Exploring Tokyo

After the fish market, we decided to head to the imperial palace. This is the historical castle that's still used as a residence for the current emperor of Japan. I was excited to see the first of many castles that I've read about in Shogun and other books. I can see Ann rolling her eyes at me now, just as if I was still in Japan drooling over the historic sites.


Imperial Palace with school group taking a class picture
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Palace entrance with occupied guard posts
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After the imperial palace, we took a trip to a craft store that Alicia likes to frequent. They give you cardboard trays of different shapes and sizes, and you pick out paper to glue on them, finally lacquering the piece to make it repel moisture and have a sheen to it. I was skeptical at first, until I found the samurai decorative paper. Then I was into it. I think these stores would go over big in the US. Put them next to Archivers for competition. Ann really liked this, and thought it was a relaxing thing to do.


Ann and Alicia at Japanese craft shop
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After the craft shop, we headed to Asakusa shrine. This is a large shrine in the middle of Tokyo. There were tons of school kids hanging out here eating the wide variety of sweets available. It was crowded, but fun to people watch.


Asaksusa Shrine Crowd
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We tried our first Japanese treat which are freshly backed small cakes baked in iron moulds that have a sweat red bean paste inside. They were really good, the red beans kind of tasted like sweet potatoes.

This was our first major shrine, so it was very impressive. Like every shrine in Japan, there's a purification fountain to cleanse your hands (and/or mouth) before entering the shrine. There are also guardians at the shrines to make sure no riff-raff enter. They have chicken wire protecting the statues from pigeons, but you can make out this guy's abs, which say to me "stay out, or feel the wrath of my 60-second abs".


60-second abs guy
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Looking back, this shrine looks a lot like other shrines we've visited, but this being our first shrine, we were really impressed. The roof itself is very large, and definitely tells you that you're in Japan.


Asaksusa Shrine
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This shrine is home to what they call "The Little Buddha", as opposed to the "Big Buddha" that we encountered later in the trip. Here's Ann and I in front of the Little Buddha. Notice the serene expressions on all 3 of our faces (2 of which are due to recovering from the effects of jet-lag, the other the result of achieving supreme enlightenment).


Little Buddha
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Man, this was a full first day. We ended the day with a trip to Omante-Sando, which has lots of shopping, a 100 yen store, and Harajuku which is kind of like Uptown for the Minneapolis area, only more kids. They have the outrageous outfits and hair styles, good people watching here.


Omote-Sando Area
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Harajuku
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I don't have any pictures after that for the first day. I think that's when we collapsed from exhaustion. Alicia gave us a great first day tour to help us get oriented to Tokyo.

Still to come, biking through Tokyo (or pedestrian dodging through Tokyo)...

Tsukiji Fish Market

Alicia had a great idea to visit the fish market on our first day, since we needed to get up early to catch the auction, and since we were still on Minneapolis time it wouldn't be as difficult to get up. It wasn't easy, but we were able to get out of the house about 6:00 AM.

Mike and Alicia are closest to the Hiro-o station (pronounced like Hero with a long O) which is a short walk from their place past a nice park and a coffee shop that Ann and I frequented.


Park near Mike and Alicia's
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Coffee shop near Mike and Alicia's
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so we hopped a train to Tsukiji (pronounced SKEE-gee) and had our first lesson on Tokyo's train system. It's really an amazing system, however I haven't been to New York or LA, so I would say my train system experience is limited to our new light rail line which is pretty silly in comparison. Anyway, the Tokyo subway system can get you pretty much anywhere. You buy a ticket depending on where you want to go (further distance is more expensive). The ticket is used to designate which stop you go on, and you use that as well at the station where you get off the train. This eliminates litter since you need the ticket to exit. We exited the train, and just needed to follow the guys with the knee high rubber boots to know where the fish market is located. Here's a picture of the ultra-clean subway station and the ticket gates you need to go through:


Hiro-o train station entrance
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When we arrived at the fish market, there was a sign that warned us to proceed at our own risk. We could see why a moment later when forklifts and trucks were whizzing by us with seemingly no regard for human life. I got the impression that they're used to working around tourists, but still may not enjoy this part of their job. We then entered the large market full of a wide variety of seafood, most of which didn't make me look forward to breakfast.


Fresh squid and octopus
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Fish on a stick
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Eels
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The most impressive thing about the fish market was the huge tuna that they were preparing. The fish are quickly frozen on board the ships and dropped off at the market where they're auctioned to restaurants and markets. The tails are cut open so buyers can see the quality of the fish.


Tuna auction
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Tuna preparation
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Marking fish at auction
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After we returned, we found out from our Aunt Merikay who saw an article in the Chicago Tribune that the fish market was closed because tourists were getting in the way. They closed the fish market on Monday, we were there on Friday. Just made it.

Fish Market Closed to Tourist Article

After seeing how the fish are auctioned and prepared, our stomachs were growling so we thought we'd sample some of the fresh fish. There's a sushi restaurant just a block away from the fish market that we tried. Alicia ordered us a wide variety of sushi including fresh tuna, eel both raw and cooked, sea urchin, salmon eggs (my personal favorite), and shrimp. We cleaned our plates, as Alicia warned us we may offend the chef if we don't. Not sure if that was true, or if that was a tactic to get us to finish. I have to say, most of the things we tried were really tasty. My favorites were the tuna, and salmon. (The eggs weren't actually my favorite, that last comment was dripping with sarcasm if you didn't notice).


Ann and I sampled our first sushi at a restaurant near the market
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Ann trying the sea urchin (she's a good sport)
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A toast with sake at 7:30 in the morning (I later spilled my sake and had to feel the wrath of the chefs)
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There was also a shrine at the fish market. One of the bazillion we saw along the trip. This was a new thing to us at this point, though, so we made sure to check it out.


Shrine near fish market
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We headed to the imperial palace next...

Arrival in Japan

We woke up early on Wednesday morning to catch a plane to Dallas, then to Japan. We were able to get first-class only on the short trip to Dallas but it was nice. When we arrived in Dallas, there was pandemonium at the gate. Not sure what was happening, but I think the seat assignments were messed up. They were calling seemingly everyone up to the gate desk for something. Meanwhile Ann and I were waiting to see if we would get on. At one point, the attendants were saying there were two open seats, but they aren’t together. We just wanted to get on the plane, we would take the seats if they weren’t together. They told us we may miss the flight, but then a passenger didn’t show up (thanks Mr. Wong) and we were able to get aboard the plane avoiding a stay over in Dallas.

The flight wasn’t too bad, they had movies on a personal TV in the seat back of each seat, so that helped pass the time. I also read a lot of my book “Musashi” which helped me get excited for the trip. There was a Japan TV special that looked like it would be good, but unfortunately it was only in Japanese, and the only thing it was showing was about elephants at a Japanese zoo.

We arrived 13 hours later at Narita airport in Japan, which is just north of Tokyo. We were very tired and ready to be at Mike and Alicia’s place. Our first challenging experience with Japan was trying to use the phone. We couldn’t figure out how much it costs, or how to dial the 800 number to use our phone card. I was looking at the machine for buying a phone card, and a security guard came up to me and asked if I needed help with anything. Just the first of many times the Japanese were very friendly to us. We also learned quickly how expensive Japan can be when I bought a small coke and juice for 800 yen (about $7.50).

We bought our bus tickets and boarded the bus. While waiting for the bus (and many times during the trip) I was saying to Ann “I can’t believe we’re in Japan!” We planned and looked forward to this trip so much, it was hard to believe we were there. We were both very tired, and I dozed off and on while Ann slept most of the way to Tokyo (about a 2 hour bus ride stopping at about 4 other hotels before ours). My first impression from the bus was the industrial area that we drove through. Not real pretty, and overwhelmingly large. When we drove into the downtown area of Tokyo I was amazed. Such a large city, and so different from any I’ve seen. There was so much to see I had a hard time sleeping on the bus. Strange signs and lots of English phrases that weren’t quite right which we saw many times along the trip. Here’s a good example from later in the trip:



Smile is best makeup
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We arrived at the hotel where Alicia was to meet us. This is the Grand Hyatt in Roppongi which is an area of Tokyo close to Mike and Alicia’s place. This is quite the hotel. Alicia told us that celebrities often stay here, and there’s a movie theater in the building where the Hollywood Premieres take place in Tokyo. As we pulled into the hotel I noticed a rolls Royce and many other expensive cars parked in the valet area. The bell hop started putting a luggage tag on our suitcases and I had to explain to him that we weren’t staying there, just waiting for our sister-in-law to pick us up. Alicia arrived with Jens and Bryce, it was great to see them. Jens and Bryce argued over who would take the suitcases, and they each took one of our suitcases, which we thought was very nice. We took a walk down the street to their place taking in everything along the way. My first impression was how narrow the streets and sidewalks were. Ann mentioned that it looked similar to Europe. We found out how challenging it was to ride bikes around Tokyo because of this:


Narrow sidewalks and streets in Tokyo
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Mike and Alicia live in a beautiful apartment near many of the embassies in Tokyo (we walked by the Chinese embassy on the way to their place). They gave us a tour of their apartment which was around 2000 square feet which is much smaller than their home in Gilroy, CA, but large for an apartment in Tokyo. It was an apartment similar to an American one, but the bathrooms were quite different. Here’s a picture of the hi-tech toilet which has a heated seat, bidet, and two settings depending on how much work you do (if you know what I mean). The controller on the wall comes off and is wireless for reasons I can’t think of. Alicia mentioned it’s good for a practical joke.


Hi-Tech Toilet
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The other difference is the shower room. This room has no toilet, and is quite large in relation to the apartment. This tells me how important baths are to the Japanese. The bathroom has a shower area separate from the tub. The tub has a controller that keeps the water at a certain (hot) temperature, and it automatically fills up the tub to the right level.


Japanese shower and tub room
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Enough about the bathrooms. Alicia made a great dinner for us our first night there which was perfect since we were ready to hit the sack. Mike travels often for work and had some advice for jet lag (Japan is 14 hours ahead of us, so there’s quite the adjustment to be made). He said it was a good idea to get right into the time difference by staying up until your regular bedtime so you won’t get up in the middle of the night. I think we went to bed about 8:30 or 9:00, so we were a bit early, but close. That advice worked well as we were good to go after Mike’s two-day jet lag plan. We slept like logs in their guestroom, and didn’t wake until early the next morning when we made a trip to the fish market.