Flight was fine, train ride to Tokyo was fine, finding hotel from station
was fine, Internet works!
We are both totally way tired. So we sleep now. More updates in future as
time allows. So far, we like it.
September 10th, 2002 5:35 PM
Today we left the hotel very early, in fact too early. Most of Tokyo doesn't
seem to open up until mid morning, at least on weekdays. Here's some officemen
and salaryladies on their way to work.
They were EVERYWHERE in the morning time. All wearing suits and nice dresses
and walking briskly.
We went to Akihabara, the electronics shopping area. Here I am looking at
a preview of Star Fox Adventures, which I guess is coming out soon, and then
I'm playing a really cool Taiko drumming game. I was pretty good at it,
but the game ended after 3 songs. I want to try more. There were some absolutely
amazing things there. I think the absolute craziest thing I saw today was
a DVD of music videos about the Boeing 777. In fact, there was an entire
section of DVDs of music videos about various aircraft. What? There was
also a big department store that had one floor devoted to video game... music.
That's right, CDs containing music from video games. Hundreds of 'em!
I might get some, I saw one with Street Fighter and Rock Man (known as Mega
Man here in US).
Jenny, in front of the hotel. We have to have a picture of her too.
Getting around is really easy! The combination of my compass-watch, our
Tokyo road atlas, and the fact that the streets and subways and trains are
all clearly marked in English makes it a snap. Our only problem so far has
been eating. Restaurant people don't speak much English, and the menus are
all in Japanese. For breakfast, we didn't have the guts to try a real restaurant,
although we saw lots of places with millions of people crowded inside slurping
up noodles, so we just went to a convenience store. For lunch we didn't know
what to do, and then we saw this:
A Chinese restaurant, endorsed by Iron Chef Chen Kenichi! How can anybody
resist? This also helped us because the menu had items written in Chinese
and Japanese, so Jenny could read and point. Right now, we're trying to build
up courage to try a Japanese place for dinner. Maybe they'll have plastic
food we can point to.
September 12th, 2002 8:04 AM
Missed updating yesterday, because we were so tired when we got back. We
spent the whole day walking. We hit the Imperial Palace, and this huge temple
in Asakusa. Pictures later. For now, look at this video
of our hotel room.
Today, we're going to go to Shinjuku. Weather.com says rain, and our room
newspaper says cloudy, but right now it's bright and sunny.
September 13th, 2002 2:03 PM
Wow, what a busy last few days we've had! I'll try to go back and fill you
in. Oh yeah, we did go out to a noodle place that first night. The noodles
we got were good, but I felt sick after eating them.
The 11th
On that day, we got up early and went to the imperial palace. On the way
there, we stopped in this park with lots of fountains:
Do you see me hiding in there? The palace grounds were smaller and less
ornate than I had imagined, but there are some nice parts. There is one
old tower in there you're supposed to be able to see Mt. Fuji from, but what
the guidebooks never mentioned is that it is closed to the public.
I did see some nice bugs on the palace grounds. I think the first one here
looks like it's made of metal.
After that, we went for lunch. Eating is getting to be less of a problem
now. We found a place that had plastic food outside (here's what I got:)
Can you believe that's made of plastic? It looks even more real close up,
the fried stuff looks crispy and the wet stuff looks really wet and shiny.
So what we can do now is find plastic food we want, remember the characters
on the sign, and then match them up with the menu inside.
In the afternoon, we went to the big temple in Asakusa. We got there by
subway, it turns out the subway system is really easy to use. We each got
stored value subway cards, so we don't have to worry about how much each
trip costs. Here's the entrance to that temple:
Between the entrance there and the actual temple is a shopping land. There's
one main street and many cross streets that are all covered over and full
of little shops selling all sorts of... junk. Souveneiry stuff.
The temple itself looks like this:
Very big, but very simple compared to those temples in Taiwan. There were
lots of different things you can do: You can buy incense and plant it in
a big stove and pray, or drink and wash with this special water, or buy candles
and place them in a special place inside the temple, or throw money in this
pit and pray in front of it. Here's the special water:
A woman made her little kid drink it, but I don't think the kid liked it,
she spit it out everywhere. I got my fortune there, for 100 yen you can
shake this container and then pull out one stick, which tells you which drawer
to open, which contains your fortune.
The fortune I got was bad. It had english on the back: "A small solitary
boat try to get another shore, it is real dangerous to try to cross the point
of rapid wave. A female who is not trained to the water, stand among the
stream meet a severe danger. Just like feeling envious looking at other
people in comfort, while you feel yourself helpless. Your request will not
be granted. The patient is helpless. The lost article will not be found.
The person you wait for will not come. Building a new house and removal
are both bad. To start a trip is bad. Marriage of any kind, new employment
are both bad." Luckily, I had read what to do in this case. When you get
your fortune, if you want it to come true, you tie it to this rack at the
temple. If you don't want it to come true, don't.
The temple area was infested with pigeons, which people were feeding.
This cool looking guy was feeding them, and offered me some food so I could
feed them too. I said no, so he threw pigeon food around my feet, causing
them to swarm around me. Jenny screamed and ran away.
A peaceful buddha and peaceful cat at the temple.
Down the street from the temple is a strange area. On one side of the street
is a residential area. On the other side, is an amusement park! Continuing
a little further, we got to a road called Broadway, with lots of Pachinko
places, video arcades, and strip clubs.
That night, we wanted to go out and get some nice pictures of Tokyo at night.
We first went back to that fountain park and took some pictures of the fountains
all lit up:
Then we went back to Akihabara, but found that just about everything had
closed! Stores here seem to open late (10 or 11) and close early (7 or 8).
We still got a few nice pictures:
Can you believe that was just one day! Now you see why we're so tired.
Here's what we did yesterday:
The 12th
In the morning, we had a Tokyo Department Store experience. As it turns
out, our hotel is right down the street from the main Mitsukoshi store.
It has been open there for a short while, just since 1673. It's got its
own subway station even. I think it is pretty much where the idea of the
department store was invented. We got there a little early, and waited for
it to open. They have a little waiting area just outside the main doors,
and there were lots of other people waiting to get in, even on a Thursday.
From the outside, we saw them getting the store ready to open, a whirlwind
of vacuuming, scrubbing, adjusting, and primping. 2 minutes before opening,
a girl came outside with a microphone and talked for a while, I'm assuming
she said stuff like thanks for coming, and maybe said something about the
special things happening that day. She went back inside, and then EXACTLY,
like to the 10th of a second, as the second hand swept past 10 AM on the
clock, all four huge doors were opened, and we were allowed in. The people
who had just opened the doors bowed deeply, and continously said welcome,
thank you for coming, all sorts of polite things. As we walked through the
store we got a lot more bows, polite sayings, and offers of samples and little
free things.
Pretty quickly we went to the subway and were on our way to Shinjuku, our
destination for the day. Shinjuku is like two totally seperate cities.
On one side of the train station is a cluster of high rise buildings, and
is all clean and all business. On the other side is a playground of shopping,
eating, various forms of pleasure. It was supposed to rain later in the
day, so we went first to the Tokyo Metropolitan Goverment building, which
has a observation deck up on the 45th or so floor. (It never rained, and
in fact hasn't rained since we've been here. There's even been a reasonable
amount of sunshine.)
After finding our way to the top of one of the towers of the government building,
we found this guy playing a calliope type thing on top:
And then a film crew appeared with a reporter type woman, and began filming
him.
The views from up there were really amazing. Here's a bunch of pictures
from the top.
Some people in the other tower.
Now pictures of Jenny:
Will she get mad because I post this one?
Turns out it's OK as long as I also post this one:
Here's the view from the bottom, looking back up at the building we were
just in.
And another random Shinjuku-scape, still on the "business" side.
Then, we went over to the "fun" side, and waited for the sun to go down so
we could see what it's like at night. Here's another
video, this one Jenny made sitting outside a train station / mall entrance.
Now it's night time. Here's some night shots of the area.
Then we finally went home. Another long day.
Today
Today, we're both tired, so we're resting. We got up pretty late, and went
to Mos Burger for lunch. It was great! Yeah, I also tried Japan McDonald's.
It's quite different from US McDonald's. They seem to have a smaller menu,
and lots of things we don't have. We kept seeing a poster for a really good
looking breakfast sandwich, looks like bacon and sausage, with a big nice
egg on top. I tried ordering that for breakfast, and it didn't work, I wasn't
sure what was wrong, I kept pointing to the picture of it on the wall, and
the guy kept shaking his head and saying stuff, I don't know what to do.
Finally some other lady came over who spoke a little english, turns out,
that nice egg sandwich is only for lunch! We went back and had it for lunch
later, it was good. Lots of smokers in Japan though, and restaurants don't
really have a smoking and non-smoking seciton. Even McDonald's is smoky.
Our only refuge... is Starbuck's. We've tried Japanese coffee shops but
they're always full of smoke and smoking people. But the Starbuck's here
are all non-smoking. And, ordering in a Starbuck's is easy. A mocha frappucino
grande is a mocha frappucino grande even in Japanese, they just say it with
a little more flair. Guuurrrrande fuuurapuchiiino mo-ka. Everybody who
is working at any restaurant, store, or coffee place we've been to is super
duper amazingly polite, they greet you when you come in the door, they're
very smiley, always saying polite things, and they say goodbye, thank you
again, please come back, bowing, when you leave. Language has been really
no problem, pointing and guessing what they mean works well enough. My small
knowledge of Japanese has come in handy a few times. Once we were in a restaurant
and not yet ready to order, but the waitress was hovering over us, ready
to take our order. We didn't know how to ask her to come back later. Then
I remembered, "Chotto matte, kudasai", please wait a moment. Not sure if
I said it right, but it worked.
People on the street are mostly indifferent to us, the first day I thought
people were looking at us, but now I don't think so. I think they just ignore
us. A few times I've been standing on a corner studying my maps and people
have come over to see if we need help, which was very nice. One old man came
up to me and said in very good english, "Excuse me sir, may I help you please?"
After Mos Burger today, we went back to Mitsukoshi, and went down to the
basement, where food is sold. I don't think there's any way I can describe
what that is like without you thinking I'm exaggerating. It's a huge area,
it seems endless, of stations, each selling a different type of food. They
all give you free samples, sometimes they almost force them on you, and are
constantly calling out polite sayings, "Right, thank you, welcome, what would
you like, politeness politeness politeness". Serving type people like that
have a certain way of talking, very singsongy and high pitched. The whole
place was absolutely packed, people jammed in every corner, the more popular
stations are crowded with people trying to get samples and buy things. It's
loud and really overwhelming. The other customers there don't mind bumping
you or even pushing you right out of the way to get to what they want. Jenny
was in food heaven, she bought a bunch of little snacky type things, and
today we're hanging around the hotel and eating them all. They're really
really good. Let's see if we'll have room for dinner.
September 14th, 2002 5:27 PM
We did have room for dinner, we went to a yakitori place in Roppongi. It
was a tiny place, and I felt under pressure since each thing they'd give us,
they'd watch me eat, and tell me what condiments to use, and then expect me
to squeal with delight because it was so delicious. They didn't like it
much when they asked "So how is it?" and I said "good". That place caters
to tourists, so they spoke english. Jenny was completely at ease though.
When we left they followed us out on the street, in the rain, and kept saying
thank you, good bye, please come again.
Today's destinations were Shibuya and Harajuku. Right outside the train station
at Shibuya is this statue of a dog, the legend goes that he used to always
meet his owner at the train station, and then after his owner died the dog
kept coming back for years and years to see if the owner would ever show
up again. Finally the dog died so they made a statue of him, and now it's
a popular meeting place.
Right outside the train station is a really busy crossing, there's lots of
video screens and huge numbers of people.
Lots of action in that area, people handing things out on the street, millions
of cool stores and restaurants, loud, and busy. Konami was demonstrating
new really really small remote control tanks, and I noticed this:
I actually see that alot, camera crews interviewing people on the street.
From there, we walked a bit. There was another arcade, with some pretty cool
games. In one of them, two guys appear on the screen doing a comedy show.
Next to you outisde the game cabinet is a mannequin of one of the guys.
You are supposed to punch or slap the other guy at just the right times
during the show to get better ratings, and as you hit him, the guy on the
screen hits the guy next to him the same way you do. You can hit him in
the face, or the back of the head, or in the stomach. Another game was "The
Typing of the Dead", which is just like "The House of the Dead" except instead
of shooting zombies, you have to type their names to kill them. Jenny and
I tried to play that, but somehow we selected Japanese mode instead of English,
and we can't type in Japanese very well. Then I found the game for me, TOKYO
BUS DRIVER. Yes, the whole time I was playing I was thinking "Hey... I'm
the bus driver".
I was not that good. I think I missed a few stops, and ran some red lights,
and might have been driving on the right.
From Shibuya, we walked to Harajuku, which is where Tokyo's cool kids hang
out. In one square there was a band playing:
In that same place was a super cute pink and blue girl, waiting for somebody,
or maybe just hanging around to get noticed:
It worked, because soon every tourist there wanted their picture taken with
her.
He's thinking, "Is it OK if I touch her?" She's thinking, "Whatever."
Lots of other people hanging around the same area wearing interesting costumes.
In fact later on the way back I saw pink and blue girl had met up with her
friends, who were wearing kimonos, but had extremely strange makeup and hair
colors.
Finally we went to Yoyogi park, and saw more Tokyo cool kids hanging around
and playing. They were doing all sorts of stuff. Playing music, hacky sack,
frisbee, baseball, and some really weird stuff too. There were three guys
practicing some pretty fancy acrobatic moves. Another group had used some
paper tape to lay out a winding track on the grass, and some of them were
walking around following the path, while others stayed outside telling them
what to do. Others were standing in some sort of formation, each holding
a piece of paper, maybe practicing a play? Then we saw a bunch all sitting
on the ground, all writing something. On closer examination, it looked like
they were all trying to solve the same logic puzzle, the kind where you have
like 8 stations that have certain paths between them and you have to find
a path that goes to each without repeating any. They all had the same drawing
of it with arrows going around every which way.
A secret group of friends:
Tokyo youth:
By some miracle, the weather contiues to cooperate with us. We got a little
rain yesterday night, but that was it. Today it was supposed to rain, people
were walking around with umbrellas, but it never quite actually rained.
One more week here, then off to Taiwan.
September 21st 2002 10:11 PM
Has been many moons since last update. Again, I'll try to fill you in.
15th and 16th it rained and we just did some shopping, so no pictures or
particularly interesting stories. We did eat at one of those converyor belt
sushi places, that was great, the food just keeps going past you and you
take it if you want it. No speaking required!
The 17th
Not sure what we did during the day, maybe more shopping, maybe nothing?
But at night we went to Harajuku and took a few pictures. I told you about
Harajuku before, right?
There were a few really cool buildings just outside the restaurant we ate
at (OK, I admit it, it was a pizza place):
That one above was covered with neon which would slowly change color and
flash in different patterns. Lots of crazy buildings like that in this area.
We went back to the same place where we saw the band playing last time we
were in Harajuku. This time we found huge groups of young girls, standing
around, some groups were giggling and playing with their cell phones and
moving around, but other groups were strangely all lined up and being quiet
as if they were waiting for a bus or something. We waited around and Jenny
got this cool picture of me:
But we never figured out what they were doing, so we just went home.
The 18th
On this day we went to the new Tokyo waterfront. The Japanese are smart.
Out of land? Land you've got too expensive? BUILD MORE! They built all
this new land out in the middle of Tokyo bay, and turned half of it into
a playground, and the other half into ports and docks and warehouses and
stuff. We went to the playground part.
To get there, we walked across this bridge.
I think it was called the Rainbow Bridge, so now we're over the rainbow.
We could see some pretty cool buildings from the bridge:
Here's what under the bridge looks like. (you don't care, do you.)
Anyway. From partway across the bridge, we could see the strange place we
were about to enter:
See, my theory is they built all this reclaimed land into some city planner's
idea of what heaven is like for Japanese people, and the result is a super
shiny, clean, spacious, futuristic version of Hawaii or something.
The island, Odiaba, is a really strange surreal place. Totally the opposite
of the rest of Tokyo. Wide streets, laid out on a nice grid, lots of trees
everywhere, plenty of room for cafes to have tables on the sidewalk, no power
lines overhead, buildings all look like they match. The part we went to
had tons and tons of endless restaurants, shopping malls, and various amusements
and attractions.
Look at this crazy pedestrian bridge they have. It's just for people!
You might have noticed in an earlier picture a huge ferris wheel:
I went on that. Jenny was actually too scared to go, she's getting worse
and worse lately, I have to do something to fix her, anyway, here's what
she looked like from on top:
(That's at maximum zoom, I was really really high up) From up there you
can see the other industrial parts of the island, breaking the illusion of
paradise:
Here's the view of "Tokyo Big Sight", a convention center. I really liked
the upside down pyramids.
Now this is another thing I could see from on top of the ferris wheel. What
could it be? Hmmm.....
When I got down from the big wheel, I found that this nice cat had been keeping
Jenny company.
Next up was another arcade, but this was the best arcade ever, the best one
we went to in Tokyo. It had super crazy games you'd never be able to find
in the US.
Several different commercial aircraft simulators. You can fly and
(try to) land 747's and 777's.
A backhoe simulator! Control the two treads independently, cab rotation,
and all 3 joints of the big arm. Dig up dirt and try to dump it on the target.
This one was LOTS of fun.
Super Firefighter Extra Save Pro Get! Or something. Jenny and I both
played this game, you get a giant really heavy firehose and aim it at the
screen to put out fires. We saved the mayor.
TRAIN SIMULTORS! Yes! Who can screw up just going down the track at
the right speed, and then stopping at the station? That's right, ME. I
forgot to blow the whistle when crossing roads, killing people, and then stopped
too abruptly, causing people to fall down, and then missed the station. They
had several train simulator games. Amazing. The controls are really complicated,
and there's a million gauges and little lights that I'm sure are incredibly
important, but that I paid no attention to.
And tbe best game was a motion capture Samurai game. You stand in
front of the machine holding a sword, and swing it at the bad guys who appear
on the screen. Somehow, I was good at this one, I cleared the first stage
on my first quarter...er... 200 yen. Video games are plentiful and lots
of fun here, but not cheap.
And as an amazing unexpected bonus, I found this. Who needs to actually
walk around the arcade, when you can ride in style.
Near that place was a ginormous Toyota showroom. They had like every car
Toyota has ever made or will ever make. Then even had a network of roads
running inside and outside the showroom where you can test drive their cars.
Isn't it insane? Jenny liked this car:
Now we come to the answer to the riddle of the strange glass tower full of
cars I saw from on top of the ferris wheel. In Tokyo, they have vending
machines for everything. That's right, everything.
Unbelievable video
Yes, even a vending machine for CARS. You push the button, the machine does
its magic, and out pops the car you requested. You don't actually have to
put in 3 million yen in coins though, it's free. The strange structure was
the holding space for all the different cars the machine can vend out. Whichever
one you select slides sideways and the drops down to the show floor. Of
course, even this level of insanity wouldn't be enough for Japan, so they
had TWO car vending machines in the showroom.
At this point we thought we'd seen it all, and it was getting dark so we
went outside. The ferris wheel was all lit up! You can barely see it in
these pictures, but it lights up in all different nice colors and patterns.
Yeah, the colors don't come out, it was all rainbow colors. There was a
little mall type thing nearby, and we went in, and thought we'd been thrown
through some sort of space warp back to one of those Connecticut casinos:
WHAT? Why is this here? What does it all mean? That place was super mega
huge too, it just went on and on, room after room of fake classical architecture,
statues, art, italian restaurants, and super expensive stores.
There were way more malls, amusements, and strange places to go, but Jenny
and I were so boggled by the whole thing, we just went home.
The 18th, 19th, 20th, and the future...
You'll just have to be patient. It's getting late.
SUPER SECRET SNEAK PREVIEW:
September 22nd, 2002 10:55 PM
So that's it! Today was raining, so we didn't do much. A little shopping,
I got some CDs with video game music: Rastan (but not the real Rastan music,
some orchestrated version), Rockman (you may know as Mega Man), and Street
Fighter (the original one!). We had convenience store food for dinner.
You can actually live pretty well here off 'conbini' as they call them, we
got a nice bowl of hot rice and sesame chicken, with some spicy ginger on
top, and a bunch of assorted little fresh sandwiches, and some kind of curry
filled bun. All very good, and really exceptionally good when you consider
they were just grabbed off the shelf.
Tomorrow we check out, grab a lunch in Ginza, navigate the JR system one last
time to get to the airport, and then take off to Taiwan. There will likely
be very few to no updates while we're there, but I probably will still check
email every once in a while.
I still have lots of pictures and stories to post, which I will as soon as
I can, while they're fresh in my mind. Remind me to tell you about the super
software store, the really good soba noodles place, what the streets of Tokyo
are like, the great stuff we saw on TV, and the extremely high and very pleasent
level of politeness we were exposed to.
Tokyo (and Chiba, we went there too) was great. It seems we're leaving way
too soon, we still have lots of stuff to do we never got to, but really enjoyed
the stuff we did have time for. I liked it here. Maybe someday we'll return...
Post-trip update
I've added seperate pages for the pictures we took on the 19th, 20th and 21st.
Here they are:
