Tokyo...gozaimas

Japan!  Why not, right?  I met Greg and Lyndell, both Australians, while snowboarding in Chile.  They invited me along on this trip, and the snow in Japan is supposed to be the best in the world, so I booked it.  Here's a map to follow along.

The first week I spent in Japan was in Tokyo.  This post is devoted to Tokyo alone, and I'll warn you, there are a LOT of pictures.  I'll try to be brief with the words.  Post coming soon covering the snow portion of the trip.

Task number one: contact fellow 2010 ND graduate Dhairya Doshi, with whom I'd be staying during my time in Tokyo.  He gave me a contact number, so I found a pay phone, put in 100 yen (about a dollar--it's around a penny to the yen), and thankfully got the right guy.

I took the bus into the city, around 90 minutes.  Thank goodness someone told me which bus to be on, because I can't even pretend to read this sign.

Actually, pretty much everything is translated to English, which is great for tourists.  This sign included, anything digital will switch back and forth between English and Japanese, along with Korean and Chinese on some signs.

Dhairya and I got dinner then I hit the sack.

I had so much fun figuring out the train system.  Everything is pretty simple as long as you aren't cartographically challenged.  If you can get around any large English-speaking city, Tokyo is not much different.

My first stop Tuesday morning was the Tsukiji fish market to see the tuna auction around 5 a.m.  Every website and tour guide says to see the tuna auction.  The cops that escorted me out had a different opinion.  Apparently as of 2014 no tourists are allowed.  Oh well, I got a few pictures before I was booted.

Fish are giant, maybe 4-5 feet long, and go for between $6,000 and $10,000 USD.

The outer markets around Tsukiji carry everything you could ever need by way of fish and most other food supplies you can imagine.

Another big draw to Tsukiji is the incredibly fresh (like off the boat 20 minutes ago) sushi.  So sushi breakfast is quite popular.  Sushi Dai is locally regarded as the best, so I waited in line an hour for a seat.

7 a.m., best time for sushi.

This stuff was crazy delicious.  Freshest, best-quality sushi I've every had.  Abour US $35 for 10 pieces of chef-selected nigiri.  Among the pieces were tuna, yellowtail, clam, salmon roe (biggest I've ever seen), sea urchin, snapper, flounder, and mackerel.

After milling around the markets a couple more hours, I went to the beautifully serene Hama Rikyu gardens next door.  My favorite thing about Tokyo was the juxtaposition between gardens that haven't changed in thousands of years and the high-tech sky scrapers in the background.

This garden featured long Japanese cedar bridges over mirror-like lagoons and quiet, elegant tea houses on islands.

The Shogun who had his castle here was a big fan of duck hunting pre-weapon style.  They would hide in these shacks, lure the ducks into a channel, then scare them into flying up and catch them with nets.

Language barrier strikes again.  I got on the wrong ferry, but it was only a 10 minute journey, so I crossed back over the river and got on the right one bound for Asakusa to the north.

We crossed under 13 bridges or varying style and complexity.  I'm glad I decided to travel by water, it gave a unique perspective to the city.

Asakusa is most famous for its giant traditional temple devoted to a golden idol trapped in fishing nets over a thousand years ago.  The Japanese come from all over the country to pay homage.

All Japanese shrines and temples I visited follow the same ritual, but this one was equipped for high occupancy.  People of all ages (like the elderly lady in the foreground here) come, dig coins out of their purse, and do their best to throw the coin into the box in the middle.  Then they pray to the god/Buddha/idol for whatever they specifically grant or protect against.  It's a cool ritual, and people are very serious about it.

Since I was on my own in Tokyo, there aren't a whole lot of pictures of me, but I made a point to take a few.  You're welcome, Mom!

I walked over to Ueno Park from Asakusa.  It was quite a hike, but I definitely prefer to travel above ground whenever I can.  So much to see!

This Samurai was a great warrior back in the Edo period and inspired the Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai.

Part of the park is this beautifully ornate temple filled with more gold than I've ever seen in one place before.  The dragons on either side of the door (the colorful vertical sculptures, tough to see here) are rumored to go drinking in the nearby lake at night.

After walking the park I took a stroll through a nearby cemetery as night was falling.  It was a very cool experience, the Japanese have a very traditional way of preparing graves.  I'm not entirely certain what the wooden slats are behind the stone, but they were on many plots and appeared to be interchangeable.

This guy has a beer in the center of his stone.  You know, in case he gets thirsty.

After Ueno I headed to a very cool restaurant my guidebook recommended (great guide book, by the way, Rough Guide to Tokyo--thanks Anna!) called Hantei.  They specialize in food on sticks, and it's delicious.  They start you off with a "first course" of six sticks.  Then I ordered a half course, which includes...

Crabs on a stick!  These guys were small, the bodies were probably the size of a quarter.  I asked the waitress, "I eat the whole thing?" motioning eating it all.  "Hai, hai" (yes).  As the Japanese say, Kampai!  Down the hatch.  A little crunchy, with the distinct flavor of crab.

Words that served me well: Arigato, Ohaio, Konbanwa, Sumimasen, Sumenesai, Eigo ga dekimasu ka, Itodakimasu, gochiso sama deshita (thank you, good morning, good evening, excuse me, I'm sorry, do you speak English, bon apetit, that was delicious).  Gozaimas can be added to just about everything to make it more formal/polite, hence the name of this post.

On Wednesday I took the monorail over the Rainbow Bridge to the island of Odaiba.  It's a man-made island that is devoted to all things technology-related which fed my geek side quite nicely.  This is a picture of the Tokyo Convention Center from the monorail.  They have a giant saw, because why not?

My first stop was the Panasonic building.  No photos were allowed inside, but it was quite impressive.  They had a show floor on the bottom level devoted to green energy, and the top two floors were an interactive math and science museum.  I could have spent all day there, I had so much fun.

I spent a few hours at the Miraiken in the afternoon, a science museum showing science of the future.  This globe was probably 30 feet across and was constructed of LCD screens.  They had presentations about global warming every half hour that showed Earth's climatological changes in a yearly cycle.  Cool.

These numbers were real-time data from all over the world.  You could click a computer screen to see what each represented, and they changed every once in a while to a different subject.  I think the green one was gallons of beer produced that day to the minute.

More cool toys.  This was a representation of a computer sending an email message.  You input the message letter by letter using black and white balls (representing 0s and 1s), they're "processed" in the computer, and the message is received on the other end.

"Hi Mom!"

My last tech stop of the day was the Toyota building.  I saw some pretty crazy concepts.  They're confident the next thing in automobiles will be hydrogen.  They're having hydrogen stations installed all over Japan, and this sweet-looking hydro-car will be on the market in 2015.

They had a bunch of driving simulators on the floor where you could activate different safety features of a Toyota.  You could also drive the new models out on the streets, but considering the quantity of cars I was seeing on streets and the fact that they drive on the left, I decided to opt out of that one.

Odaiba has a statue of liberty.  Because, why not?  Rainbow bridge in the background.

The Japanese are crazy about Ramen noodles.  I ate a lot on this trip.  This particular bowl has pork, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, corn, all topped off with a tablespoon of butter.

I finished off my day at Odaiba by going to an onsen.  This was quite the experience.  Japanese bathing is segregated and is done in the nude.  It takes some getting used to; there's a cleansing ritual to it all, which takes practice.  This one was huge, it had 8 pools inside and 3 outside, all around 100-110 degrees Fahrenheit and one cold pool next to a sauna.  Every ski resort we went to had an onsen, much smaller than this one.

Thursday started with a trip to Ginza, home of Tokyo Station and Ginza chome-4, the busiest intersection in the city.  Lots and lots and lots of people here.

Ginza borders the Imperial Palace and Gardens.  The current palace and residences are hidden from view, but there are giant reminders of what the old castle looked like in the Edo period, like this huge entrance gate to the East garden.

This place was impressive.  The stone interlocking reminded me of that seen at Machu Picchu.  The views were great, and the design very impressive.

I can't get enough of these pagodas set over water.  They're so pretty.

I ran into a camera crew more than once, but this one made me chuckle.  They found a family that was obviously foreign and interviewed them about the information signs which can be found all over the city.  These things were a life-saver.  They're oriented to the direction you're looking, have the best English street-naming system, and show how to get to the nearest train.  My guess is this had something to do with Tokyo's bid for the olympics, showing how easy is is for an English-speaker to navigate the city.

Also found in Ginza is the Sony building.  Most of the building is devoted to showing off their latest gear and some future-release stuff.  The set-up was pretty cool, very impressive.

De-constructed camera

These were so cool.  They're high-resolution lenses that can attach to your smart phone to transform it into a better camera, or you can detach the lens to turn it at any angle, reach around corners, into tight places, and still operate the shutter from your phone.  Neat concept.

Sony's big thing they're pushing right now is their 4K sound system.  They had a little educational area about sound.  This booth said that humans can hear up to a 20,000 Hertz frequency, but most adults can't hear anywhere near that high.  I was surprised that I could hear it without any trouble, and the woman at the booth said she had never met anyone who could hear it.  Must be a product of never using ear buds--great choice!  If you want to test it out yourself, click here (best in a silent room with headphones)

There's a bakery to the north of Ginza chome-4 that has been serving up the same recipes for over a thousand years.  I had to try it out.  This great attendant picked her three favorite sweet rolls, they were awesome.

I promised a Chilean friend that I would take lots of pictures of the Manga culture in Japan.  Manga is every Asian cartoon-themed thing you can imagine.

I went to a book store up in Akihabara with 9 floors purely devoted to Manga.  It was intense.  If anyone wants to see more pictures of anime-related stuff, let me know.  I have lots.

One of the not-to-be-missed experiences was to visit a Maid Cafe in Akihabara.  It was pretty interesting, these girls devoted to Manga culture are the servers and their sole purpose is to talk to you about your life while you're there.  The language barrier was a little tough, but I got to learn a lot about Japanese culture, see some art she's done, and talk about music.

On Friday I explored the area of Akasaka where I was staying with Dhairya ("Home Base" on the map).  This is the National Diet Building. (No kidding.  Maybe pronounced Dee-Eht?).  It has the two branches of government inside, and the House of Councillors is available for touring.  It's kind of like the British House of Lords.  No photos were allowed inside, but it's quite ornate.  There are special seats for the Emperor and his family when they visit.  One of the coolest things is that any Japanese citizen is welcome to come watch proceedings since politics is viewed as "for the people".

Just steps from our apartment was Hie-Jinja, a temple devoted to the protector against all evil.

The staircase was lined with bamboo gates, it was cool to walk through the rays of light coming through.

I saw some interesting characters inside this shrine...some very formal types in suits and women in high heels wishing against evil.  Every once in a while it just felt like I was in the presence of the Yakusa mob, and this was one.

I then moved on to Roppongi, kind of the trendy area of Tokyo.

Art...or slides?  This was a playground created out of sculptures.  They had jungle gyms, swings, and slides all created in a modern art style.

In the center of Roppongi Hills is this giant bronze spider.  It's huge.

I didn't spend much time in Roppongi, it felt very Western.  It was basically a big mall complex with sky scrapers all around.  Interesting to see though.

I jumped on a train to Shinjuku to see the famous Shinjuku Gyoen gardens, possibly the most beautiful in Tokyo.  It really was stunning, meticulously manicured greenery everywhere.

The western half of the garden is very Japanese in style with winding paths, bridges, pagodas, and tea houses.

Another pagoda over a mirror-like lagoon.  So beautiful.  I can't imagine what this looks like during Cherry Blossom season.

In stark contrast, the Eastern half of the garden is dominated by straight lines, huge Birch trees, and long wide-open green lawns in a French style.

I'm not sure if that's a crayfish or a scorpion, but either way I don't know why anyone would want to pick one up.

Even though it was still a little early, I walked up to the area called Golden Gai on the East side of Shinjuku.  This place is crazy.

Some 200 tiny little bars are crammed into these little alleyways.  I walked through maybe four or five times peeking into windows and taking pictures of signs.  Nothing was open yet, but it was nice seeing things in the light.

Since I had some time to kill until the bars opened, I decided to check out something I had read about in the guide book.  They call them Cat Cafes.

You pay $5 for an hour with the cats and you can order drinks.  I figured at the very least, they had wifi, and I needed to catch up on some emails.  It was actually a pretty cool place.

All the cats were pure-bred, which a nearby "cat enthusiast" was quick to tell me you'd never find in the states.

This particular pure-bred didn't look so happy in its costume.

It was rather pleasant.  I don't know if I'd need to do it again, but the idea is to enjoy the company of pets without the responsibility of pet ownership.  Lots of young couples and a few elderly people who I'm guessing have lost loved ones.  I got to talk with some interesting folks.

After the cats I went to have the best Tonkatsu of the trip (breaded pork cutlet).  This place is known especially for mixing it with ginger, cabbage, and rice, then pouring green tea over the whole thing to make something of a porridge.  It was fantastic.

And I found friends!  Gosuke, the guy behind me, grew up in the states and asked if I wanted to join them.  They all enjoyed practicing English.

At this point things were starting to move at Golden Gai so I ducked into a place that could maybe fit four people.  I had a few drinks with Brian, a Japanese-American visiting family, and Fuji, the bartender who spoke very little English.  We had a blast swapping stories and trying to communicate with each other.

And then, walking back to the apartment preparing for a night of clubbing, I happened upon a Chilean flag in a window.  I was confused, so I stared at it for a minute.  Next thing I know, a drunk Japanese guy in a suit is waving me in and I'm eating Chilean food and wine with a very interesting crowd.

Eduardo, with the glasses in the back, moved to Japan 30 years ago and has been serving up sandwiches Chilean-style ever since.  He's good friends with all the Japanese folks in the picture.  We had a very interesting night, it was definitely the most ridiculous cultural experience I've had.  I was speaking Chilean Spanish with Eduardo, who was translating to Japanese for everyone else.  It was a great final night in Tokyo before heading up to the snow.  The guy on the right owns a high-class sushi restaurant in Ginza, so we all agreed to meet there after I got back from riding in the North.  Stay tuned for phase two in Snow and Sumo!