Tokyo II

Day 256 – Robot seals, miniature cars and a big bang

This morning we had a sleep in and didn’t meet at the Parco Factory until 11am. The guide book made the Parco Factory sound like a free exhibition showing all kinds of design work. It turned out to be just one room, with the current exhibition being a collection of Rip Slyme, a Japanese pop band’s advertising, CD covers, tickets and merchandise. A TV station was there and asked to interview me (via Shouko) but I had to politely admit I knew nothing about Rip Slyme!!

There was a really cool bookshop in the same building though, so we managed entertain ourselves for a little while in there and Matt bought some more Murakami books.

The crossing outside Shibuya station – rivals Times Square!

On the way to Miraikan we had yummy stand up noodles at the station, something Shouko herself had never experienced as it was something generally only men did. We’re foreigners! What would we know?

Shouko’s part time job when she was at university was as a demonstrator at Miraikan and so as we purchased our tickets (from a vending machine of course!), she just needed to show her lifetime membership.

The Miraikan Building. Miraikan roughly translates to “future world”.

Miraikan is the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation and is broken into four main exhibition sections: Innovation and the Future, Information Science and Technology for Society, Life Science and the Earth Environment and Frontiers with hands on things and bilingual explanations for everything. We spent a long time in the ‘Frontiers’ bit as it was a lot of stuff we’d never seen before and there was probably a lot more in it given the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency offices were in the top floor of the building. It was a lot more ‘adult’ than Science World in Vancouver or Science Works at home too – I was struggling to understand parts of it!

Space toilet! There was an International Space Station Living Quarters replica you could go inside and see how an astronaut lives.

The inventor of the Post-It note got a guernsey!

And the guy who invented Velcro. The story goes that he was studying the burs stuck in his dogs fur and based the idea on that.

A representation about how the internet works…. I still think it’s freaky.

Me playing with Paro the baby robot seal. He responds to you petting him and calling his name and if you pinch him! After I had been playing with him a few minutes a little Japanese kid came up and punched him in the face! Paro didn’t like that!

Three hours later it was time for some ice cream, so we visited a nearby shopping mall and found us some cold stone. Across from the mall was a display with Toyota’s latest toys so we went in for a quick look. The future cars were quite disappointing, but if we ever get a second car, maybe we’ll get this:

We jumped back on the monorail and headed into Shimbashi which was on the way to where the fireworks would be showing later that night. We stopped in at one of those tiny restaurant/bars we had wanted to try and what seemed like an ancient husband and wife team served us up some delicious tapas style snacks to go with our beers. Matt and I just picked random characters on the wall and Shouko explained what they were and if she thought we would like them, ordered! We finally had some yakitori (skewered chicken), tai (sashimi), harumaki (light a toasted cheese spring roll), yakinasu (a marinated vegie), kiayako tofu (tofu blocks in a sauce), gindara tenaki (dried fish crackers??) and zousui (rice and fish broth – apparently the Japanese answer to chicken soup to cure a cold). Even Shouko was impressed with her “intuition” and announced she would be taking her friends back there.

The point of being back in Tokyo was to watch the Hanabi Taikai festival. A festival of fireworks held in the last weekend in July, just because Japanese people like fireworks. Many of the streets within view were closed off on one half where people had bought picnic blankets and eskies and were set up from around midday ready for the 7.30pm fireworks. The other half of the road was still blocked off from traffic, but open to walk and so you could walk a loop around the city and watch the fireworks as you go. As we didn’t want to sit and wait all day, we took the walk option which was a nice way to see the fireworks from different angels.

At the end of the fireworks we had to part ways with Shouko. We were off to Osaka in the morning and she needed a much deserved day off to prepare for her week ahead. Thanks again Shouko for spending time with us!!!

As our hotel was on the same line as Tokyo Disney we had been watching many people coming back on the train with Mickey ears and show bags. We could help but notice the vast majority were adults and not kids! Maybe next time.

Day 257 – Kids come in handy sometimes

This morning we headed over to Harajuku and very trendy area to visit the Design Festa Gallery and experience the last of the Japanese shopping crowds. It was amazing how many people were trying to fit down one little laneway, but given many of the shops were empty, I think it was more about being seen in that street rather than actually shopping there!

Apart from the gallery, (which was interesting, but quite small and probably not worth the hassle of getting over there), nearby was an organic all you can eat restaurant and we were dying for some vegetables. We had to wait in line with the hoards of others also recognising that Y1,260 is a good deal when one apple on a pedestal costs Y7,500 in the supermarket. The wait was made longer by the fact that a children’s centre was attached and so if you rocked up with a kid, you jumped to the front of the queue!

Our last Skinkansen ride over to Osaka was uneventful and we checked into our business hotel which was in the funky suburb of Shinsaibashi. We decided to try something different for dinner…. not! We had okonomiaki, the only thing different was it was a fancier one.

Kamakura

Day 255 - Just a great day out.

This morning we agreed to be on the 10.11 train from Kashiwa as Shouko would be able to get on at the next stop down the line and we could head out to the Kamakura area together. It was a great plan until we arrived at the station to find that there were two 10.11 trains, one being an express. We decided to go with the stopping all stations, as the express wouldn’t stop at Shouko’s station.

When Shouko didn’t get on the next stop up we realised we had no back up plan! We decided to get off at the next station that both trains would stop at and call. As we stepped out of the carriage, Shouko was about to step on!! So we all quickly jumped back on the train we were on. She had realised what had happened and also got off at the next station that both stopped at to change. It was very lucky because we hadn’t even looked up where we were going to meet there!

By the time we arrived in Kamakura, it was lunchtime and stinking hot. We took a walk up the main road Wakamiya-oji toward Enkaku-ji temple and stopped in at a Japanese curry house in a little alleyway on the way. Japanese curry wasn’t very hot, but tasty just the same, and added to our variety of food which has mainly consisted of sushi train and okonomiaki up to date.

Essentially, cross where ever you want!

Enkaku-ji is a Rinzai Zen temple founded in 1282 and was a place where monks prayed for soldiers who lost their lives defending Japan against the Kublai Khan. There was a small museum attached, but not even our translator could read the exhibits as the script was scribbley and written in ‘old language’, so we just had to admire the artefacts and layered kimonos instead.

Tubs of sake donated to the temple by local businessman.

On the way out I picked up an “Omikuji” (fortune card) and it was not a bad one, so I didn’t need to go back into the temple and tie it in a special area and pray for a better one.

A couple reads their Omikuji to each other.

After the Enkaku-ji we walked back toward the station on a parallel street through Komachi-dori, known for its shopping. Matt’s must-have item from Japan was a puzzle box, mine was a proper tea set and up until now I was losing hope of finding one I wanted in my price range. Still nothing in this strip, so we headed for the train to Kotoku-in temple to see Japan’s second largest Daibutsu (Buddha). The biggest was in Nara, which we had already seen.

Lucky for me, there was a little pottery shop on the path up to the temple and I finally found a cute little tea set! (Sorry forgot to take a photo before sending it home).

Sitting in the open air of the gardens, Daibutsu didn’t let us down and he was very impressive. He used to be sheltered in a giant wooden house but…

I thought it was very Zen that he would just sit there while a Tsunami washed away his house.

Some terrapins playing in a nearby pond.

On the way back to the train we stopped in at Hase Dera which was also very rewarding with views out to the beach, a beautiful garden and a funny little cave which had different small chambers where you could donate money in an honesty box, take a small figurine or plaque, write on the bottom your wish and then line it up with the others.

As the beach was close by, we took a short stroll down to sticky beak. I think we’ll save our swimming for the Philippines.

Hearing that I, in particular, had a bit of an obsession with okonomiaki, Shouko took us to a street full of okonomiaki restaurants! When I asked if she had a favourite she replied that she had never been to this street before, so when I asked her how we pick one (out of at least 30!) she replied “intuition”! Intuition basically involved looking through the window to see what we thought. Shouko’s intuition did good! The place was full, funky and delicious!

Kashiwa

Tonight we had decided to try something different accommodation wise and checked ourselves into Tokyo Kiba Hotel, a capsule hotel!  As we hadn’t stayed in one before, the lady at the front desk kindly showed us the ropes, all of which were mostly the same except that instead of having a room we were both in the dog house!

We only had to venture across the road to the nearest sushi train and spent the remainder of the night watching movies in our box and watching as mostly other travellers, and not suited businessmen as previously thought, trickled in and crawled into their box.  It was at good option as at Y4,000, that’s a bit under half the cost of a standard business hotel.

Day 254 – Sleepy shopping and photo booth fun

This morning we checked out of our box and moved our things out to Kashiwa, about an hour on the train north east of Tokyo, to near where Shouko was living with her brother.  She had managed to get two days off work to hang out with us, but not easily.  The poor thing had been at work until 5am prior to meeting us!

We met in the lobby of our hotel at midday and headed out to Shouko’s local shopping mall for a look around and some lunch.  After a couple of hours walking around Shouko looked knackered, so we suggested she went home for some more sleep and we met up later for dinner.

Vegemite was $11 in Canada, here a more reasonable $5.

At about 8pm we met up again for sushi train and finally were able to order some of the more interesting stuff you have to order specially that doesn’t come on the ordinary train.

Each one of those white strips is a fishy!

Fish roe marinated in something lemony.

After sushi train we went for a stroll around the area and had some photo fun in one of those funky photo booths were there’s a full body blue screen, a range of scenery and you can graffiti on the pictures before they are printed!  What happened to ordinary old black and white and pulling fun faces?  After that we wandered into a $2 shop type place that must have sold absolutely everything imaginable.  It was called something that sounded like “Donkey” and is apparently a bit of an institution.  Tired again, we all hit the sack reasonable early, ready for our day trip tomorrow.

Tokyo

Day 236 AND Day 237 – From blow-up mat to Tatami mat

This morning we woke up around 5.30am, packed up the tent, hopped in the car (which thankfully started first go) and were off for our 8am flight to Tokyo.  We were there with plenty of time to spare, but by the time check-in took forever and then security took for ever, we were one of the last they let on the flight.  Plenty of people missed theirs!

Getting this flight was quite silly really as when we were booking our flights it turned out to be $300USD cheaper each if we flew from Seattle to Tokyo via Vancouver on the same plane as direct from Vancouver to Tokyo!  So of course we took the cheaper option and were lucky that Elliott and Kat were happy to make a weekend of it, otherwise it would have be $25 and 4 hours on the bus.  Cheaper, but not as fun!  We called up to try and cancel the first leg, given we were in Vancouver anyway and Air Canada told us that if we didn’t get on in Seattle, they would cancel the whole ticket!  How silly!

So anyways, our first flight was short and sweet back to Vancouver airport to sit around for 4 hours, but it ended up working out well as we had some time to book some accommodation in Japan and the exact window of time we needed to watch the World Cup Final.  They even held the plane by about 3 minutes so that us and a hand full of others could watch the dying minutes!

Of course out of all the seats on the plane, I got the one with the broken headphone jack, but we were quickly re-seated and ready to begin our task of watching as many movies as possible in the next 9 hours.  We did well.  It was only a problem once we had arrived in Tokyo and with the heat and humidity punching us in the face, it was quite a struggle to stay awake on the two trains and 90 minutes from Narita Airport into Tokyo.

Once we had arrived in Tokyo and navigated to our executive box at the Dormy Inn Hatchobori Hotel, we hit the streets for some food and to stay awake just that little bit longer so that we could go to bed at a normal bedtime.  We managed to find a tiny 8 seater place, the first place we saw with at least a couple of English translations, ordered a few random things, exchanged smiles and head-bobs with the chef who threw in a tough dried piece of fish snack to try at the end of our meal and then we were on our way to fall into our futon – 25 hours after we had woken up in a tent in Seattle!  We had also lost a day during that time.

Day 238 – Finding food in Japan.

This morning we got up and took a walk to Ginza, one of the famous shopping districts, although at 9am everything was still closed!  We wandered into a building and downstairs to what looked like a food court.  A little old Japanese lady came up to us and in perfect English said “Good morning, what are you looking for?”  We explained that we just wanted some breakfast, and straight away her reply was “Why, you passed McDonalds just upstairs!”  We gave a little chuckle and explained that we wanted Japanese breakfast (but didn’t bother to add that neither of us has actually ever had a McDonalds hamburger!).  She spoke to her friend for a minute and I believe they were conferring as to where would be open at this hour.  She turned back to us and explained that everything near here opened at 11am so we were out of luck.  So we trudged back up the stairs and out onto the street. 

 
Ginza, our first glimpses of Japan in the daylight.

It was almost another hour before we found a little back street Ramen noodle place.  Delicious and easy, as you make your purchase by picking a picture off a vending machine that dispenses you a ticket and then food arrives!

The Sony Centre also didn’t open until 11am, so we were there waiting when it did.  We spent an hour or so wandering through all the present and future gadgets on offer and played a few of the video games.  The most impressive piece of new technology (for the average consumer) were the new 3D televisions, however I’m not sure how they will go with customer satisfaction as watching it was giving us a headache after only 10 minutes.  Must take a bit of getting used to.

Matt having his golf swing analysed (like he will ever need to know that!).

And now watching soccer on the 3D TVs.  3D was really freaky!

After the Sony Centre we continued on our walking tour to the Imperial Palace East Gardens...

The Imperial Gate.  Unless you swim the moat and climb a fence, you can’t actually go inside the Imperial Palace, just the gardens to the East.

A small amount of green in a city of grey!

After that it was up the hill a little bit to the Modern Art Museum, which coincidentally was showing yet another architecture related exhibition called “Where is architecture? Seven Installations by Japanese Architects”.  The exhibits were more artsy than architecture, but the best exhibit was one where they had made a model house and set a model sun rotating around it and then in the next room projected what the sun and shadows would look like from the inside of the house.  Clever.  The main museum was also quite good as there were explanations in English.

As it was included free with our ticket, we walked even further up the hill to the Craft Museum, which was showing all kinds of Japanese textiles such as kimono, pottery, lacquerware, glass and the exhibition was called “Colours” so all of the wares were set up to show a different colour in each room.  I loved it, but I’m not sure Matt was son keen.  Luckily there was a man bench on each floor.

Continuing on with our walking, we walked back through Ginza where I found an 11 storey stationary store.  Gold!  As we were so tired, we only did the first two floors, but I marked it for return as it looked like the perfect place to pick up some cute little (lightweight!) things.  

Only in Japan!

With our feet killing we had just enough energy to freshen up for dinner and find something local again.  We each picked a picture off the wall and sat up to the counter in the tiny eatery.  When my food arrived it turned out to be a cheeseburger (it looked like an okonomiaki (Japanese pancake) in the picture) which if I wasn’t feeling so tired and lazy, I would have known if I had bothered to read the description of the meal I had picked!  It came in an obento box though, so there were plenty of other bits and pieces to try!

We jumped on google maps and worked out we had walked at least 14km today.  Japan is going to be good for us, but not for our poor feet.  I did all of that in my Havaianas!

Day  239 – Mushrooms and Beer!

This morning we woke up early as we had wanted to hit the Tsukiji Fish Market before 8am, which was when it was supposed to be at its best, but as Matt read the description on how to walk there from our hotel, he realised it was closed the second Wednesday of each month, which happened to be today.   Not wanting to waste the fact we were up early, we caught up on domestic things and found some more phrases on the internet to learn and waited for Tokyo to wake up.

We got a snack at Daimaru given it was at the train station.  We have already learned that Japanese people are the way they are because they never rest!  Not a bench or stool in site in the entire Tokyo Station or its surrounds.  We settled for a quite corner to sit on the ground and munch on our sushi.  The second thing we have noticed is that there are never any bins anywhere, despite the streets being spotlessly clean.  So we carried our rubbish around most of the day (because of course everything comes in tiny individual packaging!)

First destination this morning was the Metropolitan Government Offices Observation Tower, which is a free ride up to the 45th floor of the offices for a view out over Tokyo.  From the view we saw a really interesting looking building called the Cocoon and as it was on our way, we popped in there too, but only got a look at the foyer.

The view out over just part of the city.  It looks like this in every direction!

The Cocoon Tower.

Matt had our lunch destination picked out already, a restaurant called “Mushroom”.  It was a bit on the fancy side and we had a lot of trouble with the menu which was all in Kanji (I can read Hiragana and Katakana, but not the third alphabet Kanji!) but managed to explain what we liked and got the waitress to pick.  We weren’t disappointed!!

 

Next on Matt’s destination list was the Yebisu Brewery for some beer tasting.  We weren’t disappointed there either!  Matt decided he would work towards being a “Bi-i-ru tou”, “Beer Master” or “Beer enthusiast” and earn himself a Yebisu Happi coat with the Yebisu God on the back.  I think he may already qualify!

Some Yebisu sexy advertising from back in the day.

The Yebisu God!

Around the same area was the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography which was showing the World Press Photography 2010 exhibition.  The exhibition was made up of all the winning photos for each category from World news events in 2009.  The overall winner was very moving being of a lady calling out in the middle of the night from her rooftop in Tehran in protest of the resent election results, thought to have been rigged.  There were even a couple of photos of Victoria’s Black Saturday that won awards.

The Ebisu neighbourhood was quite trendy in itself so given we had some time to spare we went for a wander.  One of my favourite things to do in new places is exactly this, people watching as everyone goes about their daily routine (and often watches back!).  We came across a really cool bookshop, so that put an end to the wandering, so much so we had to quickly hike back to the train to get back across town in time for our dinner date.

Tonight was very exciting as we were meeting up with Shouko, an exchange student my family hosted when I was 15 who had come back to Australia and stayed with us again two more times since.  The last time was about 6 years ago, just after we came back from our last long overseas trip, so we weren’t sure if we would even recognise her.  Of course we did straight away and although she is still tiny, she has turned into a gorgeous little women!  It was so different to see her dressed up in her business clothes and drinking beer!  Shouko took us to a trendy, tall stooled tapas-type bar filled with salary men and women near her work and we caught up on the last 6 years.  She particularly remembered my very tall brother and we remembered that she never got lost in Melbourne (but now we now why – if you can navigate Tokyo, you can navigate anywhere!).  She is now working as a pharmacist with the Japanese Government’s drug approvals agency and works from 9am until 7pm everyday, commutes an hour each way on the train and has learnt to sleep standing up!  The poor thing hadn’t finished her work for the day and had to go back, so we tried not to keep her long, but had organised to come back towards the end of our trip to visit properly when she had two days off work.

Back at the hotel, we decided to bite the bullet and try the hotel’s onsen (hot spring/bath, traditionally enjoyed naked, genders separated).  We had a shower in our room, so hadn’t had to experience communal bathing yet, but decided we had better get used to it!  The setting was very pretty (no photos sorry), but the baths a scorching 40 degrees, so I only stayed in about 10 minutes and returned to the room to find Matt had done the same. 

Costumed (or lack there-of) ready for our onsen!

Day 240 – Smells like fish

Up early again for a second go at the fish market, we made it down there by about 7.30am.  An extremely busy place, made even more dangerous by the forklift/mini truck drivers zipping about the place at top speed, we walked up and down a few isles looking for interesting fishy creatures and giant tunas.  Walking around in thongs was a bad idea, but I only got a minimal amount of fish guts on my dress! 

 

We picked ourselves up some fresh tuna for breakfast and ate it on a park bench on the walk back to the hotel.  Before leaving on our Shinkansen to Kyoto I got to visit Itoya Stationery again and we had a tasty vending machine picked lunch.  This one didn’t have pictures so we had to match the Kanji on the plastic food out the front with the machine!