Tokyo City

Thursday 19th December

 

There are a few things I have noticed, here in Japan; apart from the tendency to play with fire, leading to the almost certain destruction, and subsequent rebuilding of almost all significant structures over the centuries, the Japanese heat almost everything you can sit on. The toilet seats are the most complex of devices, with all sorts of controls and settings, not only for heat, as I found out yesterday when I entered a cubicle, and the toilet lid opened, as if to say "Welcome".

Daniel says that the toilets here have more class than arse!

 

I also noted a complex toilet handbasin which had 2 outlets on its rear side, and one larger one at the near side. The idea is that you place your hands next to the rear left outlet, and they get squirted with soap, then you move them to the right outlet, and they get a dose of water. Once that is done, you bring them to the near side and hot air dries them for you, no separate drier required!

 

The taxis are great here, most being what I would guess to be vintage 1980s Toyota Crowns, in beautiful condition, with their external rear vision mirrors mounted two thirds of the way along the front mudguard towards the headlights. I remember my first car, a Ford Anglia, which didn't have external mirrors, so I bought a pair and mounted them the same way. That was before they became standard equipment and door mounted.

 

I don't know whether these are extremely well preserved cars, or whether they make them in that design as taxis, as with London taxis. In any case, you don't see any dirty ones.

 

 

 

 

 

This next section written by Dan because I didn't want to get out of bed at 4 am.

 

For Elly and Dan it was 4am wake up to make it to the Tsukiji Central fish market in time for the tuna auction tour. Boarding the first train of the day on the Tokyo metro, we made our way to the enormous hangar where 15000 sellers and restauranteurs buy and sell up to 450 different types of sea faring creatures.

Unfortunately for us, no one mentioned that the tours were closed from December to February. So we began our own self guided tour. Handed a map by the guard and instructed which areas we were prohibited to go to, we set about breaking seven of the nine rules of the fish market. The only ones we were adherent to were number 5. 'no prams or babies' and number 6. 'No large groups'.

We weaved our way through the tiny stalls as they set up for the morning trade. I having to push and pull Elly out of the way as she looked through her camera lens oblivious to the motorised carts flying past. Tuna the size of a small dining table lay across large chopping boards as they were expertly cut with what appeared to be more like a samurai sword than a knife.

 

Well into the depths of the prohibited zone we came across the tuna auctions. Here, hundreds of tuna lay on the warehouse floor with crowds surrounding it making their bid. Only then were we busted by the tuna market police. Taking it upon themselves to escort us out, Elly continued to snap away on her camera feigning a foreigners ignorance despite their excellent English!

Following this we made our way to the world renowned sushi stalls on the outskirts of the market. One stall in particular had a line bending around the corner. Having waited for 20 minutes without the line moving an inch, we settled on the second best sushi bar. Raw fish at 7am requires some mental preparation but it was undoubtedly the best sushimi we have ever had.

 

End of Dan's submission.

 

Today, following Elly and Dan's Fishmarket Adventure and near arrest, we set off in the rain to have a look at the International Forum, which Elly wanted to check out, because it looked an interesting piece of architecture, which it was, but didn't take up too much of our time.

 

It was then on to the Imperial Palace gardens, the Palace itself only being open to the public on 2 occasions during the year, our arrival not being one of them, amazingly enough!

The gardens were in almost winter mode, but there were still some trees in their late autumn colours, which were just beautiful, set in typical Japanese fashion among manicured hedges and trees.

There is an army of workers on ladders all over the gardens and also outside the walls, trimming these trees by hand, like hairdressers trimming one's hair.

 

We entered the gardens via the Eastern Gate, which was a massively fortified double gate which, I gather, no longer closes, but would have been a very effective way of keeping the baddies out.

The gardens are surrounded by a massive stone wall about 20 metres high made up of enormous stone blocks carved to fit without mortar - how did they do that?

We walked for a while, but the weather was miserable, and we were getting cold , so we decided to head for shelter at the Tokyo National Museum. This was quite good, although 2 of the floors were closed due to renovations to earthquake proof the building. Amazing history in this country, with some artifacts from 3000 BC.

We decided that on the way home we should visit Shibuya, a particularly popular and busy intersection, supposedly one of the busiest in the world, where masses of people are poised to cross when the lights change. It was now dark.

It was an amazing sight when we exited the underground; the whole intersection was lit by enormous TVs installed in the walls of the buildings, all with typical Japanese in your face advertising and animated cartoon figures, all advertising something, but I doubt very effectively, with all the other TVs blaring as well.

With the rain drizzling down, the whole scene was massed umbrellas facing off against each other waiting for the lights to change.

We perched ourselves up on the first floor in a Starbucks, which must pay a fortune in rent to overlook this intersection which has become such a tourist attraction. Needless to say, Elly was there taking about a hundred photos.

We then headed down to the food basement of one of the department stores and bought some supplies to take home for dinner. The food floor in the department stores is overwhelming and everything looks delicious. Of course we oversupplied even after putting several items back. Back at home we watched, appropriately, Lost in Translation, on Dan's computer. If you haven't seen it, it is a pretty good representation of the culture differences a tourist faces.

 

Friday 20th

 

For some reason, Elly and Dan wanted to visit the Sumo wrestling museum, so we did! Actually they really wanted to see a Sumo wrestling match, but they are not on until January.

 

Adjacent to the Sumo museum was the Edo Museum, which hadn't figured in Elly's master plan for today, but looked to be worth a visit. It turned out to be excellent.

Edo is the name of the settlement which grew to be the centre of all things in Japan, and was eventually renamed Tokyo. There were detailed displays of how Edo was laid out, mock ups of houses of the time, a fully functioning bridge, and city buildings etc. lots of school kids visiting as well.

Further to my theme of burning things down and rebuilding them, I read that in Edo, they had a fire which wiped out almost the whole place, about once a year! They did make some attempt to reduce that statistic by burning alive anyone found to be an arsonist.

There could be an argument, I suppose, that some of the fires may have been caused by flaming arsonists.

 

Navigator Dan took us on an excursion to a beer museum. The beer is called Yebisu, and it was established in the 18 hundreds using German beer making techniques. It became a success, and eventually the railway station and the town that grew from it were named after it, being call Ebisu.

They museum itself was a non event, but it is a landmark at Ebisu, which is now on the city underground route. I (Elly butting in) say it was palatial and we tasted 3 different beers. Prior to the beers we went to the Tokyo photographic museum which had 3 different exhibitions- a French and 2 Japanese photographers- most inspiring.

Speaking of the underground, it is a fabulous system, with something like 13 main lines, and covers a massive area. The ticket machines have an "English" button which makes it relatively easy to buy the tickets, which would otherwise be impossible. It is initially a bit confusing because there are 2 separate companies sharing the system, so you have to make sure that your ticket covers the lines you want to use.

Ritual seems to play a big part of life here, with lots of uniformed "guards" at entrances to buildings etc, but I am impressed with people such as Station Masters, who blow their whistles a lot, and perform a highly complex choreographed procedure with each train departure. Lots of rapid arm movement, as well as flowing actions to see the train off into the distance.

Some of the guards on the trains do a similar, highly disciplined performance at each station as well.

I also noticed at one intersection, a traffic cop making extravagant arm signals and blowing his whistle profusely, and standing rigidly to attention in between, whilst being totally ignored by the motorists who were happily obeying a perfectly good set of traffic lights.

This afternoon Dan took us on a walking tour, which started at another all singing all dancing intersection at shin juju, with the streets absolutely ablaze with lights, from advertising, from restaurants, from anywhere.

The city is currently lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree, with fairy lights on everything that doesn't move and trees with lights all over them. It really is a fabulous sight.

We called in to a building which was completely full of gaming machines and raucous electronic music. Which reminds me, the sound of traffic lights here is like a twittering bird. I keep thinking that I am hearing a bird, when I am crossing a road under an overpass with ten thousand trucks driving past and a train overhead. Then I realise it is the twittering green light. But I digress.

Our next area was the gay area, where Elly chatted up a pair of drag queens, and Dan and I moved away because we thought she was going to ask them to pose for a photo with us.

Then onto the Love Hotel area, which is full of, actually quite respectable looking hotels, with signs advertising "Resting Rates" and "Staying Rates".

After that we moved to a very narrow street area, which was full of bars, mostly up a very steep staircase to about 6 chairs. We found one on the ground level, which we could barely squeeze into, because there was already one person there. We shuffled around and had a cup of Sake each, before heading home.

There was some confusion about where we could find a subway station for which we had a day pass, so Elly said we should just jump in a taxi. " it won't cost much". $30 dollars later we arrived back at the apartment.

Saturday 21

Alan piked and decided to have the morning at home and be the one to greet Michael should Dan and I be late from our escapades. Dan and I headed out early to hear the Taiko drumming at the Meiji-Jingu Shinto shrine. Unfortunately we missed the drumming but saw a traditional wedding take place at the shrine with all the pomp and glamour. The magnificent wooden shrine is surrounded by sprawling forest.

 

 

Next we went to Takeshinta-Dori , a lane way crowded with young locals dressed in Goth and Lolita styles, made up and parading, mingling and browsing the subculture bazaars. I loved the wild things on display and bought Alan a glitzy number. Even Dan couldn't resist the outlandish fashions but he restrained me buying a black top with large tiger and zips for Michael!

Time goes so quickly and since we were to meet Michael at our apartment we headed off via a department store to buy food. So many choices- it takes forever. Loaded up we decided to head back with all our bags and not go to Government offices on 45 floor for the free view, however we took the train in the wrong direction and ended up at the Government building. Tokyo is massive. Now home and waiting for Michael to awake and guide us to the Tokyo night life..

Tomorrow we take the bullet train towards the snow for 5 days skiing.

 

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