Lost and Found in Tokyo

Tokyo is a really cool city. I was most impressed by how incredibly tourist-friendly it was. Usually when we were lost, we could count on being able to find a sign in English about where we were and which direction something was. That something was almost always the exact tourist attraction we were looking for. Also, we used our JR train passes to their fullest extent -- we only paid for public transportation once in Tokyo, to get to a certain area the JR didn't appear to cover, which was the skytree. Anytime we wanted to use the JR system, we would pass the people going through on their day-to-day business flash our ticket to the person in the booth next to the ticket machines, and he or she would just open the handicapped entrance and let us through. We really felt like we had cheated the system, but I guess paying $300 for those passes is nothing to sniff at. Or scoff at. Or both. Anyway, I am a happy JR pass customer and highly recommend it to anyone traveling through Tokyo especially.

We did a LOT in Tokyo. I am going to try to cover it all, but after a while the shrines and games and lights all start to look very similar. And I don't want this blog to just be a snoozeville log of events, but also at least somewhat entertaining. That said, let's get started.

When we checked in on Wednesday afternoon, Seth and I crashed on the bed. We were still recovering from the evil burger in Hiroshima that gave us food poisoning (although any empty restaurant named The Shack on the 5th floor of an obscure building might best be avoided) and just took advantage of the complimentary wifi in the room and chilled for the afternoon. We got a hotel in Shinjuku named the Tokyo Plaza Hotel. I had heard from multiple internet sources that Shinjuku was the place to be and this one was a good deal in that area. The title of the room in booking was a "Korean Star Room" and after weighing the odds in my head that we would really end up in a Korean-style room (i.e. everything is nice but the bed is hard as a rock) I went ahead and took it because why would anybody in the world willingly sleep in a hard bed besides the Koreans. When we walked in, we understood what Korean Star Room meant. There were pictures of a Korean boy band all over the walls (and pillows). If you don't know Super Junior, look them up. It's a band of ten really effeminate, pretty boys who sound kind of like the Backstreet Boys except with way more annoying computer-generated noises going on in their ... uh, music. But the bed was comfortable which was the important thing. Having just left Korea for good, it was more silly than eyeroll-inducing so whatever. On the way out to dinner though (our THIRD rotating sushi bar of the week), we really understood what was going on when we heard the receptionist call to her boss: "Wahn-jahng-NIM!" ("Nay?") "Blah blah blah blah ee-ay-yo?" Seth and I stopped dead in our tracks and looked at each other. "She's Korean!" Seth said. Yes. After living in Korea for two years, I booked a hotel in Korean Town in Tokyo by accident. I'm a little proud.

I had read a lot about Shinjuku before getting to Tokyo -- it's the place with all the quirky restaurants, they said. It's got so many arcades, they said. I'm sure they were right, but the arcades and quirky restaurants did not present themselves to us immediately after leaving the train station the next morning. In fact, Seth and I were staring at a map for a while in the skyscraper district when a very concerned-looking Japanese man appeared next to us. I met his gaze and he asked, "May I 'elp you?" He seemed really relieved when we eventually conveyed that we were just looking for the street where all the geeks want to go, known as Electric Street. "Ah! You can buy many things! Personal computer!" He exclaimed. He told us how to get there (which unfortunately included retracing the progress we had just made for ten minutes) and we were off. We walked into a random store and Seth lost it. I wish I could explain in Geek terms what I saw in this place, but I lack the will and interest involved in learning these things, so I'll just say it was really cool and full of things that Seth liked. There was a Playstation and Microsoft floor, a Nintendo floor, an obscure Japanese game floor, and a Lego floor. This was one building. Makes you wonder what else they could possibly have in the others, although the answer is probably the same stuff. Anyway we left that area and headed over to the Government Metropolitan, where we took the elevator up to the 45th floor and got some views of Tokyo from above. For free. I'll just go ahead and say we saw Tokyo from above THREE TIMES in two days, and this one was free. The other two cost money: the Tokyo tower, built in the '50s, was $9 to go up per person (another $8 for the higher level), and like dummies we didn't do our research for the skytree, which is just a newer fancier version of the tower and costs $20 per person. Another $10 if you wanted to go to the "special observatory" (HA!). I guess the skytree might be the tallest at 350 meters and higher, but if you're not really fixated on going up to the highest level in the sky possible, maybe stick with the freebie. We could still see Mt. Fuji from the Government Metropolitan. Or we could have theoretically, at least. It was a really overcast day.

We had an appointment at 1:30 for a tour at the Imperial Palace of Tokyo. It was free, but you have to apply in advance. It's the same deal for the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, which we were disappointed by when we went to Kyoto and Nara last year so I made sure to be prepared this time. What they don't tell you on the website is that the tour guide doesn't actually speak English, and also that the tour is actually a total waste of your time. Or at least it was not as exciting as we had built it up to be in our heads. Before the tour began, the guide instructed us to listen to numbers 1, 2 and 3 on our 1985 audio devices (with *one* clip-on earpiece) of an Australian woman who hates her job reading slowly into a microphone, and then he proceded to talk for another 15 minutes in Japanese after we had all finished number 3. We waited anxiously for the insider information to be translated, but it never was. For all we know, he could have said, "There will be a free puppy giveaway at the end of the tour for all who express enthusiasm at the north porch of the Fujiyama building" but we had no idea. That's basically how the tour went though: Quickly, he would say "audio numba 5 and 6." Then he spoke in Japanese for a really long time. The audio was a little helpful though. The Australian woman warned us to be really careful on the 15-foot-wide concrete bridge reinforced by stone pillars. "Be sure to stay away from the sides of the bridge," she said (you mean the sidewalk? Next to the stone wall?? ) "And taking pictures is strictly prohibited. Thank you for your cooperation." All the Japanese proceded to take pictures off the bridge. So we did too. And the officials smiled and nodded, but also made sure we stayed away from the dangerous 4-foot wide concrete sidewalk. She also instructed us to be sure to take care on the "steep" 20 degree incline. It was weird. The buildings were kind of old, but some had been destroyed and rebuilt in the '60s, which by the way was just a great era for long, boring slabs of concrete. Anyway, it would be really great to get those 80 minutes of my life back, but c'est la vie.

We headed north next to Akihabara, the "Electric City" part of town (not to be confused with Shinjuku, which has "Electric Street"). Basically there were several buildings with six stories or more, just full of arcade video games. We went into one of them, and after trying and failing at one game which involved large robot thingies running away from each other and being shot, we went a few stories up and did pretty well at a fighting game, where you basically just had to kick and punch your opponent over and over until you knocked them out twice and got to go on to the next round. I made it through 8/10 rounds! Seth made it through 7. Just sayin. Anyway he was happy, he'd gotten his fix after about 15 minutes. But full-on adults go into these places and just go to town on these arcade games, all day. Some of the floors at the bottom were pretty packed. On another note, there are also buildings full of Pachinko machines. What's Pachinko, you ask? Well, it's a slot game. I assume there's betting involved. But the Japanese (especially older people) are really into it. To the untrained eye, you look into the door of a building and it appears as though there's a line of elderly Japanese men and women just sitting in front of arcade games. Seth also looked for Hobby Lobby, which we found the next day with the help of another kind Japanese man who took pity on us gazing at a map for too long, and even guided us there after calling the number in the guide book to inquire as to the location. Um, I find myself at a lack of words again to describe Hobby Lobby. It's not the cool craft store I know and love from home, but rather a store of figurines and accessories for enthusiasts. Seth was so, so happy. I left after about 4 minutes to chill outside and study a map for our next plan of action, while a scantily clad cartoon girl band sang (loudly) and danced for me on several TVs in front of the store. That's right. I said scantily clad cartoon girl band. Just another day in Japan.

We went to at least three shrines in Tokyo. They were all very old, and very pretty (names: Zojoji Temple, Meijin Shrine, and Kanda Myojin) and they all had two giant pillars in the ground, with two more giant perpendicular pillars on top as the entrance gate (see below for a picture of me at the bottom of the Meijin Shrine entrance). I'm pretty sure they were all established before 1000A.D. but one or two had been relocated for one reason or another. We learned that Shintoism and Buddhism are very closely entwined in Japan, which is a nice example for the rest of the world to follow, I thought. It turns out the Japanese people kind of pick and choose from the traditions they like of these religions. For example, at a Shinto shrine, you would see the Buddhist tradition of writing a wish or intention on a wooden placard and hanging it up with the rest of them. Or at either one, you find the long sticks with a cup on the end next to spring water. We learned what to do with these sticks. You're not actually supposed to drink water from them (oops). In fact it's a very specific process. Take the stick in your right hand and pour water on your left. Then transfer it to your wet left hand and pour the water on your right. Then put it back in your now also wet right hand and pour water into your cupped left hand, then take that water into your mouth and swish it around, spit it out into your left hand again, then hold the stick up so the cup part is on top and let the water wash down and clean it and  your hands. Then replace the stick! See? Easy. There are also all these ceremonial rules about clapping twice and bowing twice in front of the shrine. Shintoism is about respecting kamis, who are ancestors that used to be really important people in life. I probably just completely over-simplified it and may have pissed someone off, but there's your summary of the combination of a wikipedia article and what we understood from going to the shrines. They have rules at shrines, like don't sit on the steps in front of them and don't stand in the middle but instead off to the side, as it's disrespectful (guess how Seth learned THAT rule).

Have you ever seen a TV special or story about Tokyo? What's the first thing they always show? That crosswalk, right? With all the people who go and traffic just completely stops for them? Well, we found the crosswalk and took pictures of ourselves walking through it like shameless tourists. It's called "Scramble crossing" and that's exactly what it is! That's all. We also went to the Yebisu beer museum (if you know any Japanese beer, it's connected with Sapporo). There was no English tour, but the tiny museum was pretty easy to figure out and we basically learned that Yebisu has done really well because... it's a German beer! They import all their ingredients from Bavaria and follow all the German beer purity laws. They even brought in German brewers when the company started in the 1890s. They had to phase themselves out in the second world war, but made a comeback in the '70s and everybody was happy. Afterward of course we had a beer and ate cheese! I love cheese. The cheese was good. OH CHEESE. Another thing we did was look for the Tsukiji Fish Market! At this famous, enormous market, there's an auction at 5AM every day to sell fish to restaurants and patrons, and it's very exclusive. Naturally there was no way I would get Seth up in time to go see the auction or to have sushi for breakfast, but we looked for it on Friday afternoon. I say "looked for" because SOMEBODY decided we shouldn't take a cab from Tokyo Tower; rather we should just walk since we were feeling better from the food poisoning. Well, this turned into a bad idea. We walked for about two hours. We made one or two large circles because of dead ends (that part was my bad). I knew we wouldn't be able to buy the fish, but there were restaurants inside the fish market that would probably have really good fresh fish! Well, when we finally found the entrance to the market, it turned out there were no drunk people or flip flops allowed (we weren't drunk; I just thought that was a funny sign). And the last thing we did in Tokyo that belongs in this "miscellaneous category" paragraph was go to Yanesen, the historical district. It was the final act on Friday night after two completely packed days of touring and I can't tell you much about it except that my feet hurt. And there were some cats. People sold things. Supposedly there was another temple but we had no more energy. I'm surprised we even went.

No Tokyo experience is complete without one last experience on a subway, crammed to the sardine level of crowds. I didn't have my 90L backpack, but I couldn't turn around. And this was after Yanesen, when our feet and legs were so tired we could hardly function. It was the longest subway ride of my life. Until we got to sit down when many people left and a million more got on. An old man stood in front of me as soon as I sat down and against my will I kindly offered him my seat, but he smiled and waved me off. I must have looked pretty rough.

Oh yeah, the food. I wish I had more to report about what we ate, but we literally had sashimi FOUR TIMES, in Tokyo alone. Sashimi is a form of sushi -- it's just a rice ball with a piece of fish on top. Once was at the same restaurant near our hotel. Once was at a made-to-order place (as opposed to the conveyor belt sushi bars, where your food just keeps coming to you with no end) and I now will never forget: raw and cooked mackerel, sea eel, the different colors of (especially red) tuna, snow crab legs, boiled and deep sea shrimp, raw salmon, and sardine! The sardine was not particularly salty. I feel like that should be known, and also as though I have been deceived. Otherwise we also had a "beef bowl," which is spicy, garlic-y strips of beef over a bowl of rice. I should emphasize "garlic-y," because I really tasted garlic for the rest of the night (that is until we ate sashimi again). Man that was good too.

So now we're on the train bound for Osaka, cruising through the Japanese countryside at around 150mph. One more night in Japan, and I'll have to write about that en route to Kathmandu tomorrow! The weather is not supposed to be nice, but I've been making silent deals with the Shinto weather kamis in my head and they've been coming through for me in Tokyo.

Sayonara! :)

Hiroshima day 2! A deer ate our map again.

On our second day in Hiroshima, we set out for Miyajima Island. I thought maybe we would be able to incorporate it into our first day since we managed to cover everything we'd wanted to see on foot, but it was never discussed because we fell asleep. So before heading off to Miyajima, I thought again naively: "we might have to find something else to do later today. There's no way this will take more than an hour or two." So boy was I surprised when it turned out we had to get on a tram to Yokogawa station, take a train to Miyajimaguchi for about a half hour, and THEN hop on a ferry to get to the island. When we got there around 1PM, we sat down overlooking the ocean to enjoy the avocados we had packed for the trip. "Oh look," we noted on the way. "There are wild deer here. Ha. Remember when we went to Nara and one ate our map? That was funny." Just when I started to enjoy my avocado and try to figure out the tourist map of Miyajima, a deer approached me. "Oh hello, Mr. Deer," I said, "this is MY avocado. And MY--" And it happened again. Damn thing bit a chunk out of our map. They are not afraid of humans, and they really like paper. Later another grabbed a pamphlet out of Seth's back pocket and he just kept hitting it on the nose in their game of tug-a-war until it let go. It was not happy. I told a Spanish tourist that was the third time it had happened after two maps and he said, "Next time you want to know where to go, you must ask him, 'where is that place?!'"

After going back to the ferry station to get another map and enjoying our avocados on some stairs near the bikes and NOT overlooking the ocean, we headed into town. It's a pretty small island that's easily navigable on foot. Miyajima Island (which means "shrine island") has always been considered a holy place, and women weren't orginally allowed to enter. They even used to ship old, sick people away so they could die away from the island and its purity would be preserved. There are lots of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines and they try to keep it well maintained, so it looks like it was built in the Edo era. We looked through the shops and didn't buy anything, as usual, except for a vanilla-mandarin swirl ice cream in a cone and some ground-up and fried oyster in stick form (because it's oyster. In stick form. Yes). We stopped to check out the floating tori, a huge bright orange gateway on the water off the island. We passed the Itsukushima Shrine, which is a huge complex of halls on stilts built out on the water, originally made so that laymen could visit the island without soiling it. Basically they were really concerned with the island's purity. Now you can go anywhere though.

Our favorite part was Senjokaku, the pavillion of 1000 tatami mats. They used to measure area of a building in their sleepling mats, called tatami mats (or maybe they still do!) And I'm not sure if that's double bed or single, but either way you know if 1000 of them can fit into the pavillion, it must be enormous. And it was. This place was built in 1587 out of wood! I'm sure they still maintain it but I was just super impressed at how big it was. There were also huge paintings on wooden canvases all over the ceiling (maybe also tatami-mat-sized?), hanging down in between the ceiling boards. Some of them showed their wear and tear, and some looked great. It cost $1 to get in (hence why we did it and not the $3 Itsukushima shrine) and next door was a colorful 5-story pagoda named Gojuto.

We took two cable cars up to the top of the mountain called Mount Misen, from where you could see a mini Mount Fuji, and light the eternal flame of love. I don't know what that means, but we did it and a guy took a picture for us. I think it probably has something to do with a happy marriage, so we figured it couldn't hurt. We took some pictures from the top and then walked down the very steep mountain (to save $16 on another cable car ride) in our flip flops to the bottom, where we were determined to get our oyster fix one more time. I found it at a woman selling oysters with cheese broiled on top! We had to wait ten minutes to get it but man was it worth it. It was 4:30 and we wanted to eat one more thing before we left.... but then all the restaurants closed :(. The hungry bear inside Seth finally came out since we hadn't eaten much that day, and we were just working on where we could eat when we made it back to Hiroshima in an hour, when the man with oyster-and-curry-stuffed bread appeared around the corner. Ah yes. That's what we ate. It was magical. I will never forget you and your life-saving properties, oyster curry bread.

That night Seth announced he wanted a "big, stupid burger" because he'd read about a place in our tourist map of Hiroshima with good burgers and had to get his fix. Well guess what. We had eaten oysters and raw fish with every meal for two days straight, and he got food poisining from the burger. It was amazing. I had a bite of it and still feel a little sick, but he was up all night in the hostel bathroom, purging his body of burger poisin. We won't be eating western food anymore on this trip then.

Now we're on the Hakati Super Express train bound for Tokyo!! We have a hotel in Shinjuku, a happenin' section of the city. To be continued!

Things about Japanese culture so far:
- Note to self: stop saying "hi!" Everyone thinks you're saying "yes." Just bite the bullet and find it in yourself to say "konichiwa;" they don't think you're making fun of them. It means "hello." I guess I don't want to be like the kids in Korea who follow you yelling "HELLO" because you're white.
- The trains? Extra punctual. It's not just a stereotype. If it says the train will leave at 9:53, you'd better not get to the track at 9:53 and 30 seconds.
- Everyone here follows the rules. The cab driver who took us to our hotel in Fukuoka actually stopped at a red light until it was green, even though there was nobody going the other way. And he went the speed limit. Seth and I were pretty shocked after riding in "every man for himself" style taxis in Korea for two years. It actually reminds me of Germany a lot.
- I haven't been cursed at or gotten a funny look from an old lady once since I've been here, as far as I know! I have a habit of looking our for that since they will do anything to make sure you know they are first class citizens in Korea. Today an old lady moved her bag out of a chair and slid over for me so I could sit down next to Seth while waiting for the train to Tokyo.
- If you come here, bring lots and lots of money. Seth and I have managed to keep everything under our $100-per day limit for food and extra stuff for both of us, but we're pretty conscious of it.

Next stop Tokyo! Let's hope we're feeling well enough to go exploring on Thursday...

Hiroshima Day 1!

OK. So we overdid it. We were so incredibly excited on the first few days of our trip, we walked all over creation (or at least Fukuoka and Hiroshima) and plum tuckered ourselves out, as they say in the South. We could have taken the tram or even a taxi, but why do that when the city is so small and eaily navigable on foot and you can see so much more that way! Well maybe, Patrice, because you are exhausted? Or maybe because you bought an all-day tram pass and have only used it ONCE? Last night, after getting some food in my belly, I tried to watch Seth's favorite "Indiana Jones" movie with him. I really wanted to, especially since I always, always fall asleep when we watch his favorite movies. But after twenty minutes I couldn't keep my dern eyes open. It wasn't even 8:00. Do you know what time I woke up this morning? EIGHT O'CLOCK. Twelve hours. My body took that REM sleep and said "this is delicious. I shall indulge. Thank you."
So on Monday we activated our JR passes ($300 for one week and you can take the trains anywhere in Japan -- which is a pretty good deal) and hopped on a shinkansen to Hiroshima. It was super fast! According to wikipedia, the maximum speed is 150-200mph! It was amazing. The trip took about an hour and after getting a city map from the information desk, we took a tram from the train station to the hostel. A little tip: if you don't know how to do something, like buy a tram ticket at a machine, all  you have to do is turn around and say, "HELP" at the nice pack of tourists and Japanese people and a nice tall Japanese man in a suit will appear out of the blue who speaks perfectly good English. I learned that technique from our friend Brian Richards in Gwangju, who has been known to walk around Korea yelling, "FOOD!" Until someone just brings it to him. Or until he gets arrested.

Hiroshima holds special significance for me because I grew up in Oak Ridge, also known as "the atomic city" and "the secret city," i.e. a US-government sponsored city where they built the pieces for the atomic bomb that landed on, you guessed it, Hiroshima. Now the city is mostly old people who were carted in to help around that time but don't remember because it was 70 years ago, so they're all at least 90 now. My mom lives in one of the houses that was hastily built by government workers as one of the several each team built per day, at the time at the end of a dirt road which has since been paved. (She has since remodeled extensively, but one day and old man came over and told us about how he dug out our basement when he used to live there.) Oak Ridge had a jivin' population of 70,000 back in the day, but has since dipped to under 30,000, probably because not many people who live there have a lot of roots. Also, nobody told them what they were working on! If I was working on a war effort that turned out to be what it was, maybe I'd want to move out too.

So Hiroshima. It's a very modern city, which makes sense since they had to rebuild the whole thing. Our hostel is a 5-minute walk from "Peace Memorial Park." You can see an "eternal flame of peace" which still burned on during the rain yesterday, and a children's peace memorial, which was originally built for a girl who had been exposed to the radiation at age 2, but developed leukemia and eventually took her own life when she was 10. Eventually it became a memorial to all the children who died from the atomic bomb and their after-effects, and schools regularly get the kids to make lots of little paper oragami cranes to symbolize the need for peace. The park was beautiful and a great place for reflection, but the main attraction it seems was the A-bomb dome.

The A-bomb dome is exactly what it sounds like: a building that was damaged during the blast and preserved that way. Originally it had been an office building, designed in the early 20th century by a Czech architect. It was used for a lot of exhibitions and business, but it had a beautiful green dome on top (like a lot of buildings from that part of Europe) and was a point of pride in Hiroshima. When the bomb went off about 160 meters Southwest of the A-bomb dome, about 240 meters above the ground, everyone in the building was instantly killed. Because the bomb went off so close to the building (relatively speaking, right above it) the A-bomb dome was able to retain its shape. After about ten years of debate as to what to do with this memory-evoking building, the people of Hiroshima decided to keep it and even preserve it in that state, as a reminder. In the pictures I have, you can still see a piece of iron hanging off the side of the building. It was chilling.

Next to the A-bomb dome is a French restaurant called Caffe Ponte. In this restaurant, they take the big, fat, not radioactive at all, delicious oysters from the bay at Hiroshima and cook them French style. Right in the shell. In fact, I'm pretty sure one Japanese man there had a French accent, which I did not see coming. We got fried oysters and broiled oysters with arugala pesto sauce. Also on our decadent menu was cured ham with olives on toothpicks, and more oysters on baguette slices. Oh yes. It was magical. Also some orange-y cocktails. Alas there were only five enormous oysters per plate and we walked away pining for twenty more. We are in Japan though, and it was a French restaurant, both countries being known for teeny tiny serving portion sizes with really high prices. It was worth it, though.

After crying over the end of our oysters, we made our way to the Hiroshima castle. Obviously it had been obliterated in the bombing, but the good news is we got to go into a "faithful replica" and learn all about the history of Hiroshima. It was originally five villiages, but one guy whose name I have already forgotten came in sometime in the 16th century and decided it would be the perfect place to rule because of the nearby bay, so he took over the five villiages. It was built on sand and silt so the villiagers spent a whole lot of time over two years just removing water and silt from the area on which the castle would be built. The tower was five stories tall and on top you got a 360-degree view of Hiroshima. We also learned all about samurais and put on samurai clothes!

Optimistically, we walked back to the hostel and took some detours here and there, looking into shops and taking samples of food from people. As soon as I lied down from exhaustion though, I realized I was starving. The woman at the front desk recommended a great restaurant nearby, so we headed over. We'd had okonomiyaki before when we went to Nara, but that was the predominant Osaka style where everything is mixed together and includes some seafood (we're definitely going to be eating that again soon). This was Hiroshima style, in which all the ingredients are layerd on top of each other. Anyway, the woman who was there had clearly made it about 500 million times in her life. She started out by making something like a pancake on a huge flat grill. On top of the pancake she layered shredded cabbage and bean sprouts, and then some pieces of thin pork belly. Separately, she boiled a little ball of noodles and then cooked those on the grill, then put them into a nice round shape. She flipped the pancake over onto the noodles so the pork belly was in the middle, and spread some yummy sweet sauce on top of it and some green onions. It was awesome, and would have been even better if we'd been drunk. I'm pretty sure it's made to be drunk food, like the doeners of Germany or the poutines of Canada. Hopefully the video of Seth in the restaurant will load.

Well that was day one in Hiroshima! To be continued...

In the pictures: Seth as a samurai, the two of us looking like total assholes wearing old Japanese clothes and plastic wigs, the A-bomb dome, Peace Memorial Park, amazing oysters and drinks, okonomiyaki and the woman making it, and me under a teeny tiny $5 umbrella in front of the castle.