Thu 9th
November, 2006
Great flight to Japan, over 13 hours long and no great films to watch and we had to pay for our beer and wine, but time seem to go quite
quickly. Our first glimpse of Japan as we approached
Narita airport from the sea was very interesting, very
cultivated with small hills covered in trees and then large
industrial sites sprawled out besides the rivers. The
immigration process was extremely quick and efficient, less
than 15 seconds I'd say, and as we'd not checked in any luggage
we were soon in the arrivals hall getting some yen from the
ATM. I've probably said this before, but a good tip when
you first arrive in a strange country (I'm not saying Japan is
strange, just new to us) before you stick your credit or
bankcard into a machine, it's best to work out roughly how much
of the local currency you need. We had booked accommodation
online at a backpackers place in the North of the city, not
something we usualyy do but going into big strange cities where
you're not sure what to expect, it can be a good idea. I'd
got directions from the hostel website, which seemed quite
simple and they were. No problems buying our tickets over
the counter, picked up some complicated looking maps of the
Tokyo subway and train system, and off we went to experience the
joy of the Tokyo commuter network. We've always been led to
believe by books, TV and what people tell us that Japan, and
Tokyo in particular, is a very busy, crowded place. So our
first surprise was how clean everything was, even the tracks on
the underground was spotless, not something we'd normally
associate with a congested city. The second surprise was how
quiet it seemed to us, it was about 5pm as we neared the centre
of Tokyo after our one hour train ride, and, although a few
people had to stand on the train, it was far from crowded. Our
directions to the hostel told us to take the Keisei line to Aoto
station and change there for Asakusa, where we should take exit
2b, (which has a lift whereas exit 2a doesn't) and then gave a
little map showing directions to walk to the hostel. There
were six exits at Asakusa station, but when we got off the train
and were confronted by many signs, mostly in Japanese but with
some English, it was simple to find exit 2b and we were soon
stood outside at exactly the right spot to continue our
directions to the hostel. This may not seem such a big
deal to some people, but having struggled to orientate
oneself at many complicated stations before, I was amazed
by the simplicity and usefulness of the system. Why
doesn't everybody do the same, so simple yet so effective.
Ok, I know, I've gone on long enough about it now. For the
price, our hostel was amazing value for anywhere in Japan, let
alone near the city centre of Tokyo. It would have been
even cheaper if we'd gone for dorm beds, but for 10 quid a night
each we though the double room was great value. We had a
small room with bunk beds, but at least it was ours, and there
was only one toilet for the 5 rooms on our floor, but that
didn't seem to be a problem. The dividing walls of
the rooms were just plaster board, which meant you could hear a
mouse fart from the opposite end of the floors, but, again, for
the price we couldn't knock. And so another myth about
Japan, it being sooooo expensive to visit, was gradually fading
away. Our body clocks were a bit screwed up by now, we'd
set off on Thursday at 11am from Chicago and after a 13 hour
flight had arrived on Friday at 3:30pm at Tokyo. To
overcome the jetlag we decided to try and stay awake as long as
we could until late in the evening, then hopefully our body
clock would be so confused that it would just assume that was
the normal time to go to sleep. I've tried this on a
number of occasions in the past, normally with some success, and
it worked to some degree here, except Rita was up and about by
5am the next morning, I lasted until 7am.. Friday 10th
November As we were both up so early, we thought this would be
the ideal time to go see the Tsukij (not sure of spelling, but
to use US President Nixon's words, who's gonna know?) fish
market, one of the must see tourist things to do in Tokyo.
Caught the underground from Asakusa, expecting it to be really
busy again as it was 7:30am, but it was still not as busy as we
expected, although there were a lot more people standing, all in
smart suits and most apparently asleep or studying the insdie of
their eyelids in great detail.. The fish market is huge.
No wonder they're predicting that the worlds stocks of most fish
will be exhausted by 2050, the Japanese are eating it all!
The lines of stalls went on for ever, with so many types of fish
I couldn't even guess the name of. There was a lot of
tuna, mostly frozen, I guess from the big factory ships, being
cut up with electric band-saws. Next to the saw tables were big
bins of tuna fish heads. Tuna is used a lot in sushi, I
think, it's one of the cheaper options. There were also
tons of squid, crabs, prawns, and fish of many different
colours. And most amazing of all, there was no smell,
because it was so fresh I guess, and there was plenty of water
being sloshed around to keep the pathways clear of debris.
What an amazing place. As many of you know, I'm not a great
seafood lover, don't get me wrong, I like fish, it's just eating
them I have a problem with. Some of my best friends are
fish! I said that for effect only. One of the
traditions of going to the fish market is to go and eat some
ultra fresh sushi from the little bars around the market.
And I DID. We had a small plate of tuna sushi with some
wasabi (a type of horseradish) and a little salad. Rita
wasn't feel too good due to jet lag, so I ended up munching my
way through most of it, helped down with a small bottle of
sake. Well, when in Rome.... The sake helped enormously,
but having consumed most of the bottle it left me a little light
headed. The trials of travelling, what we have to put up
with, I suppose. Wandered (staggered?) up the main street
towards the posh shopping area of Tokyo, Ginza. Rita
spotted some famous name shops and we walked past them
all. No time for expensive window shopping on this
tour. Did make it into a large electronics store
though. To be honest, I wasn't that impressed with the
range of gadgets on offer, not quite sure what I expected but
we're all led to believe that the Japanese shops are full of the
next generation of gadgets that are going to take the world by
storm. If that's the case then dont expect any big storms
in the near future. There are thousands of models of
mobile phones, surprisingly large in size, I thought things were
supposed to be getting smaller, and most of them only work in
Japan. Once Rita had dragged me away from the electronics
(actually Rita was as interested as I was) we walked around to
the Imperial Palace and various gardens in the area. You
can't see a lot of the Palace, and what you can see is not
terribly impressive, but it was only re-built in 1968 after
being bombed during the war, and I guess the Emperor is entitled
to a little privacy. Got some nice big fish in his ponds,
though. I wonder if he's a fisher man and catches his own
fish. On the way back to Asakusa by subway, we stopped
off at one the markets at Ueno, a mixture of stalls underneath
the railway lines and many shops lining the street nearby.
Spotted an Indian curry house, The Samrat, on our way round,
stopped by for a mediocre curry. Well, it would have been rude
not to! Back at Asakusa, we decided we had to investigate the
strange building with the large gold object on top. Looked
like a golden turd to me, but that might offend some people so I
wont mention it. Turned out to be a restaurant called the
Flame D'Or, French for Flame of Gold, of course. Oh, I see
it now, it's supposed to be a big golden flame on top of the
building. The strange thing was, it's not a French
restaurant, it's owned and run by one of the big beer brewers in
Japan, Asahi. Better just test the beer for quality while
we're here. Not bad, bit largerish, but drinkable.
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Sat 11th November, 2006
Rita was up mighty early this morning, claimed she couldn't sleep due to jet lag, but I think she just wanted to try and get on the
laptop before me! Checked out of the hostel and got
the subway down to Kyoto Main Train Station. I would like
to say we went straight there without a hitch, but having worked
out a route on the slightly complicated subway map, we got on an
express train which shot through the station we wanted to stop
at to change trains at. To cut a long story short, we had
a brief tour of several downtown subway stations we hadn't
planned on, but eventually made it to the central station only a
little later than planned. The Shinkansen, known to the rest
of the World as The Bullet Train (one uncharitable friend of
mine, whose name shall remain anonymous, suggested they
dont call it The Bullet because they would have problems
pronouncing it, they would have to call it The Burret) is
still one of the fastest trains in the world after 30 years, and
no trip to Japan can be complete without at least seeing one in
action. We started booking onto the 11:53
super-express service to Kyoto, but the booking clerk
seemed to get very carried away with swiping our credit card and
printing out loads of tickets. Not sure why, but
eventually we had to sign 4 credit card slips and were given 4
tickets for the 12:20 train. We checked the values and
they added up to what we expected to pay, but why couldn't he do
it on one piece of paper. The four tickets were 1 each for the
basic fair to Kyoto, plus one ticket each for travelling on the
super-express. For a super efficient country, this didn't
seem too efficient to me, especially as he took so long issuing
the tickets, we had to change from catching the 11:53 to the
12:20. More to
follow.
Sunday 12th January Explored the temples of Higashi
Hongan and Nishi Hongan, and also the markets and covered
arcades in the city centre Monday 13th January Train
trip to Nara and the World Heritage sites of Toduiji park.
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