Sunday, May 16, 2005

7:00 – I finally decide to wake up after lying in bed for a while. Brian woke up early and decided to take a shower at 6 AM. Apparently he had a headache ever since we landed at Narita. I plug in my computer and listen to music, drink coffee, and wake up a little bit. Not much of a departure from my regular routine in America.

9:00 – We decide to head out and explore the town. We asked the hotel concierge how to get to the subway, and they provided us with a very helpful English language map.

9:15 – We walked through the Yebisu Garden Palace and pass the restaurant from the night before. This time, we choose to play it safe and eat at McDonalds, which proves to be the best deal in town. Amazingly, the dollar menu is available in Japan as well. Only here, it’s called the 100 Yen menu (~$1). After frivolously spending $20 on an unfulfilling meal the night before, it was a relief to spend only 400 Yen on a breakfast combo meal. You can say what you want about McDonalds, but damn those arches were a beautiful sight that morning.

9:45 – Arrive at the Ebisu subway station. It turns out that the Ebisu station was only a short walk from our hotel, about 10-15 minutes. It was also a very easy walk, because we were on giant people movers the whole time. We decide to purchase an all day subway pass, which was a WISE choice. An all day pass for 720 Yen, not bad at all. This was our only method of transportation for the day.

10:15 – We took the subway to the Ginza stop. I was told before arriving in Tokyo that Ginza was the very upscale area in Tokyo, much like Times Square. I was fairly impressed by the big buildings, but neither Brian nor I were blown away as we were expecting. After about 15-20 minutes, we decided that we had already seen enough and decided to go to a park bordering Ginza. After looking at the map, we learned that the easiest way to get to the park was to hop back on the subway.

10:30 – Next stop: Hibiya. This was less than a mile from the Ginza, but seemed like a world away. Hibiya was home to two very cool areas. The first was Hibiya Park; the second was the Imperial Palace. We chose to go to the Imperial palace first.

10:45 – The Imperial Palace was like an oasis in the middle of the big city. Right across the street from gigantic skyscrapers rest several buildings seemingly untouched by the urbanization of modern day Tokyo. It was a little touch of the 1860’s, when Tokyo was called Edo. The palace itself is closed to visitors all but two days a year. Unfortunately, we were not visiting on one of these two days. I did get some decent pictures, though. My favorite part of the Imperial palace visit wasn’t the palace itself, but rather a picture I took while I was there. It seems as if I wasn’t the only person interested in taking pictures of the palace. In fact, there were several Japanese folks who had the same interest. They were all lined up with their tripods and cameras, taking pictures of the same piece of history that I was. I found this particularly funny due to the American stereotype (and the truth as far as I am concerned) of Japanese tourists taking photos of just about everything they can see. Being a visitor in Japan, I did not expect to see such a scene. I guess that even Japan can’t escape the lure of Japanese tourists.

11:15 – We walked to Hibiya park. It was a pretty standard park. It was very clean, but nothing there was very noteworthy. One remarkable thing I noticed about Tokyo is that there is no littering, and everything is in its place. There were no pieces of gum, or gum wrappers littered across the ground. No cigarette butts in the cracks of the sidewalks. Everything was kept very tidy.

11:45 – Hopped on a train to Akihabara, which is supposedly the place to go for electronics. We weren’t too impressed. I did, however, enjoy myself in this area of town. Right when we got off of the subway, we saw some crazy demonstration of a crowd of people carrying some type of monument. It was as if we stepped off of the subway and ended up in a Japanese game show. After this display, we walked down a street and didn’t see any shops that were open for business. The Tokyo guide said that this was THE place to go for electronics, and that you would see stores right as you walked off the train. We were very disappointed at this point. We turned around and went down a different street, and things started to pick up. Then all of the sudden we were in the middle of a huge crowd of people. It turns out that the electronics stores weren’t right off the subway exit, but rather the exit to the JR train (Japanese railway).

Before coming to Tokyo, we were told by several sources that we would be seeing the future of technology. We were told that what we saw in Tokyo would take two years to make it over to the US. It didn’t seem that way from what we saw at these stores. They didn’t seem much better or different than the electronics we have in the US. After looking for a while, we decided to get something to eat.

12:30 – We search for places to eat, and can’t find anything of interest. Then, almost fatefully, we turn a corner and see a restaurant with all Japanese writing on the outside. For some reason, we decided to look into the restaurant. It happened to be a sushi restaurant! I really wanted to go to an authentic Sushi restaurant while I was in Tokyo, so this worked out perfectly. We walked in and were seated without much of a hassle. Even with the language barrier, all we needed to do was hold up two fingers, and we were seated. The seating was really interesting. There was a hot water spout in front of each seat, which was for tea. Also at each station was a big jar of pickled ginger, soy sauce, chop sticks, and all other utensils. Then there was the Sushi, which came around on a conveyor belt and we could grab pieces off as we pleased. I absolutely loved this experience! It was great to have the ability to choose our food without committing to an entire entrée. If we didn’t like something, we could just get another piece. They charged by the plate, and it ended up being much cheaper than in the US. I figured out that each plate had a different cost associated with it a little too late. I had kept taking 399 yen plates of Sushi when I could have got similar pieces for about 200 Yen less. Brian figured it out sooner than me, and he was able to get 6 plates of Sushi for only 1000 Yen (~$10). My 6 plates rang in at a reasonable 1800 Yen, which is siginifcantly cheaper than in the states.