Japan begins with Tokyo

Pictures are here.

Japan was not on my list of immediate places to travel to in 2010. And yet, it so happened that I landed up there at the height of cherry blossom season with friends Eugene and Anu. Eugene and I were part of the hiking group NZ trip last year and Anu and I had talked of taking a trip couple of times but it didn’t happen until Japan.

This was the first time I spent as much time as I did planning a trip (I usually prefer to pay others to do all the planning work!). Hotels were mostly my responsibility and I had some trouble finding a place in Kyoto. We were going to arrive in Kyoto on a Sunday when everybody in Japan and the world who could afford it, would be there to see the cherry blossoms. Anyway, it all worked out. When I reached out to friends for advice on what to do and where to stay, I was surprised to see how many people have visited Japan (often for business). Either Japan is more popular than I thought or my network has grown bigger than it used to be!

Couple of must do things on my list were dress up as geisha, see kabuki (Japanese theatre) and experience a stay at the capsule and ryokan hotels, both of which are Japanese novelties. Eugene and Anu had much bigger must see lists, they were the experts on the shrines and temples we simply had to visit.

We landed on April 1 which happened to be Anu’s birthday. We had originally planned to have a big birthday dinner and all that, but we never got around to finding a place in advance. Anu is vegetarian and I was telling her of the Indian restaurants I had heard of but which we were not going to visit because we were NOT going to Japan to visit Indian restaurants. What do you know, as we walked around in Ginza neighborhood, where we were staying, trying to figure out from (all Japanese) signs if there was a place serving any veg food at all, we landed up at an Indian restaurant! They had TV screens playing hindi movie song videos from the 90s and we started educating Eugene all about Bollywood of the 90s (he was polite in displaying interest).

We were quite tired and after a fruitless conversation with the English challenged Japanese-Thai-Vietnamese-Indian mixed origin waiter to determine if we could go somewhere else to hang out for fun, we called it a night. The next morning we were to meet Minako, a friend of Eugene’s, who was going to show us around Tokyo.

We started the day early with a 6am visit to the famed Tokyo fish market, one of the largest wholesale fish markets in the world. We got off at Tsukiji metro station and walked past several shops fully open for business with tempting sushi on display. The fish market was surprisingly low on fish-smell. Wet floors, lots of little little motor trucks buzzing around and seafood of every imaginable kind (huge and tiny) all over the place. There is a giant tuna auction at 5am which is now closed to tourists because they apparently got in the way. Anu got shooed away when she almost entered the sacred precincts of a stall trying to get a shot of the guy cutting the fish with a very long knife. I picked up some ikura (small orange salmon eggs) on my way out and ate it later, it was far more dense than the one in American and less salty.

We met Minako at our hotel after breakfast and went on to Edo museum with impressive exhibitions depicting the lives of the shoguns, the daimyo (feudal lords) , samurai, the complex class system of the retainers and so on. There were row houses mimicking the real ones that the lower class folks lived in (all of 10sq m!) There was a replica of kabuki theatre with a video that showed the behind-the-scenes action. After over an hour, we moved on Ueno park to see the sakura, Ueno park has a lovely walking path lined with cherry blossom trees. A few street vendors were selling food. We went up a small shrine where a couple of guys dressed in monk like garb played a lovely flute. That was where I had my first taste of takoyaki, the most common street food I was to find in Japan. It is basically fried octopus dumplings served in a box topped with okonomiyaki sauce, mayo (no idea why it needs mayo) and fish flakes. Its cheap, easy to eat hot food on the go.

We had bought a 7 day JR pass in the US that allows unlimited train travel on the JR and Shinkansen (bullet train) anywhere in the country. We spent, what seemed like, forever in a booking office reserving seats for the various train trips we were going to take. You cant reserve seats in the US and it better to reserve seats in advance even though all trains have a couple of unreserved cars (first come first served seating). We would give our requirements to Minako and she would chat with the agent for what seemed like 5 min or so, she would turn around and translate everything that had been said in 20 seconds! I suspect most of the conversation between them was apologies and polite nothings.

When we were done, we went to the Imperial palace which was closed (check hours for all shrines, temples, museums and palaces before visiting since they all vary). We went onto Meiji shrine where we saw a Shinto wedding photo session in progress. The photographers were such perfectionists, fixing every hair and fold of clothing in its place. And then there was a little wind upsetting the bride’s veil and it started all over again. We moved on. This shrine is where I learned the Shinto form of prayer. You bow a couple of times, thrown some money in receptacle, clap twice (attract the attention of the gods?) and then bow again a couple of times. I never got the exact number of bows right, but you get the general idea.

Sometime during the late afternoon. we went to Tokyo tower, took the elevator up to (cant remember which) floor and saw the 360 view (including the Zoji temple nearby). I find myself not very impressed with tall buildings anymore and this one is definitely not all that, but nonetheless, the tower looked pretty as it was lit up after dark (we took some shots of the lit up tower serving as the backdrop to the Zoji temple). In general, the tower is worth a miss.

On the agenda was also Kabuki Theatre in Ginza district. Of all Japanese theatre that I researched (Noh, Bunraku) , this had seemed the most attractive option. We went to kabuki-za theatre which is about to close down for renovations and is the only place in town with English ear phones. The line was quite long, maybe 60-70 people deep. The show goes on all day from 11am till 9pm , but you can buy tickets for one act if you stand in line couple of hours before the act begins. We did our duty and stood in line and imagine our disappointment when they called sold out just as it was our turn!! Bummer!! Would we really not get to see kabuki on this trip?

We kept walking around Ginza, which is basically NY Times Square multiplied by 10. Glitzy stores and buildings, busy and very active. We went to a soba restaurant for dinner, our feet by now felt like lead. Minako left us in the hands of a non-English speaking wait staff after translating our orders. We were the last ones to eat there at around 9pm and the waitress told us as apologetically in Japanese (that Eugene somehow figured out) that they were now taking last orders.

The next day took would take us to Mt Fuji/Hakone, we left Tokyo feeling like we were not quite done with it. Something to think about in the coming days.