Where I'm At

When we were planning our trip Wilf and I agreed that we wanted to try the local specialties in the areas we visited. ‘We’ll keep and open mind and be adventurous’, we said. We gave ourselves two up front exemptions – we couldn’t face the idea of chicken sashimi (raw chicken-can’t do it) and we wouldn’t try whale. But other than that – let’s be brave.

Tonight we found the restaurant we were looking for (that always feels like such a triumph). From street level we went up to the second floor of Kome no Kura, where we were greeted. Once our shoes were off we were taken to a little room with a table. Thankfully there was a well for our feet, which is more comfortable than sitting on the floor. When we were ready to order we pressed a button and there was a sound like a chirping bird. A moment later a little door slid open and there was our server. No one told him about us I guess – the look on his face when he saw the two gaijin was priceless – we nearly laughed out loud.

Anyhow, we ordered the following:
Takana char-han (Chinese fried rice with Tanaka pickles)

Karashi renkon (lotus root stuffed with mustard and deep fried)

Umano shim ofuri sashi (horse meat sashimi)

Chicken tsukine (ground chicken wrapped around a bamboo pole, cooked then served with a raw egg poured over)

Glasses of shochu, which is a distilled spirit.

It was all delicious!

We spent two nights in Nagasaki, which gave us a chance to see a bit of the city. Nagasaki is on the southern island of Kyushu, a two hour plane ride from Tokyo. It is warm enough that palm trees grow here, but not a tropical climate.

Nagasaki was the site of contact between Japan and Europe. The shogunate would only allow trade with the Dutch for 200 plus years, and only under severe constraints. The traders were sequestered upon an artificial island in the harbour – the island of Dejima. Over time land was reclaimed and Dejima is now several blocks inland, but the site has been med and is being restored. We spent an interesting morning wandering the site, looking at the reconstructed buildings and warehouses, and marvelling at the life those traders must have lived – locked onto the island, so far from home, in such an alien culture.

Our afternoon visit was a more somber affair – we went to the Atomic Bomb museum, the Hypocenter Park and the Peace Park. It is shocking and unsettling to realize that everything in this bustling,modern city is new, relatively speaking. 67 years ago everything was burnt or blasted away in a flash.

Lovely sunny day in Tokyo today and we took the opportunity to explore near where we are staying. Tokyo is full of surprises, not the least of which is the fact that the totally hyper modern is tucked up right next to the ancient. As tourists we often tend to see the bright lights and flash, but even a short wander reveals a whole different view of the city.

Today we were in Yanaka, which through geography and fate has survived earthquakes and fire to retain an older feel. The narrow twisty streets are full of tiny little shops – day to day necessities and specialty artisans line the main shopping area. At some point many of the shrines and cemeteries from other parts of the city were moved here (when I say some time I mean sometime within the past 500 years….)
I’m not going to be able to place my pictures just where I want in this post but you will see at the bottom pictures of the street, a cemetery view and the outside of the restaurant where we had lunch. We were taken upstairs (after removing our shoes) to sit on the tatami floor and eat our lunch. The food was good, but even better was the look on other customer’s faces when they came up the stairs and saw US! I don’t think they get many Westerners in this district.

In the afternoon we went to the Ueno Zoo – a very compact but very nice zoo. Pandas and elephants and penguins and polar bears – oh my! And about a zillion kids!

We had in our mind a particular ramen shop for dinner, which turned out to be a process. It took a lot of walking, much perseverance and process of elimination (it is on this block and it is not the hotel nor the dry cleaners so it must be this one…) to find it. No English signage. No romanji signage. Only the word ‘ramen’ in hiragana, which I could decipher. The rest in kanji….

Many ramen restaurants have a machine out front – you put in your money, push a button with a picture of what you want, take your ticket and hand it to the waiter – easy peasy, don’t even have to talk to them. I direct your attention to picture below of the ticket machine – not a picture on it. Do we just push buttons randomly and see what we get? Fortunately there was a fellow ordering who spoke English and was able to advise us. Pick the top left button – that’s always the house speciality. And it was delicious!

If you were coming up an escalator and saw this sign coming into view would you have thought ‘Of course -a clothing store’?

First day in Tokyo and we had a plan – the new thing to see and do is the Sky Tree. It is a communication/observation tower that opened earlier this year. It stands 634 meters high, which makes it the tallest such structure in the world. Not being ones to leave well enough alone, the builders have built a huge complex around the tower full of things to see and do.

I’ll interject here to say that the software I’m using to blog on the iPad isn’t letting me add pictures to this post where I want them, so you’ll find them all at the end of this post.

Everything we could find on the Internet said that the lines for tickets were huge and that there was no way to get advance tickets, so we were resigned to a long wait. And yet – no problem today. We walked off the subway just before 9:00am and walked right in.

The Japanese are super organized about such things, and one way they manage is with lots of staff. This young lady, in her official Sky Tree uniform (you can’t see her shoes, but they match) is directing us into the line for the elevator.

In less than a minute. The elevator took us to the 350m level – the elevator car was absolutely still and silent. Only the popping of or ears told us we were moving. Being a clear day we could see for miles in all directions. Travelling by subway leads to a distorted idea of the shape and size of a city – we were astonished to see how many rivers and canals weave through the city. The subways run under it all and we just pop up here, look around, pop up somewhere else.

We had our picture taken on the glass bottom section – it’s pretty dramatic, but after doing the Grand Canyon Skywalk not too terrifying. Here we are acting like Japanese tourists:

But what does it actually look like? Like this:

After the Sky Tree itself we visited the aquarium at the base – a very nice display. Lots of little kids about, and penguins and seals and many mysterious critters. We were able to see the seal feeding session – those seals have their handlers very well trained!

Day one a success- time these weary sightseers to rest up for another day on the town.

Hey Hey! We made it to Tokyo! Got our luggage, found our hotel and found the sushi restaurant we had picked out in advance (that is a lot harder than it sounds).

Our hotel is very cute and very very tiny – I’ll try for a picture tomorrow. It is now coming up to 9:00 pm Wednesday evening. On our clock it is coming up to 5:00 am – we’ve been up 22 hours which probably explains why we are kinda giddy. The Japan Series of baseball is on – at least we understand baseball!

We have wi-fi in our room so I’ll be back soon with pictures!