Tokyo: Land of Yum



Dramatis Personae
Kev: tour guide extraordinaire, navigational system
Ming: Ayumi's new Number One Fan
Kobuta: a pair of sore shoulders and a full stomach

Day the First (Jan. 3rd): Tokyo, ho! Got up before dawn and dragged our groggy selves out of the apartment and to the bus stop. Mom was painfully nonchalant about her only children leaving for a foreign country for a week, but hey whatever. Spending spree at the airport to "get rid of leftover HK money" (read: hey look, candy!). Plane ride uneventful except for a dilemma over the TVs: we didn't figure out the screens were stowed away under the seat until halfway into the flight. Oops.

Arrived at Narita in the afternoon and trucked on over to the OMF Guest Home (at Ichikawa station) where we were going to be staying. I took one look at the train map and had a heart attack. Kev says the main lines form a circle with a line going through it (gong dai wa!); there are 32 train lines. Egads.

After we dropped off our luggage, we had ramen for dinner (mmm) and then went to Shibuya to walk around a bit. We stopped into an arcade to look around and met a celebrity:


Why, Mr. Solo, how are you this fine evening? Good? Me too!

CD shopping is excellent in Tokyo; lots of used CD stores it seems (I got Heated and Hemivision by Big Sugar for less than CAN$20!). After observing several strange fashions (rocker-goth, punk-goth, skanky-rocker, Rainbow Brite, bunny rabbit, gothic-Rainbow-skater-hamburger-doll, etc), we stopped off for okonomiyaki (pizza-y pancake-ky yummy thing) and yakisoba (fried noodles in yum sauce) and the best fizzy drink ever, Calpis.

As if that wasn't enough, on the way home, we stopped off at the convenience store ("The Daily Yamazaki") and bought a bunch of onigiri. Oh and we got free bread , so we bought some jam and some scary sugary peanut butter.


Complicated plastic wrapping keeps the seaweed from getting soggy, but also keeps me from eating it sooner.

Day the Second (Jan.4th): Guitar shopping in Ochanomizu. Ming and Kev transfixed by the racks and rows and shops full of guitars. The whole block was full of music stores, but I was more interested a truck parked nearby:


It's a shipping company called Yamato Transport, and it has the cutest corporate logo ever.

Anyway, my stinky brother bought a Japanese Fender (gold-coloured, shiny) and named it Ayumi after the only female J-pop star he'd heard of so far. Ha ha.

Lunch at Yoshinoya (tonkatsu over rice, 680 yen), then over to the amusement park next to the Tokyo Dome. Ming and Kev wanted to go on the rollercoaster so I sat down to babysit Ayumi and make faces at the chubby toddler who seemed both terrified and fascinated by me and my guitar.

Afterwards, we went to Shinkjuku. We went to this comic book cafe where you're charged depending on how long you want to stay (200 yen for 2 hours, unlimited drinks and manga!). Kev wanted to meet up with a friend so Ming and I assured him that we could safely walk around by ourselves for a while and then make it back to Ichikawa without losing any limbs.


Shinjuku at dusk


True to form, we got lost. Fortunately, a friendly Power Ranger (with a round of machine gun ammo around his waist) was nearby to help us out.

After several train mishaps (wrong line, then wrong direction, then wrong train), made it home, vowing together that Kev must never know of these difficulties. Hush now. Watched Japanese TV (scary, hilarious Iron-Man/American Gladiators competition), ate at a tempura restaurant and then went to an izakaya (Japanese bar?) for munchies (edamame, ice cream, sashimi) and drinks (Bailey's in milk and sake. It burns! It buuuurns!).

Day the Third (Jan. 5th): Odaiba! Rode the elevated train (very cool), shopping and lunch at Decks Tokyo Beach. We bought a ton of those little capsule toys (100-300 yen each); too cute to pass up and just cheap enough to justify buying. Afternoon at Tokyo Joypolis. My recollection of this day is a little blurry, mostly because I'm relying on my digicam pics to remind myself if what happened each day, and I ran out of memory that day. Oops.

Ha ha, I just remembered we saw Tokyo Tower on the way to Odaiba. Kev called it the gay man's Eiffel Tower. Ha ha, I still laugh at that.

Anyway, after walking around these malls and such all day, we just walked around a little in Ginza and then headed back to Ichikawa early. Dinner and much snackage bought from the convenience store. Ate the surprisingly nummy food at the guest home while watching The Hunt for Red October (blessedly, in English).

Day the Fourth (Jan. 6th): Breakfast at Mr. Donut! We passed this place everyday on the way to the train station and each time, the stereo outside was blasting this commercial. All I could understand, of course, was "MEESTA DONUT!"


Damned if I was going to miss a chance to eat a Pon de Lion donut. Mmm...

After our sugary breakfast, we went to the weekly OMF prayer meeting. Really neat to meet the missionaries, most of which were older Europeans/Americans who had been in Japan for over 10 years, but some were younger locals. Ming somewhat embarrassedly played a song for them (on a guitar called "Deep Fried"...excellent!) and gave some CDs out. Sandwhiches for lunch, yum.


Visited Sensoji Temple along with a million other people. This pic was taken as we entered the avenue leading from the Kaminarimon to the temple itself.

After seeing the temple and the monstrous Kaminarimon, we were heading back home when Kev suddenly swerved into a store. Little did I know it was a karaoke place. So we went karaoke-ing: Green Day, Bon Jovi, U2, Disney's Under the Sea and L'Arc en Ciel. I spent most of the time laughing.

For dinner, we headed to Akihabara with Ruth, a missionary from New Zealand that Kev had worked with the previous summer. Can't waste an opportunity to shop in Akihabara Electric Town, so I got new earphones. Ruth took us to a sushi place...one of those conveyer belt ones (kaiten sushi, I think). Awesome. I ate many things I would never ever have tried on my own. Including sea urchin...that one was hard to get down.


We (four people) ate this much. 28 normally priced plates, three discounted plates, four special plates and four ice cream cones. Ruth and I had sesame flavoured, Ming had tofu flavoured (really yummy) and Kev had wasabi flavoured. Poor guy couldn't get through it. Too much wasabi power. Payback for the sea urchin.

Day the Fifth (Jan. 7th): We found out the day before that we needed to vacate the guest home right away for a missionary family that was arriving, so we packed up and moved to Ryokan Kangetsu. Not an easy task, as we needed to move all our crap from Ichikawa to Kamata stations, about an hour of trains and train switching. It was worth it though; on the inside, the ryokan grounds looked like a little traditional village or something: little bridges everywhere, lots of plants, etc. The street entrance had a sensor in place so that whenever anyone came in, it would say "Irrashaimasen!" ("Welcome!"), and then "Arigatou gozaimashita!" ("Thank you very much!") when someone left.


Our room at the ryokan; three futons on the ground don't leave much floor space. We each got a yukata, too.

Tsukiji fish market in the afternoon; unfortunately the big market is only open in the mornings, so we ate lunch (sushi again, very fresh; we tried horsemeat....guh.) and walked around the smaller side markets. Saw a tuna head; man those things are massive! Next to the head was a picture of a happy Japanese fisherman gutting a 6 foot long tuna. Whee!


Common sight on Tokyo trains. How do they wake up in just in time to get off at the right station? It's a mystery.

Dinner at a jazz lounge in Shinagawa, a major city center. How do I know this? Because on the train map, "Shinagawa" is in big letters, like "Shinjuku" and "Ikebukuro". Waha! Urban geography by Kobuta! The band was really good, but we were really out of place, being the only ones in jeans, under thirty and not coming straight from the office.


Shinagawa station: here is where Ming forlornly ran out of money.

Day the Sixth (Jan. 8th): A day with Kev's friends! They all hail from Toronto, but now work in Tokyo. One of them looked like Kevin Spacey, ha ha. We met up with them at Shinjuku, (south exit) and had ramen for lunch again (yum, 700 yen). Then over to the government office buildings to look at the city from above. And I thought Hong Kong was crowded; Tokyo streches off in every direction, completely jammed with buildings. Not many high-rises though, strangely.


Takeshita St. in Harajuku; loads of neat little stores here, some odd fashions too. The two orange signs on the right are for Yoshinoya and a restaurant called Wolfgang Puck Express.

We went from Shinjuku to Harakjuku to Shibuya, where they kindly brought us to the Tower Records stores, where helped me find Tank! The Best! Yay! Dinner in Shibuya; I don't know what kind of restaurant it was, but it was good. You take off your shoes at the entrance and let the staff put them into the little wooden lockers. Being Canadian, we tried to put them away ourselves, but were very politely told to leave them where they were and it would be taken care of.

After dinner we went to a Starbucks; as one of Kev's friends explained, since it's considered inappropriate to eat or drink while walking around, no one carries their latte's around. So instead, everyone sits down at the coffee shop and finishes them there. Hence, the Starbuckses (which were everywhere in Tokyo) are enormous, to accomodate everyone who orders anything. We went outside to the patio to drink our coffee because it was too crowded inside (to quote Smuu, we are from CANADUR. *flexes*)

We went back to the inn after that. Of course, when you're at a ryokan that has an outdoor bath, you've got to try the outdoor bath. Luckily for me, the entrance to the women's bath was right next our room, whereas the men's one was outside of our building, right in front of the main desk, ha.

So, I went into the women's bath entrance, put my clothes and glasses into a wicked basket and go into the open air bath with a towel wrapped around me (nakedness ew). Inside were two women (or perhaps animated slabs of tofu; I couldn't see anything) already in the bath. I tell you, 10 degrees Celsius is really cold when you're not wearing pants. Or a shirt for that matter. Toss towel over to the side, grab a stool. Hurredly turn on the shower to 'hot', wash up and rinse. Hurredly climb into the steaming hot bath. Hurredly get into a position where one is not too close to naked strangers or exposing too much to said strangers. Actually it wasn't too awkward because, as I've said, I was pretty much blind. You don't really feel naked when you can't see anything. I had a chat with the two women (one from Osaka, one from Nara), and then got out after half an hour. Too pickled. The two women, who had already been in the bath for an hour and a half when I arrived, stayed until closing probably.

Day the Last (Jan. 9th): Ming and Kev were going to take the train to Aomori ( northern tip of Japan's main island, I was leaving that day, so we were packed up and checked out by mid-morning. Train to Tokyo station, where both the super-bullet trains to the north and the airport express trains left from. After lunch (I finally got to try omurice), said good-bye and I left for Narita on the aiport express. Funny how my trips to Asia always end with me travelling by myself, terrified, on the last day. The train ride was quite long, about an hour or so, but I got to the terminal in plenty of time.

Had to wait for the Air Canada desks to open, so I sat nearby and watched this adorable toddler try to climb her parents' luggage. Hee. After I got my boarding pass, I walked around the shopping area a bit. There were stores of all kinds (even a little grocery store) and a lot of restaurants. Too bad I had already given Ming most of my remaining money. Oh well. I got one last onigiri, a pack of mentos, a barley tea drink from the vending machine and a pack of those yummy koala biscuits filled with chocolate. Oh and Bleach Vol. 4 (credit carded that one). Then onto the plane...

Bye bye Japan!


Sunset at Ichikawa station