Saturday in Tokyo, Part I
Saturday was a biggie, with at least four different stops across the city.
1) American Breakfast: After our experience with that unidentifiable piece of pork anatomy from Friday night, we decided to start our day with our hotel’s offering for breakfast. Nothing incredible unusual to report, although they did include a lovely garden salad with our eggs, bacon, and toast, which was a nice addition to the nutritional value of our day’s start. Atta!
2) Ueno Park: The cherry blossoms weren’t in full effect yet but it didn’t take away from the park at all. This seems to be like the ‘Central Park’ of Tokyo, although there are so many parks around it’s hard to say. It houses the Zoo, a Science Museum, and the Tokyo National Museum, so it’s a biggie.
We wandered around a few temples and shrines and watched a few kids play baseball at a community park. One of the kids had a cannon for an arm, but sadly lacked control and almost took the head off his friend. I was glad to see that this is culturally unacceptable in more than just America.
Then we also went to the zoo and just as I started aggressively banging on the glass of the gorilla pen while having full intention of throwing a donut inside, I was thankfully shown that I was wrong to do so... phew!
We took a breather at an outdoor cafe and planned our next move. A mother and little girl sat down next to us, having some ice cream. The little girl kept looking at me and grinning, so I said ‘Konnichiwa’. She said ‘Hello’. I saw where this was going. I said, ‘Oh, Amerika-jin desu ka?’ (Are you American?)... she quickly laughed and shook her head, saying ‘No no no!’. Her mother grinned. After a few minutes, they got up to move on and the girl turned and waved goodbye, I said ‘Sayonara’, and she said ‘See you!’. Once again, foreign educations and their exposure to American movies put other cultures in a much better place to communicate with foreigners.
3) Asakusa: This area is apparently an older style Tokyo, although the buildings are mostly less than 50 years old due to bombings in WWII. It has been rebuilt however in a style to mimic what it once was, and a large area is set up like a bazaar or market. We’ll be doing some shopping here in Saturday in Tokyo, Part II.
At a nearby bridge, we saw a bunch of people taking photos of what looked like a giant golden horn but were unsure what it was.
It’s the Asahi headquarters, and in hindsight I realized that the giant golden thing was actually this guy’s talent, wisp-ing away:
(Asahi spokesperson, for those who aren’t playing along)
4) Fading fast, but let’s head to Akiabara: We’d heard of an area that had a lot of buildings with lights, kind of like Times Sq., so we decided to check it out. We went to the appropriate Tokyo Rail stop and came above ground where we were a bit disappointed. It was basically a giant electronics store, which was AMAZING to say the least, it was 7 floors with pretty much every techie-geeky-thingy you could ever want. But was this what the hype was about? We’d started to call it a night, thinking that we’d see what people were talking about, but Nick suggested walking a little. We walked down a corridor called the ‘East-West passage’ and were rewarded with an entry into what equates to every computer-bound kids Disneyland... Electric City! Just look how excited these other patrons were!
Ok, Ok, we didn’t really meet these guys, but man, you can imagine how excited that guy in the back is to be there. I mean, you can tell how much he wants that Sony Handycam his buddy’s checking out.
Back to serious, this street went for about a half mile, just littered with technology and anime stores and shops with men and women dressed in maid costumes and other anime-fueled getups handing out flyers for Anime-bars. It’s really hard to describe, but you can see the ‘maids’ below from a picture I pulled off Google.
We grabbed a coffee and sat outside doing some people-watching before heading back towards the hotel.There were a lot of things about this part of town that really struck me... not least of which was the fact that this mini-wonderland for manga and soft/hardware was just 20 minutes from a part of town that reeked of tradition.
5) Does this night ever end? : We called it a night and headed back to our hotel, but stopped in a convenience store to grab a snack (as well as two frosty Asahi’s). Nick chose wisely, grabbing a bag of beef jerky... whereas I chose poorly, deciding to try a sushi-like snack I’d seen people eating around town. It’s basically what you see below, however what looks like a benign wad of rice wrapped in seaweed is sadly wrapped in some of the most ocean-tasting seaweed I’ve ever had, akin to what I’d imagine fish food flakes would taste like if eaten out of the container. After two bites, my snack was over.
5.x) There’s MORE?!?!?!: During our snack, there was an earthquake... enough that we felt it wave through our hotel room on the 12th floor. That was a new experience, and warranted a ‘huh, that was an earthquake, wasn’t it?’ from both of us.
Until Osaka!
1) American Breakfast: After our experience with that unidentifiable piece of pork anatomy from Friday night, we decided to start our day with our hotel’s offering for breakfast. Nothing incredible unusual to report, although they did include a lovely garden salad with our eggs, bacon, and toast, which was a nice addition to the nutritional value of our day’s start. Atta!
2) Ueno Park: The cherry blossoms weren’t in full effect yet but it didn’t take away from the park at all. This seems to be like the ‘Central Park’ of Tokyo, although there are so many parks around it’s hard to say. It houses the Zoo, a Science Museum, and the Tokyo National Museum, so it’s a biggie.
We wandered around a few temples and shrines and watched a few kids play baseball at a community park. One of the kids had a cannon for an arm, but sadly lacked control and almost took the head off his friend. I was glad to see that this is culturally unacceptable in more than just America.
Then we also went to the zoo and just as I started aggressively banging on the glass of the gorilla pen while having full intention of throwing a donut inside, I was thankfully shown that I was wrong to do so... phew!
We took a breather at an outdoor cafe and planned our next move. A mother and little girl sat down next to us, having some ice cream. The little girl kept looking at me and grinning, so I said ‘Konnichiwa’. She said ‘Hello’. I saw where this was going. I said, ‘Oh, Amerika-jin desu ka?’ (Are you American?)... she quickly laughed and shook her head, saying ‘No no no!’. Her mother grinned. After a few minutes, they got up to move on and the girl turned and waved goodbye, I said ‘Sayonara’, and she said ‘See you!’. Once again, foreign educations and their exposure to American movies put other cultures in a much better place to communicate with foreigners.
3) Asakusa: This area is apparently an older style Tokyo, although the buildings are mostly less than 50 years old due to bombings in WWII. It has been rebuilt however in a style to mimic what it once was, and a large area is set up like a bazaar or market. We’ll be doing some shopping here in Saturday in Tokyo, Part II.
At a nearby bridge, we saw a bunch of people taking photos of what looked like a giant golden horn but were unsure what it was.
It’s the Asahi headquarters, and in hindsight I realized that the giant golden thing was actually this guy’s talent, wisp-ing away:
(Asahi spokesperson, for those who aren’t playing along)
4) Fading fast, but let’s head to Akiabara: We’d heard of an area that had a lot of buildings with lights, kind of like Times Sq., so we decided to check it out. We went to the appropriate Tokyo Rail stop and came above ground where we were a bit disappointed. It was basically a giant electronics store, which was AMAZING to say the least, it was 7 floors with pretty much every techie-geeky-thingy you could ever want. But was this what the hype was about? We’d started to call it a night, thinking that we’d see what people were talking about, but Nick suggested walking a little. We walked down a corridor called the ‘East-West passage’ and were rewarded with an entry into what equates to every computer-bound kids Disneyland... Electric City! Just look how excited these other patrons were!
Ok, Ok, we didn’t really meet these guys, but man, you can imagine how excited that guy in the back is to be there. I mean, you can tell how much he wants that Sony Handycam his buddy’s checking out.
Back to serious, this street went for about a half mile, just littered with technology and anime stores and shops with men and women dressed in maid costumes and other anime-fueled getups handing out flyers for Anime-bars. It’s really hard to describe, but you can see the ‘maids’ below from a picture I pulled off Google.
We grabbed a coffee and sat outside doing some people-watching before heading back towards the hotel.There were a lot of things about this part of town that really struck me... not least of which was the fact that this mini-wonderland for manga and soft/hardware was just 20 minutes from a part of town that reeked of tradition.
5) Does this night ever end? : We called it a night and headed back to our hotel, but stopped in a convenience store to grab a snack (as well as two frosty Asahi’s). Nick chose wisely, grabbing a bag of beef jerky... whereas I chose poorly, deciding to try a sushi-like snack I’d seen people eating around town. It’s basically what you see below, however what looks like a benign wad of rice wrapped in seaweed is sadly wrapped in some of the most ocean-tasting seaweed I’ve ever had, akin to what I’d imagine fish food flakes would taste like if eaten out of the container. After two bites, my snack was over.
5.x) There’s MORE?!?!?!: During our snack, there was an earthquake... enough that we felt it wave through our hotel room on the 12th floor. That was a new experience, and warranted a ‘huh, that was an earthquake, wasn’t it?’ from both of us.
Until Osaka!
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