Day 1(March 15, 2013): We arrived in Tokyo at 7pm Saturday night, 24 hours after leaving home. It was quite tiring and next we had to navigate the rail system, The first leg was quite good, but as we moved to the local underground system, it was quite a challenge. We asked questions in English and got responses in Japanese - not workable. We did meet two lovely people who were fluent in English and Japanese who tried to help us as best they could. But we dragged the backpacks a distance and then gave in and got a cab.
Our Hotel - the Citadines in Shinjuku was nice - an apartment with a small kitchenette and friendly staff.
Day 2(March 16): We headed out early, on foot, with a map and a digital compass. The maps do not have streetnames, except for the major routes, which is fine as the addresses do not make any sense. We have been spoiled on past trips with the Garmin and Citymaps. This trip is proving to be challenging in terms of navigation -but not impossible- yet.
We were able to locate the Imperial Palace, home to the Emperor and his family. The Western part of the grounds are off limits as it contains the residences and private buildings. The rest is divided into parks and accessible by the public. The cherry blossoms are not in full bloom in the gardens, but enough blooms have arrived to be quite beautiful and colourful.
We met some students from the local university who offered to give us a tour of the Palace gardens so that they could practice their English. They were great kids; two were studying to be engineers and the other to be a teacher/counsellor.
We walked to the Imperial Palace and back, enjoying the sights along the way. All-in-all, we estimate that we walked more than 20 kilometres today.
Day 3(March 17): Our goal today was to make it to the famous Fish Market and try the Sushi. It is 10k from our hotel, so we thought we would try the subway system one way and then walk back. We bought our subway ticket - that was easy, but we could not easily find the location of the line (there are about 6 different ones) and the platform. After about 20 minutes of looking we thought we had success, but out tickets did not work. Unknowingly we had walked underground for 2 stations - still the wrong line. We sorted that out - we thought - by asking an attendant at the station - we spoke to him in English - he answered in Japanese - we were all confused. Eventually, we make it onto the subway and it was the right one - finally success! We counted the stops to get to our location - 9 in all - and settled in. However, one stop later the train stopped - end of the line! An attendant on the train recognized foreign confusion and directed us to the proper platform and we were off, finally, in the right direction. We arrived at the final stop and discovered we were a distance from the fish market. In fact we were on a small island and the market was on the mainland. It all looked very close on the subway map, but then I guess Halifax looks quite close to London on the world map. We talked to a subway attendant who said it was too far to walk. We told him we liked to walk far, so he drew us a map and it was a lovely walk over a bridge overlooking Tokyo Bay.
The fish market was quite large and went on for a number of blocks. There were line-ups of people waiting to get into small restaurants. We chose one and had a reasonably short wait. The sushi was so fresh and delicious. Sushi in Japan is different than in North America. It is quite basic, not a lot of different rolls and it is more expensive than we are accustomed to.
On our way back to the hotel, we walked through the art district. It was very interesting.
We were quite tired when we got back to our hotel - another great day overall.
Day 4(March 18): Today we set out to see the Meiji shrine, built in memory of the Meiji emperor and his consort. The shrine is set in a large park which includes a sunken garden of irises.
Adjacent to the park is a market which is clearly a favourite of the locals. It includes a lot of clothing and costume jewelry and trinkets mostly popular with young women from the area. It is a great place to see local fashion, which is quite diverse - short lace shirts, lots of bows in the hair, brilliant colours, lots of Minnie Mouse followers.
We noticed a very long line-up outside the market and decided to check out the attraction. Who would have guessed that people (mostly young adults) would wait in line - likely an hour wait, for the privilege of buying gourmet popcorn!
On the way back to the hotel, we decided to try a Chinese restaurant for lunch. We ordered two dishes - pork with noodles and beef with vegetables. What we got was a veritable feast. Soup and salad and rice plus very generous portions of the dishes we ordered, and dessert and Chinese tea. It was wonderful.
In the evening we decided to get out and experience the night life. The downtown area was vibrant with all the highrises lit up, neon signs, quite amazing.
For dinner, we tried a "tapas" restaurant, which provided small servings of Japanese food - perfect.
Day 5(March 19): Today we figured out the Tokyo subway system! We were able to get to and from our destination with complete confidence and accuracy. We began the day by making our way to Ueno Park,which is considered a small model of Japan, with its shrines, temples, lotus pond and beautiful cherry trees, and of course Starbucks. We spent the morning wandering the grounds and then visited the Tokyo National Museum. The museum had a special theme of "Cherry Blossoms", given the season. The displays were wonderful and included Samurai warrior armour, ceramics, lacquerware, dolls, prints and artifacts dating back to 10,000 BC.
After leaving Ueno Park, we happened upon a very extensive outdoor market, Ameyoko, which included over 500 stalls of food, clothing and handmade leather goods. There was a whole sporting goods section. We spent the afternoon at the market.
For dinner, we wanted to try one of the recommended restaurants in our "Eyewitness" tourbook. With the help of the locals we located the tempura restaurant. The food is very different than we expected. the tempura is meat and shrimp, not vegetable. It was good, but weprefer the Canadian version of Japanese tempura.
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Day 6(March 20): Today, our last full day in Tokyo, was cold, windy and rainy - one of those days that chills your bones. We started the day with a nice breakfast at SaraBeths - a New York chain in Shinjuku (check out the latte in the photo gallery). Then we just roamed around the shops and walked around the neighbourhood.
We quite enjoyed our time in Tokyo and plan to return to Japan to visit Kyoto - perhaps next year. Some of our observations about the people of Tokyo;
-They are very polite - you will not see people using their phones in restaurants. Even though the population is dense, they do not yell at each other or honk their horns in traffic.
-They want to be helpful, even if they don't know. We received much direction assistance from people who could see that we were searching maps or tourbooks.
- They are considerate of each other. They wear the health masks if they are not feeling well so as not to infect others.
- They are fit. Many ride bicycles (on the sidewalks and they don't lock their bikes). On Sunday morning, there were so many people out running that we had a hard time maneuvering along the sidewalks.
Tomorrow, we are off to Sinapore and looking forward to seeing Beth and Ian - and the warm weather!
