Tokyo Day 3 (Saturday yes I'm slack): Malls, towers in Shinjuku, dinner & Pirates in Shibuya

We went out for breakfast at a local cafe, then took the train into Shinjuku and watched hundreds of people (I want to say thousands. There might have been thousands) cross at one of the crossings. There was a huge Pirates of the Caribbean poster along a wall of the station, so we posed in front of that and then ventured out into the crowds.

You get used to huge numbers of people. You stop being amazed and start trying to figure out where is the best part of the pavement to walk (where you’ll bump into the fewest people). Circus Girl took me to the most amazing mall that just kept going up and up and up. When I win Lotto, I’m coming back here. Many of the shop girls were dressed up as if they were on a catwalk, with huge long nails and professionally-styled hair, and they were insistently helpful. Shoe shops and clothes shops (one of which was called Sheep Dip...) and sock shops (many of these) and jewellery shops... Each seemed to have their own individual style, and I didn’t see any big chains that I knew from elsewhere.

I wanted to go up the government towers, so we left earlier than I would have liked and trekked over to the towers. Until recently they were the tallest buildings in Tokyo, and it’s free to get up to the observation deck. Halfway there I remembered about earthquakes and such and had to convince myself that the chances of a large earthquake occurring while I was in a skyscraper were minimal, and in any case Japan has very good seismic standards. When we got there, though, it seemed the tower was closed – there were signs out and the lobby was dark, and people better able to read signs than us were turning away. We took some pictures of the building from the ground and some statues instead, and walked back towards the centre to go to another karaoke place :)

We found a nice place in Shibuya for dinner, and then met Circus Girl’s friend at the cinema. The cinema is very slick and white and huge and crowded. It looked quite futuristic. We saw Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (in 3D and with Japanese subtitles) which I really enjoyed, and then took the train back home. It was a good night.

Tokyo Day 4 (Sunday): Harajuku

I’m trying to decide if I should post things while they’re still fresh, or wait until I’m not jetlagged and can write better. I have a feeling it will be a bit of both. Sunday now, Saturday later. Just to be completely backwards.

I woke at 7.06 to an earthquake (5.5) that went on for about 30s-minute. Circus Girl's house is pretty bouncy (it bounces when trucks go past) so we bounced around for a bit and then it stopped. Breakfast was some Japanese pastries, including a sweet potato roll and some healthy healthy Japanese tea. I took a bit longer packing than I thought I would (I guess that always happens), dragged my bags through to Nippori Station and stashed them in a locker there. I didn’t have any cash left so we went on a mission to find an ATM that would take my card, which turned out to be extremely difficult.

Our aim today was to see some cosplay outfits in Harajuku. Circus Girl took me to the bridge where they normally stand, but there weren’t any there. Maybe they were scared away by the rain forecast. I found a good ATM so I could actually have money, and we found a shop that sold the most amazing cosplay outfits: anything from anime-style dresses and sparkly Las Vegas dancer get-ups to traditional kimonos and Victorian suits.

After a bit (I’m sorry!) we went to McDonalds where I got a Teriyaki McBurger and a Coke glass that was the main reason I’d wanted to go to this particular fast-food place. The burger was quite good, if a little strange, and the McDonalds was packed even at 3pm. We saw some cosplay girls there, dressed in short dresses with lots of petticoats and their hair beautifully arranged. It didn’t seem the right place for a photo though...

By the time we left the restaurant it was pouring. Circus Girl and I huddled together and joined the sea of floating umbrellas in the road. There were some impressive puddles, so we still got pretty wet. We took refuge in a few shops and made our way back to the train station, took my last Tokyo internal train back to Nippori, and said good-bye.

So that was Tokyo. I think I would have liked more time to see everything and some lotto money to shop with...

Tokyo Day 2: Senso-ji temple, Tokyo National Museum, dinner and karaoke in Shibuya

(written Saturday)

Yesterday morning I took the train and the subway to Asakusa, grabbing a red bean bun with a panda printed on it on the way. Asakusa is home to the Senso-ji temple. You enter through a huge gate on the um... one of the sides (my sense of direction doesn’t work in the northern hemisphere) and walk down a long avenue lined with stalls and filled with people. From the gate you can see the temple and the five-storey pagoda beside it, which is pretty impressive.

Lots of people were giving offerings and lighting candles to put in cabinets, and lots of people were taking photographs so I didn’t feel too out of place. I couldn’t resist a pair of chopsticks from a stall, and some kind of foodstuff that I still don’t know the name of, but it had Japanese peach paste inside.

From Asakusa I took the subway back to Ueno, which is famous for its gardens and museums. The gardens are beautiful, with vistas aching for photos. I took many. There’s a statue of a man walking his dog, more temples and shrines, and hundreds of cherry blossom trees, though the cherry blossom season is well past.

There are many museums in the park, but I went to the Tokyo National Museum (I think. It’s now Monday and I can’t be sure. It was a National Museum, anyway), which has five buildings of different ages and architectural styles. I visited the main one, where the exhibits are all Japanese cultural artefacts, and spent a good few hours standing in awe before ancient statues, 8^th century samurai swords, beaten metal mirrors, calligraphy, silk paintings, samurai armour, kimono and pottery. They had a station set up where you could stamp your own samurai picture with different coloured stamps, layering them into a complete picture, so I did one of those.

I was meeting Circus Girl in Shibuya later, so I caught a train just before rush hour and stared out the window at all the buildings. So, so many buildings. I’d thought Tokyo would be all high-rise apartments, but most of the buildings you see are two-storey detached houses, squeezed in together with less than a metre between them. In the old days, fire used to break out periodically in Tokyo (formerly Edo), and these were called the Flowers of Edo. Tokyo’s built upon the ashes of all those fires. Hopefully nothing catches hold nowadays...

We roved the streets of Shibuya looking for good restaurants and karaoke places. Normally Shibuya is ablaze with neon lights, but they’re saving power because of the earthquake and subsequent troubles, so at least half of them were off. It was still a pretty impressive sight.

The restaurant we chose in the end had no non-smoking area, but it did have little screened booths, you could order by wireless touch screen and everything was 270 yen (about NZ$4). So many people smoke here, and as Circus Girl pointed out, mostly the best seats in restaurants are in the smoking areas. Our booth wasn’t too smoky, however, so it was fine in the end.

There were seven of us, and we each ordered some things and shared them. I had sake, which actually wasn’t too strong, and teriyaki chicken, octopus balls (balls with octopus in them), edamame (soy beans), sprouts, pizza (I didn’t order that, I swear), crispy chicken cartilage (better than it sounds) and raw fish. Yum.

Then we retreated to karaoke, Japan style, where you sit in a room with your friends and use a remote to pick songs. We only had an hour and half there, which wasn’t really enough, but we had to go to catch the last train. The train was a sardine train, with people running at the doors and pushing their way in even when you thought no-one else could make it. I wonder why they don’t run trains all night...

Tokyo Day 1 (second half): Imperial Gardens and mall

...I lugged my suitcase onto the train and sat in a corner (which probably wasn’t the best thing to do, considering the number of people that later got on), nearly missed my stop but rushed out just in time. They play happy music to tell you how long the doors will be open for – I guess it gets a bit annoying after a while.

After an iced tea and a muffin I had to ask for scissors to get out of its packaging, I shoved my suitcase in a locker and wandered out of the station with no real direction in mind. Within ten minutes I had avoided a camera crew, gone into a bamboo shop and been presented with a free pen and small chipmunk toy, and bought a dangly phone thing. I hurried back to the station, scared that if I went into any more shops my supply of money would rapidly decline along with the space in my suitcase.

I took a train into Tokyo Station and walked the streets. It’s incredibly quiet for a city, with no buzzers or songs for the lights, just the low hum of traffic. At one point I heard a bird chirping, but it may have been a traffic signal. I walked around the walls of the Imperial Palace for a while taking pictures, and then ventured into the East Gardens of the Palace. Amazing old walls and guard houses and beautiful trees. I bought the most highly-packaged ice-cream I have ever seen (which was actually quite good) and went in search of a department store near Tokyo Station.

I found Daimaru (I think...), which is absolutely gigantic and has the entire ground floor devoted to specialty food items: the largest array of incredibly coloured and presented food I’ve ever seen. I took the escalators up and up and up and found the kimono department, and the sparkly stickers-on-things department, and the beautiful boxes department. One of the boxes was made of paua.

I met my friend Circus Girl at the station where I’d left my suitcase, and we hauled my bags down little alleys to her house. The entire suburb seems to be made of little alleys. We went to dinner at a restaurant near the station, and ordered karaage chicken, Caesar salad, tofu and shrimp rolls, red beans and green tea ice-cream. They also came out with free appetisers in little dishes, which were very nice.

Tokyo Day 1 (half of): flight and train to Tokyo

Tokyo! I haven’t seen much of it yet because the airport is 60km from the city and I’m now waiting at an underground station for the cheap slow train (I figure I’ll be able to see more anyway if I go slow). I managed to snatch bits of sleep on the plane, in between eating teriyaki chicken and scrambled eggs and melon and watching Tangled in short gasps (enjoyable) and taking pictures of the sun as it rose at 4.30am. I think I’ve had enough sleep, though I really can’t be sure.

There weren’t many people on the plane – about one to every three seats – so I was able to spread out a bit and have two pillows. Unfortunately there was quite a bit of turbulence (e.g. 280km/hr cross-winds) so I couldn’t really take my seatbelt off. I was on the side of the plane that saw the sunrise (even if the wing was in the way of the actual sun), but didn’t get to see Tokyo or Mt Fuji as we flew in.

It seems warm here – hooray after Sydney being cold. I’m determined to use the few Japanese phrases I know as much as possible, and I’m enjoying listening to the Japanese announcements. I can’t figure out how to use the internet at the airport, so this will be sent later...

It’s now later and I did more today, but I shall tell you about it tomorrow :)

Book #4: Japan

Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn.

This is another setting I have to remind myself isn’t actually real. My travel bug pricks up its antennae and doesn’t really care about the fact that Japan is in the twenty-first century like the rest of the world, and doesn’t have supernatural ninja people. That we know of.

One of the things I love about this book and the rest of the series is the style of writing – poised, poetic and with an undercurrent of tension. It takes a bit to get used to it, but it really evokes the contrasts in feudal Japan – the calm of art and tea ceremony against the fierce and bloodthirsty battles for control.

It’s a coming of age story (like most of YA I guess), and there are assassins and secret identities and hiding in plain sight (in a few senses of the word). Personally, I love secret identity stories. I can’t help grinning when the hero or heroine tricks everyone into thinking they’re a mild-mannered reporter or a hypochondriac fop, when really they’re SO much more awesome underneath. And when everything is revealed...

The book is told from alternating points of view, with the hero and heroine meeting only briefly and falling desperately, mythically in love. I like alternating POV because you get to see the main characters from each others’ points of view, and you get different perspectives on the same world. I also like it because I tend to write it...

It’s not really much to do with the story, but I LOVE the covers for this series (Hachette hardbacks). I’ve rubbed all the ‘gilt’ off Nightingale Floor because I’ve read it too many times, but it still looks dreamy and balanced and beautiful. I like the design of books. I have been known to buy books because they have a see-through dust jacket (Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness) or the chapters are numbered backwards (The Foreshadowing, Marcus Sedgwick). So pretty/different books make me happy.

Okay, I think I’m going to go read this book again.

More suggestions for Japanese books?