Saturday in Tokyo

We all got up and had breakfast at the hotel in preparation for our mandatory bus tour of Tokyo…we were told it started at 9am, but to be downstairs at 8:40am (SO Japanese!). I guess I missed the memo and didn’t realize that meant be on the bus at 8:41, because when I strolled onto the bus at 8:55 I was the last person!



We drove the 40 minutes into Tokyo, and got a less-than-informative commentary from our “English-speaking” guide, haha. We took a roundabout way to the destination, and were told about a few major sites on the way. We ended up at the Edo-Tokyo museum, which highlights a historical period of Japanese history. There were replicas of the city through different eras, artifacts and historical memorabilia. Honestly, most of us were relatively underwhelmed at the collection after about 40 minutes, and a group of us escaped and went to go have an early lunch.



The guide recommended a place, and a few of us went – we were seated in the back of the rather expansive restaurant, which actually contained a sumo ring in the middle of the dining room! We were amazed by a few menu items on the English-translated menu (Horse meat sashimi?! Whale bacon?! Drinks with collagen in them? Ew?). I ordered some sushi and dumplings, and some of the guys got hot pots. Our food was wheeled out to us on a cart, and we feasted! The guys with the hot pots had to wait while their food basically cooked in the pot in front of them, but our table was overflowing with bubbling cauldrons and sushi!



Everything was delicious, and I ate way too much. After lunch, we went back to the museum to meet back up with the group, and got back on the bus. We stopped briefly for a group photo at the gates of Tokyo University (the director of the program claimed the Japanese government liked “proof” that the students were here and doing educational activities…) and then ended our tour by getting dropped off at a huge shrine on the northeast side of the city. It was a sunny Saturday, and the street leading up to the shrine was PACKED with tourists.

Horse meat sashimi and whale bacon!

By the time I tried to get a group together to hang out for the day, everyone had gotten lost in the crowd besides Fernanda, a Brazilian girl doing her PhD in Geneva Switzerland. We joined forces, fought our way through the mob to see the shrine, and decided to escape the crowds and go somewhere else.  On our way to the train, we caught a good view of the Tokyo Sky Tree, now the world’s largest tower (I think).



Also, we saw the Asahi Beer headquarters building, which is supposed to resemble a giant glass of beer, with the top resembling bubbles. Also at the Asahi building is the “Golden Flame” sculpture, but my guidebook said the locals refer to it as “the Golden turd,” which I believe is quite an accurate nickname!

We hopped on a train across town to go back to Shibuya, since Fernanda hadn’t been there and I spent only a few minutes in the neighborhood on Thursday. We saw the crossing (with even more people on a sunny weekend!), grabbed a pricey 700 ¥ iced coffee, and did some shopping. We spent forever going through just one department store that had 8 levels with everything you could imagine. She was looking for a pen for her father, and we found an entire FLOOR of pens and stationary items – the choices were so overwhelming that it took her almost a half hour to decide which pen to buy!

We bought silly trinkets, and had to force ourselves to leave so we wouldn’t spend all our money! Fernanda hadn’t had lunch, so we decided to try to find conveyor-belt-sushi. There was a sushi restaurant listed in my guidebook really close to us, so we tried to find it. WE were completely unsuccessful, and again,  an nice Japanese person saw us staring at the map and lead us to where we were going…..we had walked by it about 3 times because it had gone out of business :(

We agreed to try to keep looking while we walked to the next neighborhood, and aimlessly ambled, window shopping and trying to find sushi. Somehow, we came across NO sushi places and about 45 minutes later arrived at the next big shopping district. Fernanda gave up on her sushi quest due to desperate hunger, and we had some dim sum-like dumplings at a random Chinese place.

We did a bit more shopping, and then headed to the train to go to Shinjuku, which contains the smaller neighborhood called Golden Gai where I grabbed a drink with Leah and Jon on my first night. We found another bar that had a sign out front welcoming foreigners and offering free admission for travelers, so we climbed up a steep set of stairs and grabbed a table in the totally empty place. We tried some fun drinks (Green tea liqueur fizz and some sort of sake cocktail), but after 2 drinks, we were tired of the smoke, and decided to get fresh air and look for another place.

The Golden Turd

Side note – smoking rules in Japan are very confusing to me. You CAN smoke in bars and restaurants, but you CANNOT smoke on the street. If you want to smoke outdoors, you can only do it in these silly little fenced in and signed areas. It looks like a playpen on the sidewalk for smokers, and I think it’s really weird!

We were looking for a bar when we stumbled upon a 100 ¥ store! It’s the Japanese equivalent of a dollar store, and we ran in just before it closed. We dashed through grabbing souvenirs and candy and random junk, and both ended up blowing a ton of money!

We left as they were locking up the store, and found ourselves fighting through the beginning of the late night rush hour crowds. It was almost 11pm, so we opted to play it safe and head to the train. We were glad we did, because the station was completely packed, and we had to wait in line for the train. We had a crowded yet uneventful commute home, and had a late night beer with some other students we ran into in the lobby of the hotel.

Fernanda and I had a good day together, so we were both happy to plan to team up again the next day and explore. We debated where to go, and settled on trying to see Mt Fuji and visit the natural park called Hakone. We agreed to not rush or stress out about leaving early (a lot of the other people were getting up super early to go back to the city or head to some temples, but we wanted something a bit more relaxing) and headed off to bed after a good day!

Midnight rush hour

Friday - "Science" in Yokohama

Weird candy

Thursday night I slept like a rock in my real bed (although I slept surprisingly well on my tatami mat the night before) and woke up ready to start the actually program I came here for! In case you’re wondering, the program is sponsored by the Riken Center for Allergy and Immunology (RCAI) and all the travel has been jointly paid for by the Riken Institute and the Japanese government.

I had an interesting breakfast in the hotel (they offer eggs and bread, but also miso soup, rice, and many unidentifiable savory Japanese foods), met more of my classmates, and caught the bus to the Institute. We were all a little worried, since all we knew was that it was the 7th official stop, which we were told was “after the railroad tracks” but we weren’t sure we were going to be able to identify the actual destination. Like everything has been so far, it was way easier than we all expected, and the stopped was announced as the “Riken yadda yadda yadda?” stop, and we found our way to the building easily.


We got checked in, got packets of information, schedules and maps, and had a day full of talks and tours. Highlights included the map of our ASSIGNED seats (?!) for the lecture hall, being told we were not allowed to access the wireless internet so we would always focus, and the map of the cafeteria which described in unnecessary detail what food is served at which stations and how to pay, haha! We had to sign a contract saying we would attend everything unless given permission and giving them the rights to use our pictures and abstracts….it was interesting.


The day concluded with a “Welcome Party” – I had no idea what to expect from the event, but was hoping for a brief, non-awkward happy hour-like event. When we walked out of the last talk, we were greeted by tables FULL of sushi, tempura, fruits, veggies, and a few “Western” items like mini-pizzas and finger sandwiches. There were a couple coolers of beer, but the most surprising thing was the set of drums and guitars at one end of the room….


The program director announced that the Riken band (Nerd Alert: the name of the band is Negative Selection! Hilarious :) would regale us with some tunes. As they set up, one of the band members even donned a wig! It was really, really funny, and they played one Japanese folk song (re-interpreted to rock music) and then "Purple Haze" – both unpredictably well done. We gave them quite the round of applause after they announced they only knew those two songs, and someone shouted “one more song! Encore!”….to which they actually obliged us. They finished up with an interesting rendition of "Smoke on the Water" which had us all giggling.

Beer vending machines!

The party ended EXACTLY at 7:30, as scheduled (so Japanese), and we were politely asked to think about making our way out of the building when we were standing around discussing what to do afterwards. We were all wondering if we could take our open beers with us, so I gathered my courage and asked the director my first question of the day: “Will we get arrested and thrown into Japanese jail if we walk on the streets or get on the bus with open beers?!”

Our crew

He explained that it was perfectly legal, and we wouldn’t get in trouble, but that Japanese people normally don’t drink in public/on the street. We decided to opt for cultural insensitivity in the name of a good time, and stuffed our bags with the leftover free beers and headed back to the bus to go regroup at the hotel.

About 20 of us decided to try to go find a bar in central Yokohama, and we dumped our school bags and all headed to the train together! It was hilarious walking down the street with beers in hand, trying to stick together in the evening crowds. Somehow, I got elected tour guide since I was one of the only people who had been into town, and I had to try to keep us together, make sure everyone realized the last train was at midnight-ish, and find a bar that would let us all in….

Giant ice cubes

It proved rather difficult, but everyone was in good spirits! We took forever to all buy train tickets, but we got to town, (successfully!) got out of the train station, and walked around the area I had been to the night before and looked for a bar to grab a drink.

We quickly discovered that about 70% of the bars couldn’t hold our group even if they started out empty (which none were since it was a Friday evening!), and the other 30% looked at us and turned us away. I got told “No foreigners” more than once…

The locals, lol

Eventually, after about 20 minutes of wandering in circles and drinking in the streets, we voted to settle on an Irish pub since it was big enough even though it was packed, and they were bound to tolerate Westerners. We squeezed in, ordered expensive beers, and had a pretty good time. People headed back to the hotel in little groups, but once it hit 11pm, I rounded everyone up like a mother hen, and got us back to the station so we wouldn’t get stuck in midnight super-rush-hour! We got broken up when we were trying to fight the crowds an buy tickets, but most of us stuck together and got home.

Unhappy midnight train driver

We grabbed snacks and drinks on the way home from the station, and hung out in the lobby until the wee hours chatting. It was a fun day and I was happy that I was “stuck” with so many personable people for the next week.

Fishies and fun

Well, today I woke up and went straight to the Tsujiki Fish market – this market is famous for being the largest fish market in the world! There are two main parts to the market: the first part is the tuna auction, which begins at 5am and only allows in about 100 visitors a day (due to their disruptive effect on the frenetic business!), and the second part is the large wholesale are of the market where fish of every variety are bought and sold.

Since the trains don’t start running until after 5am, I opted not to spend the previous night outside the fish market waiting for it to open :P I headed out at the more reasonable time of 9am and wandered until I found the market. It took me a few minutes of walking around in circles through the tiny streets and alleys that surround the HUGE market to actually figure out how to enter the warehouse like expanse of the wholesale area. My search was complicated by the fact that thousands of Japanese men were frantically hurrying around everywhere in trucks, carts, scooters and bikes, which made every street crossing relatively frightening!

I conquered a few crosswalks, narrowly avoided certain fishy-transport doom, and found my way into the dark, cool maze of the fish market. As far as you can see there are tight rows of stalls filled with wall to wall fish: eels, crabs, tiny fish, giant fish, octopus, huge abalone with shells as big as a football, dried fish, salted fish, cold cases full of smoking dry ice and enormous slabs of deep red tuna, squid, aquariums of live fish, urchins, clams, mussels, and shrimp. If it lives underwater, you can find it there!

I aimlessly strolled and weaved through the endless alleys of fish. I saw fats rats scurrying under the tables, and was constantly stepping over puddles of melting ice mixed with fish blood and parts….but mostly I just enjoyed the view! There was just so much delicious looking seafood that the icky parts of the experience were easy to ignore, and after about 40 minutes of meandering through the goods I decided to find a restaurant and find some breakfast sushi! 

Weird as it may sound, I found a place that looked relatively reputable, was full of what I can only imagine was Japanese tourists, and was reasonable priced. I grabbed the picture menu (lifesaver!) and pointed at the pieces I wanted to try. I got two big pieces of familiar tuna and salmon, but also tried some abalone and eel nigiri that looked exotic and yummy.

Almost everything was delicious! But one slab, the abalone, was just weird…I popped the whole nigiri it into my mouth (apparently it’s rude to do otherwise) and chomped down but found that it had the consistency of a rubber eraser. I just couldn’t chew it no matter how hard I tried! I quickly gave up and had to resort to spitting it out in the damp hand towel they gave me to wash my hands when I walked in.

Overall, it was a small but tasty breakfast, and I left the Tsujiki area to go see some more sights. I rode the train to another neighborhood, called Shibuya, which is a posh, young area known for its shopping and “hip” vibe. Shibuya is also famous for having the most trafficked pedestrian intersection in the world: when all the traffic lights of the six way intersection simultaneously turn red, the circular crosswalk is flooded from all sides with tens of thousands of people rushing through every hour, all hours of the day. I crossed though the famous crossing and headed to the Starbucks (also famous for being the world’s top grossing S-bucks) since it had a second floor view of the masses.

I watched the river of humanity ebb and flow and sipped a coffee while waiting for a passing rain cloud to blow over. When the drizzle stopped, I walked to the neighborhood called Harajuku, which is best known as a vibrant, high-end shopping area. Guidebooks refer to it as the “Champs-Elysess” of Tokyo, and it’s a bustling road lined with huge leafy green trees and stores like Gucci, Dior, etc. I did about 10 minutes of window-shopping, but since I couldn’t afford anything even not considering the poor exchange rate, I eventually headed back to the ryokan to grab my bags and start the journey to Yokohama to check into my hotel-home for the next week!

The train journey took about 45 minutes, and was relatively painless. I did accidentally get onto an express train, so I did have to hop off and switch to a local in the middle of the trip, but all in all it was easy! My hotel was just a 3 minute walk straight out of the train station, and I checked in with no issues.

When I walked into the room I was a bit surprised – I can only describe it as a queen bed sized room jammed with a double bed and not much else. There is no closet, and the bathroom is so snug that I can spread my arms and touch both walls….but it’s functional and has everything I need, and it feels almost cozy for just one person :)

 grabbed a shower and walked out to find dinner and happened upon 3 other students at the conference (a French woman named Margot, a Chinese guy named Charlie, and a Chilean guy named Francisco) so I invited them to go grab some food. Since none of us had found a map of Yokohama (in English....or French or Spanish or Chinese), we just headed back towards the train station which seemed to have a lot of restaurants around it.

 

We settled on a place jammed with local men eating what appeared to be grilled skewers of meat. There was no English on the menu, but Charlie claimed that he could read many of the Japanese characters, so we trusted him and sat down. We pantomimed (none of the staff spoke ANY English) that we wanted some beers and then turned to Charlie to guide us through the menu full of indecipherable squiggles….but it turned out that he know about 10% of what everything said, so we basically chose 20 skewers at random and hoped for the best.

I have to say, I got a bit nervous as I saw the plates delivered to neighboring tables: I could clearly identify what seemed to be intestine, tendon, tongue, ears, cartilage, gizzards, and other “parts” on sticks steaming on the tiny plates. As our food began to arrive, I tried my best NOT to guess what was on each plate before trying it. None of us could be 100% sure, but we suppose we ended up eating intestine, liver, stomach, chicken skin, chicken breast, and a few veggies. Intestine ended up being my favorite of the unidentifiable skewers, but I can’t say I will be revisiting that restaurant! Without a Japanese guide or some pictures, its hard to make a meal work….but I felt accomplished for trying, and had fun chatting with the other students.

They had all arrived a few hours ago, so they were wiped out and they headed back to the hotel to rest up for the first day of the program. But I wasn’t ready for bed yet, so I headed into the center of Yokohama to explore. I hopped on the train and rode the three stops to the main station….which is big. I literally got lost for 15 minutes INSIDE the station! A lot of them have labyrinthine networks of underground malls shooting out from every angle, and I kept walking down every wrong way before heading back to the middle and finding a stairwell that went straight up and out of the shopping mecca.

I walked in the direction I thought was towards the waterfront, which was supposed to have cool shops and restaurants, but I couldn’t find the area I was looking for, and I gave up when I found a huge grocery store. I always LOVE ambling through foreign grocery stores, so I was psyched to find one :)

I spent a while going down every aisle and wondering what all the completely unfamiliar products were, bought a few packages of fun looking cookies and candies, then headed back out to the streets. I walked for a while and enjoyed seeing all the Japanese young people going in and out of the bars and arcades for a bit before heading back to the hotel to unpack and get ready for my first day of “summer school!”

Still alive :)

Hey everyone!

I am still alive :) It's been kind of non-stop here the last few days!

Thursday I went to the world's largest fish market, saw the world's busiest pedestrian crosswalk (the famous Shibuya Crossing - 100,000 people per hour I think), then made it to Yokohama to check into my home for the week.

Friday started my program - we had orientation, tours of the Riken Institute and lectures all day, capped with a "Welcome Party" and then dinner and drinks out on the town of Yokohama.

Saturday was a bus tour of Tokyo, a museum and a huge Shinto shrine, and then more wandering and sightseeing in Tokyo.

Today I'm headed to go find some hot springs in the National Park surrounding Mt Fuji :)

I promise to update more later, but for now, I'm off to explore!
Kristyn

Exploring Tokyo!

Well, I had a great first day in Japan! I landed at 5am, customs was a breeze, and I caught a direct bus to my part of town in Tokyo. The lovely lady at the information desk at the airport convinced me NOT to brave the rush hour crowds in the trains with my baggage, so I took her advice and shelled out a few hundred extra yen for the cozy, reserved seat on the limo-bus.

Mmmmm

Side note: 1000 yen (¥) = $12.50, therefore every 100¥ is about $1.25.

Like I said in the last post, I found my ryokan with (almost) no trouble, got a shower, and set out to beat my jet lag and do some sight seeing! I started the day off with a quest for food. I did end up braving the Metro, which was pleasantly easy to figure out: the routes are color and number coded, and the ticket machines even have an "English" setting! I aimed for the park I wanted to check out, and hopped off the subway and started looking for something to eat....which at first was a mildy overwhelming prospect due to hunger and a lot of indecipherable menus outside of yummy smelling places.

Happily, I found one with familiar looking photos, and I sat down at the bar, sheepishly pointed at the picture of the food I wanted, and hopefully waited for something edible to appear in front of me.

I was not disappointed! I had pointed to some gyoza (dumplings) and was surprised when they came out accompanied with a bowl of soup, a bowl of rice, two dipping sauces, and some spicy pickled veggies. I was sort of glad to be eating alone, because I scarfed that meal!! It was tasty and just what I needed - all all for only 600¥! I tried my best to pantomime appreciation to the chef behind the counter, and walked to the park.

Japanese kitties in the park!

Shinjuku National Garden was an imperial garden completed in 1906 - it is huge, with different themed sections: traditional Japanese, a French formal garden with sycamores lining the rose filled inner garden, and a lot of foresty areas. It was cool on the shady gravel paths, and most of the part was quiet and peaceful. I wandered in a big loop, saw lots of trees and flowers, and even more young Japanese school kids running around and enjoying the sunshine (all in matching sun hats :).


After the park, I took a longer-than-expected walk to the Tokyo Metropolitain Government Buildings. The guidebook claimed they had a free 45th floor observation deck, and I thought it would be a cool way to get the lay of the land. I strolled through a huge shopping district and finally found the double towers.

Mt Fuji is hiding behind those clouds!

The view from the top was pretty neat! On a clear day you're supposed to be able to see Mt Fuji, but I wasn't so lucky...apparently my plane landed between two typhoons, so the weather has been a bit nutty, and there were a lot of clouds in the distance. But I could see Tokyo's version of the Eiffel Tower, the park I had just visited, and tons of cool buildings around the city.

Next, I headed over to a shinto shrine in the middle of the city. It was built to honor Emperor Meiji in 1920 and has the largest gates of any shrine in Japan. It also sat in the middle of an expansive green, forested park, and was fun to stroll around.


I decided to head back to the ryokan because it was time for me to check in! I was excited to see my room, and to be honest, my feet were killing me. For some reason, after the flight they were all swollen. It wasn't too bad, and at first the walking around made them feel better....but after 6 hours of walking in the heat, through foreign grass, they were puffy and had weird red splotches, haha!


I got back, checked into my room, and had an e-mail from one of my friends who is here in Japan at a different conference and she wanted to meet up for dinner! I had a couple hours to kill, so I attempted a dip in the traditional Japanese cypress tub. I say attempted, because I put one fat foot in there and literally yelled. SO HOT!!! It's sort of like a hot tub - you shower before you get in, and they leave the water in all day - I was the first person to request it for the day, so I must have gotten the fresh piping (scalding) hot water. I even tried getting in without my feet in the water (think...butt first - thank god nobody was watching that graceful performance...) but I lasted about 3 seconds before I felt like overboiled ramen and decided to take a power nap before meeting up with Leah and Jon.

My little room :)

Leah and Jon were kind enough to meet me at my place, and we headed back to the neighborhood I had wandered near the park. There is a famed drinking district there called Golden Gai (pronounced Golden Guy). We grabbed dinner and a beer first at a Chinese place (delish!) and they filled me in on all the cool things they had seen over the last two weeks. After food, we walked to Golden Gai - its cool because there are over 300 bars in 5 blocks, but they are miniature: they only have a bar with about 6 seats each. You pay a seat charge (anywhere from nothing to 2500¥!), which is sort of like renting the chair for the evening. The bars all seemed small, intimate, and really cool! Some had themes (Halloween? Cats?), and some aren't super keen on foreigners, but we stopped into one that seemed welcoming (see picture :) and was free!

Awesome!

We all had a drink, but we were all pretty wiped out, so after one round and some people watching, we headed back to the train station at about 10:30pm.

The thing about Tokyo is that apparently there is a HUGE after work drinking scene. People go out, have a few (too many) rounds of sake, but the catch is all the trains stop running around midnight. So I got my ticket to go my short two stops home, but there wasn't a train for another 45 minutes. In the meantime, the platform started to FLOOD with people. I was about to experience late-night Tokyo rush hour!

Kampai!

I was actually kind of psyched except for the fact I was worried I wouldn't fit onto a train and I would be stranded 4 miles away from my place (cab rides are notoriously extremely exorbitant in Tokyo). But I squeezed into a full train headed to my stop - I thought the train was full until about 30 seconds before the doors closed when there was a mad dash to cram as many people as humanly possible into the car. It was nuts! I tried to take a picture, but it was impossible to lift my arms!

I made it home and curled up on my tatami mat on the floor and fell asleep pretty quickly - overall, a great day in Tokyo!!

I'm allergic to overnight flights....ew.

Made it to Tokyo!!

Hey guys!

Konnichiwa (hello) from Japan - I just wanted to say I'm here! I made it to Tokyo, grabbed a "limousine" bus to my ryokan (traditional Japanese inn - this is mine: Kimi Ryokan), and am going to go see the sights!

I am already struck by the friendliness of the people - when I was wandering from the bus to my ryokan, I must have made a wrong turn. I realized it almost immediately, and turned back around to follow my little map. A nice little Japanese man saw me spinning in circles, marched up to me, and asked me in pretty amazing English if I needed help. I asked him if I was on the right street going the right way, and he said yes, but that he insisted on walking me to the ryokan anyway :) He lead me the 8 remaining blocks to the ryokan and told me next time to stay more than just 2 weeks so I can see more of Japan.

I will take tons of pictures and post more later, but for now, I'm off to wash off the jet lag (Tokyo is 16 hours ahead of San Diego....its a whole different day here!).

Sayonara!
Kristyn

PS - This is a picture of all the fancy options I had in the toilet at the bus stop!! It was way too confusing for 5:30am, but I thought you guys might enjoy a picture :)