After our wonderful travel in Alaska, Vancouver and New York, we headed off for 5 night in Tokyo on the way home. Because we had flown with Japan Airlines we were eligible for a stop over…and the most logical thing to do was empty the bank accounts totally by spending 5 nights in another of the most expensive paces in the world.
The flight was a redeye from Alaska to Seattle, a short flight to Vancouver, then another redeye to Japan.-Sarah became so good at floor sleeping. In Seattle we made a teenager’s day by giving her our mobile phone – with credit.
We arrived in Vancouver and had to fill in a few hours. We ate some nice food and spent the rest of our US dollars – only then to realise that it was a very expensive meal as they gave us parody for US:Can dollars. They must laugh at tourists!
As we boarded the flight Sarah realised that she left her iPod on the chair. It was just back there through the glass wall. ”Look, just there”. But “No”. Hope we made another person happy when they found it. Raina broke her Bose earphones.
We were doing well. At least we got some sleep and arrived in Japan after about 50 hr since waking up in Seward and seeing a bed or a shower.
Note to selves- -never plan to redeye flights in a row!
They don’t keep family groups together in Japanese immigration so we went through different lines. Raina looked up to see Sarah being marched off with serious looking men. Then was marched off herself. They decided that they did not like the emergency passports.
Just like in the TV shows, we were taken to “the back room” which was a little scary – us with no Japanese, them with no English. At least they took us to the same room! At this stage we were hot, tired, smelly, had no iPod and had already had a brilliant time in Japan three weeks earlier. We decided that if they were not going to let us in, we would be happy. We would go home after a fantastic holiday.
But denied access was not to be. 60 minutes after arriving, and answering 1000 questions (Why did we have emergency passports? Where were our real passports?) and a lot of stress, they decided that we could come into Japan with our strange passports. And lucky they did because Japan was amazing.
Pity about the 2 ½ hr bus trip into Tokyo.
We finally reached our hotel. It was lovely, with the most amazing views over the city. Fuji was straight out the window but it never did show itself. We had read about how small Japanese hotels were. We say that any hotel that could fit our growing pile of luggage was great. Two single beds, a desk, bathtub, bidet. What more could you want?
We found a fantastic restaurant over the road. It was probably the equivalent of the local fish and chip shop. The food was mainly ‘wet noodles’ in a soup with meat.
This was the start of our food holiday of Tokyo.
We had made a rule. We could not eat at the same place twice and could not eat at a place with English menus. We were beginning to regret this rule already.
15 hours of sleep later and we were ready for action. The beds in Japanese hotel were NOT soft. You would not be wrong to call them hard. But we slept well then headed off in search of food.
Tokyo is divided into districts or wards. Entertainment, electrical, clothing. We stayed in Shinjuku, the administration district.
The hotel was between the subway and the JR station in Shinjuku. This is the busiest railway station in the world. Four million people pass through it a day. It has seven levels of tracks and covers an area of 10 city blocks. Between the train levels and the street level were three levels of shops. Shops are not above ground. They are underground malls around the train stations.
There were massive escalators going mainly up from the lower levels and steps going down. The Japanese people are so orderly. There may have been 500,000 people in there at any time, but it was so orderly. When travelling in the corridors or on an escalator, the walkers hug the left wall so that the runners can pass on the right. And there were so many runners. Always in a hurry. Always.
There appeared to be no peak hour. Whether it was 8 am or 11pm, the trains were full of people in business suits travelling to and for work. Everyone was immaculately dressed and we did not see a single lady in ‘sensible shoes’.
No-one spoke on their phones. Almost everyone listened to an iPod and used their phone for texting nonstop. The people not texting were reading books. But they did it wrong. From back to front. And they could do it standing up on a moving train.
Finding food was harder then it sounded. Plenty of fast food like MacDonald’s but real food restaurants didn’t open until 11am.
We eventually found a vending machine restaurant. Very cool. You looked at a picture, looked for the corresponding number, put in your money and but the ticket. You then took the ticket to the counter and they dish up the bowl of number whatever.
It was great fun. A bit like a lucky dip, but again the food was good. The Japanese slurp as they eat and are messy. That suited us well as we have been known to dirty up the odd tablecloth. This place was also wet noodles. So with our stomachs happy and our shirts dirty we headed off to discover Tokyo.
The electronics district was our first stop. Poor Sarah had no music machine. Lucky some of our music was on Raina’s phone (as she needed her iPod). The electronics ward was amazing. Each shop was seven or eight stories high with floors dedicated to appliances. 3rd floor TVs. 5th floor music players. Floors for appliances with foreign adaptors. We found an iPod who is now names Takashimaya. It is so much better than the old one – because it is with us not lost!
The fish markets were next. We didn’t bother going early to see the auctions. 1 am to hear people yelling for fish……nah!
We spent ages walking around looking at weird and wonderful things. We were glad not to see any whale meat. We didn’t want to cause a fuss and tell them what evil bastards they are for whaling – because they are.
They pack their seafood in wet sawdust.
And we saw the best ever ice machine. It was a massive thing up in the rafters. Utes would drive under it and load up with ice. Not an esky full – a ute full.
We had been told to eat at the fish markets. We thought the sushi at Coast in Vancouver was amazing, but then we walked into this tiny restaurant. It was about 4 metres wide and 10 long.
You sat at a long bench running down the length and ordered your food (off the picture menu). The chef stood in front of you and prepared it. This sushi was swimming in the ocean 12 hours ago and was truly the “Best Sushi Ever”.
We ate snow prawns, salmon row, squid, sea urchin. It was all so good. Nothing was pre-prepared, or cooked. We could have just spent the next three days sitting there, eating this stunning sushi. Damn our silly food rule!
The fashion district was in Harajuku. This area is one of the fashion centres of the world. When they say “Paris, Milan, Tokyo…” This is where they are refereeing too. As well as high end fashion it is famous for the Harajuku Girls.
Every Sunday afternoon, many young people dress up in a range of ‘out there’ costumes – including cosplay (costume player often based in magna characters) and parade the streets. We were not there on a Sunday, but we did see a few. Guys get into it as well.
Humidity was around 287% and didn’t our hair love it. No wonder they have their shops underground out of the heat.
Dinner the night was a disappointment. Not bad, just not brilliant. But Japanese food redeemed itself the next day when we walked past again and saw a sign saying it was a Chinese Restaurant.
Next Day-
We set off on tour bus to the glorious Mt Fuji. The bus picked us up at 7am. We were still driving around Tokyo picking up people at 10 am. We didn’t mind – it was like a tour.
It was a work day and the streets were so crowded. Pushbikes and pedestrians…with umbrellas.
Even bikes with umbrellas.
It was our first tour with a tour leader – with a flag on a long stick. The leader was such a cliché. He told a lot of ‘funny’ little stories, some of which lost a bit in translation. Like his description of how to use a Japanese squat toilet, complete with diagrams. He told us which way to face, how to stand and where to put your feet. He said “not to slip, or you’d be in the shit”.
We were ushered about all day and given very specific times to be back at the bus after each stop. We were of course given ample time to check out every gift shop along the way.
The shops weren’t too bad.
We did buy some wooden Samurai training swords. 
We went in a gondola ride on the Komagatake Ropeway over a mountain with a sulphur mine. Very lovely. The smell – not so much!
Followed by a pleasure boat trip around Lake Ashino on the most bizarre and ugly pirate ship! Not sure of the cultural relevance.
We went to the Mt Fuji Fifth Station. 2,300m above sea level and had a fantastic view all the way to Tokyo. Fifth Station is like Everest Base Camp, but we got there in a bus and there is a gift shop. It is where the climbers set out from. Pity the cloud was down and we could only see a few metres of the supposed mountain.It was at this stage that Sarah found out that her evil mother had taken her to an active volcano. Poor thing. A morbid fear if volcanos and a mother who has taken her to New Zealand, Vanuatu, Yellowstone, Alaska and now Japan.|
The ‘Rim of Fire’ tour is almost complete.
When driving through towns, we noticed that they do not have parks and sorts ground. Any land without buildings was planted with rice paddies. Houses on one side, rice paddies on the other.
The cloud lifted a small amount and at least we could see the base of My Fuji. So apparently it is real. But we are not 100% sure.
This is where we developed our hatred for bus tours. The day was sooooooo long and drawn out. At least we didn’t have a four hour bas trip back.
Instead of the bus ride to Tokyo we took the Shinkansen…otherwise known as the ‘Bullet Train”. We were very excited about this. It travelled at speeds over 350kph and got us back to Tokyo in 35 minutes.
Waiting at the station was genuinely scary. If the trains that were not stopping at this station, they went past at 200kmp. They were so fast you couldn’t see them properly.
When travelling on the train you couldn’t focus on anything closer than about 100m. Closer up was just a blur.
On the train we started chatting to a mother and son form Italy. We ended up going to dinner with them where we had more super sushi. We had such a fun night. Roberto had excellent English and his mother had one or two words. It was much fun.
We had some excellent adventures getting very, very lost on the subway after dinner. On this system you swipe your ticket to get in and to get out, to make sure you have aid the correct amount. 
The boom that flicks out if you are at the wrong station was quite aggressive and attacked you. We somehow ended up with three of us on one side and the other trapped in the station. It was all very funny.
It took two hours to get from dinner to our stop……which turned out to be two stops away.
We laughed in English, we laughed in Italian, we laughed in Japanese. And all the while Sarah was still carrying our god damn Samurai Swords.
We slept really well again that night – even on the concrete beds.
Date
The Imperial Palace was amazing. 7.4 square kilometres of the most magnificent garden, smack in the middle of the world’s biggest city (43 million people). In the 1980’s the palace grounds were valued as worth more than ALL the values of all of the real estate in California.
Parts if the original palace and the walls built in 1868 still remained. But even better was that Andy (my Dad) had been there after WW11 (Occupational Forces) and now here I was.
Everything was so beautiful. The whole place was surrounded by a huge moat and a magnificent stone wall. The gardens were so beautiful. In the middle if this massive city was the most peaceful, green space.
Quite like Central Park in NYC, but not a place for playing and making noise. Business people would walk over and sit on their own eating lunch. People just walked slowly and looked. It almost had a church like feel to it – but nicer.
And everything was manicured and neat. There was not a leaf out of place. Or a stone for that matter. The hedges didn’t have straight tops: they had a 90-degree pitch top. 
But maybe the best thing about the grounds was the weather. It was many degrees cooler in the gardens then in the city. After a lunch of water and the famous ‘Japanese ‘ice cream sandwich’ – a slice of ice cream between biscuits – or more traditionally in bread, we headed off for out Tea Ceremony.
We really wanted to do this as all of Raina’s life she had heard about the Tea Ceremony, among other cultural aspect of Japan. Andy was here for a year in the Occupational Forces after WW11 and loved the place and the people.
A few hours later we had crossed Tokyo via the subway, taxi and on foot and found the place we were to go.
We thought the address must be wrong as we were in a suburban street, complete with alleys, washing lines and tiny houses. Then we went through a gate in a big wall and into a wonderland.
The place was close to a hectare in size and you could have been forgiven for thinking you had fallen through a time portal and gone back a few hundred years. Magnificent old buildings complete with little doors at crawling height. Traditionally people coming to e tea ceremony would crawl in and out. As the tea ceremony as originally for the Samurai class, everyone entered at the same level and no one had a higher status.
The tea ceremony tradition is around 1000 years old and has very strict rules and rituals. The cup is held in a specific hand, turned two half turns before drinking, words are recited. Only men prepare the tea and only women serve it. The ceremony is not about drinking the tea. It is about the process and the preparation. It is an art and can take as long as four hours to complete.
As you entered, there was an alcove with a scroll. The message reflected the mood and the house or the season. We sat on a tatami mat and the ceremony began.
The view out the window was equally important. The ceremony started with a sweet that was given to counter the bitterness of the tea and was also aesthetically pleasing.
A small iron kettle with coal burning heated the water that was used to wash and to make the tea. Everything was washed and wiped. The tea was beaten with a bamboo whisk. Tea was made with Japanese green tea (not at all pleasant). During a ceremony everyone aspires “towards a sense of tranquillity”. It was very peaceful.
We were then shown around the gardens, made an offering at a shrine and left.
We stepped back into the hustle, noise and heat of 21st Century Tokyo. 
Just up the road was a gaming arcade. Hundreds if gambling machines, flashing lights, chinking noises and cigarette smoke. It was all we could do to run in, have a look and dash out – less than one minute. No idea how they sat there happily. 
The Tokyo Metropolitan Building is a skyscraper, housing government departments. It is one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo and had an observation deck and a coffee shop on top. One of the best views in Tokyo and it’s free. It is a government building, owned by the people, so why should they pay to go up? Is the Japanese attitude.
The view was great. Still cannot confirm if Mt Fuji is real though.
Our final dinner was at another long thin restaurant where the kitchen was behind glass on our bench. It was great to sit and watch them cook your dinner. It really was the “best food ever” Sticky BBQ meat.
We did a bit more sorting of our massive amount of luggage and sadly went to bed of our last night of this amazing trip.
A hot bus trip in the morning then an uneventful flight home. Japan form the air is all freeways, golf courses, market gardens, forests and towns. All very organised.
So that was Japan. Absolutely fabulous.
The people were wonderful, everything was so pretty and so green. The history was everywhere.
What an amazing month we had had.
Narita, Vancouver, Alaska and Tokyo.
We arrived in Sydney to experience a 5 hr delay due to fog and the airport was in chaos. Yah for the Qantas Club.
The Samurai swords survived the trip. Once again the luggage pile grew. It was suggested that next trip we only take hand luggage – – WE don’t think so!
So what is next you ask?
A European Degustation.
We ere planning a “Taste Test” of Europe but then thought “A careful, appreciative tasting…and focusing on the sense, high culinary art and good company” fitted the bill well.
So look out Europe, 14th June 2011 is not far away.