Monday 12 October 2009

Japan First Day

The Narita airport had me excited from the minute we touched the ground. Everything seemed so fuctional, so neat, tidy, and technology laden, so "if you're going to bother making something, do it right." Moving through customs was efficient, within 5 minutes I was out where Tori was waiting for me. She had already dropped whatever gazillion yen it took to buy two train tickets to Tokyo station, right by the Imperial Palace and right near our hotel.

The hour train ride to town didn't show a hint of undeveloped land, everything is squeezed in somewhere. The train was quiet, fast and everything on it seemed to be built to a high level of quality.

We navigated out from 4 or 5 floors deep on the subway which I think was later from work on Friday night and probably 75th percentile past rush hour, but it was the busiest spot I've been in a long time. Finding our way around was decently easy as I can see over everyone and signs are all in english and characters. Once outside we fired up blackberry GPS and google to find our hotel which as the crow flies was probably 150m away, but we had to walk around a couple blocks because of construction to get there. As expexted, checking into a Four Seasons always relaxes me a couple of notches, as long as I'm not thinking of the bill too much (Four Seasons = expensive. Tokyo = expensive. Four Seasons Tokyo = expensive^2). Since I'd been travelling and mostly awake for 20+ hours, we had a quick dinner at the hotel restaurant and went to bed - definitely a convenience choice rather than a choice based on economizing.

After sleeping for 14 hours on no schedule that made sense on home time, I woke up and watched a few bullet trains come and go from our window - super cool. Clicked on the TV, and second channel was Giro d' Italia coverage of the time trial that sounded intensely exciting no matter what the situation, Japanese just sounds so intense when they get going.

Our goals for the day were to see the Hama Rikyu Onshi-teien gardens which was about 2km away, the Tsukiji fish market, and the Roppongi area.

The first 2km walk was completely inspiring. I thought I'd be impressed by Tokyo but it's so impressive I'm in love with it. I've never seen a place as awesome as this. Everything is so nice, so architecturally cool, so tech laden, so clean and so manicured it's unbelievable. It makes Manhattan look like a blast from the past in many ways. Using anything is preceeded by a 60 second learning curve because there's 10 more features than I'd ever expect (and if there's no english on it it's pretty challenging).

The gardens have something to do with an old palace - but now they're a sanctuary from the city. Very manicured, very relaxing.

We found our way over to the fish market, but first went through the produce market where some festival was going on with a team of people banging away on giant drums. We bought some snacks that were fishy flavored mushy dough balls. I think we got there late for the fish market activity, but suffice to say the place is crazy huge. I have no idea what percent of Tokyo's daily catch changes hands here, but suffice to say it seems big enough to handle a large portion of fish commerce, and this is a city over 12mm people, so that's mind bogglingly fishy. Before leaving we bought a bag of unsweetened dried kiwis which I'm in love with. Seemed like an easier snack to have all day than a bag of soya covered giant dried scallops.

We walked back to a mall type thing called Shiodome for lunch. On the way I decided to try one of the million vending machines and was a bit surprised that my can of coffee came out piping hot. The gas station nearby had no pump islands in the middle, all the nozzles hung from the ceiling and were pulled down with strings to save space. We ate at some third floor restaurant and marveled at the view from the window that showed 3 levels of sub ground level construction in a huge patio/atrium area, the road level, stone sidewalks with stainless steel handrails going every which way above the roads, then a train level and 50 story buildings all over. Every level has gardens and trees planted. There's so many stairs and escalators its like that famous Escher drawing.

Lunch meals specified calories on each dish, Tori and I ordered two different meal combos and drank tea while we waited. When the server brought Tori's tray out it had a dozen little dishes of different stuff, mine had 15. Insane amount of preparation. Naturally I started to screw up the mixing and matching with that amount of possibility, so the girl came back and showed me what was up. We could figure out less than half of what was on the plates, lots of biodiversity and culinary diversity going into my belly. We couldn't even explain back and for what "that little pink thing probably was" or "what it tasted like". Probably a vegetable of some kind, and I have no idea how prepared, and have no idea of anything that tastes similar.

Before moving on to Roppongi we went to a Panasonic Life building. I thought it might be an electronics type place, but it's more like a cross between the Museum of Modern Art in NY and Ikea on triple steroids. Apparently Panasonic has industrial reach into everything needed to construct and furnish a house, and it was all on display here. I've never seen such badass stuff - my new house reno now seems like it will fall so far behind what is actually capable with 21st century technology. Totally mindblowing.

We walked west to Roppongi and stopped through a neighbourhood citizen fair. A park was set up with tent stalls of food, crafts, info, games, and a big dance performance stage was going on. The humane society had a big display that showed how many strays they take in then euthanize and put into giant blender machines and incinerators. I think most of the audience could have done with less pictures of cement truck sized dead animal blenders and the resuting polished white broken bone piles after all was done.

We walked past the giant Toyko tower thing that sort of looks like the Eiffel tower, then made it to the area we were trying to reach. Seemed more urban-hip, people hanging out and being busy looking as cool as possible. Got some coffees and chilled out till past dark, then took the train home.

This morning I took a picture of the spaghetti bowl train map as a joke and figured I better have good walking legs because there's no way we'd be able to navigate the train system, but even with words that have no meaning to us it's entirely logical and simple. What looked like a complete impossibility this morning looks like endless ease of moving around for a couple of dollars a pop now.

The outdoor courtyard/entry plaza of the bulding we're in has thousands of color changing little raindrop sized lights drilled into the marble floor. Lot of effort for a cool effect.

This is by far the most impressive city I've ever been to. Nothing is shoddy, it's all well kept, high tech, and beautifully designed with diverse styles and materials. Even though it's busy, it doesn't feel crowded - people are reserved, even markets that would be super obnoxious in other countries are mild mannered here (maybe everyone is rich enough generally that white tourists aren't simply viewed as cash sources). People put a lot of effort into what they wear - some of it is pretty outlandish, but despite any judgement on style preference, you can tell people wake up and actually spend effort thinking about how they want to look.

I love Japan!

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like you're having an awesome time exploring Tokyo with Tori... Very cool stuff.

    Janice and I are in Nice, France right now, which is super cool as well, but in a much less "high tech" way!

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