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'Tokyo is a giant city of 5.3 bazillion people. Though it was largely decimated by American bombers during World War II, it has risen from the ashes and now boasts the highest number of giant television screens per square mile of any city in the world'* For such a large city, it has no discernible centre, and is best looked at as a number of different areas joined together by an extremely effective subway system. Each group has its own centre - Shibuya for teenagers, Harajuku for trendies and alternates, Ginza for the rich, Shinjuku for the drunk office workers. It means it's quite difficult to decide where to stay and when we were booking accommodation from Sydney we struggled to find anywhere central or reasonable. The reason for that was apparent within 30 minutes of leaving Narita airport… when we booked our flights six months ago not even thinking about Japan we had inadvertently booked to arrive in Cherry Blossom season, a brief period of about 10 days when Tokyo's cherry blossoms are in bloom and the whole city is packed with visitors wanting to see them, and businessmen celebrating the spring season with cherry blossom parties in the park until the small hours of the morning.
Despite the impact it had on our accommodation search, it was an incredible stroke of luck to arrive in Tokyo at this time. After checking in to our nondescript hostel near Tokyo central we headed out to Ueno Park to go and see the cherry trees in all their blooming glory. We'd heard that the cherry blossom falling looked like snow but it was hard to believe until we saw all the tiny petals blowing off the trees in the wind, collecting at the side of the streets like flakes. It really was a remarkable sight and we were lucky to get to see it.
Our general approach to Tokyo was just to get a metro pass and wander round each of the distinct areas to see what was happening. We thought that would give us a better sense of the culture than spending the time in mueseums and temples. The tube map is remarkably easy to follow, so pass in hand, off we went. First stop was Ginza, the main shopping area of Tokyo. Everything on this trip seems to come back to food and we spent most of our time looking round the basement food levels of the major department stores in Ginza. They are veritable gastronomic wonderlands, selling everything you could possible want to snack on, all in incredibly beautiful packing, and most at a reasonable cost.
The exception is fruit - I think Japan must be an importer of fruit and it's really expensive. But nothing prepared us for the greengrocery section in one major department store (think Japanese Harrods) which was selling individual strawberries, packaged in individual boxes, for 600¥ each. That's £4.70 for a single strawberry. It was tempting to buy one just to see what they tasted like but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Seeing the wealthy residents of Tokyo spending their days spending in the multi-storey luxury goods stores of Ginza you can't help thinking that someone forgot to tell them that there is supposed to be a recession happening.
Jon was very excited to try some authentic (and fresh) sushi while we were in Tokyo, and it doesn't come fresher than that served at Tsukiji fish market. Last time I'd been in Tokyo the rules around entrance to the tuna auction were more lax which is why after a late night session myself and a couple of international colleagues were able to wander in at 4.30am after making the (alcohol fuelled) decision to go only half hour early. Our hostel had advised us we needed to get a taxi there by 5am to be in with a chance of getting one of the 60 tourist passes that are handed out on a first come first served basis. We arrived shortly after 5am to be greeted by a cheerful guard informing us that all the passes were gone but we could hang around until the wholesale market opened at 9am. Although disappointing, there was nothing much we could do so we headed to the outer market to try and find Jon some fresh fish breakfast. Whilst we were queuing to get into a small (amazing) sushi shop four pissed up Western businessmen in suits stumbled past and I had a vision of how annoying we probably were to others a few years ago. A couple of hours after its opening we got into Sushi-Dai, a counter restaurant that holds about 15 customers. They even let me come in and watch Jon eat, which given the size of the restaurant (and the quality of what they serve) was very nice of them.
Jon ate the set menu, and each piece of sushi was made up in front of us especially for him and he tucked into semi fatty tuna, Spanish mackerel, Japanese Gizzard Shad (?!), sea eel, horse mackerel, negro rolls and squid. After trying the semi fatty tuna he then treated himself to a piece of fatty tuna which he declared to be the best sushi he had ever eaten, and was a happy boy for the rest of the day.
One night we headed to Shinjuku and to the New York Bar at the Park Hyatt hotel - or the Lost in Translation bar as it is more commonly known as its where much of the action between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson takes place. I think the Park Hyatt has cottoned on to this, charging a 500¥ per person cover charge after 8pm - we duly finished our bottle of Dom Perignon at five minutes to and headed down to the lobby bar to spend the proposed 1000¥ cover charge on another drink. You can take the RTW travellers to a nice bar…. Later on that night we had dinner and sake in yakatori alley next to Shinjuku station in a locals restaurant no bigger than a room catering for those about to take the last train home.
We experienced a few lost in translation moments on our trip but my favourite pastime was to look at the slogans on people's T-shirts. My very favourite was a four year old girl wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with 'I LOVE RUMP' - I have no idea what it was supposed to say but it still brings a smile to my face. A few of the Japanese people we have met tell us they do the same thing with Western tattoos of Japanese characters with one lady swearing she saw someone walk down the street in Kyoto with 'Today's specials' tattooed up his arm in Japanese.
Last time I came to Tokyo was with work, and the other chap from the UK was a massive sushi fan - I ended up not eating much for a few days then giving up and going to KFC and McDonalds. But this time I have been pleasantly surprised by how much good food there is to eat and what good value it is. Our Time Out guide for Tokyo is a little out of date, and addresses here are difficult to find. It's also taken us a while to get used to the fact a great restaurant or bar will randomly be on the fourth floor of a non-descript office building. More than anywhere we have ever been before Tokyo is a vertical city - people live, work, eat and sleep on top of each other as with one out of every six Japanese people living in Tokyo there simply isn't the space to live any other way. So - for the first time this trip - I've gotten brave enough to toss aside the guide book and go where the locals are eating and try what looks good (or at least what doesn't look like it has fish in it). I've also picked up a valuable life skill - eating with chopsticks. It's taken a while and I probably don't have the best technique, but I no longer panic if I forgot my emergency fold up knife and fork.
We don't have a hope in hell of trying to figure out what is on most menus when they are in Japanese script, and many tourists here must feel the same. Luckily the Japanese have created a solution to this - plastic food. For the majority of dishes on a menu, most mid-range places will have a plastic model of the food in the window, so you just have to point. My particular favourite plastic food is the drinks alongside - some kind of orange gel thing for beer with the traditional 1 third of the glass frost. One day when we were out wandering we stumbled into the kitchen wholesale district and found the shops that make these things to order which we thought was bizarre. Lots of photos of that one.
On our final day in Tokyo we headed to Shibuya, the centre of youth culture and found ourselves a table in a Starbucks restaurant that overlooks the most famous (and busiest) pedestrian crossing in the world. Even though it's outside a major train station it's still hard to comprehend where all the people come from and where they are heading to, every single time the lights turn green. We headed to Tower records and spend a good hour listening to weirdly addictive Japanese pop music. This is mostly high pitched, part Japanese, part English songs sung by teenage Japanese girls wearing lots of makeup (although interestingly this is the first place we have been to without One Direction fever - the local boy band 'Sexy Thing' seem to have cornered the market here).
To me, Japanese culture seems full of contradictions. Most people are incredibly reserved and work in an incredibly hierarchical office structure, but they can go out with their boss, get horrendously drunk and tell them what they think of them and nothing is said the next day. Everyone seems to obey rules - queuing nicely in a way that would rival us Brits - but flaunting the ban on gambling in the loud Pachinko arcades that seem to line every other street in the capital. Where everyone dresses in identical dark suits for work, but male sized school girl fancy dress outfits are for sale in every major general store. It's considered rude to blow your nose in public, but it's perfectly acceptable to vomit all over the train in the evenings. Smoking is banned on the street, but seems to be actively encouraged in restaurants and bars - a weirdly unpleasant experience after it has been banned for so long in the UK.
Most of all it's the treatment of women that seems oddest to me. This is a very male dominant culture and much of the evenings are centred around men - from the adult stores on almost every corner, to the 'hostess' bars in Rappongi and the uniquely Japanese concept of 'maid cafes'. We decided to visit a maid café in Akihabara mostly because we couldn't quite get our head around what they were. Akihabara is better known as electric town because after WWII it was the black market electronic centre in Tokyo. It's grown over the years and is now the centre of geekdom. There are three Sega buildings on one block and every other shop sells manga or electronic games and equipment. Akihabara is also the centre of the maid café culture. When you head out the station young Japanese girls are yelling for you to come to their café wearing the same uniform as the girls inside will wear - variations on a maid outfit. You are greeted with cries of 'Welcome Master!' and then you pay for a seat at the counter which gives you an hour to buy drinks or spend more money on time with the maid. A 3 minute game (basically of variations of paper, scissors, stone) costs 500¥. A photo costs another 500¥. We watched with interest as worked out the American tourists next to us must have spent 10,000 (nearly £100) between them just to laugh with Japanese girls that barely spoke any English. But it was the regular customers that were really interesting. We were there at lunchtime and obviously some of them were there on their lunch break happily splashing the cash for the maids to pay them attention. It seems innocent enough, and the maids are obviously raking it in, but it's not something we could see catching on at home.
We'd generally focussed on trying to figure out modern Tokyo culture, but we did do a free tour of the Imperial Palace, and also visited the Meiji shrine where I had spent a great day with our friends Lou and Samm a couple of years ago. The shrine was built at the start of the twentieth century as a tribute to Emperor Meiji who is credited with modernising Japan, and is a really lovely green haven in the middle of the city. I like to go and read the wishes that people write on the wooden board and wasn't disappointed to see someone asking for a light sabre for their fourth birthday among the usual hopes for health and happiness.
Finally after an exhausting five days in Tokyo we decided to head to Tokyo Disneyland, and moved to stay in a hotel in Tokyo Bay. It's only about 20 minutes by train out of Tokyo but very different - the highest thing around is Cinderella's castle rather than multiple high rises. There are two main parks - Disneyland and Disney Sea - the latter being more for adults. Japanese people love things that are cute. Obsessed with it. So building the first of their theme parks outside of the US in Tokyo was a stroke of genius on the part of Disney execs.
In fact they have even invented a character for the sole purpose of selling things to the Japanese. Who the hell has heard of Duffy the Disney Bear?? Well he is everywhere here. And so are the Disney hats - the first thing people do before coming into the park in the morning is buy a giant Disney character hat. So here more than any other Disney they don't seem to really worry about the rides - just character meetings, parades and shops. We concluded that the rides here were a little lame - even for Disney - and seem to have been watered down. Before getting on to one rollercoaster there were warnings everywhere that the ride did a 360 degree loop. Then they told you about it again when you were boarding, and gave you the opportunity to get off. Lame. Even Tower of Terror in the newer Disneysea was so lame Jon got me to go on it twice even though I am petrified of the one in Orlando. However despite the lame rides, the admission fee was worth it for the people watching alone, whose shopping obsession confirmed our earlier thoughts that someone forgot to tell the Japanese about the global financial crisis. Or maybe it just got lost in translation….
* From Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries by Tim Anderson. A very funny book about his experiences teaching English in Tokyo.
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