Saturday in Tokyo

Tokyo Tower

The rain cleared up today, which was perfect for our Tokyo city tour. I met up with Caren and Will and really enjoyed spending the day with them. Our first tour stop was at the Tokyo Tower. Caren and I shut our eyes and gripped the side of the elevator all the way to the top, while young Will laughed at us all the way up.

Will’s about to graduate from high school and being a big fan of video games and anime, picked Japan as his graduation/Spring Break trip. Nice guy, but when he told me that he was in seventh grade during 9/11, I kind of wanted to do violence to him.

Anyway, the Tokyo Tower was all you could imagine it to be. The view was a little hazy, but very lovely. At one part they even had a glass floor so you could look through to the bottom. Will did a lovely job of taking the picture for me, as there was NO way I was stepping on that death-defying structure.

The Japanese, for those of you that aren’t familiar, are great fans of all things animated. Everything in Japan has some kind of animated representation. So it wasn’t really a big surprise to find the Tokyo Tower had its own character. However, in designing a long “tower like” figure, the Japanese decided to make him pink. A great big phallic symbol with a buzzing TV receptor at the end. Naturally, I couldn’t keep my opinion to myself, and Caren bought me a little phallic guy as a reminder of my trip up the tower.

Our next stop was an outer watch tower of the Imperial Palace. The inside of the Palace is actually open to the public only two times a year, and today was not one of them.

We then drove on to the Asakusa area, to visit the Sensoji Temple. Our drive took us through some of Tokyo’s more interesting neighborhoods, reminding me just how little time I have to explore this great city.

At the temple I paid 100 Yen (one dollar) to pull out my fortune stick, and thank goodness, my fortune was pretty good. Apparently, I’ll find that which is lost, and my health and employment are good.

The surrounding shopping area was too tempting to pass up, so off we went. At this point our tour guide told us that we could depart the group and stay in the Asakusa area, or we could continue on to the Pearl Factory, where we had a chance to win a real pearl. That pearl factory never stood a chance.

We stayed in the area, enjoying lunch (a sashimi combo plate for me), and lots of shopping. I did end up buying a beautiful Kawata (like a Kimono without the big bumper) and various sets of rice crackers in the neighborhood. Finally, the time approached for me to return to the hotel to meet my other good friend Daisuke Tonai. Our attempts to find a subway station were not that successful, so we opted to take a taxi back to the hotel.

The taxi ride took forever (okay, just 40 minutes), and I kept wondering why the hotel was only one subway stop from where we were, the taxi ride was so long. Finally in my fluent Japanese hand gesture, I asked him. He explained very clearly we were in Asakusa and not the Akasaka located next to the hotel.

Ooopsie

So, bad Japanese me, I was late getting back to the hotel.

Tonai-san was very kind, and didn’t event comment on my lateness. He was so kind in fact, that he didn't even complain one time after he carried my bag all over Tokyo. The big bag containing yet another bottle of tequila (which of course he didn’t know), but it wasn't a light thing.

Anyway, we first we went to the Shinjuku area in Tokyo. A massively huge feat of humanity. The term bodies in motion may likely have been invented in this part of Tokyo. The train station alone handles more than 3 million people a day. He took me to the basement of one of the fancy department stores, to the food court area, which has a lovely array of free samples. Kind of the Costco of Japan.

John Lennon Museum (Who Knew?)

After Shinjuku, we headed on to the John Lennon Museum, which truly probably should be called the Yoko Ono Museum. Still I was kind of expecting a bunch of pictures and posters in a one-room building, and that was not at all what the museum was like. It was quite impressive. Yoko Ono has spent a good deal of time, money and energy showcasing her husband’s life (using of course artworks created by herself.)

No pictures were allowed inside, but to give you an idea, the memorial room to John Lennon was a stark all white room, with white towers, engraved with white words to John’s poetry. All the chairs in the room were clear plastic, so I assume this was an interpretation of heaven. What was odd was the very strong smell of chlorine in the room. Not sure from where or why that was part of the display.

Memorial room aside, there were tons of floor to ceiling pictures of Yoko Ono and John Lennon, and they even recreated Lennon’s childhood bedroom, and had you walk through a semi-replica of the street he lived on in Liverpool. Each window was filled with a television set playing images or telling stories from his childhood. This place was really very cool.

Dinner

By the time we finished with the museum, Tonai-san’s wife had called us to tell us dinner was ready, so we headed over to his house for a total FEAST. The food was awesome. Tonai san’s wife had prepared a huge sushi platter that kept refilling itself. And she made Sukiyaki, which is one of my favorites. I just kept eating and eating and eating.

And of course, I even got to do some more beer and Sake research.

It had been a while since I saw Kento (named after Ken Griffey Jr., and born on 9/11) and I can’t believe how big he’s become. He’s such a little model. Every time I took his picture, he posed in a perfect little pose.

It was so great catching up with Tonai and his family, and I would really like to see him get gets reassigned to the United States. I told him I’m planning on starting an email campaign asking JNTO to let him come back. He didn’t seem to think that would help much.

My last stop was another train ride back to the main part of Tokyo. I made it without any mishaps. Of course Tonai-san hired a taxi to take me to a special train station (not the one near his home), so that I wouldn’t have to do any transfers. I’m really feeling quite the transportation expert.

In the hotel room, I was again too tired to even think about a massage. Tomorrow I’m off to Mt. Fuji and then Caren and Will and I are planning on having dinner together after I get back.