Day 2 Highlights:
- Breakfast with Uncle Yasu and Aunt Toshiko at the Okura Hotel
- Asakusa’s Senso-ji temple and all the little shops out front
- Akihabara (electric town) with all the latest electronic gadgets
- Meiji-Jingu Buddhist temple, the biggest and most beautiful temple in Tokyo
- Seeing crazy demonstrators in Harajuku dressed up like it’s Halloween already
Sorry I’m quite a bit behind, but it’s surprisingly hard to find an affordable internet connection in Japanese hotels. Part of this is that EVERYONE has access to the internet via their uber souped-up mobile phones (it’s pretty standard to have a smaller-than iPhone flip phone equipped with a 8.0 megapixel digital camera and internet access from anywhere, even in the subway). There are internet cafes in various parts of town, which often doubles as a place to park yourself when you’ve missed the last train home and need a place to snooze until it’s time for the first trains to start back up around 5am. But I’d have to go find these joints, and we’re a bit removed from these kinds of places seeing as we are in a fancy-schmancy part of town in a big hotel. So for now, I’m going to write my blog when I have a chance, and then upload them when I am connected.
Anyway, I have quite a bit of catching up to do…
Day 2 started with breakfast at the hotel with Uncle Yasu and Aunt Toshiko. Uncle Yasu is my dad’s oldest brother, and the last time I saw them was in 2004 at my sister’s wedding in Hawaii. I have very fond memories of my Aunt Toshiko, as she put me on the back of her bicycle and take me around the little town that she lives in with my paternal grandmother. She would tell everyone that I’m her little niece who lives in America, and they would say things to me in the Osaka country bumpkin dialect that I couldn’t really understand very well. Yuka and I were celebrities when we visited, because they live in a town where everyone knows each other. My dad’s side of the family only has one other girl, so Aunt Toshiko and Cousin Takako were always excited to have us visit.
This day was my cousin Junya’s wedding, so my parents attended the reception leaving me free to explore the city on my own. I consulted my Lonely Planet Japan for its suggested one-day itinerary, but my dad said that most of the itinerary was uninteresting, and gave me other suggestions. Other than the Tsukiji, his suggestions were all stops on the “one week in Tokyo” itinerary, but it made me realize that what is interesting to foreigners may not be interesting to Japanese (even for those who don’t live in the country anymore).
My first stop was Asakusa, the old entertainment district where those heading to Edo (old Tokyo) would attend kabuki plays, and eventually, developed a red light district around it. Heading into the temple, one first encounters the Kaminari-mon (Thunder Gate), where rikisha (or as westerners know it, rickshaws) drivers still offer rides for an exorbitant fee ($20/10 min). Passing through the gate, one is immediately overcome by tons of souvenir shops on the road leading up to the temple. I took some hilarious photos here, including one of a child’s Ninja dress up kit (only $70) as well as cheap polyester kimonos clearly targeting unknowing tourists. There are tons of local specialty foods boxed up in fancy packages as omiyage, or gifts to bring for those at home. I said to my parents that if Japanese culture ever decided to give up on the obligatory gift-giving tradition, the Japanese economy would collapse. When Japanese travel somewhere (domestic or international), it is expected that you bring gifts home for family, friends and co-workers. There are regional and local specialty foods for sale, and the people who work at these stores work HARD for your yen by handing you little samples, constantly calling out inviting you in to stop and look around. Multiply this by 100 stores/touts and it’s an overwhelming experience. I was at the Nakamise-dori on a Sunday, so not only were there tons of foreigner tourists, there were tons of day trippers (mostly seniors) shuffling along the main drag. Japanese are normally orderly people, but these places are a study in chaos theory – especially for me, who grew up in the US and am used to men stepping aside to let me pass. This results in me getting body slammed by men of all ages and aggressive little grandmas cutting me off to get in front of me. Yikes!!! I’m not so good at navigating crowded places, and Tokyo on a Sunday is pretty crowded everywhere.
Feeling a bit bewildered, I headed toward the temple where all the street food booths are, and grabbed some yakisoba (stir fried noodles) and yakitori (grilled chicken skewers). They were both cheap and yummy, and I shared my table with three middle eastern tourists.
I then got back on the JR train to head to Akihabara, electric city. I only knew it as the place to get the latest and greatest electronics, but it turns out that it has now become the center for anime/manga goods as well. Akihabara probably has the highest concentration of otaku (geeks) in all of Japan! I wasn’t really looking to buy anything, but I did find a great bargain on an SD card for my digital camera as well as a spare battery. The SD card is probably fine (it’s still in the original package), but the suspicious battery I bought from some south Asian man turned out to be a total fake (I didn’t figure it out until I tried to charge it), so I got duped out of 2,000 yen! GRRR… I didn’t think I had to worry about fakes until I got to the rest of Asia!
I got back on the JR train to head over to Harajuku, thinking I’ll check out the most splendid Shinto shrine in Tokyo and see some crazy cosplay (short for costume play) girls dressed up like it’s Halloween year-round. Meiji-Jingu is a Shinto shrine built in memory of the Emperor Meiji – this is the guy who (reluctantly) agreed to open up Japan after 250+ years of isolation from the rest of the world. The shrine in existence today was completely rebuilt using traditional methods, as most of Tokyo was bombed to smithereens during WWII. As you walk through the massive torii (gate) toward the shrine, one comes up to sake barrels to the right, and wine barrels to the left. Emperor Meiji was quite the early adopter of new ideas, and the French presented him with many barrels of wine which the emperor enjoyed with his meals. He also cut off his chonmage (the little ponytail looking thing that samurai wore) and wore western clothes. The Meiji Restoration represents the westernization of Japanese culture, and Japan rapidly adopted new technologies and ideas while maintaining Japanese traditions.
The other side of Harajuku is decidedly not traditional, where the cosplay folks hang out to dress goth, anime and just plain old bizarre on a daily basis. According to Lonely Planet, the dressing up is a release for Japanese girls who feel repressed by the many rules in Japanese society, allowing them to take on roles of their choosing to express themselves. Whatever – I think they like going to school or work in their pristine uniforms, but like women all over the world, just want to dress up (often in slutty outfits) and pretend to be someone else for a change. Unfortunately, I was running out of time to meet up with my parents back at the hotel, and I was only able to find some 50- and 60-something hippie looking weirdos wearing bizarre clothes (I couldn’t pick up a theme from their haphazard outfits).
