The Complete Travel Journals Travelling for the easily frightened

We woke up at a disgustingly early 4:30 a.m. and stumbled out into the world at 5:30.

Today was the day we would visit the famous Tsukiji Fish Market. This is where all of Tokyo’s seafood comes from. It’s also the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world. You’ve probably seen it on Japan Hour. Guidebooks are vague on when the auctions for the catch, generally thought of as the highlight of any visit to Tsukiji, really begin, so we thought getting there around 6 a.m. would be a safe bet.

Wrong.

By the time we reached the market, at about 6:30 a.m., the auction hall was cleaned out except for two large tunas.

But wait, I’m making it sound too simple.

Before we even entered the market, we were already lost and confused. We had promised to meet June outside the train station. Of course, all three of us forgot that there are several different stations for each area and which one you end up at depends on the subway line you take. So while Lianyi and I had taken the Oedo line and ended up at Tsukiji-shijo station, June was at Tsukiji station on the other side of the market. So Lianyi and I went into the market without June, and we thought we could perhaps catch up somewhere inside.

I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the chaos inside. It felt like I was back in Hanoi! There are fishmongers on these mechanical trolley-like contraptions zooming around all over. Hundreds of them, and they make it quite clear that they aren’t going to make way for you stupid gaijin.

And once inside, we still didn’t see any fish. Actually all we saw were extremely crowded shops and restaurants and a car park. So we walked back and forth trying to figure out where to go to see all the “action”, until eventually we just decided to venture into the central building next to the car park.

Finally, we were in the market proper. Here were the fishes and the weird seafood in various states of death, bleeding and stinking and slopping water all over your shoes. Fishmongers were going about their business gutting and chopping and displaying their wares for sale. None of the seafood looked appetising, but the buzz and the movement of the market really woke me up.

After walking about and taking random turns, Lianyi and I got tired, so we decided to make our way out. Finding the way out of the market took another 20 minutes since we didn’t remember anymore which turns we’d taken or where we’d even entered from.

Eventually we managed to get ourselves back to the shop/restaurant area, where we miraculously found June sitting on some steps hiding from the chaos. There were long queues outside each restaurant there, all of them serving the freshest seafood in Tokyo. We picked a tiny sushi bar with a short-ish queue and waited for about half an hour before getting in.

The chef was a boisterous old man who brought to the life the stereotypical image of the Japanese chef. He had a loud gravelly voice that he used to amuse his customers, booming things like “Ladies first! Hai!” as he served us across the counter.

Lianyi had a whole sushi set to himself. June and I shared but even then we couldn’t finish our food. The seafood rolls had way too much wasabi for me and the super weird seafood stuff just made us feel sick. June had a bite of a sushi with salmon roe and then gave the rest to Lianyi. He said it was milky and delicious. I had a tiny taste of this orange mushy stuff that sort of looked like crab roe except mushier and softer, and immediately felt like vomiting. Lianyi lapped that up too.

For the rest of the morning up until late afternoon, I couldn’t even look at any kind of Japanese food without wanting to vomit. And even today, I can’t even think of sushi without feeling my stomach lurch a little. We totally should have had grilled seafood instead.

(That’s what I say, but Lianyi claims this was the best sushi he’s ever had in his life.)

After the questionable sushi breakfast Lianyi and I parted ways from June. She had to go change hostels, we wanted to take a boat ride from the Hama Rikyu Garden to Asakusa.

From what Lianyi said of the garden, I was unimpressed. I said, “I’m all garden-ed out really.” But he insisted that the guidebooks and one of his interviewees said the boat ride was really worth it. So I went along.

We walked for 20 minutes from the Tsukiji market to get to the Hama Rikyu Garden, and it wasn’t even open when we got there. We had to sit outside for another 20 minutes to wait for the gates to open. I was seriously exhausted (endless walking for the past 4 days, not enough sleep) so I took off my shoes, put on my sunglasses and went to sleep on Lianyi’s shoulder while we waited. When the garden was opened, the first thing I did was go to a vending machine and get myself a can of coffee.

I haven’t mentioned the vending machines yet. There is a vending machine at every corner of Tokyo. Down every alleyway is a vending machine. At our hotel, there was a vending machine on every single floor. In parks, vending machines are much easier to find than toilets. Actually that applies to all of Tokyo.

So anyway, I got myself some coffee, then followed Lianyi around the park. He was trying to act as a tour guide to the park using the official map and guide, but he was kind of lousy. The boat ride that we wanted to take would only begin at 10:30 a.m, so we had an hour and a half to kill in the park. It was a nice enough park with a few quirky things like a tomb for ducks that were killed by the emperor during his hunting sprees, and a 300-year-old tree that was being propped up by crutches.

I fed the tree some of my coffee cos it looked like it needed it.

Just kidding.

But anyway as I was saying, the park was nice enough but it wasn’t spectacular the way the Detached Palace Garden at Hakone was. And it doesn’t hold a candle to the fabulous Ueno Park, which we would visit later that day. So it was kind of a blah place.

That amazing awesome boat ride that the guidebooks and Lianyi’s interviewee raved about? Phooey.

I don’t know if we were just too tired to appreciate it, but it was seriously dull and underwhelming. It was 40 minutes of nothing. Ok so I got to see some riverside flats which house Tokyo’s less-well-to-do residents. And we passed under some bridges that are apparently significant for some reason or other. But whatever ok, it was boring. Lianyi, who MADE ME take the damn boat, slept throughout the whole ride.

The garden and the boat ride were such a waste of time, time that we later wished we had spent at Ueno Park instead.

So anyway the boat brought us to Asakusa, where we headed straight for Nakamise Dori. This is a tourists’ marketplace, a sprawling roofed market that has lanes and lanes of shops selling souvenirs and knick knacks to bring home. But because Japan’s tourism industry is mainly targeted at domestic tourists, the things sold there weren’t all rubbish. They’re actually stuff that Japanese people themselves would buy.

We tried a couple of their street snacks, one of which I really liked – a sesame-flavoured fried pau with red bean filling. Lianyi bought a couple of boxes of cakes for the people back home. I bought two aprons for my mother and my aunt.

After walking down one of the lanes, I spotted a Uniqlo sign on a small-ish shopping centre across the road.

“Uniqlo!” I squealed. “Can we go please please please?”

I’d been keeping my eye out for this clothing chain since I got to Tokyo but for some reason it had been eluding me. Which is strange indeed, since there are over 80 outlets across Tokyo. My friend had told me to look out for this chain because they sell very well-designed t-shirts for really cheap prices.

So we made a dash for Uniqlo, which turned out to be more of a treasure chest for Lianyi than for me. All I could find to buy were a pack of socks, while he walked away with a sizeable stash of t-shirts, polo shirts and socks. After the short detour, we returned to Nakamise Dori.

Walking down Nakamise Dori brings you to the Sensoji Temple, the most crowded temple I’ve ever seen in my life. Before you enter, you have to go to a giant cauldron and try to get the smoke from the burning incense into your hair and clothes, it’s supposed to bring you good fortune or whatever. Inside the temple, you can pay 100 yen to receive your fortune. We couldn’t really be bothered.

I was really very tired so I just sat down at the temple steps while Lianyi roamed around the compound for a while. He said it was beautiful. I guess we have to trust him.

Once he was done with the temple, it was a quick pit stop at a restaurant for Lianyi to get an extremely expensive cup of coffee and for me to rest my burning feet. And then back to the subway station to get to Akihabara!!!

(You cannot mention Akihabara (!!!) without also typing three exclamation marks next to it.)

Akihabara (!!!) is Tokyo’s “Electric Town”. It is an entire Orchard Road filled with Sim Lim-type stuff. It is arcades and computer shops and electronics bazaars and not-so-secret porn stashes, all in one huge shopping district. If it runs on batteries or electricity, you can find it here. It is also where you go to feel better about the way you look after the uber-cool hipsters of Harajuku and sleek chic types in Shinjuku and Shibuya have made you feel like a troll.

And after visiting two temples, four art museums and two history museums, it was where I had my first spiritual moment in Tokyo.

It happened in the first arcade that we walked into. The arcades here are all 5 storeys high each. In this first one, the first floor was jam packed with those machines where you slip in a coin and try to manipulate the machine arm to pick up a soft toy that you want. (What are those called?) Except the machines here don’t just offer soft toys, they also offer things like nurse and french maid costumes in boxes, and female anime figurines for lonely lonely boys.

The second floor had the good stuff. The Rock Band-type games, and these huge pods that you go into and the entire interior surface of the pod, from floor to ceiling, turns into a gaming screen, and, of course, the Dance Dance Revolution.

As I watched this androgynous Japanese teenager thumping his/her feet on the electronic dancefloor, I seriously got a lump in my throat. Because, dude, this is where it all began! It felt like I imagine what it would feel like to finally see the Eiffel Tower in Paris, or to watch a bullfight in Spain. You've seen it on TV, you've watched local kids do it in the arcades and now here you are, face-to-face with the REAL THING.

Akihabara is madhouse!!! It’s awesome!!! (Besides the porn, which made me uncomfortable. As Lianyi noted, I stuck uncharacteristically close to him whenever we were in the porn sections of any store.)

The worst thing that almost happened: We got into a lift on the 5th storey of an arcade to go back down to the ground floor. It was already full when we got on. On my right was Lianyi. Very close to my left was an obese young boy who looked about 13, with glazed eyes and what looked like food bits at the corner of his mouth.

On the third floor, the door opened and more people wanted to get on. “Ohmygod ohmygod if the lifts here work like the subway I am just going to vomit and die,” I thought.

Thankfully, they don’t.

The worst thing we saw: Two MEN dressed as french maids, long scraggly wigs included, handing out leaflets for a french maid café. We wanted to take a photo but we were too scared. Seriously, one of them looked like the Wicked Witch from the West out of Oz.

After Akihabara, we had to choose whether to go to Ginza, the upscale shopping district that’s known as the Fifth Avenue of Tokyo, or to go to Ueno Park. We didn’t have time for both. Based on June’s descriptions of both places, we chose Ueno. We didn’t want to shop anyway.

Once we got to Ueno, I had gotten over my sickness of Japanese food enough to need another meal so we looked for a place to have a really late lunch. It was about 4 p.m., 7 hours since our sushi breakfast. We were actually hunting down a restaurant that was listed in our Lonely Planet, but because Japanese streets have no names, it’s really impossible to track down anything so after a while we just settled for a cute little place that seemed palatable. In fact, it turned out to be one of our best finds in Tokyo and I had my best meal in Tokyo right there. Not only that, their English menu was comprehensive and flawless too. It even explained things like how you can ask for half-servings of rice/noodles or add a drink to make a set and stuff like that. This was the first and last time we got such a great English menu in Tokyo.

I actually ordered a bowl of rice and tempura but when Lianyi’s noodles came I made him exchange dishes with me. It was delicious.

All around the restaurant and Ueno station itself is a large shopping arcade where apparently you can find all kinds of Asian goods and designer label knock-offs, but we decided to just head for the park. But when we got there, it was already 5 and all the museums in the park had closed. It was quite disappointing, especially that day also happened to be the second Saturday of the month, which means that entry to the Museum of Western Art would have been free! I had also wanted to have a look at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Natural Science but alas all we could do was walk around the park and just take a look at the shrines and tombs there. And homeless people. We couldn’t even take a seat anywhere because every single bench in the park was occupied by a homeless person.

Despite the museums and even the zoo (yes there’s a zoo within the park! With pandas!) being closed at this point, Ueno Park was still kind of fantastic, if just for its sheer size. I can imagine it would have been pretty damn awesome had we been able to catch a visit to all of the museums and all. Still, it might have been for the best that we didn’t get to go to the museums, because I was seriously exhausted beyond redemption by this point. I had to sit down after every 5 minutes of walking. My feet were starting to feel numb and I was also feeling kind of vomit-y. I don’t know if it was from the fatigue or the memories of the morning’s sushi.

After the park we just headed back to our hotel and napped for an hour until about 7:30, when June came to our room cos she happened to be exploring Shinjuku at the time. We watched some Olympics judo together and then headed out to Nishi Shinjuku for dinner.

We had dinner on the 29th floor of a skyscraper, at a restaurant called Hakkaku. It was ok, not fantastic but not too bad. The views were pretty cool though.

After dinner of course we were too fucking tired to do anything else so we all went back to our respective beds to sleep. Because the next day was Summer Sonic day!