Day 2: Tokyo Morning Tour
We are staying at the Hotel Grand
Palace Tokyo. Walking distance from the Imperial Palace, which has
nice rocks. This is pretty good digs. I am glad it was included in
the price of the tour because I am too cheap to have paid for it
separately. My son and I both love the Japanese Plumbing. The shower
is great fun. The tub might even be big enough to actually take a
bath in. I may have to try it.
Right now I am sitting down doing my
blogging in my Happi Coat (supplied by the Hotel) while Dan does the
shower thing (I decided against the picture of me in my happy coat). You can set the temperature of the shower, but you have
to do it in C. There is also a water fountain built into the toilet.
I suspect this is mainly for customers that have their pet Dogs with
them. (ok, that was a bidet joke).
Daniel commented that the included
breakfast buffet is by far the best hotel breakfast he has ever had.
This is mainly because he is a vegetarian that doesn't like pancakes,
waffles, eggs or cereal. So a breakfast with Rice, pickled
vegetables, french Fries, and Miso Soup, is a special treat. I also
thought it was pretty good. I enjoyed the little pieces of fried fish
and the Korean pickled vegetables (whose name eludes me at the
moment) (Kimchi!! (Why, thank you future proof-reading self)(You are welcome, to many beers to remember Kimchi past self).
After breakfast, we were signed up for
a morning outing with Sunrise Tours. We had a pretty young thin
japanese girl (no dark blue uniform this time, dammit) meet us in the
lobby and put us on a tour bus bound for the place where the real
tour busses leave from. This was a somewhat disconcerting time,
because we drove around the area in circles for an hour just picking
people up from other hotels. But since it was our first day here, we
were constantly amazed by simple things. Like the boxy little cars
that are so popular here. And the traffic lights. And the fact that
everyone drives on the wrong side of the road and never hits each
other.
After several go rounds and ticket
exchanges we ended up on a different (but identical)(and very nice)
tour bus for our “Tokyo Morning Tour”. These buses are pretty
cool. They look and feel much more modern than any American buss that
I have ever been on. Though this could be because I have not been on
an American tour bus in 3 decades. However, they are evidently
designed for Japanese size butts. Because my son's and my American
size butts really didn't fit into them, side by side. I must say that
there was a similar complaint from the Canadian and English
contingent. I really should have asked the spanish speaking persons
but I didn't know the spanish word for “fucking tight”. (Not sure
that “punta de la madona verde” would have worked in this
particular situation).
First stop: The Tokyo Tower. This is an
orange copy of the Eiffel Tower (hey, we are 9 meters taller). 50
years ago it was a statement of Japanese engineering and the tallest
radio tower in the world. Now it is the 2nd biggest
tourist trap that looks like the Eiffel tower in the World (the first
biggest being the Eiffel Tower. Hey, I am not making this stuff up,
the tour guide told us this).
The view from the observation level of
the tower is similar to the view of the observation level of the
Eiffel tower. Except that you are looking at new Japanese buildings
instead of old French buildings. Why are all of the japanese
buildings new? Because we fire bombed Tokyo to the ground in 1942 is
why. If we had done the same thing to New York in 1942, it might look
as good as Tokyo does today. I am thinking that it is not too late.
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| If you jump. They bury you where you hit. |
Oh, and what is that in the distance. It looks something like Tokyo tower but it seems to be a hell of a lot taller. That is the Tokyo Sky Wind Tower. (Sky Tree Tower?). It is the tallest television broadcasting tower in the word. Tell those guys in Toronto to take a hike. (Really, another thing our guide told us).
Oh, so you want to know more about our
guide? He was the 5th of 5 boys. In fact his name means
(literally) “5th Son”. He is 63 years old and runs a
8K every day. He speaks good english but can also do German and
Korean. He dotes on his only daughter (who is majoring in sports and
is 178cm tall). He has a son studying music in Vancouver (majoring in
music and 187cm tall). Last year he declared 11 million Yen as his
Salary (down from the previous year).
So, a tour guide in Japan makes
something like $130K a year. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Then
go buy a Subaru.
If this guy had taught me as much about
Tokyo as he did about himself, I am sure I would have told you.
Second stop was the Imperial Palace.
This turns out to be just a few blocks (ok, perhaps miles) from our
hotel. We must explore this more later, since this stop was only for
10 minutes photo op.
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| I love these trees. I believe they are Black Pine |
Third stop was a Buddhist shrine near
Electric City. This was a pretty neat place. Very old. Lots of
people. A very interesting mix of commercialism and devout worship.
Not sure if the vatican sells officially sacred souvenirs so close
the bones of Saint Paul...... but I bet if they do they claim that
they had originated the idea.
After this, we cruised down the main
drag of Electric city and then were dropped off at Tokyo Station.
This turns out to be a very victorian looking station built before
the war and evidently one of the few structures that survived the
repeated American bombing. I was assured that though it looks like a
result of dutch architecture, it was in fact designed by a Japanese
architect (who probably went to school in Holland).
The final note on this tour was that,
though they picked us up at the hotel, they did not leave us off
there. They deposited us a the Tokyo Station, which is around 3 miles
from our accommodations. I can't find anything in the literature that
says this would happen, but I can't find anything that says it
wouldn't either. Bastards. So we had a nice walk home, mainly along
the pretty scenic sidewalk that runs around the Imperial palace.
There is a moat around this entire thing. Because the moat was
traditionally a national defense mechanism, knowing the depth of the
moat was considered taboo. (10 meters).
Later Dan and I tried our hand at the
Subway in order to get back to the Imperial Palace and check out the
gardens. The subway was great fun. Everything is so clean and
functional. Even the automated ticket buying machines were easy to
use once Daniel found the “English” buton.
The gardens are part of the grounds of
the Imperial Palace. They have been recently (in the last 100 years)
re-done in what we think is close to the original format. They are
free to anyone that wants to wonder in, though you do have to go
through so simple security to get in. They were very nice, though not
overwhelming. In all truth, the Japanese Gardens in Portland are more
impressive (though smaller and without the huge fortifications
(which, after all, have nothing to do with the gardens)).
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| Look at the size of those rocks. |
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| This is the only real garden part of the garden |
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| I like this shot. And this tree |
For Dinner, we stumbled around trying
to find a place to eat. Our first frustrating event. I guess that I
thought that more people in Japan speak english. Our guide told us
that 20% of the population know some english. It turns out that very
few people in the food industry speak english. Nor do most places
have an english language menu. In fact, “We have an English Menu”
is a huge draw (at least for me).
Imagine, if you will, you find what
appears to be nice authentic little tokyo restaurant across the
street from you hotel. You enter and the young thin cute japanese
girl in uniform smiles and bows to you and says “Kumbawa” and
shows you to a table saying “aragato”. She hands you a warm
little towel to clean your hands and a menu. You nod and smile and
say silly english things. Then you look at the menu. It is written in
Japanese. Well you were expecting that, a French menu is in French,
after all, and you did ok with that (well, except for thinking the
fish was poison, but lets move on). But with Japanese, it is like you
can't read. Nothing is in any way comprehensible except for the
price, and that you have do to 10 seconds of math on before you feel
like you can afford a “biru”. Here is a visual aid for those of
you following along:
<Jon will put a picture here of the
menu. Trust him>
<but not too much>
<but not too much>
If you ask for an English menu the
waitress may say “No English”. Now what do you do? If you are
lucky, there are pictures of the food and you can order that. But if
you are unlucky (or the guy behind the counter really doesn't care
for your buisness because you don't look like rich Tokyo buisnessmen
who are going to drink a lot of sake) then you may just have to be on
your way.
So, needless to say, Daniel and I were
very hungry and a bit grouchy before we found a place that we thought
we could eat at. (We need to have someone write down the japanese for
“Vegetarian”). The food was pretty good, but I am sure that it
could have been better for the price we paid. Also, I think the wait
staff should have paid us for the entertainment we must have given
them as we tried to eat civilized food using civilized utensils which
were clearly incomprehensible to us.
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