First, a couple of pictures from Teman’s place. As some people may know, there is a difference between how Japan and the USA does bathrooms. Japan separates the toilet facilities from the shower/bath/sink & mirror facilities. Teman’s place has both an upstairs and downstairs toilet room equipped with an impressive high-tech toilet. They have heated seats, automagically detect when you get up and flush on their own, and have built in bidet-like functionality that so far I’ve been a little scared to try. If you look next to the towel there’s a panel to used to control its operation. I need a new toilet at home, I wonder what something like this would set me back…

The bath part is also a little bit different than what you see back home. The bath is not only a cleaning ritual, but a important way to relax at the end of the day. To this end, the bath is set up so that you shower and clean yourself off before you actually get into the bath. Since the shower is separate from the bath, the floor has a drain built in. Teman’s bath has a cover so that the bath can be kept warm and a panel to either control temperature or autofill at a given time.

Anyways, after laboring over yesterday’s blog post I decided to try and make it over to Asakusa on my own while Teman and Sayaka were at work. Asakusa is a part of Tokyo next to the Sumida River that is well known for Senso-ji temple (also known as Asakusa Kannon).

This was the first time I had tried to use the subway on my own so I set out with some trepidation but it turned out getting there was pretty straight forward, I just had to walk over to Gaienmae station, hop on the Ginza line, and take it all the way to the end. The subway system, a least along along the Ginza line, is very easy to use. The stops are all announced in english as well as japanese and they have a nice little indicator above each door that shows all the stops (again in english as well) on the line. As you go from stop to stop a bar under the next stop lights up as well as an arrow showing which direction the subway is heading.

After initially walking the wrong way once I got off the subway I backtracked and found that Nakamise, the main shopping street that leads to the shrine, was just across the street if I would have walked the other direction. A lot of of the stores around Asukusa are more touristy or budget minded in comparison to wandering around the trendy places around Shibuya/Harajuku/Omotesando however there were a number of places selling a wide variety of very tasty looking snacks.

The temple itself was impressive and it was interesting to just linger and listen to the monks chant for a while. The smell of the incense that people offered before you got to the main temple lingered through the whole square and added to the ambiance. The place was just crawling with tourists, both foreign and local, however if you wandered a bit farther from the main temple it thinned out really quickly. I found a little shrine area that a (artificial?) stream running through it that was quite tranquil and snapped a lot of photos there. They were doing a lot of construction, both on the main gate and around Asakusa Shrine, so I didn’t really check out the shrine. The shopping area extends out for blocks and blocks and I spent quite some time wandering around exploring before I hopped back on the subway to head home before the commuter rush.

After Teman and Sayaka got off work we headed out to one of their favorite ramen shops. We split an order of gyoza that were garlicky, quite meaty, and a bit different than I have had before and then moved on to the main course - Dragon Ramen. Imagine a huge bowl of ramen with a couple of chunks of sweet, tender pork almost the size of your fist along with hardboiled egg, some sliced green onion, a small whole tomato, and a single little octopus tentacle on a skewer in a light miso broth - it was sooo good and very filling.

Photos for todays adventure can be found on my Flickr page.

Woke up feeling much better after a good 8 hours of sleep. Had a nice relaxing morning drinking coffee, listening to NPR over the net, and working on my Day 1 blog post while Teman and Sayaka slept in. I think this is going to be my modus operandi while stay at their place. They are not big coffee drinkers so instead of having a coffee machine, they use these interesting single use coffee filters you unfold and place over your cup….

After a nice relaxing morning we walked over to Fujimamas for brunch. Their brunch menu is very western - the only difference is the Japanese level prices. Being a cheap skate, I skipped the $6 coffee but my 2 egg breakfast was quite good. On the way back we passed Kiddyland, a toy store filled with the incredibly cute, where they had someone dressed up as what appeared to be a 4ft tall daikon who was entertaining a group of kids - I really regretted not bringing my camera. We also passed a Shakey’s Pizza which brought back some memories for me however I don’t really remember Shakey’s offering pizza that included mayonaise or an egg cracked in the middle when I was growing up…

After brunch I grabbed an atlas and headed out for a couple of hours. The way the neighborhoods around Teman’s place are laid out the major streets cut virtual islands of mixed residential and shopping areas that are the size of several city blocks. These islands are then crisscrossed with winding side streets only large enough for a single car to go down. Without an atlas it would be very easy to get lost.

I headed out and hit the main streets to get a better idea of the boarders of Teman’s neighborhood to help get my orientation, circling around until I reached Omotesando close to where we had brunch again. I have to pause and say, even though I live in a decent sized american city, I have never seen so many people. The streets were just packed, so much so that one of the parking garages had a cadre of 4 attendants to try and direct pedestrian traffic so that cars could make it in off the street.

I headed down Omotesando towards Harajuku station and Meiji Shrine. Harajuku is where the school kids dress up all crazy and let people take pictures of them. Most were dressed up in goth fashion somewhat like what we see at home except often with some cute touches (one girl had what appeared to be a dead teddy bear that had X X ‘s for eyes) There was also a definite subset that reminded me of strawberry shortcake. There was one that really stood out - a homely guy who had to be in his 30s dressed up as maid, complete with short skirt and all. < shudder > The place was a zoo so I didn’t fight my way through to take any pictures.

The entrance to Meiji is right next to Harajuku. You walk through a gigantic torii and walk down a wide gravel path cut through a pleasant woods. Along the way you run into the looming wall of sake barrels from across japan ready to be presented as shrine offerings. The shrine itself is an impressive structure with nice woodwork surrounded by more torii at each entrance.

Right next to the Meiji shrine woods lies Yoyogi park, a huge park filled with people doing all the things you would expect on a nice Sunday afternoon - biking, picnicking, throwing the frisbee around, or forming a drum circle. The sidewalk outside Yoyogi was, to me, the more interesting part since here you could find band after band lined up right next to each other blaring out music as long as their generators would allow. Metal bands seemed to be the most popular, but there was a wide range from funk to pop-ish girl groups. I messed around taking a couple of short movies with my camera to show what it was like - I need to practice since they didn’t turn out too good.

Video #2 - walking past a couple rock bands - please right click and do a “save as” (80MB).

Once I got back we all went out for dinner at a soup curry place that was both delicious and cheap. Curry broth with veggies, hard boiled egg, potato, and “bacon” (thin sliced ham cut into squares) with rice on the side. mmmmm. We then hit the local grocery store - 4 levels, lots of people, tiny isles, and lots of interesting things to look at. I love the way that every individual piece of fruit or vegetable is loving wrapped separately. Meat was crazy expensive - the nice marbled stuff thinly sliced was ¥1200 for 100 grams, steaks ¥1600 per 100g - ouch.

Pictures can be found on my Flickr account

What a long, long day. Friday morning Trevor was nice enough to pick me up and take me to SeaTac about 10 AM. Breezed through check-in and security so I spent a couple of hours working on laptop while I waited for my 1:30 flight.

The flight was a long, uneventful 10 hours. I tried to catch a couple hours of sleep without much luck. Arrived at Narita to a cold, gloomy downpour, about 4 PM local time, midnight Seattle time.

Getting through immigration was pretty easy although I had to wait in a 20+ minute queue. Once through, Teman met me in the arrival lobby so I wouldn’t have to try to find his place which was kind of him since he lives more than an hour away from the Airport by public transportation. I’m not saying that it would have been impossible for me to find on my own but if I was a betting man I know where my money would have gone.

There are basically two groups of public transportation options in Tokyo - the lines operated by JR and those who are run by everyone else. I had picked up a two week JR rail pass through JALPAK before I left but I wanted to save it for the pricey shinkansen trips I was planning on taking later so we took option B. Picked up a ¥3000 Passnet card and 1 train, 1 subway, and a 10 minute walk later walk we arrived at Teman’s place - local time 7:30 PM, Seattle time 3:30 AM.

We drop my stuff off and after a quick tour of Teman’s sweet, sweet place we headed off back to the subway to an English-pub-themed expat bar not too far away in the heart of Shibuya so Teman could pick up some food and we could catch up a bit more. On the way I had a Jet Set Radio Future flashback seeing the Shibuya bus terminal - it looks exactly like it does in the game.

We got off the subway at the end of the line, the Hachiko exit. Shibuya was bright, busy, and more than a little overwhelming. Luckily, the rain by now had tapered off to a mere drizzle. Given my near-zombie state I didn’t even try to take any pictures, I need to go back and poke around later since we didn’t really dally. The pub was a fun little smokey place that had a wide range of English beers tap, bit of a change after Seattle’s smoking ban. Beer was a bit pricey, UK pints were in the ¥800-¥1000 range (approx $8-$10).

Made our way back to home and I had a shower. By this point I had gone past tired and come out the other side. Finally went to bed at midnight local time, 8 AM Seattle time. For me, that’s a long day.

A couple weeks and I’ll be taking a long, long, long deserved vacation to the land of the rising sun. My good friend Teman lives in Tokyo so I’ll be crashing at his pad for a while before setting out via train to see the country armed only with a travel guide, a couple of pimsleur lessons, and the invaluable knowledge gleaned from the Josh in Japan podcast. I plan on bringing my laptop with me so I’ll try and post some updates while I’m gone.

I thought this was pretty cool…