3 posts tagged “日本”
So, upon waking at the stark hour of 5am, I decided to weather the dark dampness of Saturday morning and find my way to some breakfast in Tsukiji. Sadly, I didn't take very many pictures. With all of the running people, fast-moving trucks and noise, it was hard enough concentrating on walking let alone pulling out the camera. I find it a miracle I wasn't bowled over by a truck full of fish guts.
Stall after stall of fish and various seafood here. I mean, I haven't seen any market this big, let alone one dedicated to food from the ocean.
Finding the sushi restaurants took me a good 20-30 minutes of directionless wandering. I found a strip of them and pondered waiting in the 45 minute line for the "best" places, but my stomache disagreed with that idea.
Yesterday I layed down for a nap at 5 and didn't wake up until, well, this morning. As a result I skipped dinner and was completely famished when I stumbled into the insanity of the market.
One of these restaurants had no line and even had one of the 8 seats in it open, so I went in. I decided that a chef-selection of sashimi as a chirashi bowl would be exactly what I needed. With tea and miso, it was completely perfect. And yes, it was the best "sushi" I've ever had. So very fresh, and very beautiful. None of that weird plastic grass and for a change some real wasabi. I never realized just how much better the real stuff is until now (cuz, well, you can't get the real thing, it seems, in Toronto, at least in my experience).
If anyone is curious, the name of the place is Yamazaki. If I knew how to type that in Hiragana, I would, since the sign is certainly not in English. Thankfully the menu was.
After breakfast, I wandered up to Ginza, which is a short distance away. However, it was still before 10am, which is when everything opens. By about 9:45, I decided to head home, but not after I took a quick photo of the Apple Store in Ginza.
Perhaps in a few days I won't have such bizaro jetlag and I'll be awake at normal times like most people here are. Here's to hoping!
Well, I've now been here in Tokyo for a grand total of 24 hours.
After my last post I decided to take a stroll up to the Imperial Palace again during daylight to see what this side of it looked like. I just wanted to kill some time until rush hour was over so I didn't have to lug my crap into huge crowds of people. It really is quite beautiful and this isn't even the nice side, from what I know.
I returned to the hotel and gathered my things together and made the trek with my 100lbs of stuff to Shinjuku, where the Sakura House office is. Shinjuku is billed as the busiest train/subway station in the world, and it's not hard to see why. For one thing, it's just vast. It took about 5 minutes to just find the exit, and I wasn't lost.
When I concluded settling things and getting my keys and directions from the wonderful Sakura House staff, I trudged back to the station to find the entrance to the JR Yamanote line. Like I said, this is a big station, and I even had to stop and take a break not to gather my bearings, as everything is extremely well-labelled in addition to Japanese, but also English and Korean.
Ticket in hand, I made my way to the platform. Up and down so many stairs I managed to get on the incorrect platform, but noticed before a train came and walked back down and around to the right place. I haven't yet even needed to stop and ask anyone for help or directions, everything is so clearly marked.
The JR line trains (at least on the Yamanote) are a lot more crowded than the ones I'd been on before. If you imagine the TTC during rush hour, this is the normal daytime, non-rush density on the JR. I felt kind of guilty taking up so much space with my bags, but what could I do? Not much. I'm just a crazy gaijin here, so no one really takes notice anyway.
Following the map I was given at the office, I walked the 5ish minutes from the Komazawa-Daigaku station to the house. No problems there, but I did seem to manage to not see the very bright pink sign on the door and walked a couple meters past it.
It's not a huge room, but it's certainly enough for me, now.
I unpacked, took a bit of a rest and decided to head back to Shibuya to see what there was to see. Unfortunately, en route I realized I was more than exhausted. My jet-lag had kicked in and I was starting to get easily confused again. It's only 3 stops to Shibuya from here, so I decided to keep on going.
I left the station from the Hachiko exit, which is somewhat famous. I was so overwhelmed with the number of people and flashing things and noise that I didn't even notice the statue that it's named after. I'll visit again to see if I can find it. I crossed the street to get a look at the intersection and have my Lost in Translation moment drinking coffee in the 2nd floor Starbucks.
That's it for today. I think I'm going to take a nap, see if I can find something cheap to eat and, if I have the jet-lagged energy, make my way to Ginza to see if I can find a drink. It is Friday, after all.
After a rather un-restful sleep I woke to the sound of the weird alarm on my now-defunct cellphone. I packed a few things, unpacked a few others and got ready for the long trip ahead. I arrived at the airport quite early, but I like being early for things like this. I was so numb from sleep deprivation that the excitement didn't hit me at all, even when waiting in the long line to go through US Customs.
Grabbed a cup of coffee at 'bucks. I was kind of wanting one last Timmie's, but the new store wasn't open yet in the brand new Pier F in Terminal 1, so a rather bland tasting grande mild had to do. I took a seat at the gate with an hour to go before boarding.
I was relieved that there was another flight not an even an hour after my 12:05 plane, and when I deplaned in Chicago, I ran to the next gate just in time. The staff informed me my bags might come on the following flight anyway, so I may be waiting a while for my massive bags to show up at Narita.
I say that in the present tense since I am actually writing this as we breach the dateline. So, technically, it's tomorrow, but today. I'm confused, but what can I do ... To me, it's still Wednesday, but it's Thursday and will be so when I land in 4.5hrs.
Flying over the Yukon was beautiful. I never realized just how mountainous it was. It did look extremely cold, though, with the weakened sunlight coming in at a strange angle from the south.
And now the jackass in front of me has reclined his chair and writing on a laptop has become rather fucking annoying. Such is the way of Economy.
When I booked the tickets, I asked for vegetarian meals. At the time, I wasn't eating meat at all due to a food poisoning incident a few weeks prior. After seeing what the non-special meal was, I'm glad I did anyway. I'm sure it was fine, but the anemic-looking chicken wasn't terribly appealing. Not that my, well, I don't know what to call it, other than a meal, was much to write about, but here's a photo. The only thing I wished my meal had was the carrot cake.
Instead, my vegetarian, no, actually fully vegan meals, had an appropriate vegan chocolate chip cookie. I didn't know prepackaged vegan food like that existed, apparently it does. But that was before the Yukon, somewhere over the mid-west states, I think Wisconsin.
Over Alaska we were served another small meal. Again, I was glad that I pre-booked an alternative. Mine turned out to be a cold rice/bean/corn combo with some tomatoes and cilantro and a small, dry pita. Everyone else was given, at least back here in cheap-class, instant noodles. Now, I have nothing against them, but, well, they looked rather, shall we say, shit.
Now, just past the dateline and the Aleutian Islands, I'm staring out at the Bering Sea and clouds at the -50ºC air around the plane at 10,000m and the ceaseless sunlight. To my body, it's 10:15pm, but my senses tell me otherwise. I have no idea what time it is now, where I am, but I know it's just after noon in Tokyo.
One of the flight attendants is originally from Kobe. His english is very good, and he joked that he'd be taking classes from me, soon, as he learned through the school I am planning to teach at. His stoic demeanor and stature reminds me of my Aikido Sensei back in Toronto. Takeda-sama always seemed so classically Japanese to me, but perhaps it's just a thing with men of that generation.
I've now arrived at my hotel in Tokyo after an hour and half of trains and lugging my stuff up and down a lot of stairs. I started writing after I went to grab a bite to eat at a place where I didn't really know what I was ordering. Good thing it had pictures. The whole point and shoot thing works when getting food, at least at whatever kind of place it was. The jet-lag is so weird, I couldn't even figure out how to get inside until a kind guy going in showed me that the doors are touch-operated. Slidey little things with a touch pad on the front.
After that, I passed out at 10pm local time in my small room and now it's 4am here. Or something. I'm wide awake now and there's basically nothing I can do about it. Time to go for a walk.
...
So now that I've gotten a little more ... conscious ... it's about 8am and I finally have a chance to post this from the hotel cafe. I walked past the Imperial Palace, but it was very dark. I'll have pictures and words later.
