Tuesday, March 21
I woke up this morning reinvigorated. Never in my life have I felt so gung-ho and full of energy at 4:45 am. After lying in bed for awhile, I realized that Jane was lying awake too. We both had mild headaches due to disruption to our diurnal caffeination cycle. So, I got up and took another shower to further the airline grime removal process, reduced the coarseness of my face from 60 grit to 2000 grit, and brushed my teeth with a complimentary black toothbrush. Apparently, the Japanese like their toothbrushes small sleek and narrow enabling each tooth to receive the individual attention it deserves.
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| View of Tokyo from our Hotel Room Window |
Eventually, Jane and I made it down to the breakfast buffet. For the first course, I enjoyed salmon with scrambled eggs, “hash potatoes”, fresh fruit, and lots and lots of good coffee. There was also a second course followed by dessert. Jane enjoyed a similar meal but, because she was in Tokyo, added miso soup.
After our hardy breakfast, we ventured out on foot to see a small piece of Tokyo on our own. We walked down a main street by our hotel past government buildings, homeless people on the street, and the area train station to Shinjuku Central Park. We strolled around the park enjoying water features, a shrine, and flowering cherry trees.
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| Waterfall at Shinjuku Central Park |
Shrines are numerous throughout Japan. This park’s Shinto shrine, Juniso Kumano Jinja, is one of 12 branch-shrines each honoring its own god and derived from a 1400 a.d. mother-shrine. The grounds included a sacred gate, a sacred hall, a sacred tree, a sacred forest, a purification area, a structure for hanging Ema (wooden boards with prayers or wishes), a worship hall and most importantly, a monetary offering box.
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| Juniso Kumano Jinja Shrine |
Observing flowering of cherry trees in Japan is a national spectator sport and tracked online. It occurs over a three-month period beginning in the south and proceeding northward. We are fortunate to be here during this period. The Japanese have a term, hanami, which roughly translates as “to lay out a huge tarp in order to stake out your territory under a flowering cherry tree or trees.” This park is a popular place to practice hanami and because today is a national holiday (spring equinox), we observed many hanamiers even at 10 o’clock in the morning
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| Hanami at Shinjuku Central Park |
Shorty, after returning to the hotel, we began our real immersion tour (or, in travel agentese, our pre-pre-cruise land excursion). Our personal Tokyo guide was Setsuko which roughly translates to Sissy in English. Sissy is a remarkable lady who grew up in a small village surrounded by mountains near Mount Fuji. Against all odds, she became a foreign exchange student and fellow student of Jane and her sister at Kane High School. Against even greater odds, she survived the wilds of northwest Pennsylvania and returned to her village to finish high school. She then moved to Tokyo to attend university and has lived there ever since raising a family and working. Over the years, Sissy and Jane have remained friends via high school reunions and Facebook.
Tokyo is the world’s largest city with a population of 36 million so that efficient transportation is critical. Throughout the day, Sissy served as our customized GPS and train scheduler. We quickly devised a system at the train station ticket kiosks where I held out my hands full of Japanese coins. Sissy would study the Rosetta Stone of train connections that only Tokyoians know how to translate. Then she would mash buttons to produce a ticket. However, even train ninjas like Sissy don’t have permission to purchase two tickets simultaneously so that we duplicated the process at each kiosk. These tickets were marvels with paper on one side and a magnetic-appearing back side. With practice, Jane & I learned how to insert them into a slot in the gate. Then a blue light would turn on, and the ticket would magically reappear in another slot beyond the gate before we could even take a step forward. We collected the ticket to reuse at the next gate. Sissy, however, had the master ticket to rule all tickets. Normally, without neophytes like us tagging along, she could snub the kiosks and had the power to penetrate any gate at a whim.
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| Train Ticket Kiosking |
Besides training, walking was our other mode of transportation. Sissy knew all the short cuts and back alleys. Because it’s impossible to walk three abreast in Tokyo, I trailed behind trying to catch snippets of conversation between Sissy and Jane while hanging on for dear life so as not to get lost in the crowds. We definitely observed sections of Tokyo off the beaten path.
Most videos about Tokyo feature hordes of pedestrians at Shibuya Crossing, one of the world’s busiest crosswalks. We experienced similar crossings. Two to four opposing teams would line up at an intersection and recruit members. The action began on the green signal when teams would dash head-on at each other avoiding lamp posts and other barriers. Miraculously, opposing sides threaded through each other without fouls, penalties, or obvious injuries. This was the most critical time to line up behind Sissy and I followed her like a tailback behind a blocker. In addition to the above-ground pedestrian activities, there is a whole underground series of walkways not featured in tourist promotions. Sissy was quite familiar with these and they were often faster than dealing with the crowds and traffic lights above.
Our first destination with Sissy was the Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens. We took the train from the Shinjuku station near our hotel to the Iiadabashi station and first walked to and around a nearby shopping/restaurant area and also visited another Shinto shrine. From there we walked to the gate entry for the gardens. The gardens were beautiful with ponds, waterfalls, open areas, hills, bridges and of course, cherry trees in various stages of flowering. The developers had incorporated many features reflecting a Chinese taste and flavor. Sissy was surprised when we started identifying some of the plants and claiming (without proof) that we had some in our backyard. Actually, Raleigh and Tokyo are at a similar latitude so that many Japanese plants have been introduced as ornamentals (some becoming invasive exotics such as kudzu). The gardens were peaceful and we enjoyed observing Tokyoians appreciating nature.
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| Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens |
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| Sissy and Jane in the Gardens |
After visiting the gardens, we wandered back to a train station and walked past the Tokyo Dome, home of the Giants. (I know, but perhaps the name is aspirational for this height-challenged country. I’m no baseball fanatic but I would bet the San Francisco Giants have a much higher APH than the Tokyo Giants. For non-fans, APH is a baseball stat for average player height.) Sissy said that the Giants’ first game of the season was today. Indeed there was a sense of excitement and enthusiasm among the fans we were navigating through. It was heartening to see how Japan has so fervently adopted our national past-time, however, their fans need to improve on the raucousness, obnoxiousness and inebriation aspects of fandom that Americans have perfected.
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| Tokyo Dome, Home of the Giants |
We then took a brief train ride back to the shopping/resturant area to have lunch at an authentic sushi restaurant of Sissy’s picking. Inside the restaurant was a chef surrounded by a circular conveyor belt which was in turn surrounded by tables and chairs. Customers vocally requested orders and soon the order would magically appear riding on the conveyer belt. Plates were color coded according to the cost of the order. Tea cups were stacked on the table so we added matcha powder and hot water from a spout. Sissy requested what may have been the only English menu in the restaurant and it touted some interesting delicacies such as “Scaweed” and “ciam” soup. Sissy shouted our orders and served as the head order-grabber because she was at the end of our line as the plates travelled by and was also the most adept at identifying orders. Sissy convinced me to try sea urchin but they were temporarily out of it. Unsolicited (yes, really), Sissy complimented us on our chopstick abilities. It went to my head though because I then chased a clump of rice around the dish before almost poking it up my left nostril. The food was excellent and I ended up with quite a stack of plates in front of me to tally for the bill which Sissy graciously paid.
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| Enjoying Sushi in its Native Habitat |
As we were walking back to the train station, we passed one shop with a sidewalk display of chopsticks. Now that my chopsticking prowess had been officially recognized in Tokyo, I felt the urge to upgrade from the short unfinished blunt-end beginner’s models that we have accumulated at home from take-out orders. Even at this sidewalk display, I could see that Japanese chopsticks can be delicately crafted works of art. After considerable deliberation over the many varieties, Jane selected one with cats and I chose one with a manly black design. These are pro models sharpened to a fine point to allow precise rice grain manipulation and come with a checklist of required PPE. The store attendant wrapped our new eating utensils in a custom fitted box. As I handed over the money to pay, a delightfully confusing sound was emitted first from Sissy and then from the attendant. This was followed by a flurry of Japanese dialogue as I began looking for an escape route to flee. Then, each of the involved Japan natives inspected and fondled my bill as if it were some long-lost family heirloom. It so happens that 2k yen bills are extremely rare these days and neither of them had seen one in years. Jane and I had exchanged some U.S. currency at RDU and were packing several of these crisp new treasures. I think I’ll try to barter with them now that I know their rarity. BTW, 2k yen is about $15 these days. So, I’m not as wealthy as it seems even with a wallet loaded with 1k and 2k bills.
Safely armed with my chopsticks, we took another train ride followed by a lot of above- and below-ground pedestriating to arrive at a famous art supply store that Jane wanted to visit. Our three-person traveling team gradually hustled through the crowded store up to the third floor. There, after much deliberation, Jane purchased four colored pencils. I love my wife’s frugality. She travels around the world to a city with the world’s most stores and is ecstatic about purchasing four PENCILS. (BTW, she was slightly disappointed that she couldn’t use a coupon.)
After Jane’s successful purchase, we walked back to our hotel and invited Sissy to our room. There, Jane presented Sissy with some gifts from Kane and a colored pencil drawing Jane made of the McCleery Lobo Wolf Sculpture at the Historic Kane Depot. We then went to a restaurant in the hotel lobby for refreshments and chatting. We discussed possibilities for Sissy to visit us in both Kane and Apex. However, the sun was setting and as Jane & I perceived the increasing darkness outside the window, our eyelids became ever heavier. I almost dozed off as Sissy was demonstrating how Japanese people use a keyboard to type their complicated language which is a mesh of three types of characters, hiragana, katakana, and Chinese kanji. I have always been intrigued by this and had inquired about it, but jet lag was powering down my brain. So we apologized to Sissy, who despite having to work tomorrow, had several times suggested taking us to dinner. We said our mutual thank-yous and farewells and saw Sissy to the hotel door confident that she would find the most efficient route home. We found an efficient route to our hotel beds. I was dozing off around 8 pm and soon had visions of sushi and kiosks dancing in my head.
What a great start to your trip! Glad you got to spend time with Sissy and see the beautiful Cherry trees blooming. LF
What a great day you had with Sissy. It’s really nice to hear all the details. Thanks!