Little Nerd Goes to Tokyo

Our awesome hostel.

Tokyo was a whirlwind - I don't think there's any way for it to be anything else.  I visited some of the major parts of the city that I didn't get to on my first time around, and some parts that I visited before but wanted to see again.

We stayed at a very nice hostel in a traditional building.  Like, really traditional.  Like, parts of it a hundred years old traditional.  So that was cool.  They were very nice to us there, intensely accommodating, and the area we were in was nice, too.  We had to pass through a kind of skeezy area when walking to and from the train station, but skeezy in Tokyo just isn't the same as elsewhere.  Less bite.

We also spent a good half day in Yokohama, which is a bay city next to Tokyo with ultramodern design and giant things.  There's the giant ferris wheel, pictured right, and the giant malls, and a giant tower that contains a hotel and goodness knows what else, and wikipedia tells me it's the tallest building in Japan.  You can see part of it in the left hand of the picture.

We also went to Ginza, Shinjuku, Asakusa, and Shibuya, and we were based out of Ueno.  There was a lot of shopping, where I wished i had a little more spendy money, and a lot of just seeing the city sights - hustle and bustle and walking up fifteen million stairs.

The escalators were frequently out of service, and Tokyo was darker than it should have been.  With the post-crisis power problems, the largest city in the world is having to cut back and conserve.  It's still bright and loud and colorful at night, but it doesn't sparkle the way it should.  It struck me most on the plane when we were flying out last night.  I've always really enjoyed flying out of big cities because they just look like handfuls of jewels scattered over dark land.  Tokyo was dimmed.

Additionally, there were faces missing from the crowd in the city - Western faces.   Tourists were conspicuously absent, even in the ultratouristy traditional shopping street in Asakusa.  Here I was, a foreigner looking even more foreign just by virtue of being one of the few.

As can be expected, I embarrassed myself more than once.  The intensity of my fandom for learning everything about Japanese culture has burned down a bit, so I forget things a lot.  I forget to stand on the left of the escalator and I really dishonored myself when I lost my grip on my suitcase in a train and the extended handle banged into the knee of the businessman sitting across from me.  He was reading a paper so it came as a surprise to him, and my English "I'm so sorry!" (the Japanese takes longer to make it through the brain to mouth process) did not endear me.  If looks could kill, I'd be done.

However, I also feel like I have license for a few slipups, since I'm a tourist and all, and besides I'm spending my money in this country when it can use the business.

I am glad to have a slow day today.  I'm in Tottori, my lovely host Caleb is at work, and it's pouring cats and dogs outside.  Soon I am going to venture out to the store for lunch, but watching the downpour does give me pause.

I will leave you with a picture of me and Hachiko, the faithful dog.  His story, like most of the folk favorites in Japan, is a sad one, but he has a very nice statue.