Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Blog Thread III : Look Who's Blogging Now
allison:
Man JD, even if you knew it was bound to happen - it's still tough. I'm sorry you have to go through that. Hold on to the good memories!
pwhodges:
Yes, it is still a biggie, and I have every sympathy. Knowing about it in advance is no preparation for watching a person lose their personality, their identity and finally even their sense of self. It's hardest while it's happening, but if they are healthy enough to live for a substantial time afterwards, remaining responsible for them (even though in a care home at that point) is a draining experience.
JD:
Good news though, my free Chrome shoes finally came.
David_Dovey:
I sent this e-mail to my folks so excuse the out-of-context stuff and the overabundance of stating the obvious but danged if I'm gonna try to summarise my Tokyo experience again.
--- Quote ---Tokyo is amazing, Sam is in love and says she wants to move here. I think she'll say that about every city we visit. I also think she just loves Tokyo so much because we're taller than everyone.
Got into Narita as expected at 0900hrs. First experience of Japanese culture was- of course- the Japanese toilets in the airport. Decided I didn't have to go bad enough to squat over a hole in the ground, seriously worried about losing my balance and falling over.
Breezed right through customs, everyone was super polite and helpful and spoke serviceable English. Downstairs to the train station and got the first major crisis of the trip, and one that would bother us right through our time in Tokyo: Attempting to navigate the train system. Even though almost everything is in English, the tickets are not, which makes it hard to work out which platform you are supposed to be on, or even which train. Another "interesting" episode came when we found out some way into the trip that at some points in the journey, the first four cars on a train separate and go in a different direction to the rest of the train. Much consternation trying to work out which cars we were actually in, and which ones we wanted to be in, culminating in a mad dash down the platform at a stop to get in the right car.
Luckily there were train announcements in English as well. In fact, damn near everything in Tokyo is English, and a lot of the time, without the Japanese to go with it. Sam remarked that we the only really "Japanese" things we saw were outside of the city. Everything in Tokyo proper is so Westernised.
We are staying in Kinshichou, which is three stops away from Tokyo station. Nothing crazy interesting here, aside from some pretty nice restaurants and a beautiful park. Also a 5-storey tall karaoke place, although I was to find out later that they are common as muck. Also; pachinko parlours. Pachinko is kind of a cross between slot machines and video games, and they are EXTREMELY loud. The glass sliding doors leading into the parlour keep all of the noise out but when we went in it was instant and overwhelming, about as loud as any concert I've ever been to. And just like slots, people (of all ages) lined up in front of the machines, who based on how full their ashtrays were, had been there a long time indeed.
First day there, after checking in at our hotel (which we found thanks to an incredibly helpful barber down the street) we grabbed lunch at the Burger King across the road from the hotel. Yes, we ate at a Burger King in Japan. A recent fad (condemned by doctors) in Japan & Korea is "mega-burgers", and Burger King's version is the Rodeo Whopper. Four whopper patties, fried onion rings, lettuce tomato and mayo. Being a moron and unable to turn down the challenge I of course ordered one. With a grape Fanta. I was only able to finish two of the four patties, mostly because I made the fatal mistake of looking at the "beef". It wasn't pretty.
We spent the rest of the day in central Tokyo, Ginza and Maranouchi which are the central business and government districts and recently revived as a center for luxe and couture brands. Gucci and Bulgari mingling with tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants, sake bars, multi-storey video game arcades and pachinko parlours. There was a section of three or four city blocks which were owned entirely by Mitsubishi. After that was the incredible looking convention center in Maranouchi which makes our tin shed look... well, like a tin shed.
I'll be including some photos from our travels, if they don't attach properly, let me know.
By far I think my favourite thing in Tokyo was the architecture, particularly in Ginza. Every building looked simultaneously modern and cutting edge, and timeless and classic. Not a dud among them. Dominating the skyline near where we were staying was a gigantic digital television tower. It was still being built yet it was already the largest thing in the city. On top of what has already been built there will be another observation deck and a huge broadcast antennae. It'll be done in 2012 and vying for spot of tallest structure in the world.
We also visited Hibiya park in the middle of the city, just down the road from the Imperial palace. Gorgeous place, combining Western and traditional Japanese gardens. Most peculiarly, the place was full of stray cats, reclining on the benches, acting- as cats do everywhere- like they own the place. As it turns out we were there on "ocean day" and there was a festival in the park with bands and lots of young people strolling around and drinking beer and snacking on the Yakitori (meat on a stick) that the street vendors sold.
We were exhausted and got back to the hotel at about 2130hrs. Being a capsule hotel, the bathing experience was communal and I almost went without but the humidity was too much to bear and the idea of a hot sauna and cold shower was too tempting, even if it did mean looking at some old Japanese dongs.
Finding stuff for Sam to eat in Tokyo was hell. Most of the restaurants have injected-moulded plastic versions of the meals in the window, but it was still impossible in most instances to tell if they had, say, fish stock in them or something. In the end we found a place in Kinshichou that did the job, and for cheap. On the Sunday night we found a Yakitori place, which was amazing, although we made sure to steer clear of the many, many varieties of organ meat on the menu and stuck with plain old boring duck and pork.
We spent Sunday checking out the Shibuya and Harajuku districts during the day. These are the cool, young districts and once again chock full of cool little boutiques (more Shibuya) and up-market department stores and couture brands (Harajuku). Over this weekend the Laforet Grand Bazar was being held, which is when all of the stores in Harajuku take their end-of-season stock and discount it ridiculously at a massive street market. Accordingly, Harajuku was literally flooded with people. After we were done with shopping we hoofed it down to Shinjuku, which as it turns out was much further than we thought it would be. I'm not sure how far exactly it was but we definitely earned our Yakitori that night.
Shinjuku is the nightlife centre and really the stereotypical place people think of when they think of Tokyo. This is where there is neon stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction and the outrageously-dressed pretty-young-things parade up and down the main square. It really is beyond describing in words so I'll let the pictures do it for me.
We headed back home at the incredibly late hour of 2230hrs (to be fair, we'd been on our feet for about 12 hours at this point and criss-crossed the better part of three city districts) for a long spa to unwind our knotty muscles and one final night in the capsules.
Up early-ish this morning and checked out of the hotel at midday, thinking we'd have all the time in the world before our 1800hrs flight, but by the time we'd had lunch, schlepped our bags across to the train station, waited for a train that would take us all the way to the airport (about half an hour), then took the hour-long train ride out to Narita and got ourselves checked in and through customs, it all worked out quite neatly. Just finishing typing this e-mail up as they're calling our flight, although there's no free wireless in the airport so I doubt I'll get to send it til we're in NYC, and I'll probably have a whole bunch of other tales to tell! I guess I'll get to that when I get to that.
--- End quote ---
TL:DR; My life is interesting now, and you all have to hear about it! I hope you don't get sick of that. I'll try to make shorter posts from now on as well. Yikes.
Jimor:
--- Quote from: David_Dovey on 20 Jul 2010, 12:21 ---
--- Quote ---... Also; pachinko parlours. Pachinko is kind of a cross between slot machines and video games, and they are EXTREMELY loud. The glass sliding doors leading into the parlour keep all of the noise out but when we went in it was instant and overwhelming, about as loud as any concert I've ever been to. And just like slots, people (of all ages) lined up in front of the machines, who based on how full their ashtrays were, had been there a long time indeed.
--- End quote ---
--- End quote ---
I just have to comment that it is impossible to put into words the assault on the senses that a pachinko parlor really is. Even when just walking near the street on the sidewalk when those sliding doors open is like being hit by a physical force that nearly knocks you into traffic. The dictionary.com definition of "cacophony" should simply be a self-playing .wav that seizes control of your computer volume, cranks it up to absolute maximum, and blares the sounds from within one of these places.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version