| Submitted by: Mark Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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There is no unpleasant smell in the largest fish market in the world. Toward the front there are some prepackaged goods, toward the back it is mostly raw fish of the boats. If you count dead fish, most of the fish I have seen in my life I saw today. It is a lot of fish.
After that we wanted a restaurant meal, I guess we wanted fish, though toward the end the thought of having fish was not an unalloyed joy. We found a stall and got a rice bowl of maguro, the good part of the tuna, for 700 yen. The bowl was a lot like sushi ingredients served in a different configuration. All this raw fish must be being inspected for parasites by someone before it is served, but we don't see that part of the process. One thing you have to love, if the menu says 700 yen, you pay 700 yen. Period. Which is very civilized of the Japanese. In New Jersey If you get something that says $7, you better have $8.47 in your pocket. Here tax and tip is 0% except in fancy restaurants.
From there we continued our tour past the Asahi Shimbun offices. This is one of the major newspapers of Japan with a circulation of seven million. We were headed to take a boat to Asakusa (pronounced 'Asaksa'). We were going to go by boat, but access is via a park and garden, the Hama Rikyu Garden.
A big sign was up saying that the garden was not open today. This would have put a real crimp in our plans, but one Japanese man was waiting and was waiting to get in and also seemed to have a passion for helping tourists. We saw a lot of him over the next hour or so. The first thing he told us was that the garden would open at 9. It was about 8:45. He had little English, I had almost no Japanese so we used English. He was very helpful and very nice. He suggested a number of day trips that would be good for us to take. At 9 we went in and found the garden to be delightful in ways that I hadn't realized I appreciated Japanese gardens. It was just a beautiful spot with lots of large birds, cranes and ducks among them, flying overhead. There were fish to see and in general it just gave a feeling of real peace. The garden used to be used for duck hunting by the Tokugawa Shoguns. U. S. Grant met with the Meiji emperor here also. You see a lot of building over the tops of the trees, but it is still quite nice.
Water fountains are somewhat hard to use if you are used to American ones. The stream comes up vertically and you control how much comes out. This means if you are not careful you get a shower. Also the water breaks up and goes in all directions.
There was a pavilion in the middle of a pond that we visited. All very nice. Finally the sun came out. At about 10:15 we took the boat for Asakusa. Waiting we ran into the gentleman who was helping us before and tried to hold a conversation. I used to complain in my log about boorish Americans who come to a come to a country without memorizing a bit of the vocabulary. Now I have become one. I really tried, but my memory has gotten worse or there are too few cues in the language, but I retain the Japanese I memorized only for a few minutes. Certainly I cannot recall most of what I need in time to use even the phrases I have memorized. I still remember a bit but not enough and I feel very rude and ignorant.
On the boat our friend acted as guide, pointing out landmarks on each side of the river. I would have liked to do something for his kindness other than to just say arigato, but I was not sure what to do. An article I had read said that if we carried around something inexpensive and American to give out that would be appreciated. I brought a bunch of Star Trek keyrings (how we got them is another story) but was too self-conscious to offer one. I had to settle for an 'arigato' when we got to Asakusa.
The Senso Temple in Asakusa is a bit unusual to American eyes mostly for the carnival atmosphere around temple. We had been to shrines that had concession stands outside, but nothing like this. It was a block long pavilion of people selling toys, souvenirs, cookies, candy, shirts, Japanese bathrobes, and who know what all. There is a carnival next to the Temple on one side and a Shinto shrine on the other. The temple is supposed to have been founded 1300 years ago, by legend when two fishermen found a golden statue of Kannon in their nets. We visited the main building where people tossed coins into a collection box. There are also many getting their fortune told. Getting your fortune told is a mechanical process. You give 100 yen to the temple and shake a box that is filled with sticks and one stick falls out. It has a number corresponding to a numbered drawer. You get a fortune on a slip of paper in the drawer with the same number. It all works like a semi-automated version of casting the I Ching. But if you don't like the fortune you have gotten you can leave it tied to a tree and then the fortune blows away. Actually they usually provide a rack for the purpose of tying fortunes to. You see them there like bows on a braid.
A side yard had someone entertaining the crowd, but whether it was for political reason, to see them something, or what I could not tell. From a vendor we bought and shared a chocolate covered banana.
Evelyn found a listing that Kappabashi-dougugal-dori was supposed to be a street famous for the plastic food that restaurants use in their displays. This dates back to the Meiji Restoration when wax anatomical models were used. A Nara businessman decided that the methods for making anatomical wax models of organs for medical education could be made of food being sold in a restaurant and could entice people into restaurants. Over the years the artistic style has improved and the models now are startlingly real. One food they never try to portray realistically: a cup of coffee is always shown as a cup of coffee beans. Plastic food has also become a sort of pop art outside of Japan.
In spite of the tour book claiming that the plastic food could be found in many shops, we saw it in only two. I guess if you make a special dish, you have to commission special facsimiles to be made. Generally you get a standard model and have to learn to make the dish to look like it.
The street has become more general restaurant supply. It also has become a sort of tourist attraction. It is funny to walk the street and hear from loudspeakers Glenn Miller's 'In the Mood.' It is doubly funny because this was a wartime hit with American troops in the Pacific, if I remember correctly. I suppose it is no stranger than us playing 'Lili Marlene.' They also played Hank Williams's 'On the Bayou.' I wonder how many bayous there are in Japan.
By this point it was 2:30 and there was not much time to left to go to a museum so we went back to the Ryokan, stopping at the post office to get stamps for postage back home. We did necessary sorts of things: logs and laundry.
For dinner we tried a Chinese restaurant not far from the Ryokan. I think we accidentally ordered appetizers only since the meal was rather small. At the next table were a group of about six salarymen and two salarywoman. They were dressed casually or semi-casually and the obvious boss was in a three-piece suit. The boss was being magnanimous and buying a bottle of wine and pouring it for the others at the table. I assume they had all been working on a Saturday and the boss was rewarding everyone with a good meal, perhaps treating or just seeing everybody socially. Everyone at the table was good-looking and trying to be a hale fellow, well-met. This is, after all how a team is forged. Work hard and consider your work buddies your second family. There are, after all, no real off-hours. There is just an important job to be done. Earlier today we talked to an American working for one of these sorts of companies. He often does not come home till one or two in the morning. In any case the whole scene in the restaurant gave me the willies. It is a hell of a price to pay for success.
After dinner we went walking and ended up at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, This is a big concert hall and arts theater. It also is nicely spacious, but it is not all that special. It is noted for its towering escalator ride, but there are escalators as big in the subway. Coming out it was raining again, darn. We returned to the room.
This was probably our most laid-back and do-little day of the trip. Well, I guess we need a little rest now and then. We generally push ourselves pretty hard on vacations. Even when we should be resting we are writing in our logs. And writing really is hard work also.
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10/13/96 Tokyo: Modernization and Modernity
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We had less that we planned today than other days so we worked on our logs in the morning. We left at 9:20 to partly cloudy skies. I guess that is not really an incredibly late start.
Because they have the key interlock for the power in the room we lose the station memory programming from the short-wave and radio each day. It is a bit of an inconvenience that we cannot have any power to our room when we are not actually in it.
We have been skipping breakfast for reasons of time. Then we have been feeling pretty hollow by lunch-time. Today I stopped by our local grocery (where we originally bought sushi before we found better sources) and got two steamed pork buns for breakfast for us. They are certainly cheap enough, about 80 cents a piece. I may keep that as part of the act. That takes me back to Thailand and buying steamed pork buns through the window of a train. That was a great trip. Part of what made that trip good was that it was a good group and part was that Southeast Asia is was a great selection of countries. Japan is a real eye-opening country, but it just isn't as openly exotic. It has bought too much into Western values. Also it is too hard to find the old pre-quake Japan.
The plan for the first part of the day is to walk around Shibuya and later Harajuku. These are the fashion centers of Tokyo, perhaps the most fashion-conscious city I have ever seen.
We get off the train in Hachiko Square, so named because it has the Hachiko statue. Hachiko is the Japanese Greyfriars Bobby. Hachiko was a college professor's dog who would wait for his master at this very square. The professor died in the mid-20s, but the faithful dog would still come to the square every day to wait in case the professor returned. For a decade the dog waited every day. When the dog died national contributions paid for a statue. I believe that Greyfriars Bobby was buried with is master. If you think that is sad, consider Hachiko. His little body was taxidermized and he still stands in the National Science Museum for all to see. In Japan that passes for a real honor. It is a truly Japanese end for the dog. Our first stop was The Loft, supposedly a typical department store. Yup, I'd say it was a pretty typical department store.
NHK is the Japaese Broadcast Company. (You were expecting JBC, maybe?) It is from here that 1500 TV and radio broadcasts are produced each week. Of course we have no TV and we can't pick anything up on the radio and even if we did they charge for admission and everything is in Japanese. Word on the street is that this is not much of a tour really. You are taken through a mock studio with people pretending to broadcast a show. Anything real is behind soundproof glass. It is more a mock tour and definitely not worth the price. We did get a chance to visit their souvenir store and discovered a whole bunch of souvenirs for that popular Japanese program Sesame Street. I guess it is useful for teaching Romanji, but it seems fairly English language oriented. If they broadcast so much radio, how come we can't pick any up? Part of their exhibit is a set of PCs with Netscape looking at their own pages.
TEPCO is only moderately more English-friendly. That is the Tokyo Electric Power Company. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark Leeper" |
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