How the Jones Clan Tuned in Tokyo

Well, as some of you all know the Mrs. and I recently took a vacation to Japan. We went in the beginning of October and stayed about a week. Good times to say the least. We started our journey around the globe on Saturday morning and arrived in Japan on Sunday night, about 16 hours or so of flying so that includes a notable time change of 14 hours. Needless to say this was a recipe for really f-ing our sleep schedules. We did our best to avoid that little trouble spot by taking an Ambien on the flight out. This helped somewhat, but we were still a little bit off.

Prior to leaving, we had purchased a week long Japan railpass which allowed us to ride the bullet trains and other trains in Tokyo. So when we landed we learned that we still had another hour and a half on a train before we got to our hotel in Tokyo. One thing we quickly found out about Japan is that trains are very well scheduled, and extremely punctual. So when you are waiting for a train there are signs that say the next train will arrive at 5:17 for example, and they most certainly arrive at that minute. So it's nice to know exactly how long to wait, however if you are running late you will most definitely miss your train. We went from the airport to a train station called Shinjuku. This is known to be one of the busiest, most complicated and biggest train stations in the world. So that was a nice little test for us right out of the gate. English is not widely spoken at all, and very little signage is in English. I quickly learned how to ask if someone spoke English in Japanese, this was moderately useful as invariably the response to my query would be the person holding up their thumb and forefinger near one another to indicate "little". Little, varied from full English sentences to no English at all. Luckily for us, Japanese people are without a doubt the nicest and most patient people we've ever come across. So people were very willing to try and help even if communication was difficult. Eventually, we found our way out of the trainstation, but not before exiting improperly and being verbally reprimanded (I think) by a security officer at the exit.

After a little difficulty, we did find our hotel only a short walk away. The rooms were predictably small, but not crazy and very clean. Cleanliness is unbelievable everywhere in Japan. Also, the toilets there are worth telling about. First the "western toilets", aka toilets like we have here are extremely high-tech. They almost always have a seat warmer, and they typically have a little nozzle that extends/retracts to offer bidet/shower services for your back-door. What a great treat I found this was. I was little skeptical of the shower/bidet feature initially but quickly became spoiled by its benefits. If given the opportunity to use one, I highly recommend it. The other toilet style, typically found in older buildings or public buildings is a traditional Japanese toilet which is essentially a rectangular hole in the ground. You just squat over it and go, it flushes and everything. Very weird to me, and not something I'm interested in trying again. So enough about the toilets.

The first night we were there, we went for sushi, naturally. This was the best sushi I've ever tasted, unbelievably fresh and delicious. Ordering is sometimes an adventure. There were some items we didn't recognize and had to look up later on. For the most part everything was delicious though. I also found a vending machine that sold beer. What a grand idea this is. If only americans could adopt this, it would be great. Also, vending machines are everywhere, and nearly anything you can think of can be purchased in a vending machine.

The next day we woke up very early and went to a fish market. This place is crazy and tons of people everywhere. It is essentially the main fish market for all of tokyo and there is every kind of fish you can imagine freshly caught on ice to be purchased. Many items are still alive even, this was a really cool experience. Giant section of bright red-tuna necessitating a band-saw to even begin cutting them. All kinds of stuff that neither of us recognized. It was cool though because while there were certainly tourists here, it was most definitely a blue collar place of business first and foremost. Tourism seemed more of an aside, rather than the focus of the whole operation which was to catch and sell fish. In order to get here we took the Tokyo subway. This was very much like the bullet trains in that they were extremely punctual with posted times for when the next train would arrive. These were entirely different than New York subways. First they were extremely clean and extremely quiet (both the train itself and the people on it). So you can imagine the odd looks we got when Anne kept farting loudly and laughing about it, just kidding. The rest of the day we spent wandering around different parts of Tokyo that were near our hotel. We to the Tokyo equivalent of a red light district. This was interesting, and somewhat frightening because there was a pet store located right in the middle of this place (take that where you will).

After that, we headed back to our room for a quick nap and then it was out for the evening. We went out to eat at a place that served shabu shabu. I hadn't ever tried this before, but I definitely will again. It's sort of like fondu. You sit at a table and you have this big bowl of broth on your table that is on a burner. You go to a buffet style counter and pick out all of these vegetables and herbs and things like that. Then you bring it back and dump it in the broth so they cook and flavor the broth at the same time. Then the server brings you trays of raw beef and pork that is sliced really thin. You drag these slices through the broth to cook them and then you eat them. This is awesome, I loved this meal. So we (I) embarassed ourselves (myself) by eating a ridiculous amount of beef and pork. So good, I couldn't quit. Afterward, we headed out and happened in a very local restaurant/bar that we decided to pop in. This place was really cool, and certainly not a spot where tourists would normally go. We had a few beers here and were clearly fascinating the other patrons. Eventually we took some pictures and attempted to communicate with these guys, but didn't have much luck. One of the girls at the bar, clearly wasted, stopped to bow to us about 100 times on her way out. After this, we were doing pretty good and decided to attempt one of the quintessential Japanese experiences, karaoke. They have clubs devoted to this all over the place. However, they take it extremely seriously, unlike us. Fortunately, a lot of the clubs are set up where you have your own private room. This is what we did. In the room it was just us, and they have the machine, two microphones, and even a tambourine. They also bring you beer by just picking up a little telephone and asking (or in our case, mumbling some attempted Japanese and them just giving up, coming to our room, and letting us point at what we wanted). This was surprisingly fun. We had a serious blast doing this.

So the next morning, hung over, and a little worse for the wear we awoke early and went to Nara. Anne wasn't feeling well, so she slept on the bullet train and I enjoyed the ride. If given the opportunity to ride on one of these across Japan, I highly recommend it. I think uttered the phrase, "holy shit, we are hauling ass" about 50 times. Every time you think it's at top speed, you feel another gear kick in and it takes off even more. The amazing thing was it was the smoothest ride, no noise other than a little wind, no bumps or jolts, just smooth as butter at about 180-200 miles per hour, amazing. Smooth enough that I could set my beer on the window sill and never worry about it tipping on me (that's right, they sell beer everywhere here, and everyone takes advantage, when in Rome...). So we arrived in Nara a few hours later and headed to our hotel. This hotel was extremely old, and extremely cool. Nara is a relatively small place. OK, really small. But it is cool and we really had a good time here. The big attraction in Nara is the huge park. There is a giant park here with lakes and things, and a HUGE population of deer...that are tame. I was led to believe that this is the only place in the world with deer that are of this nature. You can buy these little crackers and the deer will eat them right out of your hand. Anne was, needless to say, in love with this idea. It was cool. The other thing we tried here was conveyor belt sushi. I'm sure there is a proper name for it, but that's what we called it. A little belt goes around with various sushi on the plates and you just pull off what you want and eat it. They bill you based on how many plates you have, and each color of plate represents a different price.

The next morning was a short train ride to Kyoto. Kyoto, is a massive city as well, not as big as Tokyo, but big. Here we stayed the first two nights in a traditional Ryokan. This is very old school. You have to leave your shoes at the door, and then there are slippers you have to wear. One set of slippers is for one part of the house, and the other is for another part. Then, in your room, no shoes at all are allowed. We promptly made this faux pas, and were reprimanded accordingly. The rooms are all very traditional. They had a handly little info. booklet, and each room in a Ryokan (any Ryokan) has to contain certain elements like a little sitting area, plants, and other stuff that is very detailed. The people that ran this were a married couple, extremely nice, and the wife was dressed in traditional Japanese attire with the robes and her hair up etc. She was perpetually saying thank you to us in Japanese. When I say perpetually, this is not an exaggeration, she would just thank us for no apparent reason at all times. We had a traditional home cooked breakfast and dinner, this was delicious. Some of it weird, but it was all really, really good. They also had a traditional bath here, with the rock pool and extremely hot water in it. Oh, and you have to shower before you get in the bath so as to keep the bath clean. The bath was refreshing, and cool to experience. Also, one night, Anne got up and went to the bathroom in the middle of the night (a shared bathroom here) and saw a spider that she described as being about a foot across in diameter, crawling on the floor, good times.

During one of our days in Kyoto, we took a train to Kobe, home of the famous beef. We went to an amusement park, rode a roller coaster that was clearly for youths as I could barely fit in it. We went to a haunted house, also clearly for youths. Then we got our pictures made in these photo booths, where I was the only nonfemale involved. Also, everyone was 13 or younger, except one pair of women who were 60 and 100 respectively. Speaking of young girls. I was quite the attraction, in Kobe and everywhere we went. Evidently a male over 5'6" with pasty skin and large red beard = hilarious. Scores of tee-hee's and giggle's followed me around, I thought this was pretty awesome. The main thing I wanted to do in Kobe was eat some beef. So we ate at this restaurant where I had undoubtedly the best steak I've ever tasted in my life. It was literally like a piece of beef flavored butter, so freakin' delicious. Totally worth every penny, and the pinnacle of beef as I know it.

After our day in Kobe we went back to spend the night in Kyoto again. We went to out an area of Kyoto that is famous for Geisha girls. We did in fact several of them, they weren't keen on having their picture taken, so I only got a couple of them from the side or back. That night we went to this performance which was a medley of acts where each one demonstrated a traditional aspect of Japanese culture from a tea ceremony, to various musical acts, to puppet shows and all sorts of things. Overall, we thought this was pretty lame. Oh well, an experience anyway. We decided to eat shabu shabu again in this geisha neighborhood. This was worthwhile because we saw an extremely drunk old man wobble out accompanied by two geisha's notably younger than him.

Finally, the next day it was back to Tokyo for our last night. We checked into a different hotel this time in a different neighborhood. We were almost directly on the corner that is often shown in movies where a few streets intersect and when the crosswalks stop the traffic a ridiculous mass of humanity crosses the street all at the same time, literally thousands of people. We let luck guide us for food and drink tonight, mostly drink. We went into a really cool small jazz club, with only about 10 seats. This was extremely cool, but also was closing shortly after we arrived so we only stayed for 45 minutes or so. We happened in 3 or 4 really cool places, including a small bar that was younger people mostly so that was interesting to see as well. Finally, we had to get food at the end of the night. We found a traditionaly noodle shop, very divey, near our hotel. This was a perfect cap as it was cheap, and the one type of food we hadn't tried yet but wanted to. The men working were all extremely nice, and the noodles were amazingly delicious. It was a wonderful meal, and a great way to go out. The next morning we woke up, did some brief shopping and then it was back to the U.S. after another lengthy flight. Japan is a great place to visit, and an experience so unique from anything we've ever done. We both recommend it for the amazing food and the culture.