Turning Japanese [day 2]

We woke up on Sunday morning after a quite light sleep, since we had neither an alarm clock nor a wake up call to let us know when the time was right. We got ready and headed out, and took the Chiyoda (hehe) line to the hotel where we were meeting the tour group. We were good and early, so we looked around for a place to get breakfast, but there was NOTHING. Weird, in Seoul there are 40 places to eat on each corner. A guy walks over to us saying “gray line, gray line” (the name of our tour company), and then asks me “Brown? Mr. John Brown?” “That’s her… I guess.” For some reason people are always thinking Bree Teacher is a man, but this is the first time someone has called her John. He takes us to a waiting taxi, and this takes us to another hotel where the bus is waiting for us, and we meet our tour guide, and the bus driver: “The best bus driver in Tokyo,” whose name, the guide tells us, is “Mr. Best Driver.”

Our tour guide takes us to our first stop: Tokyo Tower. This tower, she explains, is the exact same style, shape, and size as the Eiffel Tower. Whoever came up with the idea of Tokyo Tower liked the Eiffel Tower so much (and they were so lazy) that they just copied it exactly. However, in some strange attempt to prove that their tower was better, they put an antenna on top of Tokyo Tower, so it’s just thismuch taller. Plus, they painted it neon orange. It was a pretty cool view, and their mascots are two brothers, and they’re some sort of squid-tower hybrid, so they’re fairly enjoyable.

Next, we went to the Meiji Shrine to check out “the finest example of Japanese shrine architecture, nestled in a peaceful, picturesque area.” We passed through a gate that was made from trees that are 1500 years old. This is supposed to purify the body, as is the water that our tour guide MADE us clean ourselves with: you pour it over your hands, and rinse your mouth with it – Bree Teacher drank it (although we both totally drank the holy water at a temple in Busan – oops).

The best thing we saw at the Shrine, for sure, was the traditional Japanese wedding that was happening. Everyone in the whole party was decked out in fancy robes and kimonos. The bride, though, had a bright white, huge kimono, and on her head she wore a big white hood. The tour guide explained it to us: she said that as soon as a woman gets married, she starts to get jealous of her husband, so she wears a hood to cover her “horns of jealousy” that grow out of her head.

Our next several sights were just “drive-bys”: we saw the national Diet building, which is basically a Parliament, but with a fancy name (it was quite a-bustle, since we saw it on the day of the national election); we saw the Akasaka Guest House, which foreign heads of state used to stay when they visited Tokyo (also of note, its exterior is “based on” – ripped off from – Buckingham Palace… I’m sensing a theme here); we saw the Russian Embassy in Tokyo, which had the most intense armed guards on all side of it – Japan and Russia are having a land dispute over some islands north of Japan, and they had been having a lot of protestors and other riffraff in the area; we saw the Ginza shopping district, which is apparently world famous.

Our tour guide led us around here, as she did at every stop, by having us follow a flag she hoisted up that was covered in cartoon cats. As if a group of “American” tourists did make enough of a spectacle in Japan, she drew more attention to us. In Ginza we stopped for lunch at a traditional Japanese-style restaurant. We had lots of little samples of different Japanese dishes, to give us a taste for the food. It was pretty delish all in all. After lunch we headed back to the bus, and met our new tour guide (for some reason there was a different one for the afternoon). His name is Ricky, and he was hilarious, he told us lots of funny stories, and he had lots of really interesting information about each of the places we visited.

But let me introduce you to my nemesis... I had bought a bottle of gingerale at the temple, and I had it in the cupholder in front of me on the bus. The guy sitting in the seat in from of me had his hands over the back of the seat, and putting them all up in my grill. Then he starts fiddling with my bottle! I have to drink from there, buddy, I don’t know where you hands have been! The whole trip, he’s just flinging his hands around over the back of his seat. And to make matters worse, at our next stop, the Tasake Pearl Gallery (where we learned how to cultivate pearls), HE WON A FREAKING PEARL! Of all the people that could have won. Also, his friend pretended that he won a pearl too. He was going to steal a pearl from an old Japanese man, but the guy caught him “Sir, that’s a nine, not a six…”

Next we drove to the Sumida River and we went on a riverboat cruise. Bree Teach and I were, perhaps, a little trepidatious, after our last cruising disaster, but this one was super fun, and at no point did we approach a drowning state. Just like in Seoul, every bridge that crosses the river is different from every other one. At the ending port of the cruise, we saw a man playing a harmonica and… pans. Simultaneously.

Then Riicky led us through a Shopping Street called Nakamise, which led to a Temple at the far end. We didn’t have much time to browse, because we were trying to hard to follow his teddy -bear -on -a -stick that kept us together, and because Ricky can really move. He was practically running through there. The temple was cool, and interesting and all, but we’ve done temples so many times, so you better believe Bree Teach and I cruised through there and ran back to the shopping street before we left for our next stop—

The Temple was our last real stop on the tour, but we had some more “drive-bys” on our way back to people’s hotels. We saw three more shopping districts: the first is called Kappabashi, and it’s probably the strangest shopping district I’ve ever heard of. In Japan, and in Korea, restaurants have displays of their food outside their restaurant to show people what their food looks like. These foods, though, are made of plastic. Kappabashi is where they make and sell these. Ricky said they’re ridiculously expensive. The next shopping district was Ueno, and it had a black market where you could buy shoes and bags and things. The third is called Akihabara, and it has hundreds and hundreds of electronics stores.

…So we got of the bus here, instead of being driven back to our hotel. We shopped around Akahabara for a while (and later Ueno). We also went for dinner in what is, quite possibly, the best kind of restaurant I’ve ever seen. Anywhere. It’s a sushi restaurant, but you don’t have to order anything, the sushi just goes around and around on a conveyer belt, and the chefs just keep putting more on, and then at the end count how many plates there are, and each plate has a different price.



I could have died from deliciousness… Except the most embarrassing moment of my life happened here… I like to pretend I’m a pro at sushi, so I got a little dish and poured some soy sauce in. In between the soy sauce and the ginger there’s a little dish of green powder. Wasabi, I assume, because it’s a sushi restaurant, what else would it be? I’m a big fan of wasabi, so I take a scoop and mix it in with my soy sauce. I dip in my sushi… It’s not very spicy, so I put in some more “wasabi.” Eventually, just before we’re about to leave, the waitress comes over to Bree Teach, points to the green powder, and says “Tea!,” and mixes her a cup of green tea. The whole time, I had been mixing green tea powder with soy sauce. I want to die.

So, we promptly left the restaurant, and went back to the shopping districts. We got the strangest dessert on the street. It’s something called Moffle, and I still haven’t figured out quite what it is. It tastes sort of like chipped ice. Sort of approaching an ice cream-like taste. But it has the look and texture approximately like insulation. After dessert, we decided to try to walk back to our Ryokan. Bad idea, since we had no idea where it was. Luckily, Tokyo has maps everywhere, So, after an interesting trek through some water plants, and a park with about 1000 wild cats, we made it back safe and sound---