Tokyooooo

  Tokyo, Japan
Tuesday, May 2, 2006

Tokyo! What a place... We had three fantastic nights here, made all the better for having a Grant (or Guranto as they call him) and Takayuki (or Rookie as we call him) tour guides and translators.
But on our first day it was just the two of us, taking on the subway system armed with three-word vocabularies (well, Shaz knew a few more than that). In pouring rain we went up Tokyo Tower, visited a nearby temple and cemetery site and then travelled up to Asakusa, where we saw the Asahi Beer building (a Phillipe Starck creation, half shaped like a beer glass and the other half topped by what looks like a golden carrot) and found some great markets and another temple. Near this spiritually significant site we checked in on worshippers of another kind - gambling addicts in a Pachinko parlour. Shaz had told me about the noise of these places, with all the millions of ball bearings dropping down through hundreds of machines, but I hadn't imagined just how assaulting on the ears it would be. It was like a massive pokie room with the electronic game sounds turned up to the 'eardrum-piercing' setting, accompanied with a constant crashing sound of the ball bearings. After a couple of minutes our curiosity was satisfied and we got out of there.
That night, after Grant arrived, we went out to dinner near Ginza. Being the eve of a public holiday one of our favourite Japanese sub-species - the drunk businessman - was out in force. We ate a great meal (including, we're proud to say, a serve of chicken cartilage) and then made our way home for a well-deserved sleep.
DAY TWO - After a breakfast of convenience store baked goodies we spent more time in Ginza. The main strip is incredible. It's a long and wide boulevard of multi-story shopping, most of which is very expensive. From there we went to Harajuku to spy on a second well-known sub-species, the Harajuku Girl. The girls have a reputation for dressing in the kookiest clothing possible and hanging around near the train station entrance. While their clothing was bizarre, the display was a touch disappointing. Instead of giving off cool self-confident vibes, the girls (really only 15 or 16 years old) gave the impression of being pretty desperate attention-seekers. Still, we figured, they at least seem happier than their gothic cousins. The Harajuku shopping area was packed with tens of thousands of people, and we enjoyed being part of the human crush slowly moving down the street. That night Rookie, after spending an incredible nine hours stuck in traffic from Nagoya to Tokyo, arrived and we went out to a kind of German beer hall in Ginza. Later we went to Rapongi, which has a very different feel to anywhere else, with more westerners, particularly Americans around. We grabbed a few beers at a good little below-ground pub, posed for photos with a drunk wedding guest squatting asleep in the street, and then went home.
DAY THREE - Since Rookie had his car, going to see a giant Buddha statue at Kamakura seemed like a good idea. Well it wasn't. Because it was Golden Week (a week of national public holiday) traffic out of Tokyo all the way to Kamakura was insane. A 100km or so trip took about 3.5hours. And when we got there this very old little town's main street was so congested it was simply impossible for Rookie to park. So Grant, Shaz and I went in, saw the Buddha, had an ice cream and then jumped back in Rookie's still-moving car. The trip home was much better, and it was great to drive past the incredible sprawling port of Yokohama. That afternoon we went to Akihabara, which is an electronics geek's paradise. More or less the entire suburb is made up of electronics stores, and it was no coincidence the majority of people on the street were of a nerdish persuasion. After buying a gizmo or two we headed home, then went out to dinner. The ever-generous Rookie shouted us dinner at a lovely little place that cooked tempura just for us. Rookie and I had a couple of beers back in his hotel room and then called it a night.
DAY FOUR - One of the things on our Tokyo wish list had been a visit to the Fish Market, which supplies all of Tokyo and much of the surrounding region. Because it was closed the previous days we had to get up super early to fit in a visit before our flight out. We only spent a hectic 15 minutes there, as that was all time would allow, but it was fascinating to see the utter chaos of motorbikes, carts, trucks and forklifts zooming about the narrow alleyways an the enormous tuna that had been sold at auction. Rookie asked one of the sellers how much one of the bigger tunas was worth and was told about $3,000. We took some happy snaps and then made tracks for the train station. We sadly said farewell to Rookie at the station, and then Grant came out the airport to see us off. After three very enjoyable, and satisfyingly weird at times, days we flew out of Japan to Ireland.