Smile and Nod

• Kristymatt's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Tokyo

Trip Start Oct 12, 2005 Previous
Entry Trip End Mar 31, 2006 Next
Entry

  Tokyo, Japan
Wednesday, October 19, 2005

In Japan, when in doubt, just smile and nod. It's worked for us so far!

Despite the fact that arigato and konichiwa are the extent of our current Japanese language learnings, we are really loving Tokyo. We have rented an apartment for the week in the area right outside the center of the city near the Nishi-Ogikubo subway station. It's about a half hour to the middle of the city on the train. Short term apartment rentals are called `weekly mansions` here. The apartment includes a kitchen so we're able to cook for ourselves based on what we can identify at the supermarket across the street. We've mostly been successful except for one incident where we thought we bought low fat milk, but actually got half and half - which is great in tea but terrible in cereal. We usually have breakfast and dinner at the apartment, and eat out for lunch and snacks. It is great for keeping us our budget of $200 US per day

01 The view from the weekly mansion

.

Our visit here has been made much easier by our dear friends Mogan and Kei. Mogan, of course, got us into the Asia travel game by convincing us to visit his home country of Malaysia a few years ago. His wife Kei is very close to delivering their first child (a son) so she gets extra credit for being such a sport during our visit! Mogan has been a wealth of information about Japanese culture and they are both excellent interpreters. Mogan took us to the Sensoji Shrine on Monday after we got rained out of our visit to the Imperial Palace. Mostly, we have just been walking around enjoying the always interesting street life.

We met a nice family who run an Indian restaurant near our apartment. They are from Bangladesh orginally, and have run their restauant for three years. The owner gave us some useful info on navigating the subway, and their son (4 years old) gave us some gum. He was a cutie and spoke to us in Japanese, assuming we could understand. His parents said `No, english!` but he stuck with the Japanese. We will eat there again before we leave.

We've got a tenuous hold on the way the subway works. It's very extensive and involves many lines crossing one another all over the city, all of which require different amounts of payment because they are run by different companies

02 inside the mansion

. Luckily there is a fare adjustment machine near the exit of every station so you can make up the difference. All part of the adventure.

We will be exploring Tokyo until Friday, and then leave for Kyoto on the Shinkasen (bullet train) on Saturday for a few days.

Weird Japanese Things:

Some toilets include a button that makes a fake flushing sound in addition to a real flush, shower and bidet button. And the toilet in our apartment has a sink on top that runs every time you flush.

There are people behind the subway station vending machines. When someone has a question, they knock on a 9 x 12 panel located on the front of the machine and a real person's head pops out and answers the question. We are assuming that the head is connected to a body, but this is Japan so maybe it is a robot head.

Slurping your soup is considered polite. The louder the better.

The meat in the grocery store is exquisitely packaged. The little tiny containers of perfectly diced|skinned chicken wings were particularly great. Also, the cans of coke they sell in the store are teeny-tiny, about a third of the size of an American can.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

03 Mogan and Kristy	04 Kristy and her Bib	05 At the Sensoji Temple	06 Mmm Snacks
07 Wierd Japan - Umbrella Locker	08 - Slippers	09 - Cooking at home	10 - Very Nice Bangladeshi Family

Slideshow Print this entry Share Tokyo hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry