The first place we went after changing money at the airport (if you go, remember to activate your rail pass at Narita, because the rail pass exchange stations are not actually *that* common) was the supermarket.
I stand and stare at the japanese writing on the signs above the carrots. Then I stare at the three-times-too-wide and two-times-too-short carrots under the sign. Then I stare at the strange vegetable next to the carrots.
posted by wtanaka at
11/05/2002 04:50:00 AM
Today was the first day that I:ve been here that Liane had to go to work at her high school. So I spent my time trying to find internet access. It:s taken until about 8:30pm tokyo time (about an hour ago) for me to find it.
I got out of the house, called Aeon and Shoko, and found that I had forgotten my rail pass at home. So I went back home, picked it up, forgot lianes "tokyo for free" book, and headed out to Ueno station, assuming that was the right direction for finding the noname brand building that Shoko told me had some internet access on the first floor. This risk turned out well -- after about 5 minutes of starting every which way at a rail map, i found yurakucho station one south of tokyo station, and headed there. the turnstiles there dumped me out into a town called Ginza, which is one of Tokyo:s many many shopping districts.
Each of these districts has blocks and blocks of six to nine-story buildings. the buildings have vertical signs hanging off of their corners with each of the 15 stores names and logos printed on the signs. so when you look down the street, you see a grid of 150 store names, all in japanese. i ended up wandering around Ginza for about 2 hours. Along the way I did find a stationary store where I bought some expensive cards to use as flash cards.
i gave up on finding this store, after asking a few people where the building was and still not being able to find it. i found the sony showroom in Ginza, and spiraled up the showrooms through small minidisc and CD players, a BMW 5 series, some restaurants, and some amazing televisions and sound systems. inside, i saw some blonde people, so i asked them if they happened to speak english. yes, they did, they were from london in fact, and i could find internet in the Virgin Megastore in Shibuya.
I finished my wandering through the showroom, and happened upon them on the way down. We danced on the music-playing stairs down to the first basement, and went out for coffee and a brief tour of the imperial palace which they didn:t see yet.
serenity.
we met up there with Akira, bicycle courier, who spends his time hanging out at the imperial palace to practice speaking english with the tourists. he asked us a lot of questions and eventually took us past his bike to a small park across the street and then up to the 36th floor of this newly constructed building. we got up there about 10 minutes before the sun set over mt. fuji.
we all parted ways in that building, and i went to ebisu station to meet up with Aeon. She took me to a stylish looking cafe in Ebisu, where neither of us was able to read the menu. My "ice co-hee" wasn:t sweet enough, even after pouring *all* of the sugar water in it. Aeon thought that my coffee's sugar content was hilarious. I did too actually. But it was the only thing on the menu that i knew how to order.
Aeon gave me tips on more places that i might be able to find internet, and we're going to talk later in the week to try to go to Kyoto together.
posted by wtanaka at
11/05/2002 04:47:00 AM
i am in a virgin megastore in japan, on an ibook with a japanese keyboard. it:s hard to type on this keyboard because it:s strangely sized, and all of the punctuation is in the wrong places. make that are in the wrong places. see how my apostrophes come out as colons? also, every so often i hit the magic combination of keys that changes the keyboard mode to japanese input, and i start typing in hiragana. i don:t know the keyboard combo to get back into USA mode, so i have to use the touchpad to try to get out of it.
some things i:ve noticed:
2002 november 4
everything here is so well designed, from the quickness with which sponges and shower floors dry to the plastic bags in stores which tear off with minimal effort without spinning reams of bags off of the roll to the shopping carts in stores which glide in every direction.
[ah, how naive i was... the lack of street names, lack of city planning, lack of credit card usage are definite minuses]
i went to abiko english class with liane on sunday. madoka, chizu, and keichiro took us out to sushi after class. really nice people. i picked up my rail pass from ueno station, and liane and i walked around the area. we visited tokyo jidai matsuri temple in asakusa where liane bought me a fortune (100 yen). it turned out to be "worst luck." ha ha, i thought.
about 5 minutes later, the cheap flash card in my camera failed, and all my pictures for saturday and sunday (including pictures of the abiko class members) were no longer fetchable from my camera. the fortune said that something would be lost then found. . . eventually. i am hoping that it was talking about my pictures. liane bought me a good luck charm. the luck salesman said it was good for everything on travels. one-stop-luck-shopping. i also washed myself off with some magical smoke. hopefully that was enough to ward off the "worst luck."
on monday, i went to shin yokohama with shige and liane where we visited the ramen museum. it:s apparently well known around here.. we walked in, and there were displays full of bowls, displays full of dried ramen noodles, displays full of paper-covered styrofoam ramen cups, displays of chopsticks, and some televisions playing ramen movies. there was a store in the back with all kinds of ramen paraphenalia.
then we went down into the basement.
we entered a dark hallway made up with rustic and ancient storefronts. halfway around this hallway, we came out onto a cavernous room with ramen stands and a throng of people standing in serpentine lines outside the stands.
now is a good time to mention something else about japan. as you picture any of these scenes, imagine someone walking into you every 10 or 15 seconds. it:s the norm here. when i go to another country, where pickpocketing is more common, i:ll probably just ignore the pickpocketers because i:m so conditioned to being bumped.
we waited in line for about 15 minutes for some ramen (some of the lines were 75 minutes long). it was okay.
that afternoon we went to yokohama (port side) and visited yamashita park, chinatown, and went up yokohama tower. the views of the park from the tower were gorgeous.
chinatown was tiny compared to san francisco:s chinatown or even oakland:s chinatown. and all the food was amazingly expensive -- even for japan.
It:s amazing to me how little of the experience it:s possible to get into words.
