Tokyo To

Time to try to update this post, hoping that blogger doesn't choke on it this time. There is a certain amount of Russian roulette involved in using public, shared computers & network I guess... (but hey, in only 3 weeks my sister will be bringing my beloved powerbook to Japan!).

So, let me tell you a bit about what I have been up to, the short answer is "a lot"! The last 10 days have been spent settling in to Tokyo life and doing a decent amount of sightseeing, here are some of the highlights:

School: I have classes every week day from 9 AM to 1 PM. The school is about 50 minutes away (using the train system) however we usually leave around 7.30 in order to catch one of the earlier trains that are not quite as crowded - minimizing the sardine-ni-fication factor... (danish joke, sorry folks...;) The 40 minutes I have to wait for classes to start are spent with Starbucks Coffee ("shorto latte hotto") & home work, both of which seem to significantly improve my Japanese... which by the way is still fairly minimal although It is a great pleasure to experience that i am starting to understand things. For example the waitress at a sushi place we went to tonight told us to "please be careful the tea is hot" and I understood all the words (--however it only takes 3 words to say this in Japanese...). I have also learned the entire Hiragana character set, which means that I am starting to enjoy reading the ads on the train etc. - not that i know what the words I am reading mean, but I can read them, at least some of them: up next are the Katakana characters and of course the endless list of Kanjis, which I doubt I'll ever make it through (I so far haven't met any foreigner who'd claim to know any significant amount of them)...

Other fun stuff: As i mentioned in my last post, I've made friends with Carrie & Tag who are here from DC. Given their previous knowledge of Tokyo & their Japanese skills, we've been able to get around quite a bit. School has also been a great source of 'cultural activities' -- here's a short list:

Visit to Kamakura which for a while was the JP capital, loong time ago (see link for details) and which now/still boasts around 70 different shrines as well as the quite impressive "Daibutsu" that is in one of these pictures. We were extremely lucky to get to visit during Hanemi (Cherry Blossom Viewing), it was a simply amazing day and a day trip I'd highly recommend to anyone visiting Tokyo.

Next up was a Sunday visit to Harajuku (where the crazy-li made up JP teenagers hang out on Sundays and inspiration for Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Girl song). We rounded this off with a visit to the Meiji Shrine, where we got to witness a Shinto wedding (Cherry Blossom season is also wedding season).

More cherry blossoms around the imperial palace, in Ueno park and in Shinjuku Park - the latter features the apparently famous cherry blossom trees that boom in two colors at once (pinl and white).

A visit to Yasukuni Shrine & museum, which is the Shrine that has gotten Japan or rather prime minister Koizumi in trouble with other Asian nations as it is dedicated to Japanese War Heroes. A group that includes people who are considered war criminals elsewhere... (the sheer mentioning of the name here, will ensure my blog being banned from Chinese web browsing forever...)

A Sakura Viewing Cruise through Asakusa, followed by a visit for a shrine/market (this one is pretty famous too, but of course I forgot the name...

Shopping in Shinjuku

A visit to Tokyo Tower - the Eiffel Tower of Tokyo, with a pretty grand view...

And finally a visit to a Sumo tournament! This was a school activity, we were quite lucky that their happened to be a free/open to the public tournament very close to our school last week. It was quite a treat to sit in the grass eating take out sushi while seeing the big boys getting it on... I should have some good pictures of this available at some point, including one of Carrie & I posing with one of the wrestlers.


Food: I've decided to give food a special mention, as I've had a lot of it and most of it has been very very good. Just tonight i probably had the best Tuna I have ever eaten in a Sushi restaurant close to our local train station. They keep their own salt water tank in the store, so the fish really is as fresh as it gets I guess. The place itself was neat as well, laid out like a conveyor belt sushi place, no belt however, but sushi chefs attending to your every wish directly, preparing every piece right there. This is probably not a big deal here, but pretty impressive to me and as noted, most of all very very tasty... Other treats I have tried include:

Natto-sushi-roles, a unique and unforgettable Japanese experience of fermented soybeans served with rice and seaweed. Natto smells like old sneakers and the taste is not that different, so OK, Natto might have been a one time experience.

Okinomiyaki, a type of do-it-yourself-at-your-table omelet. Very good.

Sukiyaki, another do-it-yourself-at-your-table thing, this time all you can eat Meat & Veggies grilled. (To give you an idea: this is where I would have taken my old MRF team out to dinner, the boys would have loved this place...)

Yukiniku, meat, onions, some sauce, rice -- very good...

Curry, lots of Japanese Curry, which interestingly is more like the danish version of Curry than any other Asian version I know...

and, I confess, a decent amount of Starbucks, which happens to be close to school (although actually they are everywhere here) and which is just too tempting in the morning. I am however happy to say that the 6 USD Tokyo Latte is a myth. A tall (12oz) Latte will set you back 340YEN, aka 3 USD and hence pretty much the same as in the US. In general i have found many things like groceries and eating out (depending on the restaurant of course) surprisingly reasonable compared to the JP prices horror stories I had heard, it's really not that different/much more expensive...

I'll finish this entry with a wonderful picture of an English language menu we found at a small curry place in Kamakura. Mind you that most places do not have English language menus, so this one is really quite novel/impressive in that regard -- it's also quite entertaining in others, such as the listing of cold "Bear"...