Friday dawned warm and sunny and we determined that today was the day to conquer the subway system and the Edo-Tokyo Museum. The SUICA card which our friends had provided for us is a magical all-in-one card that is primarily meant for local in-city train travel within Tokyo, Kyoto and other cities, but which can also be used to buy odds and bobs from local shops or kiosks in the train stations and around the city. A glorified cash card which you top off with real cash at various machines located conveniently everywhere and which one could easily use up as you move through your business day. A great concept requiring no pin codes, no fumbling for change, no hassle in a society made up of trusting individuals.
Like any subway system, Tokyo's looks like a messy bowl of spaghetti when you examine its 'helpful' diagrams posted everywhere, but there is a logic to it all assuming one is not color-blind. But, since Bob IS color blind, and asking help in English was not promising to be successful, we had asked the hotel to write down our destination - the Edo-Tokyo Museum - in Kanji so that we could show this to people who while they may not understand us, could at least point us in the right direction were we to get lost.
While all signage in the stations and trains is shown in Kanji and Romaji (English letters representing the Japanese word), and most public announcements are done in both languages we entered the new world of the underground with a bit of trepidation. But,as expected, we got to the museum stop with no problem grateful that we weren't handicapped as we raced up and down stairs, escalators and other level-changing devices along with the white-masked, brief-case toting hoards. Like New York there is a warren of opportunity to shop below ground with every known type of vending machine, food stall and concession stand and every place was a curiosity which had to be examined. When we finally came back up to ground level we were near the Sumo Wrestling Arena and the vendors were selling t-shirts with local very-large heroes on them, along with all manner of tourist chatchki. At this point we were obliged to use our trusty hotel-provided Kanji card for people to point us in the direction of the museum where we paid our entry fee, and started our visit.
The museum is fairly new and has been designed to show the two main periods of the city - pre Meiji era (Edo) and post (Tokyo). It is physically divided on each floor into these two periods and one learns about how people lived, were entertained, worked and were educated. There were beautiful miniature re-creations of palaces, shogun establishments, and areas of the city and full size mock-ups of houses, kabuki theaterstages and shops. And amidst all this were display cases with important documents and artifacts all described in Japanese and English. The focus seemed to be on the socio-economic environment as it was affected by history. The period in which Bob was most interested - 1914 - 1946 - the war years, was somewhat 'glossed over' and edited for local consumption which was interesting and telling in its own way. I of course, was looking for memorabilia of the 1920's when Daddy and Walter were here.
What was most impressive to me was the concerted, focused effort to become Westernized in an amazingly short period of time. With the goal of becoming less isolated after hundreds of years of being ruled by the shoguns everything changed: trade was increased; steam engines were brought in; clothing styles changed to western wear; western foods were introduced; education systems were changed to match Europe; cars were introduced along with the British driving system; hair styles were drastically changed and men were told to cut off their top knots, and the emperor, much to every one's amazement dressed in Western clothing and set the tone for the future. Some of this made sense, some had to be super-imposed on a very Oriental culture, and much had to be blended to take advantage of both. And so it remains today. Japan remains fairly isolated, and while it is an economic force in the world marketplace, its society at home remains insular.
After a good three+ hours, which we both enjoyed, we returned to the hotel, foot sore, but far more aware of this city and its history. In search of a cooling glass of beer we went to a promising Belgian Beer hall, only to discover that unlike Europe, beer establishments in the heart of Tokyo only seem to open in the late afternoon. We assume that is to keep the hard working employees sober until end of day. So back to the hotel we went to write the blog and sip a room-service beer while watching some baseball.
Baseball, Japanese-style is great fun. The teams have both borrowed names and logo so that there were theTokyo Giants, the Carps (with the iconic red 'C' of the Cincinnati Reds), the Swallows and others. The fans in the stands were all chanting for their teams and had two sticks attached with a string that they banged together in unison. While the sportscasters were speaking Japanese and the scoreboard was in Japanese it could have been NESN with a different set of players. Only difference for me was that while in the US the team would be made up of Hispanics, Japanese, Blacks and Caucasians, here it was 99% Japanese. Melting pot it wasn't. If we got bored watching Japanese games, there were just as many games re-played from the US, so that we watched a NY Yankees/Boston Red Sox game all explained in a language we don't understand.
After a lovely French bistro dinner of Steak Frites, wine and "1664" beer, we called it a day.
Saturday we felt lazy so we slept in, wrote more blog and then arranged to ship ahead our luggage. This is a wonderful concept we need to adopt in other countries. For a very nominal fee, your large luggage pieces are shipped ahead to your next hotel where they await your arrival. We were promised that if we gave the pieces to the concierge by 3:00 p.m., they would be waiting for us at the hotel in Kyoto when we arrived the next day. Because most trains provide little to no luggage storage for large suitcases most Japanese use this approach to leap-frog their luggage ahead of them and then carry only an over-nighter small bag onto the train. Hassle-free travel so much nicer than dragging large bags up and down stairs, onto track platforms, fighting for space on the train, muscling it back off. We are converts.
We had arranged to meet Narumi Hirose at 4:30 for an early sushi dinner and what a wonderful experience that was. The restaurant she had chosen is very popular (both for the quality and the price of its sushi) and the lines can be horrendous and thus our early arrival. We could have eaten at the counter which had a continuous chain of sushi plates passing by your eyes with the sushi chef in the middle feeding the chain, or we could sit at a table. We chose the table which too had an interesting approach: one was given a digital tablet on which every fish was portrayed with its price, you picked your fish and the number of plates you wanted, and hit enter. Within minutes your sushi arrived with appropriate sauces. At the end of our booth was a large 6" cube box holding enough ginger to satisfy even Bob who eats it like salad and containers of soy sauce. Unfortunately everything was in Kanji only so we were dependent on Narumi to manage the tablet which she did perfectly. Every bite was amazing, and our pile of plates accumulated at the end of the table. We were pikers compared to some diners who had piles two feet tall. At the end they count the number and type of the plates and the bill is totaled on the tablet and sent to the check-out counter where we went to pay. The waiting line at 6:00 was down a long corridor and wrapped around a wall. A fabulous find on the 5th floor of a high rise modern shopping mall right across from our hotel but which we would NEVER have found on our own.
The whole evening was a delight - getting to know Narumi who is the girl friend of Pete Shirling (Bob's high school buddy); eating fabulous sushi; getting to see more of the hidden malls in Tokyo; and lastly shopping for doo-dads at Bic Camera, an emporium of all things electronic. And thus our first week in Tokyo ends.
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