Our Japanese experience began aboard the Japan Airlines flight.
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It was also here that we first encountered words in "Engrish" - English the Japanese way. But given that we got a small pot of Haagen Dazs ice cream for desert, all grammatical errors were forgiven.
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Two choices of food were provided: a "Japanese" meal and a "western" meal. Of course, we chose the Japanese one, and ate it with chopsticks. We later noticed that most tourists chose the Japanese meal, while the Asians on the plane were all eating the western-style steak with a fork. By the way, if you ever fly with JAL, ask them for plum wine - it's delicious!
Meanwhile Alaskan mountains were whooshing below.
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Everything in the airport was straight forward with all signs in both Japanese and English (we later realized it was the case for all other methods of transportation as well). There, we changed our JR Pass receipts for the actual passes, hopped on the Narita express and got off at the recently renovated Tokyo station.
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We were going to contact Kazu - our host for tonight - by internet. It turns out that, despite Japan having the title of one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, finding free Wi-Fi is quite a challenge. In the end, we did find two computers with internet at the JR East travel center (Google-map), contacted our host, and an hour later we were already having supper with him and his friend. (Note that this picture was taken only a few hours after we have landed, and we already got the Japanese show-a-peace-sign-on-every-photo disease, so beware!)
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By the way, we found Kazu through couchsurfing.org. If you don't know about this website, I really encourage you to check it out. Basically it's a place where travelers and hosts meet. During our trip to Japan, we spent only two out of thirteen nights in a hotel. The other eleven nights we surfed the couches of very kind Japanese residents with whom we spent some awesome time! Also, it was our first time surfing. We did host a couple of times in our apartment in Montreal, and we really enjoyed surfing for the first time. It's an experience I recommend to all! We made great acquaintances and got to sleep for free, what could be better!
Okay, enough couchsurfing publicity (it's great, I promise!) After supper, we collapsed in Kazu's small apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo. After all, we did endure our longest flight yet (13 hours) and crossed nine time zones. So night and day were all upside down for us. In the morning, we got up and went out to explore Tokyo.
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First, we went to the district of Akihabara (Google-map). It's renowned for its community of gamers...
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... for its huge electronic stores (I've always thought that a rice cooker needs only one button,clearly, the Japanese think otherwise)
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... and Maid Cafés, which are simply overpriced coffee shops where girls dressed as French maids (or so they think) call you "my master" and can feed you with a spoon.
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Going west from the central Chuo dori, we came to an Origami workshop where paper for this Japanese art is fabricated. (Origami Kaikan on Google-maps). Beautiful exhibits are shown on the first floor.
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On the second floor, people gather for origami courses, the third floor is a shop where you can buy all sorts of paper and origami books and the paper is manufactured on the fourth floor.
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Unfortunately, we did not get to witness the masters at work, but soaking in the Japanese zen, we watched the paint dry on the sheets above our heads.
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At the exit, the visitors may stamp a piece of paper with the Origami Kaikan logo to have a proof of visit for the folks at home. The same is practiced in many shrines, museums and other landmarks. We were prepared with our little notepad which was filled by the end of our trip.
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Our next stop was the Asakusa district, where we went to see the Senso-ji temple (map) (Google-map). The Nakamise street leading up to the temple is filled with little souvenir shops and food stalls.
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Of course, this part of town is pretty touristy, but since most tourists were Asian, we felt like we were among locals at all times.
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The large amounts of tourists is quite understandable. The Senso-ji temple was built in 645 and is considered to be the oldest temple in Tokyo.
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According to the legend, it was in the year 628 that the brothers Hamanari and Takenari Hinokuma have fished out a statue of Kannon - the Buddhist goddess of compassion - from the nearby Sumida river. They tried to get rid of her by throwing her back in the river, but the statue kept coming back to them. Since she was bothering the fishermen and scaring all the fish away, they decided to keep the statue locked up. So they built the Senso-ji temple, put Kannon there and fished peacefully ever since.
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At the entrance to the main pavilion, the visitors waft incense smoke on themselves to "purify" their body before talking to the gods.
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On the temple grounds, there is also a beautiful five-storied pagoda (also on title photo).
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Walking around the temple, you can get great views of the Tokyo Sky Tree.
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Some people soaked in the sunset light, others were mastering new technologies...
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And us, we went strolling the streets, moving slowly towards Ueno station (Google map).
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We passed by some amusement park with Hansel and Gretel houses.
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On our way, we saw the famous "marbled" meat in one of the shop windows (on the photo, it's actually a plastic imitation. The Japanese are pretty good at making it look real!). The muscle and fat are intertwined in a very elegant fashion. To achieve this, the cattle receives a daily portion of high quality beer and a professional massage every day! The cost of such meat could be around 10$ per 100 g.
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For most people, Japan is synonymous with sushi, and we are no exception to most people. So we tried our luck in finding a conveyor belt sushi place (kaiten-sushi) in the Shinjuku business district. (map) (Google map).
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With plenty of office workers looking for some food at the end of the day, the area west of Shinjuku station is filled with restaurants. Udon, ramen, sushi, you can find it all here. And we found what we were looking for: a small kaiten called Himawari Sushi (Google map).
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Usually, a kaiten sushi bar is set up in a way where the chef is standing in the middle and a conveyor belt is circling around him. The clients can order from the chef, or take food directly from the conveyor. Our Japanese speaking skills are not the best, so we were contented with the dishes circling around.
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Usually, the plates with sushi are preceded with information on the ingredients and even the number of calories written on a small card.
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Every customer has a little faucet in front of him that supplies infinite amounts of hot green tea (seen on the picture above). The sushi themselves were well above our expectations. Not only the fish was some of the freshest and most well cut we ever had, but the rice was also excellent! I've always thought that simple white rice is the same everywhere, but it was here I learned that this was not the case. Back home we were used to dipping our sushi in soy sauce, but here in Japan, this was unnecessary, because the rice was really that good on its own!
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The price of each dish is determined by the color of the plate. At the end of the meal, we gathered our stack of plates, the cashier counted them, and we ended up paying about 2200 yen for the two of us (around 27$), which is quite an amazing price for the best-sushi-I-have-ever-had!
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That's it for the first part of our Japanese trip. Stay tuned for some more Tokyo!
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