Did I Mention It Is Rainy Season in Japan? (written on June 22)

Yesterday I wrote that it had rained about 50% of the time. If you add in today and, if my math is right, we’re up to 75%, and it feels like 100%. We haven’t really seen the sun since we landed, although yesterday the clouds thinned enough mid-afternoon to put sunglasses on. Today, it has rained from mid-morning and hasn’t stopped. We just walked four blocks to and from dinner at an Italian restaurant chain here called Saizeriya, and it was really coming down. I swear that it was raining inside my umbrella as we walked back home.

The Japanese seem very prepared for rain. Everyone appears to carry an umbrella. Then, at the front of every restaurant or store or museum, etc., there is a dispenser of long plastic sleeves into which you can put your umbrella. Inside the plastic sleeve, you can safely bring your umbrella inside or even stuff it in a backpack, and it gets nothing else wet. I have never seen these in the US.

We spent most of the day at the International Tokyo Toy Show 2008 at the Tokyo Big Sight convention center. We got there around 9:20am or so, and we thought it was crowded. We were wrong. By the time we left at 12:15pm, you couldn’t move in the main corridors. The show was primarily geared to toys for kids under 10, and, thus, it wasn’t a place for Nintendo or Microsoft to exhibit their video games. If you think stereotypical Japanese toys, you’d be right. Hello Kitty and the Power Rangers (Bandai) were very prominent. There were also a lot of toys that came with their own trading cards and a lot of Lego knock offs, although Lego was there as well. The Godzilla pictured is noted as “not on sale until July.” The best item, based on the time I spent with Joey and my nephew Aki, is a building toy called Wammy. I can’t find an English language site, so I assume it’s not yet in the US.

We spent the rest of the day in the same section of Tokyo, called Odaiba. Odaiba is built on reclaimed land and looks about as futuristic as an area can get. It was finished just in late 1990s, with some of the rail opening just a few years ago. The subway is above ground (a la the Disney World Monorail), and buildings look right out of Logan’s Run.

We ate at a food court in a mall called Aqua City, where I resisted the urge to go to McDonald’s. Joey did not resist and had a massive thing called a Mega Mac that had four hamburger patties instead of two. According to what I read via Google, the sandwich, out since early 2007 in Japan, was such a hit that it quickly became permanent beyond its “available for a limited time” status. We then went next door to Joypolis, an indoor amusement park run by Sega, where we played games for a several hours, just to stay out of the rain.

Tomorrow, my sister is going to take a day off from work and show us some more cultural sights – probably in the rain again.

Our First Day in Tokyo (written on June 21)

The travel had me sound asleep last night at 7:30pm local time. I woke up completely refreshed at about 11:30pm, but managed to go back to sleep several times before finally getting out of bed at 4:00am local. Tonight, we’re going to try to make it to 9:00. As I write this, it’s nearly 8:00pm, so 9:00 doesn’t look too challenging.

A few quick observations after one day out and about:

• There are convenience stores everywhere. Surprisingly, the most prominent is 7 Eleven.
• There is no on-street parking in Tokyo. You pay for parking every place you go. In fact, my sister told me that you need to have validation of a parking place before you can buy a car.
• When someone tells you it’s rainy season in Tokyo, believe them. It’s been overcast and humid since we arrived and raining about 50% of the time.
• Tokyo has McDonald’s, Denny’s, Red Lobster, Starbucks, Wendy’s, Domino’s, and KFC, but no Taco Bell. Sounds like an opportunity.

Today, we took advantage of our early rise to go to the Tsukiji Fish Market. We saw all sort of fish, shellfish and other seafood, including some incredibly large tuna that had been flash frozen on the ship. Thanks to my brother-in-law, I ate a shrimp right out of the ice (see below) in which it was displayed for purchase.

After a rest back at my sister’s, we had lunch at a noodle restaurant. Orders were done via a vending machine, which issued a ticket that you handed to a woman standing up near the kitchen. All the money is in the machine. I had some tempura and noodle soup, which was very good.

Later, we took the train to the center of town and walked around the Imperial Palace grounds for a bit. These grounds come complete with moat, as they’ve been around since the 17^th century. We walked on the ruins of a tower destroyed in 1657. As you see in the picture at right, taken from the ruins of the tower, the palace grounds are right in the middle of modern Tokyo,

From there, we took the subway down to the largest Pokemon store in Tokyo. My son was huge into Pokemon about 8 years ago, but this time around the toys only carried excitement for my 7 year-old nephew. Pikachu was certainly everywhere, as you can see to the left.

Dinner was chicken yakitori from a neighborhood place. I had the basic chicken and decided not to join my brother-in-law with his chicken livers and hearts.

Tomorrow, we’ll probably still get up early. We are likely to go to an international Toy Convention to see what’s there.

Arrival in Japan (written on June 20)

We’ve been in Japan now for about 5 hours. We woke up in St. Louis over 24 hours ago and are fading fast.

The trip over was uneventful, save a small delay in the departure of our Houston to Tokyo flight. We were fortunate to have cobbled together miles to upgrade to business class, which made all the difference in the world. We were fed well and had access to over 250 movies on a new video system put in by Continental. The 13 ½ hour flight was by far the longest flight I had ever made and having no worries about someone leaning back into me and being able to lay flat made a huge difference. You can see some of the pillows at right.

The drive in from Narita to my sister’s apartment took a little over an hour. She lives in the Ota-ku district, which is southwest of the city. As I looked around, I realized perhaps the obvious in that it is very noticeable that you are in Japan. As I joked to my brother-in-law driving in – other than driving on the left, the road signs in Japanese, the rice patties, the square cars, and the square houses, I could have been in America! Off the highways in the city, the roads are very narrow and tough to navigate. I’m not sure how two cars can even exist on some of the roads we saw. With all the twists and turns, I quickly lost track of where I was. This is a bit uncomfortable.

After a quick dinner at the Japanese equivalent of fast food, we swung by a few Japanese grocery stores to stock up on food. Diet Coke is apparently at a premium in this country, as we only found it at the last store we visited. I feel withdrawal coming for my wife and me. As I found out at left, a large box of Frosted Flakes is nearly $3.00 and, as in many other areas outside the U.S., is called Frosties.

Tomorrow, we plan to get up early and go to the fish market in downtown Tokyo. They apparently have very, very fresh sushi. More on that later.

Off to The Land of the Rising Sun (written on June 18)

Tomorrow morning (Thursday the 19^th), my wife, son and daughter and I are heading out for a trip to visit my younger sister, husband, two nephews and niece. They live in Tokyo, Japan.

We’ve been planning this trip since last August, when my sister announced that she and her family were moving to Tokyo. My sister speaks fluent Japanese and previously lived there for seven years. My brother-in-law is Japanese, and the three kids, all under 7 years-old, speak both English and Japanese. When she was pitched this opportunity to move back and have her kids closer to their other grandparents for a while, she couldn’t turn it down. She works for a subsidiary of China.com that makes ERP software. They were having challenges in their Tokyo office and needed her help.

We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to Japan with a place to stay and built-in tour guides. A few years back, when my wife’s sister lived in Paris, we packed the kids up and went to visit. This time, we’re going to spend about five days in Tokyo, then take the bullet train to Hiroshima to see the Peace Museum and to Kyoto for all the old temples, and then, believe it or not, go to Tokyo Disneyland for two days.

We leave St. Louis at 7:15am tomorrow morning and connect in Houston for a 13 ½ hour flight to Tokyo. So – when most of you wake up tomorrow morning, my family and I will already be heading to the airport, and, when you go to bed, we’ll still be on the airplane to Tokyo.

It should be pretty cool. I have listed to sixteen 30-minute Japanese lessons in my car. At minimum, I can order beer and sake very clearly! I can also ask people if they understand English. That’s probably sufficient.

I should be able to log in from my sister’s apartment over there and, if I can, I will post some updates and thoughts on what we see.

じゃまた
This reads “ja mata,” which means “see you later.”