-that is, Christmast cake. And a very happy 2012 and New Year to ya’ll! Yup, it is the new year and yes, I just said ya’ll. I would like to remind you that this is my post and I can exploit whatever silly words I would like. But I guess I had better be careful if I want to keep you reading my writings about my happenings here in Japan. Anywho..
I have just returned from a fine holiday all the way down in Tokyo. Yesterday was indeed an office holiday here in Japan and today is a really real workday. And for many of us that means back to work. I will be fidgeting and appropriating myself here in the office for the better part of this week before next week’s back to school. Gosh, those are surely words I remember dreading back in my high school days. Not just dreading them but I remember that on the wake of heading back to school from say, a summer break I would often worry and fret about the having to buy of school supplies. Gosh it was tedious to make the trek out to Zellers or some general store to pick up lined papers and such things. But ironically I have become one to love stationary -and much stationary and other things did I see -in Tokyo.
(New Years Eve at Meiji Jingu shrine. You couldn’t have picked up your hundred dollar bill off of the ground if you dropped it. Too many people -everywhere!)
And so let me begin displaying for you my few adventures in Tokyo, which will probably take the better part of two posts.
On my goings to Tokyo, I had planned my way as such that I would rest up in Sapporo the day before my travels and then fly our the very next evning to arrive in Tokyo on New Year’s eve. Dumb? No. I was ready for the crowds. And this being my first year abroad in Japan after hearning much of how even Japanese flee the country to get some due rest and relaxation during this very vexing holiday season I was ready to deal. Ready to fly.
After plane-ing in to and arriving at a local airport in Tokyo, the first of my many, lonely countryside-dwelling prayers were answered. After so many months of longing to, and thinking about drinking Cherry Coke I found an actual COCA COLA cafe RIGHT THERE in the airport. But, this was no ordinary cafe. For the low and fine price of two hundred and fifty yen you got yourself a cup with a straw. And the rest of the work was up to you. I stood infront of a towering but somehow friendly red vending machine and punched away at the touch-screen tapping and finding just what combination of the one hundred plus varieties of Coca-Cola related drinks I wanted to drink. Cherry Coke was the first. Soon followed by a spill of Vanilla. But I have to say that overall the cherry took the cup. And since I was on some sort of deadline I parted ways with the cafe and entrained myself on monorail heading right into the heart of Tokyo.
(Shinjuku, letting you know just how small you really are compared to all those gigantuous buildings.. and stuff)
Now it had been a while since I had been to Tokyo. I mean really ‘been’ to Tokyo. Our Tokyo orientation some months back was something a little too akin to business. This trip at this time was me with suitcase in tow riding a monorail for mintues dashing by as I weaved through tall and dark buildings glowing from the inside, glowingly visible through the specks of windows and magnificent architecture-come-neon that only Tokyo is known to offer.
After spelunking on train I then took afoot and found my next week’s worth of accommodation. Now I admit that I had some reservations about dorm-rooming with seven other people at a foreigner-friendly hotel, but for the price they were offering I figured my dollar was better spent on food and shop than on bed and sleep.
Now I would hate to really have to relive what some, just some of the nights were like in the dorm room accommodation that I braved but a few short spats in my blog might advise you for or against such an accommodation. I was firstly relieved and intruiged to have met so many genki/happy travellers from so many countries. Australian travellers certainly took the cake on this one. I first arrived to a room full of Australians that were here in Japan to tour just a little and to snowboard a whole lot. Speaking of snowboarding I can’t wait to get out there and rash-up some fresh powder just as soon as I get my mitts on some boots and bindings for my flambouyant-looking snowboard.
Now aside from people checking in to and out of the room at outrageous hours in the morning/night (I can thank dorm life in college for preparing me for this one) -lights flashing on and off and death threats to other mostly-undrunken sleepers in the room, I didn’t really have it that bad. That was probably the worst of the lot. Praise the miracle of sleep for the right-good institution of ear plugs. I am glad that I carried ear plugs.
At last the final two nights of my stay in Tokyo -an eight day spat altogether- was spent in the solace of a fine single-roomed hotel. And I was able to at last really rest. But we’re not ready to comment on the end of the trip yet.
(Super-duper good Korean food to be found in Shin-Okubo, the Korean-ish/like district of Tokyo. Get there on the famed, circular Yamanote line)
Most of my days in Tokyo were spent meeting longtime friends. Well, that is some friends met just last year while at school back home and other friends who I have known for as many years, if years were dollars, with which I could buy a rather large cheese burger. Sorry about that, I just had to see if I could make that comparison work.
Now with every day seeing friends, this left me little time to really get lost in the wedges and side-streets of the city but I did manage to find a few things that really tickled my fancies. The first of which were cafes. Now having worked at just a few coffee shops before I believe that I am altogether ruined when it comes to coffee. Not to the better hopes of my family, I am indeed a coffee purveyor. My family would have me drop the habit, I mean.
Every day I found myself in another cafe sipping JUST one cup of the dark and delicious brew. Moriva Coffee, Excelsior, St. Mark’s.. you name it I tried to get there to drink their coffee. The most expensive cup? Well, that would be in the threshold of six hundred and thirty yen. With exchange that might rate something about seven dollars Canadian for a small black coffee.
And the most interesting cup of coffee? Well that would have been at a UCC coffee shop in a train station where my coffee was brewed within sniffing distance of me using a very sophisticated looking coffee siphon. Coffee? Five dollars plus a tasty sandwhich (not the ideal combo for me, mind you). I must say that including the makings of the coffee here in Japan, the service I have received completely puts to shame any ‘best’ service experience I have ever had in Canada. Serviettes, coffee spoons hand crafted and set just perpendicular to cup on saucer, chilled water served just as you are about to rest your bottom on a most fine and wooden seat -nothing compares, I am sorry. Even when it comes to the brewing of the drink. That is unless I would begin to count the find coffees that I have had in Europe, South America and such.. how I love it all.
(This ramen could make your heart stop. No, not because of oils and fats, but because it is just THAT good. Miso, of course)
But coffee wasn’t the only thing I spent my fine dollar upon on this trip. Another money chomper was the train and transit system. Aside from devilish convenience and the trains always being on time, you can assuredly count a basic fare on the train at about one hundred and fifty to two hundred yen. And if you are not happy in one part of town then you are no doubt going to hop on train (however many times per day) and get yourself somehwere else more interesting or more exciting. And for that you have to pay. Every time.
But the trains are heaven and compared to back home a lot more crowded, too. Your concept of personal space? Forget it? Just think of trains and most busy places in Japan an opportunity to show off that fine, new flagrant cologne that you’ve just been waiting to sport in public. But in Japan you can show off to about five other people at once, all crowded around you. Everyone enjoying your fine fragrance whether designer brand, or otherwise.
With this post already becoming of warned length -as many readers have criticized and/or commented, I will come to term with a few talkings of food. Namely ramen (rah-men). The heavenly noodle that rests just long enough in a finely made, handicrafted broth that you have to slurp up real loud and real fast before the noodle realizes what is happening. This is ramen. And a city like Tokyo -okay not city, this metropolis, Tokyo- has a great variety of the thing. For me, eating these noodles is like getting paid every time. It feels good. I enjoy eating the noodels and my wallet does, too. Because for not more than a thousand yen (that is about ten bucks) and as cheap as five or six hundred yen, you get fed and you and your wallet stay/get plump. Don’t really know which adjective to slight in there. It’s up to you.
(Anglerfish nabe and a wide assortment of squid-y things, salads with wasabi and par-boiled egg broken and spread on, etc.)
Yes, I went out of my way to get the noodles. All kinds of noodles. I ate those noodles at the airport dining hall/food court on the way to Tokyo. I went out of my way on the way back from Tokyo to eat those noodles again at the airport. I at dipping-style noodles, Kyushu-style noodles, salt, miso, miso, and more miso. I am not afraid to say that miso ramen preferably the variety that includes a bit of butter, real butter on the tip top is my favourite kind.
Besides all those slippery noodle-bits I also ate varieties of other right good foods. Some including squid with squid innards mixed on in, really really good yaki-niku (skewer-seasoned and grilled meatstuffs), Anglerfish (the kind with the really big scary, flat mouth) nabe, miso-wasabi salads, really good korean food found in the Korean bit of Tokyo, really big takoyaki, the classic raw egg atop a thinly, meat-ly donburi/bowl of rice -for breakfast, a really good omlette with kona coffee and stellar toast at a Hawaiian breakfast spot, ayu (a sweet fish skewered, salted and roasted atop coals at a festival), and on and on the list can go.
I tried omlette rice, rice enveloped in a thin and tasty omlette; curry and rice with a pork cutlet, really good dim sum in the Chinatown of Yokohama. Pastries I made a point not to really eat but I did have me some good chocolate doughnuts..
No doubt I will save you speak about where I went and what I saw for my next post. Though, maybe the post need not wait until next Monday. Or maybe I really need the time to brood over what I want to say in my mind. Haha. We’ll just have to see. I have no desire to be cruel to you especially if you really want to hear more about Japan. Japan through my eyes, that is.
I will wrap up today’s again by promising not to bore you with pictures, but to share with you some, some pictures. And a final impression and fleeting thought about Tokyo? Well, I have something that tickles me about that city. A friend sent me a mail message-to-phone while I was between shopping place and train-riding space and asked me what I thought of Tokyo. I told my friend my first and most honest thought, I both love and hate the place.
Every time I am there Baz Luhrmann’s song, Sunscreen comes to mind when in the track he notes that one should, ‘live in the city but leave before it makes you too hard, and to live in the country just long enough before it makes you too soft..’ or something like that. And you know what, I kind of agree with the guy.
There is nothing like walking along in Tokyo and having someone bump into you, step on you, step at you, pull on your coat if by accident, or blunder against your shopping bags and keep walking, etc. My first instict would be to turn and offer an apology, or expect a quick apology -but not in Tokyo. The people just keep on at whatever they are doing, wherever they are walking, etc. Tokyo makes you into something firm and calloused which you may not be, if only on the exterior.
What do I love about Tokyo? Everything. Food, shops, availability, quality, open late, not open at all, parks, and no parks, shopping, and people, and fashion and every nook and place the mind and heart could possibly get lost in -and not always for the best. You can spend all day indoors and underground on subway and train platforms or in department stores just fleeing from the known light of day.
That is Tokyo for me and so much more.
Well, I just needed something to do over the winter break and that was it. I chose to travel to a really big Japanese city and capital. And finally, now that I have take my first real domestic trip within Japan I am SO very looking forward to the following trips and travels that I can and will take within and surrounding Japan. I am so very excited.
But in some fine and simple sense, after all the training, shopping, walking, and waiting it was just nice to come back to my little place I call home here in Hokkaido. So nice to come home and rest up after this all.
Did you enjoy your winter break? I pray you, if you have the time and can steal me a minute, do tell of what you did and whom you saw -and I’ll do the same, in a few words or less.
Until a few more future Tokyo-like babblings,
Ciao.
(At last this post wouldn’t be authentic and written by me if the last picture wouldn’t be of some noodles. Heaven, just heaven)
The Traveller's Typewriter 