Interlude: I'm not sure I want to order that...

Lots of things are lost in translation. It's always a treat when a restaurant in Japan has an English menu - mostly because you have a much better idea of what you're ordering. But menus can also be a huge source of amusement. I'm sure the same thing would happen if non-native Japanese speakers tried to translate Japanese to English, but it's good for a laugh. Some examples that we found:

Popcone? What's that?

French and Japanese, but no English. We ate at a French crepe place in Tokyo where they spoke French to us.

Mmmm... guts!!!!

I don't even know what the first one is supposed to be. All I know is I'm definitely not ordering it.

Ok, so under the Fried food section, we have "fried food." I was tempted just to see what it was, but I'll skip the "fried gristle."

Clown royal. Entertaining drunks since 1870.

Japan Day 2: Shopping crowds, fortunes, museums and sake

After lunch, we walked to the impressive Kamirarimon Gate, with large gold Buddha statues and a giant paper lantern. Past that is a major shopping street where they seem to specialize in random tourist trinkets. It was impressive not just for the variety of stuff, but for the sheer number of people there early on a Friday afternoon. Our one find was a stand that was making fish-shaped cream-filled pastries, a nice after lunch treat.

Sensoji Shrine stands at the end of the long street. It's very common for the streets leading up to shrines to be lined with shops, creating a kind of festive, commercial atmosphere. Don't expect to see brand-name stores or a Starbucks on these streets - it's all smaller shops, and usually lots of snack stands and restaurants mixed in.

The shrine was impressive in scale, with beautiful architecture and a large incense burner in front.

There were plenty of locals visiting. It seems like religious life is integrated in to their day-to-day activities. People stop routinely to say a prayer at a shrine - I think they may go to a specific shrine depending on what they are praying for. At one point on the trip, we saw a group of teenage boys dressed in their baseball uniforms praying for success in the game.

At Sensoji, as at many shrines, you can also purchase a fortune for 100 yen. We both purchased fortunes. Robin's was terrible, but thankfully, you can conveniently negate it by tying the fortune to a metal rod nearby - and it doesn't even cost extra :-)

The large incense burner is also interesting. The smoke is supposed to be curative and ward off colds, so people step up to it and wave the smoke in to their face.

 

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Edo Tokyo Museum. We were here for an hour-and-a-half and could easily have spent much more time here. It provides a very detailed look at the complete history of the city, and much of the interesting modern history is of course at the end. The link to the museum site gives you a sense of both the incredible architecture (long escalators take you up the equivalent of 7 stories!) and the exhibits.

We got back on the subway to head to the Roppongi neighborhood for dinner. Another interesting cultural observation - the Japanese routinely sleep on the subway at any time of day. If you look around the train, at least 10% of the people who are sitting down are dozing, and sometimes they look sound asleep.

We found a great yakatori restaurant in Roppongi, though we never did learn its name. We were looking for a specific restaurant in the guidebook, but couldn't locate it (directions are often vague - "go to the bottom of the hill and look for a red lantern"). We stepped in to a completely different restaurant to see if they could help. When we told the host at the door we were looking for a yakatori restaurant, he walked us half a block to point out a nondescript wooden door. Talk about service.

Yakatori is meat and veggies grilled on skewers. This place was small, with a traditional Japanese wooden bar and low seats. We took off our shoes at the door and were guided to seats right in front of the grill. They had an English menu, but we could just as easily have pointed to what was in the case. There were a number of ex-pats here for dinner, and the place was fairly buzzing with conversation, beer, sake and the aroma of grilled food.

One of our favorites - grilled asparagus wrapped in bacon. We also had sake with our meal - the first time on the trip we ordered it. The cold, crisp, dry sake went well with the food, though I'd say a light Japanese beer would have done nicely as well.

It had been a very full day for two completely jet-lagged travelers, so we just about crawled up the hill to the subway and rode one stop to our hotel.

* All photos here have been linked from Flickr. You can find the full set here.

Japan Day 2: Breakfast, a boat and not getting lost

We had heard that the "combini" - the convenience store, most likely 7-11 or an am-pm store - were great for cheap breakfast. We tried a 7-11, but in our sleepy state couldn't identify what exactly was in those packages. With nothing labeled in English or even Romanji, we gave up and wandered down the street. We found a place near our hotel called Jonathans that had a picture menu. Picture menus are an important find for Robin since it makes it easier to avoid fish (though it's hardly foolproof). I, on the other hand, eat anything, so in a pinch, I'll just point at something on the menu. In this case, we found a mix of Asian and Western breakfasts, including savory curries with rice, and a good selection of Japanese teas.

After a shower to try and wash some of the jet-lag off, we went to see the concierge to get some help with planning our stay - tickets to a kabuki show, a tea ceremony, possibly a acupressure massage (never did get that last one). She was extremely helpful and called us several times with updates or questions. She arranged a tea ceremony for us, and got us information about the kabuki show so we could buy tickets, printed out directions, and labeled everything carefully. You got the sense she'd spend hours to solve an insignificant request, and you don't even tip here in Japan.

With plans for the day, we headed back to the subway to go sightseeing. The Tokyo subway is a destination just on its own. There are hundreds and thousands of people of all ages and all types - businessmen in suits, women in highly impractical shoes for commuting, schoolgirls and schoolboys in uniforms, teens and young adults in wildly colorful outfits where it looks like they may simply have reached in to their closet blindfolded (but it works for them somehow). People who are sick with a cold or flu also commonly wear masks (not because they're afraid of getting sick - so they don't get you sick!), so you see that a lot.

We made it to our destination without even getting all that lost. There are some street signs in Tokyo, but with the exception of major streets, most signs were hard to find, and often in Kanji, meaning we couldn't read them. With some guessing, we found Hama Rikyu Gardens - where we wanted to find the river cruise boat. The only way to catch the boat was to pay the entrance fee to the garden first, which seemed like a good money-making scheme for the garden. The garden itself wasn't very elaborate, but it sported:

• Feral cats living the high life in a huge garden
• Great views of Tokyo
• The boat cruise up the Sumida River to the Asakusa neighborhood

A view from the garden towards Tokyo Bay:

The cruise on the Sumida took us past many of the city's bridges. Most of the architecture was very modern, the city having been largely rebuilt after World War II, but there was one interesting building at the end:

It looks like a giant gold turnip. I have no idea why it's there.

We got off the boat at Asakusa and ate at Sansado, a great tempura place where we sat upstairs in a room with tatami mats, on cushions at a low table. A lot of restaurants have both regular seating and tatami seating, where you always take off your shoes and sit on a cushion. The servers are often dressed in kimonos, so it has a very traditional feel. It looks like this:

You may (or may not, as the case was at Sansado) have an indentation under the table for your feet. Most people in the restaurant seem perfectly comfortable sitting on the cushions rather than on a chair. After filling up on some tasty tempura, we were ready to see more sights...

Japan Day 2: Something's fishy about this place

Still on California time (17 hours behind Tokyo), we were predictably awake before 5:00am, so we got dressed and took the metro to the Tokyo Fish Market. It's a little confusing to tackle to Tokyo subway for the first time at 5:30am in a jet lagged, decaffeinated state, but we had directions from the concierge and everything is very clearly marked. All the stations are numbered so it's easy to figure out which direction to go. Announcements are usually in both Japanese and English. The only thing that confused us is that there are two separate subway systems - the Metro and the Toei lines. We bought a day card for one, then on the way back realized we couldn't get back on because it was a different line. So we ended up with a separate day card for each line today (700 yen each) instead of the combo card (1000 yen).

We missed the auction at the fish market, but got to see the market in full swing. There was a frenzy of activity - motorized carts racing around the market delivering fish, people carrying boxes - seemingly with no rules. You had to stay on your toes to keep out of their way! This seemed very different from our introduction. For one, no one bowed at us. I was pretty sure that most of the time one of these carts was going to take someone's shins out:

But it was fascinating. Huge slabs of tuna lay on boards, defrosting or being cut up. It was very colorful with plenty of things that we couldn't easily identify. It looks like there are at least two types of octopi here:

The fish market was both clean and smelled reasonably non-fishy, despite the tons of fish everywhere. I have a feeling they wash and scrub everything regularly to keep it that way. I should have sought out fresh sushi at the market, but I was too jet-lagged and hadn't even had tea or coffee, so my brain never made the leap - "hey, there's amazingly fresh fish here! I bet I could buy some sushi!" Nope. Never thought of it.

We got back on the subway to head back to the hotel and dodged about a hundred schoolgirls who were entering the station when we were leaving. The school kids travel in huge packs during the week, and I think they go to school on the weekend, too - all of them in neatly pressed uniforms.

Next up, breakfast...

* I've split Day 2 up in to 3 parts. We did so much that first full day in Tokyo that it was a lot to put in one blog entry.

First impressions of Japan

I decided to start this blog so I could share my experiences from our recent trip to Japan with a few friends. I'll definitely write about more than travel, but since I love travel and have been to 23 countries and 49 states, what better theme than travel? Neither Robin nor I had been to Japan before, and while the dollar-yen exchange rate was distinctly not in our favor, we decided this would be another trip-of-a-lifetime for us. So I'll write about the Japan trip in the next dozen or so blog entries (11 days, and there was a lot to see!).

November 18, about 3:20pm (local Tokyo time, still November 17 back home). Wheels down on United 837 from San Francisco. Despite the 10 1/2 hour flight from SFO, Robin and I weren't all that tired. Business class seats help, of course, though we still had to suffer the surly service that is United. Add in a 2 hour bus ride to the Sheraton Miyako in Tokyo and the jet lag begins to show. Still, you could do a lot worse for bus service. The friendly porters greet you politely and quick organize everyone's bags - sorted by the stops the bus is making - while you wait for the bus. As other buses go by, one of the porters always makes sure to bow courteously to the drivers.

When we got to the Sheraton, every staff member we saw bowed to us and welcomed us. It wasn't just because we were checking in - they did this every time they saw us. There was no refusing the porter's help with bags. Whether you had just a few shopping bags or a truck full of luggage, they were there to eagerly assist you - and amazingly, there's no tipping at all in Japan. The porter showed us to our room and gave us a quick tour, explaining everything including the toilet with many buttons, then bowed his way out. We bowed back, which led to more bowing before he left.

We were fading quickly, so we went to the concierge for a dinner recommendation nearby and she directed us to a well-known noodle shop nearby. Upon entering, we realized this was going to be an interesting experience - everything was in Kanji script - no English or even Romanji (Japanese in Latin characters). Fortunately for us, a Japanese businessman sitting at the next table spoke excellent English and helped us order, which meant Robin could avoid fish. With a belly full of noodles and a bit of beer, we made it back to the hotel for an 8pm bedtime.

Our first impressions of Japan - we could learn a few things from them. No surprise there, really. Everyone is extremely polite and goes out of their way to be helpful. The service staff everywhere is typically well-dressed, too. The bus driver from the airport had on a dress shirt, vest and tie. The porters at the airport were in pressed slacks and shirts, and handled all the luggage carefully. The hotel staff, the businessman at the restaurant and even the restaurant staff who didn't speak English were immediately helpful.