Day 1 in Tokyo

Day 1 in Tokyo:

I got up at the crack of dawn to drag all my crap down the stairs (with the help of the lovely Tian Jing) found a cab to the bus stop and got the last seat on a bus to the airport. As it would be, the last seat meant squeezing between two older men who were profuse sweaters, a little pudgy, and the one on my right obviously had once been a cat, considering how many times he tried to clear his throat. I wanted to give him the good ol’ elbow in the ribs every time he did that, but I also didn’t want to touch him.

The airport was altogether uneventful, though I danced a merry little dance when my bags weren’t overweight, and the instant I got onto the super-clean Japanese-run plane I pulled a blanket around my head (no pillow again—I’m getting tired of those flights) and crashed. I woke up when the food cart was pulling away, and managed to grab a tray before it was too late. Of course, had I slept through it, the waitresses were considerate enough to leave a post-it on the seat in front of me asking me to call them when I was ready for my meal. The people on the plane were generally quiet, the half hour of spiderman 3 I watched was as bad as everyone had said, and three hours later I landed in Tokyo.

Perhaps the proudest moment of my day was when I asked where an ATM was and the lady at the counter gave me some directions. All I understood was one word—hidali—but I knew that it meant left, and so I walked in the direction she gestured (don’t point, just gesture—I pointed by accident once and the guy I was talking to dodged to avoid the direction of my index finger) and looked on the left and found it.

Trying to figure out how to get to the hotel was difficult. So the advantage of having studied Chinese is that I recognize all the kanji they use here, which is very common in place names, meaning that maps aren’t too difficult for me. The problem is I have no clue how to say anything. So although I may know how to say something and what it looks like, I probably won’t connect the dots. Or, more commonly, I just know one or the other, and that doesn’t get me very far at the end of the day. So I finally get helped by someone really nice who was working there to help us buy tickets, and she tells me how I should go and where to transfer, and I nod and get the right ticket, but only after boarding do I realize that although her directions may have been good, the only map on the subway used kanji (hence the above ramp) so I knew I wanted to go to Minami senju, but I didn’t know that that also meant . Eventually I had the guts to ask the nice-looking girl next to me, and she gave me decent directions, then went on her phone to check and told me in English very good directions. She was great.

So an hour or so later I arrive at the station, and looking at my directions I printed out from the hotel, it’s a seven minute walk. That was as much as I got regarding directions. So I asked a guy at the counter who pulled out a printed little map which I guess the hotel gave him, as marked right on it was my hotel. Blessing my fortune, I dragged my boatloads of crap behind me and headed towards the hotel, huffing and puffing along.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they say. Shanghai was finally beginning to cool down to a reasonable temperature when I left, and I have discovered, to my chagrin, that Tokyo is hot. Unpleasantly hot. Really hot. Still not as bad as Shanghai was at its worst, but still warm enough that being outside is sort of unpleasant. Why me? Why, oh why?

So dripping sweat I make a turn where the map says, and continue walking. I pass one alley, then another, and realize I’ve most definitely walked too far, despite not yet running into the cross street. I review my moves, no mistakes, and then realize that those alleys are streets. Tokyo is designed in little neighborhoods, and each block has a number, so I’m in the neighborhood Kiyokawa in the 2nd area on block 38, building number 3, which is just written 2-38-3 Kiyokawa. Those little alleys are the streets which divide the blocks, and once I worked all this out I turned down the right alley to the hotel, where I got a 4th floor room, and luckily the front desk lady was nice enough to help me drag all my crap up the stairs.

So dripping sweat I opened the door to my room, which is a little 3 mat room (aka 6x10 or so. There’s a TV on a cart in one corner and a pile of blankets for making a bed in the other corner. There are some hooks along the walls and a shelf in the back. The bathroom is down the hallway one floor down, and I think there are only showers on the first floor. We aren’t allowed to wear shoes past the hotel entrance, where we change to slippers, and we aren’t even supposed to wear slippers on the mat.

The staff here are really nice, and although it is a little minimal it works just fine. They are great with directions, suggestions, and all sorts of other things. And you can drink the tap water! That makes me happy (I’m easy to please, what can I say?).

After trying to cool down I decided to go out and explore the neighborhood. I went on a long walk through a few little districts, eventually ending up at this mall nearby. I went into the grocery store there to look at produce and oh my god was it amazing. Ginger still attached to the stems, Daikon radishes the length of my forearm and twice as thick, fresh, unground wasabi, and the fish! They must have had eight different sushi boxes and the same amount of sashimi boxes, not to mention the whole baby octopus, the giant octopus arms, clams, and all sorts of other stuff. I took pictures and they’ll go up soon.

After that I picked a place for dinner. I went in and the waitress said all sorts of things to me, and I smiled and sat down and looked at the pictureless menu. I had picked this place because the plastic food outside looked good, so eventually I picked something that I knew was a set meal. She asked me a question which I think had to maybe do with what I wanted on my rice, but maybe not, and I looked at her funny, and she sort of thought for a second, wrote something down and walked off. I figured that was a good sign. I ended up ordering sobu noodles with little bits of crunchy tempura batter, seaweed, and onion, with picked vegetables and rice. The rice had a raw egg cracked on top plus a dollop of fresh wasabi. The egg white was fluffy from being steamed by the rice, and when you mixed it all together it was this fluffy, sticky, goopy, a little spice mess. I added a little soy sauce which made that part great as well.

After that I walked home, which brings me back to here. Until tomorrow!