Oh yeah, we were in Harajuku and the Imperial gardens. That means we're about to finish off our last full day in Japan.

We hit "Old Tokyo", which we read was supposed to preserve the character of the old city. I guess that means a crowded raucous pedestrian shopping mall, where you can get any kind of junk you want:

...

We were pretty much shopped-out by then, though. So, back to the hotel for a nap for the wife and some blogging for myself (I probably did the Kyoto post then). Then it was out for our final night.

We went to the last section of Tokyo we wanted to see: Roppongi. It was described in the Lonely Plant book as almost a "mardi gras" atmosphere. Well, it was nothing like that. It was another tall, bustling district, jam-packed full of shops and restaraunts. No floats or beads. But, it was hopping.

When we walked up out of the subway station, a serious windstorms was blowing through, and we didn't know exactly where we were or where we needed to go to get to ther restaraunt we were planning on: a Thai place, some blocks from the subway station. So, we flailed around in the bitter-cold wind for a bit before giving up on the Thai place and trying to find a spot a bit closer. We wandered around for a while but didn't find anything that grabbed us. Well, there was a store called, ahem, Freak Brothers that was pretty interesting - it more about the lifestyle of the Freak Brothers than the comics. But after that, we still needed some food. There was this combo:

...but we declined.

Finally, desperate, we decided to go to an Irish pub (the fourth). It was crowed, small, tacky and deafeningly loud. We lasted less than a minute before slouching out the door, cold, hungry and cranky. After a bit of indecision we decided on a place that had "grilled beef" on its otherwise all-Kanji sign. It turned out to be a Japanese "BBQ" place, where you sit at a counter with a big hole in it, they bring a bucket of hot coals, and you order small plates of raw food that you then cook yourself. It was both fun, and delicious! Success!

Then we went to the Geronimo Shot Bar:

They serve shots.

We had two each. Which wasn't anywhere near enough to get us on the monthly list (I think the leader was up over 200). The all-time leader was in the 2,000's, if I recall correctly. I think the shots were a little weak.

Then it was off to do karaoke, Japanese-style. That's where you rent a private room and get to sing whatever you want. They had a little notice that said "Big Echo is not a shot bar!" Don't know why they needed that. Since I utterly hate my voice, I refuse to sing. So, I stuck my wife doing it all by herself.

It was still fun. Then, it was off to find another bar. We wandered for a bit, then my wife spotted a sign for a bar called Agave, a tequila bar. They had four hundred different tequilas:

...

...and Cuban cigars.

Delicious! If the next day wasn't the day of the plane, we would've stayed all night.

So, back to the hotel...

I woke up at dawn and tried to get some sunrise pictures, but I was too sleepy to bother with trying to hold the camera steady.

.

And then we woke up, bummed around for the morning and started our trip home. We got to hang out in the first class lounge while waiting for the plane (free booze and chips!). Then an 11-hour flight to Chicago, on which I watched a surprisingly touching little documentary about the New York Dolls reunion.

When we got to Chicago, we immedately noticed the same thing: Americans are really fat. Then we noticed that McDonalds' hamburgers are really salty.

And three hours later, we were home again.

Look, it's a miniature Tokyo!

No, that's just the view from the hotel room through the magical LensBaby.

Off to the Imperial Gardens! A couple of quick subway rides gets us from our hotel to the Gardens. It's the beginning of cherry blossom season, and the place is busy. Maybe it's always busy, I dunno.

Here's the entrance:

The little sign said this was a dolphin. I think it looks more like a carp (those little eyebrows are on all the carp in the ponds):

The Imperial Palace (which the gardens are part of) is right in the middle of the city, so it's tough to get pictures of this beautifully-done garden without getting little bits of the city at the same time:

and:

But, if you focus on little tiny bits:

Or if you're willing to put a lof of sky in the shot:

You can do it.

It's a very nice place. There are lots of cherry and plum trees; there are trees representing all of the prefectures; everything is sculpted right right, everything is manicured just right. The small pathways through the gardens are rubberized, so your footsteps are silent. The fish are happy. Very nice.

More to come...

From Hiroshima, we took the train to Tokyo, where we would squander our last three nights in Japan on cheap booze and fast women. It was a 5 hour trip, made even longer by the fact that we could only get seats on the smoking car for the Osaka-Tokyo half. Smoking is ubiquitous in Japan; even the non-smoking sections of restaraunts are more like "nobody is smoking in this section right row". Nonetheless...

We got to Tokyo and miraculously found a way out of Tokyo station, where we hailed a cab to the hotel, which the cabbie couldn't find on his own:

The hotel was really just the top 7 or 8 floors of the 40 story building on the left, so it was pretty small by Tokyo standards.

Went to our room, opened the window and got the reverse view:

Or, looking out instead of down:

So, that was cool.

That night, we ate at a little noodle shop up the street. No English speakers there, so we just pointed at the display items in the case and hoped for the best. Display items? In Japan, restaraunts will often have a little display case on the street with plastic replicas of the food they serve. They're often quite well-done and not as tacky as you might think. So, my wife took the watress outside and pointed at what she wanted and I pointed at the bowl in front of guy next to me, "suppu" (soup). The place soon filled up with black-suited businessmen who drank many liters of sake.

Then we found a little club up the street and hung out there, ordering drinks by randomly picking them from the all-Japanese menu. Good fun. Then we ran back to the hotel in the rain...

Next day, breakfast at Denny's! No, really. Denny's are everywhere in Japan, but they're not much like the ones in the States. Here's the menu:

You can't get salmon, or rice and miso soup, or eggs and salad, at Denny's in the US. And a side of sausage in Japan is a single sausage - though just on the flavor, "mini hot dog" is a better description than "sausage".

Then we went to Shibuya, one of Tokyo's many shopping districts. Like Ginza, it was filled with big-name stores (a 3 story Gap) and huge malls. What we saw wasn't as high-end name-brand as Ginza, though it was still expensive ($80 for T-shirts in a little biker store that may or may not have been from the Rolling Stones' 1975 tour). We only stayed for a while, but we ate lunch at an El Toritos (right next to TGI Fridays), where we had the worst Mexican food I've ever had:

They were playing a Miles Davis concert from the 80's on a huge plasma TV in the corner of the resaraunt, but they were playing Mexican music on the P.A.. So, I got to watch Miles stalk around the stage in his silly 80's clothes. I just imagined he was playing La Cucarracha. Ole!

Then we left for Harajuku, a place I had previously known only from Gwen Stefani. First we went through the back-alley-esque pedestrian district, which was chock-full of girls in schoolgirl outfits, even though it was early Wednesday afternoon - don't they have school?

It was crazy. This section was definitely more youth-oriented than Ginza and Shibuya. T-shirt and sneaker stores (there are a lot of Chuck Taylors in Japan), alternated with old-school punk, goth, biker, surfer, skater and rock stores. All your teenage fashion fantasies can come true, in Harajuku - though the crepe vendors seemed to be doing more business than many of the stores - they smelled awesome. I bought a bunch of T-shirts. We went to a store called Snoopytown - all Peanuts stuff.

Then we went to the other section of Harajuku, which is more upscale (Louis Vutton, etc.). It was super-crowded:

It's a bit hard to tell, but the crowd of people on the sidewalk stretches as far as we could see - a solid mass of heads. It was like the most crowded day at the State Fair. We walked up and down the block to see what's what - but it was just more gigantic multi-story malls filled with high-end designer stores. The Japanese must spend gigantic amounts of money on clothes to keep all those shops in business.

One nice thing about those huge malls, though, is that the bottom floors are often food courts. But they aren't the McDonalds/Panda Express/Taco Bell food courts in US malls; for one thing, you almost never see seats - I guess you're supposed to buy the food and take it home; for another, the variety of foods is vast. Instead of a half-dozen fast food places all serving greasy fast food, there will be 30 different places serving everything from fresh bread to French pastries to candy to coffee to sushi to teriyaki to grilled veggies to noodles to fried everything to soups and salads. Most of it is made fresh, there. Sometimes there are multiple floors of food vendors. Ahh... delicious.

More to come...

After leaving the Hiroshima Peace Museum complex, it occurred to me that I had visited another great WWII memorial, many years ago. When I was ten, I took a trip with my grandparents to Hawaii, and we went to the Pearl Harbor memorial, and visited all the preserved shipwrecks, took the tours, etc.. Now, it's been 25 years, and like I said, I was ten, but I don't recall any of those memorials being dedicated to the idea of Peace. Maybe that has to do with the fact that the casualties in Pearl Harbor were mostly military, and that we weren't at war at the time.

We made it to Hiroshima rather easily - just two cabs and a train. We checked into our hotel, opened the window and saw...

City! But, Hiroshima isn't anywhere near the size of Tokyo - we were easily able to walk to all of the stuff we wanted to see. And maybe not surprisingly, it's a pretty modern city with wide streets and lots of parks. I didn't look up the population, but it feels more like a Raleigh than a NYC - smaller, less chatoic, and just a handful of really tall buildings (we were in one of them).

Continue reading →

Off to Kyoto...

We started the day at the base of Mt Fuji, at Kawaguchiko. We had to take a bus to get to the nearest Japan Rail stop so we could take a train to Kyoto. We bought our bus tickets and waited. While I watched the luggage, Mrs. Cleek ran off to get some snacks. See if you can spot her trying to cross the street:

Done with Tokyo for a bit, we hopped a subway to a train to another train.

Continue reading →

Upon waking, we opened the curtains of our hotel window and saw...

Mmm... metropolicious. It's the Ginza district.

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Look down there! It's land!

It's northern Honshu, Japan's big island.

It's surprisingly mountainous and unpopulated.

And here we have some farm land, about 100 miles north of Tokyo.

And here's us. Well, sorta. we're up near the front of that plane - first class, baby. Don't fly to Tokyo any other way! It might cost you 250,000 frequent flyer miles to do it, but you'll appreciate being able to turn your seat into a bed and drink as much free booze as you want - not that you want to start a 14 hour time difference with a hangover... but it's nice to know you have the option.

So, we started the day at 5:45AM EST, in Raleigh NC. There, I left my wife's jacket in the car at the airport. We flew to NYC. Then caught a flight that went north up the Hudson River (flying directly over my home town), into Canada, out over the Hudson Bay, across northern Canada, Alaska, the Bering Straight, grazing Kamchatka and finally into Tokyo, Japan - 14 hour flight. I slept a couple hours over Canada, but not much. I love flying too much - I'd rather stare out the window than sleep and miss anything.

When we got there, we found that one of our bags didn't make the flight - the one with our medicines. Yay! Then another hour train ride to Tokyo from the airport. It was 5:00PM Tokyo time, or 3:00AM EST, before we got to our hotel. Then we stayed up another 4 hours, to try to force ourselves onto Japan time. So, 25 hours of being awake. Whew. What a day.

But, in the morning (Tokyo morning), we were all rested and ready to go. Cause, hey - we were (still are, in fact) in Japan!