Oh! Link to more photos

Updated in July: If you are just arriving here, start at the bottom if you like chronological order.

We encourage you to start from the bottom and read in its entirety, but here is a link to all the photos (some are blogged about, some we just don't have the time to post and write up -- there are 370 of them for heaven's sake!)

June 3: Homeward bound

June 3
Our June 3 was about 40 hours long.

Got on the bus to the airport at 1 p.m. Got to the airport at 3 p.m. (Flight took off at 5 p.m. I will not not not get started on the self-entitled asshole family that was seated in business class with the two sick kids who resulted in our flight being detained by the quarantine officers once we got to LA. No I won't mention that at all.) Got into LAX at 11 a.m. the same day (that's the great thing about flying home from Asia: You time travel.

LAX is an awful pit that is analogous to a third world country. We had a six-hour layover there. It's a horrible, horrible place. We were also up for about 30 hours by that point.

That is all.

Would I go back? (To Japan, not LAX.) Sure. But I have a long, long list first. That said, if you’re considering it, go. We had a great time (though a bit exhausting but that is more us than the trip). And if you like shopping, and have some money to spend, then by all means, go for it. But we did quite well spending very little and wandering quite a bit. It is immensely entertaning.

Sorry for any typos, boring writing, stupid formatting stuff. It's been almost a week and I need to get this live.

Enjoy, and stay tuned for the next Groonin travels--somewhere, but I don't know where or when. Justin has forbade any talk of travel for the forseeeable future...

June 2: It was seven years ago today...

June 2

June 2 is our wedding anniversary, so what do we do but frantically look for souvenirs and get on the go again, this time taking the train back to Tokyo for our last night. We splurged and went to the Grand Hyatt for an evening (the person who booked this knows the manager, and it showed in the terrific room we got).

We got to see Fuji at 200 miles an hour on the way back, though. It's pretty.

But all things considered, I liked the neighborhood the Park Hotel was in better. Roppongi hills is very expensive and very American expat in a mall-ish kind of way. It seemed like a but of say, themed area in like, Maryland, or Southern California, or Vegas? I heard English too much. By that time I kind of didn’t want to hear it, you know? See above for my thoughts on my fellow Caucasians.

The bed was immensely comfy, the pillows were perfect (I’m looking at you, Cross Hotel Osaka, you are fine and good but did I mention your pillows fucking blow?) and the sheets on the bed, well, I have never slept in nicer ones – they felt like your favorite soft comfortable sheets but probably cost more than my wedding if I wanted to buy a set.

That night we met up with our friend Jamie. Jamie and Justin’s parents are friends, but Justin had not seen Jamie since 8th grade up until Christmas last year, when Jamie and his family came to his parents’ for Christmas Day. Jamie used to live in Japan and is recently back for work. We went for a quick bite and then walked and then another light bite and hung out talking for hours. It was a nice, mellow time, and a great way to end the trip.

I meant to get a photo of all of us but spaced. So here's a photo of the view from our hotel room instead.

June 3 in a sec.

June 1: Osaka, and the world's worst pillows

June 1

I liked the Cross Hotel in Osaka very much. But their pillows are like tumor-filled rocks. Go, but BYOP.

June 1 consisted of wandering. We didn't make it to the castle. We should have, but we didn't.

First we went to Den Den town, which is supposed to be for electronics, but we didn’t see much electronics. What we saw more of were cell phone merchants, DVD stores, modeling stores (as in plane and car models, not John Casablancas retail outlets).

And porn. You know what? I was going to post a picture of one of the posters, but then I reconsidered because people at work were going to see it. And then I realied that our stupid work filters will edit out all photos anyway. So here you be (not safe for work if you have a workplace without a filter):

Yes. That's a catcher. No, we didn't photoshop that. Yes, it's on the naughty bits on the other posters, too.

People are going to ask me about Love Hotels. Yes, we saw them. No, I didn’t find the one that I wanted to explore that sounded the weirdest (S&M merry go round?). We walked by a bunch of them…but honestly? Got kind of skeeved. I didn’t feel like spending the $ to go in and take photos, and when you kind of don’t want to touch anything, it’s probably going to diminish your ardor.

But they are hilarious even from the outside. There was one called “The Broccoli.” No joke. I am kicking myself for not at least taking a photo of the sign. There is a whole district of them (love hotels, not broccoli). Some nice cars, too; they put a board up in front of the cars that obscures the license plate. Pretty awesome.

Speaking of oddities, Little Bo Peep is big in Japan. We saw quite a few folks all kitted out in peep wear. In every city. No joke.


We were going to buy some Engrish shirts, but honestly, 1) they were really expensive, and 2) most of them weren’t weird enough. They were all very Green-friendly (hello, I can find that in super-green Portland and usually in the proper syntax) or surf-based (and I don’t ever want to surf so what’s the point). Surfing. Surfing is huge. They love that California surf aesthetic. Do people surf in Japan?

So we came home with no tangible Engrish, though we did take some photos here and there. Because we're too cheap to spend $80 for a t-shirt with nonsense English.

I just love this. We gouge you every day! But it's not enough! And then we raise the prices some more! For you, our customer.

Hey Mormons, so that's what it stands for?

I'm not sure which entrances me most: the singular "bun," the random apostrophe, or the frantic exclamations. I think you need all three.

Osaka looks cool at night:

We went to dinner at the sake restaurant that was on Bourdain's No Reservations. Yeah. We're Stuff White People Like that way. It was good. I wouldn't call it great--some pieces were great, but sone pieces we got were "OMG I have to eat this because they are looking at whitey." It was not expensive, and I thought it was friendly (though Justin disagrees). It is teeny tiny. It's about the size of my jetta. The albacore, though, was so freaking good that I want to make an albacore house that I can eat my way out of. I would totally do it in like, seconds.

Sidebar again: You can get some odd stuff in vending machines in Japan (measuring cup-sized sake, beer, hot food, cold food, trinkets, fried food, noodles, but I think the underwear machines are folklore.

We met up with a friend at the end of the trip (get to in a sec), and he lived in Tokyo for almost a decade and didn’t see them (I don’t think he actively looked for ‘em but who knows).

Everyone has heard of them but I don’t know anyone who has ever seen them. Are they like unicorns?

Onto June 2. I'se tired, I am.

May 30: Kyoto to Osaka

May 30

Time to leave Kyoto. That morning we walked around, over to Nishiki market, and ended up getting a knife at the kitchen store there. This place was hardvore -- knives for every imaginable animal and function. We got a 8" chef's knife, stainless with carbon, and this thing is freakin' sharp. I'm almost scared to use it. They would also write your name on it in Japanese, which is cool.

I then saw this, which defines me lately:

We wandered around the city taking our time walking to the train station (it’s only like 20 minutes from Kyoto to Osaka, our next stop, so we didn’t reserve a train in advance). We stumbled upon some sort of bike festival/race, and thought this very fortuitous. The photos are on the Shutterfly link, which I will post; to be quite honest it's a giant pain in the ass posting photos on here so I try to do as few as possible. I'm not really into bikes (and by not really I mean "couldn't care less") and I'm the one posting, so I'll leave it at that.

Oh wait, there is this cool video of this bike trick guy: [that didn't post. weird.]

Justin’s stomach was bothering him (surprise! despite surgery, no burps and no beer, it’s still an issue! ain't life grand!) and while he tried to describe what Tums were to a Japanese pharmacist, I found this:

Make your own caption up.

Shimogamo shrine is right next to the train station. Justin asked if I wanted to go in. I demurred. I was hot, sticky, and shrined out, honestly. And it was under a shitload of scaffolding. But here's a photo:

Then we took the train to Osaka.

I don’t know why, but I was totally excited for Osaka. Oh wait, I know why. It’s because the whole city, at least according to what I’ve seen and read on it, is all about eating.

After a longer than expected train + subway ride to hotel, we collapsed in our room for a little while. And then it was time to eat and explore.

(You can tell I’m getting tired of writing this, right?)

We found a Tokyu Hands, looking for gifts. Justin was absolutely enamored of this store’s huge hardware section, complete with wood!

Osaka has the most shopping arcades of any city I have EVER seen. I think it might beat Tokyo in sheer number and it's no way as big a city.

Or maybe it’s just because we spent more time wandering through them here; we didn’t have a guide, and left to our own devices we do what I want to do, which is walking until your feet tingle and thighs throb and people-watching and eating random food in random places. So I guess in Osaka that exploration meant we walked through a hell of a lot of shopping areas.

Kudos to Justin for navigating our way through it; after a while they all start to look the same and I have a feeling I would still be wandering around there if it weren’t for him.

Osaka at night is much nicer than Osaka in the day. It’s a decent city, but doesn’t have what Tokyo and Kyoto have. In fact, it's really not that attractive. But who cares. I liked it. It definitely pushed the bar on weirdness density.

(I do want to go back and see more of the countryside that we had initially planned but couldn’t afford in both money and allotted vacation days. Sigh. I think we’d like that even more.)

We ate a lot of street food. First we found taiyaki, and I was soooo excited. They were soooo good. But first we had to try the takoyaki, which are fried dough balls that have octopus in them. I tried to like them, I want to like them, and Kurata in Lake Oswego does a good version of them. But I didn't like these. The guy had a long line, too! But the takoyaki were rubbery and undercooked. It was like having a pancake that isn't cooked in the middle--and is also filled with octopus. Gross, right? These are the specialty of Osaka. Maybe cooked a little better. I'm pretty much done with them.

But another specialty is the (let's see how badly I can do the spelling) is okonomoyaki, which is really good -- it's like a savory omelet/pancake thing with eggs, shrimp, fish, and a bunch of other crap that I probably don't want to know about. Oh and I also ate some fried sesame things. Those were real good. This was dinner.

Believe it or not, I woke up feeling fine. Maybe gluten doesn't affect me when I cross the date line.

May 29: Kyoto

May 29

In the morning, we had another half-day guide, Tomo. Tomo was awesome; I’d say she was about our age, she’d lived all over the world though from Kyoto; her English was fabulous and we impressed her by how much we talked to her about food. I like talking about food. Remember, food is fun.

First stop was Sanjusagendo. I’ll let someone else describe it better than me. (is it obvious that I really want to finish this recap now, and I’m not even seeing the light at the end of the tunnel?) It really was incredible – the level of detail on the statues is unbelievable. The eyes, they follow you. The statues are all so different, some of them creepy as hell and some of them very peace-inducing. You're not allowed to take photos inside.

Sidebar: So when we drove up to the parking lot for this first stop, Tomo gasped. What, we said. She said, there’s no one here!

Is it closed?

No, it wasn’t closed, but by 10 a.m., there should be a lot more people here, there usually are a lot more people here.

It was like that at the Meiji Shrine as well, Noriko had told us.

Not like I minded, but tourism is down not just because of the economy but because of the flu. I’ll be dammed if I’m changing my vacation for hysteria, so we were good. But you know, I kind of really, really liked a scene not choked with crowds. But you should go. Travel is so important. I need to do it more. You should all find ways to do it.

And on another note, after all the hubbub about how expensive Japan is? It really isn’t that bad. I mean, it’s not a super-bargain, but I had a decent amount of Japanese yen left over and I only went to the ATM once, and that was preemptively. Really, I didn’t even need to go, in hindsight.

I think like any city it can be shockingly expensive, but so can NYC – go to the Four Seasons instead of Rainbow Falafel, and there you go. Hotels probably cost more, though for what you get, but we took subways and trains instead of cabs (we once took a cab like a mile from the Gion area of Kyoto to our hotel because of a sudden downpour and my slides had no traction). And we didn’t have drinks at the hotel because spending $25 for a Jack & Coke goes against everything I hold dear.

But it wasn’t that bad at all. Seriously. Go.

The gardens are beautiful:

Then it was Golden Pavilion time, otherwise known as Kinkakuji Temple.

This place was a lot more crowded, though lovely.

I really had expected to dismiss Kyoto as a dodgy tourist mecca, like Florence (sorry, I know a lot of people adore it but I had a lousy experience there and it is lousy with tourists and thoroughly unpleasant).

But I was surprised how much I enjoyed the city.

Silver Pavilion I liked even more – not quite as crowded (the temple itself was undergoing some roof work, but that didn’t stop us from exploring the grounds. The gardens here were beautiful and varied, from exquisite sand gardens to knotty, rooty mossy carpty goodness. There is something about being there, you start to notice things like the angle of the moss, the pitch of a root, the smoothness of a handrail made from bamboo. You can’t not slow down and take things slower, and breathe. I liked that.

Me @Silver Pavilion (we only like the candids Justin takes of me, otherwise I look retarded):

And now us:

And look, here we are in front of the sand garden, one of many gardens. It kind of reminded me a little of the Japanese Gardens in Portland. Maybe that's why I liked it.

Moss is nifty. Japanese moss is the niftiest, I think.

View from up the hill:

Lest you think we went all tree huggy, I bring you this:

At this point (possibly when she grasped how weird we were) Tomo bode us goodbye (actually no, the half day was over), and Justin and I strolled along the Philosophers’ Path. It was sunny and warm and the light speckled on the water just so, as I’m sure it does continually, entrancing and alluring.




And Japanese cats continue to ignore us.

We spotted another shrine on the way back – actually there were a ton, but this was incredible. Nanzenji shrine, I think it is.

Later on, we wandered around in search of dinner. We walked for a while. This is kind of what we did, often, unless I/we had a particular place in mind. We'd walk around looking for somewhere that looked good but not too good, kind of English friendly but not too English friendly, more like English unfriendly except for us. Then one of us would be like, "Oh, FINE! Let's go here! Here is fine! No really, it's FINE! I am HUNGRY!" and then we'd sit and eat and warm towels and sake would emerge from the delicious depths of the kitchen and it would all be good and we'd be all huggy-huggy-Japan-yay.

With clouds threatening, we decided to duck into this sushi place that looked pretty full. No one spoke a word of English, and we felt like dumb Americans ordering a tuna roll and a futomaki roll, but we weren't that hungry--at least not one we got these humungous Futomaki rolls! They were the size of an outstretched hand. OMG it was hilarious. There was like a cup of rice in each slice of the roll. Does Kyoto have a marathon? This is where I'm going to carbo load.

Big fucking sushi for big fucking Americans.

After this, we left the restaurant and it was pouring. We walked around in it a little whole, but my Adidas slides are worn through and have no traction and risk crutches + Carin in a foreign country, we grabbed a cab. It was only like $5.

Then Justin decided he wanted to walk back to Lawson and get one of those waffle ice cream things.

Posting...getting this online for the sake of time, not quality...

May 28: Hakone to Kyoto

May 28

Hakone was pouring.

We took the shinkansen (aka the “bullet train”) for part of the way, before changing to a local train which inched up the mountains. Endlessly. I was tired. And humid. And sweaty. And wet.

But the ryokan was worth it.

But we were tired.

But look at the food!

And this was only part of the dinner. The thing ig, it's all small, beautiful bites, so you don't feeel all gross.

Oh! What’s a ryokan? It’s a Japanese inn. Like a B&B. But not foofy. And you don't have to talk to anyone else at breakfast. The idea is that it’s for a little R&R. (Hee, B&B R&R)

You get there, have some tea, have several soaks in the hot baths (before which you scrub the hell out of yourself), eat a exquisitely presented dinner, sleep on futons, wake up, bathe/shower again, and then eat your breakfast. Pretty much this eating and sleeping was all we did, since it was positively lashing rain. There is quite a bit to do in Hakone, apparently, but we didn’t do any of it.

Because it was fucking pouring.

Besides, it’s really fun to get into the baths. I had tweaked my hamstring and IT band from running before we went on vacation, and I was looking forward to repeatedly scalding the shit out of my legs as healing punishment. It’s so much fun to shower and bathe when it’s such a pleasurable experience. Wait, that came out the wrong way. I just meant that when the water pressure is fierce, the bathroom is cool, and you don’t have to foot the water bill (well I guess you kind of are when it comes to your hotel tab), it’s not, like, an obligation.

Sidenote #Ilostcount: Every place we went to, from cheap to upscale, had terrific, unbelievable water pressure. So much so that when we got home we asked each other if there was something wrong with our showerhead. Nope. It just can’t blast a layer of skin off. And there’s something to be said for that!

The clouds started to lift when we left Hakone:

And, then there was Kyoto.



Perhaps this is why there are no love hotels in Kyoto?

We really liked Kyoto. This surprised me. I expected a gross tourist Mecca lile Florence. I hated Florence. But it was really quite pleasurable and had a nice allotment of weirdness as well.

We wandered all over the freakin’ place. And laughed at signs and things.

And ate grasshoppers and bees. No, really. I asked the chef at one of my favorite Japanese restaurants if she had any recommendations, and she came back with Okariba.

It’s an izakaya where the chef hunts everything he makes. Including fish. And wild boar. And, I guess, grasshoppers and bees. Which are candied. Kind of.

We didn’t order them, he just took a shine to us (because ahem, how could you not?) and brought out this platter. We couldn’t say no, could we? They weren’t bad. And really, aren’t shrimp and lobster just sea bugs? I actually can’t stand to look at a whole lobster on the plate; all I see is roach. You’re welcome.

Anyway, we had a great time, had some sake, met an interesting French guy who is a physics professor in Kyoto and who divides his time between Paris and Kyoto. Tough, eh?

More in a few.

May 27: Tokyo Weirdness

May 27

The Railpass gave us access not to the Tokyo metro/subway, but to the JR rail lines. One makes a circle around Tokyo and so that’s what we took. We just decided to wing it. I like winging it. Really. I swear. Our first stop was Ueno park.

We went to the Ueno park zoo.

But not before seeing a set of really nice legs in the park.


Japanese zoo = Japanese warning signs about zoo = Excellence.

And I learned about Spider Monkeys. OMG. They are my spirit animal. Long arms, very goofy, totally gawky and strange and misaligned, and the one I was captured by was a total ham who tried to impress everyone in and out of the cage, and kept falling down. It. Was. Me.

We saw animals we might normally not see, like Capybara. And of course the tapir, not to be confused with Taper, which is a different kind of animal, unique to runners.

We were talking about the capybara at the office a few months ago (I’m not sure why, how does this relate to marketing?) and so I was quite pleased to encounter one.

As well as an enormous goddamn pelican.

And jackass penguins!

Then it was off to Ikebukuro and the Sunshine 60 complex. (Thank you, thank you, thank you Meg for the suggestion. This was so, so well worth it.)

Namja town is…well,I’d have to say it’s in the top 5 things that I’ve seen and couldn’t understand from whence or why it came. There is Stonehenge. The Grand Canyon. Las Vegas. And now…Namja town.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

“Namco Namja Town is an indoor theme park in the Sunshine City shopping complex in east Ikebukuro, Toshima, Tokyo, Japan. The park was opened in 1996 by Namco, a Japanese company best known for producing video games, although the park itself does not focus on those games. Instead, it features themed dining, carnival-style games, a haunted house, and a line of character mascots exclusive to the park.”

But it doesn’t even come close to what it is. I don’t know what it is. I don't know if I want to know what it is. It’s sort of like if Chuck-E-Cheese and Sesame Place (for those of you Delaware Valley residents or ex-residents like Justin and I) and Farrell’s and the Boardwalk and a whole lot of crazy crack fairy dust got whirled together in some kind of absurdist food processor. It’s all in Japanese and we don’t speak any so maybe it would make more sense if we understood. But you know what? Probably not.

You have to buy a ticket (about $3 each). The place is kind of meandering, it's like a dollhouse you're kind of scared of, it's like weird Guilliver Narnia and it doubles and triples and quadruples back on itself, it’s like a labyrinth of games and lights and colors and noise. There are places you are kind of…directed toward but if we diverged off it, we found ourselves getting redirected until we had no clue where we’d ended up. It was like a mystical forest of weird.

When you first come in, you are directed to a lot of…well, I’ll call them stations, where you can get a massage (all for additional fees –$3 can only get you a massage in Thailand, I guess). That’s what we didn’t understand at first – it’s a kid’s play area, and massages? Huh?

After walking around this some, my bet is that this particular section is for the mothers, who probably drop their kids off at the various games or for birthday parties (there seemed to be a few going on while we were there) and then take some time for themselves. Can’t say I blame them. More places should have massage breaks when you don’t want to do what the establishment offers. I could sure use one when I have to go to any kind of hardware store with Justin.

In addition to all kinds of games and rides, Namja Town also has a “Goyoza Stadium” (Goyoza are Japanese dumplings, usually stuffed with pork and fried). Unfortunately we weren’t able to partake because we had just eaten lunch. (And I don’t like pork anyway.)

But there was certainly time for dessert. At Ice Cream City. It’s billed as a museum. It’s sort of like a “Please Touch,” or maybe like a “Please Lick” museum. They get the museum part because in one area there are a bunch of exhibits which I assume detail the history of ice cream and there is a display to show how ice cream cones have evolved through the ages.

Really, it's all about the dessert, as aptly put on this poster:

But you’re there for the city part of ice cream city, ya know. And like a city, there are many options to choose from. You could have a crepe with ice cream and bananas and chocolate. You could have a blend-in type ice cream from another store. Or soft serve. Or gelato. Or enter a huge store with every kind of Japanese ice cream flavor, all of course written in Japanese (and why wouldn’t it be?) Here it’s unlike a department store basement in that it’s totally fine to eat what you buy right then and there at the little seating area.

Justin was thrilled.

Eventually we disentangled ourselves from all that is Namja and made our way out of the town and over to the Tokyu Hands department store.

We were there to see kitties.

We had heard about the Japanese cat cafes for a while now, which had gained popularity since many Japanese can’t have pets due to apartment size restrictions, other rules, etc. Well we didn’t make it to a café per se, but on the 8th floor of this department store, next to the pet department is a “cat house.” (Their words, not mine.) A cat house where you can pay a token fee and go in and hang with the cats as long as you want.

As long as you follow these simple rules:

The cats were really cool, but entirely mellow. Very few were playful. They are pretty much just there to sit and chill with you. They’re not all out at the same time; some of them are in their own pods.

And then we just wandered around though a bunch of different neighborhoods, back to our hotel. It was awesome.

For dinner we stopped at an izakaya not far from our hotel. I just liked the way it looked from the outside, and once again! Carin’s restaurant karma prevails! It was awesome. We had little bits of a lot of food and it was all delicious. Have I mentioned how much I love Japanese food? Especially now that I can’t eat real bread, I am all about all things rice.

Bah blah blah this is too long already, let’s hit the next day.

Next day it was off to Hakone, a hot springs area about 30 min from Tokyo.

May 26: Tokyo explorations

May 26

Okay, so we had to do it. We had to get up at the asscrack of dawn on our vacation.

Yeah I know everyone goes to the fish market when in Tokyo, and it’s tourist assholes that entail restrictions on things like the tuna auction at the market, and it’s tourist mecca, but hey, a lot of Japan is and you know what? Who cares? It’s not like we look like we could be natives or anything.

Besides, tourist-wise, it wasn't THAT bad. It was what it was.

Justin, with the help of the map, navigated us to the market, which was about a 10 minute walk from the hotel. Only we entered at the fruit and vegetable area of the market, which is about as big as the little Wednesday People's co op market on a winter weekday, which meant that Justin asked, “Wait, so this is it?”

Au contraire; soon we were knee-deep in fish guts. Well, not really. But didn’t that sound disgusting enough?

Speaking of disgusting: Octopi. Beautiful to look at. Not so great to eat.

It really is that bustling; it’s not for tourists to gawk at, it’s a working fish market and should be treated accordingly. I never went to the one in Manhattan, at South Street, so I can’t compare it to that, but jesus, people, step lively! I imagine it will be good practice for when we go to somewhere in SE Asia, when you try to cross the street and there’s a whole shitload of traffic screaming toward you from every direction and every speed.

Especially when you see one of these carts that looks like it’s powered by R2D2--get the hell out of the way. These are how everyone who works at the fish market gets around. And these little guys haul ass!

More from the market:

Phallic-looking goeduck:

Tuna:

We wandered around for about an hour, taking many photos along the way, and video of a squid who spat water onto an onlooker. It was awesome.

So I’d heard, oh you gotta have sushi at the market, blah blah blah. Not like you'd have to really spend a lot of time convincing me. Besides, it was kind of like dinnertime back in Portland anyway, time-wise.

And I really don’t see how raw fish at 7 a.m. is any different than smoked salmon on your bagel at Sunday brunch.

It took us a while and a lot of map turning around to find the food stall area, though. Justin at first didn’t believe me when I insisted “Yes! There are vendors that sell this stuff! Cut! Fresh! Over rice! To you!”

Eventually we found said area , found one with a line (always look for the line) though not an obscenely long line (full of Americans*), and soon I was tucking into a huge bowl of tuna, uni, salmon roe, wasabi, and rice and sipping on green tea (well, we both were eating but damn if I remember what Justin got). It was fantastic.

The green tea in Japan is wonderful, and I am going to go to Uwajimaya at some point to get some of it. It has a wonderful roasted taste that I hadn't had before. Totally great. I really don't think you could have gone wrong with any of those vendors. Sigh. I want to go back now. Even the most random sushi places there are better than most of what we have here.

*Sidebar #1: Here’s the deal with seeing other Americans in Japan. Or at least other Caucasians, most of whom we found to be American (though with a few German thrown in). You pretend not to see each other. It’s kind of like high noon on the Johns Hopkins campus’ upper quad when class lets out: You walk by and the brain acknowledges it sees people, but you want absolutely nothing to do with each other. (Or maybe that’s just me. And maybe Hopkins has changed since the mid-1990s.) There is this kind of attitude of “What are you doing here? You can't be here! Because I'm here!” You know?

I can’t say that I didn’t feel this feeling, but I kinda had to laugh it off because where we went was nowhere edgy. I hardly think there is anywhere edgy in the world anymore. It’s just where you choose to go and where will make you happy. And that is enough Portlandy zen niceness for me at the moment. Good lord, who have I become? Anyway.

We hightailed it back to the hotel to shower and change to meet a guide at 9 a.m.

No, we are not blind.

When we were in Brazil we had a guide in a couple cities we went to, to show us around and either get us to places others don’t normally go (see! we! are! edgy!), or just to give us more history of the place. So we did that, for half a day, in both Tokyo and Kyoto.

Our guide in Tokyo, Noriko, was very nice. In her fifties, she had this great way of closing her eyes when speaking to us and trying to get the right word. From Noriko I learned the difference between two very important phrases, which I will now define in my terms, and not hers:

“Sumimasen” – It’s what you say when you are trying to get by someone, or trying to get someone’s attention. Like "Excuse me, pardon me."

“Gomen Nasai” – It’s what you say when you accidentally knock by someone as you try to get by them. Like "Oh shit, I'm sorry!"

I aimed for the former.

On the whole, everyone we met was very pleasant. Although Justin was surprised that more people didn’t speak English, I was the opposite; I was surprised that so many did. In the subways in Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo, there was always someone to point us in the right direction or help us decode how much the fare was. And it wasn’t just for us. It was for everyone; they helped you whether you spoke Japanese fluently, or worse than haltingly.

Okay, so first stop on our Tokyo tour was: the Meiji Jingu shrine. I will let Wikipedia define it so I don’t have to.

“Meiji Shrine, located in Shibuya, Tokyo, is the Shinto shrine that is dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shōken. When Emperor Meiji died in 1912 and Empress Shōken in 1914, the Japanese people wished to pay their respects to the two influential Japanese figures. It was for this reason that Meiji Shrine was constructed and their souls enshrined on November 1, 1920.”

Here are empty sake barrels that have been donated by various sake brewers. Sake is used in many ceremonies (beats the hell out of Manischevitz!).

There are often weddings here, too. We were lucky enough to see a couple in formal wedding attire:

And a school group on a tour. They looked really cute all teeny tiny and in their teeny tiny matching hats—baseball caps for the boys, and more of a boater-type hat for the girls. We saw a bunch of tour groups at the zoo in Ueno park, too; each group had a hat of a different color. I guess they plan that all out in advance?

We then checked out the gates by the Imperial Plaza and went to the Imperial Plaza Park.

And here’s the deal with the imperial plaza park, courtesy of Japan-Guide.com. (My information retention dwindles as I reach old age.)

“The current Imperial Palace (Kokyo) is located on the former site of Edo Castle, a large park area surrounded by moats and massive stone walls in the center of Tokyo, a short walk from Tokyo station. It is the residence of Japan's Imperial Family… [the] Castle used to be the seat of the Tokugawa shogun who ruled Japan from 1603 until 1867. In 1868, the shogunate was overthrown, and the country's capital and Imperial Residence were moved from Kyoto to Tokyo. In 1888 construction of a new Imperial Palace was completed. The palace was once destroyed during World War Two, and rebuilt in the same style, afterwards.”

More on the palace, if you like.

A lot of things we saw in Japan had a similar in the story: original destroyed, got rebuilt, in original style, but we swear it was here before then.

Anyway, it’s massive. Imagine if Central Park was the residence of a monarch and family, and you weren’t allowed to go in most of it. Maybe it’s not Central Park or Forset Park big, but it’s pretty gigunda.

And then it was onto the Asakusa Kannon Temple and Nakamise Shopping Arcade.

Like the inverse (or is that converse) of a typical museum in which you go to the main event first and then hit the gift shop later, in this case one tends to go through the shopping arcade enroute to the shrine. Although it’s not exactly affiliated or anything like that, it doesn’t surprise me in shopping-mad Japan*.

Sidebar #2: (Take Seinfeld tone) What is the deal with shopping in Japan? From the wee hours of the morning to the wee hours of the night, and everything inbetween, shoppers teem, everywhere. The biggest crowds we saw were not at any tourist sites but at every single shopping entity we visited. Department stores. Outdoor shopping arcades. Malls. It’s like, what recession? I’m pretty sure Japan is not the bargain basement of Asia, so what…is the deal?

Loved the Temple and learning how to purify ourselves and waft incense over the body parts that give us grief – I prompty drafted a good deal of smoke over my legs and Justin aimed his at his stomach (wait, that sounds bad).

At the shopping arcade we didn’t get any trinkets, but did pick up some taiyaki-- which I learned is the name for what I’ve been exclaiming “fish cakes! They have the fish cakes!” First encountered by us at a Mitsuwa grocery store in Edgewater, New Jersey, we are wholly addicted to these pancakey, red beany goodness. They are so good I don’t care about the gluten.

(Later, in Osaka, we found back a pan to make them ourselves. I am so excited. I am sure they will not be nearly as good as the ones we had from an Osaka street vendor or our first taste from Mitsuwa. Gotta make it back…to Edgewater. Sad!)

We spent the rest of the day first securing our train reservations for the rest of the trip (I highly recommend the Japan Rail Pass, which, like a Eurail pass, you can only get outside Japan; you can get on unreserved trains with it as well, but we figured it would just be easier to book the stuff now so we knew which seats we were getting, that the train car would be nonsmoking, etc.), and then wandering around Ginza and in and out of a bunch of department stores and shops.

Japanese Department stores. I don’t know why we didn’t take more (any?) photos of them. The only thing we really bothered with is the basement, which, no matter which department store you enter, will be a clean, glowing, glorious, chattery, buzzy well-lit hive of fantastic food and flurrying shoppers. Fortunately or unfortunately, there is really no place to eat what you buy there. It’s not like a food court. It’s what you get when you stop there on the way home from work, I guess. Or during the day—if you are a woman.

In fact, Japanese frown on eating or drinking on the street. Though there are always vending machines with drinks (everything from hot beverages to sake to beer to water to juice to tea to Pocari Sweat), if you get something, you stand by the vending machine and consume it until it is done. Then you throw it away in the receptacle right next to the can. Same thing if you’re at a convenience store. It’s likely why the streets are so clean: no food waste. It was kind of nice but sometimes it kinda made us feel like we had to "Consume! Reallyreallyfast!"

We love sake.

That night we went to a sake tasting place that I learned about on bento.com -- if you are going to Japan and want to eat, check out this site. The owner spoke no English but we somehow found a way to communicate “dry” and “delicious” and “how much.”

I won’t even get into how fucked up street addresses are in Tokyo because everyone knows that. The only way we found this sake place, teeny tiny and on the 2nd floor of a building that defines “nondescript” was because two jolly old guys came up to us and asked where we were going—by that point, thanks to Justin’s mad skillz, we were only half a block away!

That was kind of our directional issues on this trip – just when we were ready to give up, or gave up, where we needed to go was, literally, just around the bend. So when we trusted that, we were golden.

Justin loves me even more because we ended up at Mosburger for dinner. It’s a burger! With a hole! And the fries were good. He said the burger was ok. But it’s a burger! With a hole! Like a beef donut!

Tokyo at night is fantastic; I prefer it.

Okay, I’m done for now. This takes longer than I'd like.