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.
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?
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.
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?
*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.
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!"
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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment