Tokyo Part I

The "Golden Turd" Building by Philippe Starck
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I met Nick at the airport in Tokyo as his flight got in about an hour before mine. It had been about 7 weeks since I'd seen him, but it turns out I still recognized him. Whew!

Altogether, I'll have about a week in Tokyo, but only 3 days at the beginning of the trip. We spent two nights at a lovely ryokan (traditional Japanese Inn) in Asakusa. I finally decided to take a break from hostels and get a real room since the ryokan are supposed to be a travel experience all on their own. I know many of you at work have been traumatized by my hostel-staying and are cheering this decision. The ryokan was a great introduction to tatami mats, futons, green tea, bathroom slippers, yukata, traditional Japanese baths, and so much more.

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Outside of many Japanese restaurants there are detailed displays of plastic food. This may sound tacky but it's actually really helpful. It lets you see what is in the restaurant and the food is so realistic that we found ourselves looking at the displays as if they represented exactly what our dish would be like. Also, in restaurants that lack an English menu, you can pull the waiter outside and point. Pretty handy. Anyway, the stores that sell this plastic food are in Asakusa near where we were staying. It was pretty fun to browse the stores and their various dishes. Everything from beer to soup to sushi to pasta to extensive desserts.

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Speaking of food, Japan has not broken my trend of good food. At times I've eaten some strange things, some I knew what they were and some I didn't want to know, but it has mostly been very good. The soups (udon, miso, ramen, etc) are excellent and the sashimi delicious but my heart belongs to the tempura. Asakusa is also known for tempura and we went to a nice and very popular local place to try it out. I was hooked and it has become my standby. Strangely, sushi is not nearly as popular as I thought it would be and I've actually had to work to track it down.

For those of you who have followed my love of food on sticks throughout this blog you will understand my disappointment when I missed a chance at a street fair because I was a day late. I went out for "dinner" and was crushed to find that the temple was being used to film some scenes from a movie (we were hoping the actors would start sword fighting but no luck) and the vendors were nowhere to be seen.

It also rained pretty steadily every day I was in Tokyo. This may be my new Sydney, but for now I was actually enjoying the rain since I was still cooling down from Shanghai. Of course, wandering the streets of Tokyo in the rain isn't the most pleasant thing in the world. I think I may need to break down soon and purchase an umbrella. My second trip through Tokyo will be a more in the center of things and I'm hoping that we get a little bit of drier weather.