The Big City

A very fascinating city, Tokyo is spread out into many different central burroughs. It has no true center/downtown, and each burrough has a different feel. Shinjuku and Ginza are both shopping districts filled with lights that made me feel like I was in Vegas or Times Square at night. But, Shinjuku is where the young people are and Ginza is where the older(richer) people are. In Asakusa there was a beautiful temple, senso-ji, and a long market(which is part of the temple area). I took a water taxi from there to a beautiful and peaceful garden near Ginza.

On the morning of the second day I visited the fish market, Tsukiji, which was quite large. I looked around a bit and then had a sushi breakfast including uni(sea urchin) and unago(sea water eel) among other stuff. After a trip to the Godzilla statue near the Sony building(which I visited the night before) I met up with Mike Merriman`s good friend Sachiko. We went to a Japanese style spaghetti lunch and then visited the meiji-jingu shrine which was very nice and peaceful. We were very lucky and saw a traditional wedding procession with the bride in a kimono and all... We then visited the highest building in Tokyo, the met. gov. building., which was not very impressive and it was too cloudy to see fuji-san. The view reminded me of the view from the Eiffel tower in that except for a few high-rises most of Tokyo is 4-8 story buildings and they seem to go in every direction forever. For dinner Sachiko took me to her favorite restaurant, Shang-hai Noodle, a Japanese style Chinese restaurant. It was delicious. Her friend and her boyfriend and his friend met us there and we talked for a while. Unfortunately, I had to get back to my hostel by 10pm(curfew), so, we ended the night early.

The most interesting thing that I have learned since arriving in Japan is probably the fact that Japanese people love American culture. They strive to be like Americans in every way while retaining their own culture as much as they can. They love to be able to speak english with someone who is fluent. They want to master english and be like an American so intensely that sometimes it seems that they may lose a bit of their past and own culture. But, they just want to incorporate the American culture as much as possible.

Tokyo is a big city and one with everything, much like New York City, it will be very interesting to see how things are different in the countryside of Honshu and the other cities, esp. Kyoto which is supposed to be the cultural capital of Japan.

I have now moved on to Nikko(north of Tokyo). It is small mountain town just outside of Tokyo and has a cluster of very old shrines and temples. I will tour these tomorrow morning, early, then it is off to Hakone(west of Tokyo) to view Mt. Fuji. After this I will be heading to Takayama in the central mountains of Honshu.