Getting our Bearings in Tokyo

View from hotel
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On our first afternoon in Tokyo, we wandered around Shinjuku, slightly dazed from the overnight flight, but not doing too badly overall. Shinjuku is a very business-y neighborhood, also with lots of shopping to be had. The Tokyo city hall as well as several head offices (NTT DoCoMo is one) are all in this neighborhood, so there's always plenty of black suits about. We didn't know too much about the area before coming to Tokyo, but we are happy to find that it is a very convenient spot to be based out of, since Shinjuku station is a major hub for both the JR lines (like an LRT) and the subway.

Shinjuku shopping
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The subway is a whole other topic itself... the map looks like spaghetti - really complicated - but it's actually not that bad. We found the subway system to be really convenient, and we even managed to buy the correct tickets every time! It's a lot like the London Underground, where you have to pay a different fare depending on how far you are traveling. The guide books make it seem like an insurmountable task to figure out how to find your train and buy the proper tickets, but we managed OK with no knowledge of Japanese to our credit.

We stuck out not because we were white, but because we were dressed badly...

Plastic food!
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There's not as much English around as in Hong Kong, but we found enough to get by. I have to say I felt bad for not learning at least the basic Japanese phrases before going, but oh well, it's amazing what you can accomplish with hand gestures. It makes one grateful though that we happen to be fluent in the most commonly known language worldwide - there's very few people who don't know at least a couple words of English.

So anyways, back to our first afternoon. We visited a number of the different department stores in the area, Keio, Takashimaya Times Square and Mitsukoshi, as part of getting our bearings. We used our Lonely Planet guide to find a restaurant, which of course no longer existed. I'm not sure if Lonely Planet has EVER found us a restaurant in Asia, now that I think of it - we're not impressed! Ok, I think there was one out of about 6 we tried to find in Hong Kong that was actually in operation. We picked another restaurant on our own though, a little curry place on the second floor. We chose curry for a couple reasons: One, Indian people tend to speak more English than Japanese, and Two, we weren't quite brave enough yet to attack a Japanese menu. So, the curry was good, notwithstanding the smoking that seems to be allowed everywhere - except on the streets actually, which I find really funny. You can smoke in a restaurant in Japan, but not walking down the street - clearly they are more worried about littering than they are about health! The department stores in the Shinjuku area are all pretty high-end. Very fashionable stuff though, but definitely not in our price range. We were quite impressed at how fashionable the people seem to be in Tokyo, and all with their own unique style. You see some very outlandish outfits that would never fly in North America, but it all seems normal here. So much for the staid, boring Japanese, they seem to have way more style than we do! And not European or New York style, theirs is uniquely Japanese. We stuck out not because we were white, but because we were dressed badly...

Max sleeps through the best part...
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Max was pretty bushed (well, we all were) so he conked out in his stroller, and so missed several toy stores and the Disney store. We tried to wake him up, but he was not having it. One store we visited, called Tokyu Hands, was billed as the Japanese equivalent of Home Depot. I don't quite get that, since there was no lumber or renovation stuff of any sort in sight, but you could buy pretty much anything else. They had everything from Halloween costumes (dress up as an eggplant, anyone?) to camping gear, to an amazing variety of light bulbs, including some very funky LED ones.