August 31, 2010: Shinjukumania

Today we spent a leisurely morning in the Sunroute Hotel in Shinjuku where we are staying. We had breakfast buffet at the hotel and blogged. We left the hotel and went to the Odakyu shopping centre where we went up to the restaurant floor and found an excellent Japanese restaurant. We had a bento box that included prawn tempura, miso soup, rice, pickled things, some strange crab pudding type thing, and sashimi. We left and walked around some of the stores in the centre and walked around the viewing platform. Next we walked around Shinjuku more and admired the modern architecture. Our favourite building is called the Cocoon Building and it looks like a cocoon or sarcophagus. We tried to go up in it but only made it to floor two the rest were locked down for people who actually worked in the building.

We walked through the sweltering city heat to the Tokyo Municipal Building #1 where we went up in the North Tower. They are offices for the municipality, government, some schools, and other offices. There is a viewing platform free and open to the public taking an elevator up to the 45^th floor. There are vistas all around Tokyo on top. There are maps that point out the noteworthy buildings and mountains that you cannot see because of the haze or smog. We had a dessert in the Italian café up there and admired the view, especially of the Cocoon Building.

We walked around Shinjuku some more and looked for some dinner. The flashing lights reminded us of Las Vegas but not quite the same. We had dinner at a deli place that actually was more like a trans continental cuisine place. We shared a Caesar Salad, Nachos, and a Margharita Pizza.

We walked all over Shinjuku getting lost in the side streets, marvelling over all the shops and looking in some of the department stores and strange pawn shops that actually seemed to be counterfeit goods, and eventually had a Baskin Robbins ice cream. We then headed out to a Pachinko parlour to play Pachinko. For those of you unacquainted with Pachinko it is a Japanese game like slot machines but you get a bunch of little silver balls that you then play like a pin ball machine that is vertical. It is loudy, smokey, and confusing in the place. We had a hard time figuring out how to start. It turns out you put your money directly into the machine and it spits out balls then you feed them into the machine and if you are Bill and April lose them all. The guy beside April tried to explain the strategy but no matter what we tried we lost the balls eventually and left empty handed. Apparently you cannot win money in exchange for the balls so people end up getting cigarettes, candy, or other items like cans of tuna in exchange. We have heard that there are people in alleyways willing to buy these items for money and that is how people end up getting money for them but it may be different nowadays. The book April was reading about Pachinko was written in 1975 and I have not played Pachinko since I was 3 in 1983 when it was all over candy so it’s tough to say. We walked back to our hotel around 10:00 p.m. exhausted. The temperature outside at that time was 30 degrees Celcius! It is hot.

The aptly named Cocoon Tower

Municipal Building #1: South Tower on the left, North Tower on the right.

April atop of the municipal tower

View from the municipal tower

Cocoon Tower

Cocoon Tower

August 14, 2010 Around and about Tokyo by Train

We started off from the hotel and hopped on the Tokyo JR rail and went to see the Imperial Palace which is near to Ginza. We had tuna sashimi and rice at a little place under the train tracks that was really good. Authentic. We walked around the East Garden and Imperial Palace grounds and then went to Ginza and looked around some shops. We hopped on the rail and went to Ueno and hopped off. We had dinner at a noodle shop and then walked around Ueno park and visited the Zoo there. We were happy to see animals; we’re having withdrawal from our cat. The Tiger was gorgeous. When night fell there were bats flying around the zoo and the park. We hopped on the train and went to Harajuku. We walked around Harajuku and it was a lot tamer than we though. We walked all the way to Shibuya and went across the famous Shibuya crossing that can take 8,000 people at a time and has all the billboards and flashing lights. We hopped the train back to Shinjuku from Shibuya. The train system is easy to use. We next went walking around Shinjuku to see more of the night life. We finally succeeded in finding the other half of Shinjuku and got out of the three block tourist maze/vortex by our hotel. We marvelled at the lights that looked like Shibuya (April thought it was Shibuya again). We stopped at a cat café at 12:30 and paid for an hour of hanging out with cats and had a cold drink. There were about 30-40 cats there and they wandered through the two level place as they pleased and there were toys to play with them and books with their names. So many beautiful varieties including Russian Blue, leopard cat, Silver tabby, and munchkin cats that have front legs are shorter than their back legs. We then walked back to the hotel. We went to bed around 2:00 a.m., a true Tokyo day.

Hanging out outside the Imperial Palace, Tokyo.

Bushy tail of a red Panda

Bill and the bright lights of the big city

Cat at cafe

April found a silver tabby

August 11: Shinjuku by foot

We had the breakfast buffet at the hotel (not included with our stay). We were shocked by all the foreigners, having just come out of the mountains where very few people spoke anything but Japanese. We were also surprised by some of the foods on offer at the buffet.  Clearly this hotel is geared more towards tourists of an international nature.

We walked from the hotel and wandered across an overpass, and then a second one, observing the railway that went right under us through the centre of town and how that would never happen in Canada. We marvelled at the skyscrapers and inventive architecture. We happened to land right in front of Takashimaya department store. It had the mysteriously named Tokya Hands department store. It was unclear what this store was and we were intrigued. It went up several levels and had everything from orthotics, umbrellas, makeup, models of dinosaurs, and knives. It seems like a Zellers or Bay type outfit. But on the other side of the building is the department store which has individual units like Chanel, Hermes, and Salvatore Ferragamo and then department store type clothes, children’s toys, three levels of restaurants and food fair type outfits, and wedding kimonos and a cloth section. It was 14 floors high with a basement level as well. So much to see and there was even an art gallery on the tenth floor which had an exhibit of photos of rainbow colour sea slugs magnified. There were even free postcards of one of the slugs in a beautiful magenta hue.  We had lunch on one of the floors at an excellent sushi restaurant. We also had gelato later in the food court area. We did not buy anything except for one sweet bean pastry. We went back to the hotel through the muggy afternoon air.

We did laundry as April blogged. We then went out for dinner. After dinner we went to Yodabashi Camera and looked at digital cameras and lenses. Bill was very excited. We then had a milkshake and wandered around through the stores around Shinjuku at night in wide-eyed wonderment, observing the comings and goings of thousands of people. We got a taste of Tokyo and it was exhaustingly exhilarating.