Sensory Overload
I finally accomplished my aimless wandering mission last week – I spent 14 hours straight walking around the city on Saturday, which allowed me to take in most of the big neighborhoods in Tokyo, but I still have lots more to see. Here's a map of Tokyo, if you'd like to keep track - the green square in the middle is Akasaka, my neighborhood. I shot out of bed at around 5:30 on Saturday and headed straight out to Asakusa in the northeast corner of town to see Sensoji Kannon, a gigantic temple founded by fishermen in the 7th century. The compound housed a handful of smaller temples, buddhas, gardens and a five-storied pagoda which was pretty impressive. After that I took the subway down to Ginza, a famous shopping district in central Tokyo, but it was totally dead around 8:30am, so I walked from there through downtown Tokyo to the Imperial Gardens and Palace, where the imperial family of Japan is housed. The gardens make up Tokyo’s version of Central Park, with the entire city built around the circular moat surrounding the gardens. From there, I walked over to the National Diet Building, which houses Japan’s legislature, and then I went next door to see the Japanese Supreme Court building.
Walking around all morning made me thirsty, so I grabbed the first drink I could find in a 7-11 down the street: the enigmatic Pocari Sweat. “Pokkari” means “cloudlike” in Japanese, and “sweat” is not a Japanese word; it’s said that Coca-Cola used this name for its branding campaign in Japan because sweat signifies “diligence, effort and refreshingness” here (I don’t quite get the third point, but they’re Coke, and I’m unemployed). I tried it, and to my amazement, it was spectacular, kind of like eating sweet, overripe watermelon sprinkled with a tiny bit of salt, and I ended up drinking at least 2 liters of it by the end of the day.
After my Pocari Sweat break, I took another subway ride out to Shinjuku, a giant commercial and financial district on the northwest side of Tokyo, and stopped at the Taisoji Temple and the Shinjuku Gyoen National Gardens on my way in from the east. The Taisoji Temple, founded in 1668, is famous for housing the city’s largest statue of Yama, the King of Hell, who was surprisingly intimidating for a big wooden guy. I then spent a couple of hours weaving my way through Shinjuku, which was another sensory-overload experience: tens of thousands of people and cars sharing the streets, 30-foot televisions on the sides of buildings at intersections barking about this shampoo or that car, thousands of 10-story buildings crammed to the top with lights and shops, and countless smells like fresh cantaloupe, car exhaust, grilled meats and fish, perfume stores and sewage hitting you from all sides. I wandered into the western side of Shinjuku to the skyscraper district and saw the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building, which puts any city hall in the world to shame, and then worked my way southward to the Meiji Shrine Inner Gardens. Saturday was extremely hot and sunny, so I was overheated by the time I arrived at the entrance to the Meiji gardens, but upon setting foot through the massive gate, the temperature must have dropped at least 10 degrees, as the entire pathway through the garden was covered by a canopy forest. I could have easily spent the rest of the day there because it was so cool, dark and relaxing; I’m definitely going back as soon as I get a chance. The shrine to Emperor Meiji (of the Meiji Restoration of the late 1800’s, which began the process of Westernization in Japan) was relatively simple and quiet, consisting only of a walled-in square with a large entrance gate and one main building.
Next, I headed back to Harajuku, which could not be a more stark contrast to the serenity of the Meiji shrine and gardens. It was packed body-to-body with crazy teenagers, cross-dressers and girls running around in Little Bo Peep outfits – I’m not really sure what that was all about, but who am I to ask questions? I walked through Harajuku down to Omote-Sando, a district with lots of restaurants and high-end shopping similar to the Champs-Elysee in Paris, and then ended up in Shibuya, in the southwestern corner of Tokyo. Shibuya is similar to Shinjuku in that so much is hitting you at once from all directions; three giant TVs blaring super-fast music videos in Japanese and broken English, colorful lights from advertisements covering the exteriors of the buildings, and the craziest intersection I’ve ever seen in my life – it was made famous by a scene in the movie “Lost in Translation” in which Scarlett Johansson tries to cross an insanely crowded street in Tokyo. I stopped at this intersection and stood on a bench there for at least 30 minutes, marveling at the thousands of people crossing the intersection each time the stoplight changed. An estimated 1 million people cross the intersection every day; I think that this number easily must be tripled on weekends. My pictures and video don’t do the mob scene any justice, but they can hopefully give you an idea of the countless number of “heads” bobbing their way across the intersection.
After I grabbed some dinner and walked the rest of Shibuya, I met up with my classmates back in Akasaka, and around 20 of us traveled as a group back to Shinjuku to go bar hopping; unfortunately, because of the crowds in the subway and on the street, most of us were separated from the group, so I ended up coming home early and going to bed, which was a nice treat after my all-day walk through Tokyo.
On Sunday, I met up at Omote-Sando with my old high school friend and we walked through Harajuku and Shibuya again, until she had to leave to go climb Mt. Fuji, which I’ll be doing tomorrow night. Afterwards, I found some of my classmates and we had some great sashimi at a little hole in the wall on a hill in Shibuya. That night, we caught most of the Wimbledon final, and then stayed up for the World Cup final at 3am, which unfortunately did not end too well for our French classmates. At about 6am, running on almost no sleep, a group of eight of us took an early morning trek out to Tsukiji, the world’s largest fish market, which is a tourist destination in itself. We had to fight our way through the place, as it was packed with vendors, trucks, carts and shoppers buzzing throughout the tiny walkways and driveways carved into the market’s 56 acres of space. We saw vendors slicing through 1000-pound tuna with band saws and sword-length knives, along with thousands of containers filled with anything that anyone ever thought of pulling out of the water and eating, including eel, octopus, crabs, snails, sea urchins, and mussels the size of my head – again, it was absolute sensory overload, and you can only imagine the smell... My friends and I enjoyed big bowls of raw tuna and salmon for breakfast after surviving the chaos of the market, easily our best meal of the trip so far.
Tuesday, after a trip to the Indian embassy to pick up visas for the Mumbai/Goa leg of the trek, my friends Tericke and Anthony and I visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which is dedicated to peace in Japan, along with the Yushukan Japanese War History Museum, which is housed on the same piece of land, ironically. The whole place was being outfitted with yellow lanterns in preparation for a holiday this weekend, but I haven’t been able to figure out exactly which holiday it is (we don’t have school on Monday or Tuesday, that’s all I know). That night, our teacher took the whole class to a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome to see the visiting Chiba Marines take on the Nippon-Ham Fighters. The dome was eerily silent between innings, and the stands were divided into cheering and non-cheering sections for each team, with the cheering sections only performing organized cheers and songs when their team was at bat (here's a good article explaining it). The fans of the team playing defense would all sit quietly, and only cheer if a big defensive play was made. It was really bizarre. They had what seemed like an army of beer girls with small kegs strapped to their backs, bowing to the crowd each time they hit the end of a row to serve the fans, and I was lucky enough to get on the jumbotron along with some rowdy teachers from Boston Public, although the crowd mostly just saw me shaking my American rear end like crazy.
A few of us left the game early to take a ride on Dome City’s Thunder Dolphin roller coaster, which was a lot more violent than any of us had bargained for, but it was a great ride. Afterwards, we snuck into the Tokyo Dome Hotel for a drink in the swanky lounge on the 43rd floor, and got an amazing view of the city at night; we then pulled a total about-face and ate disgustingly delicious fried shrimpburgers at an underground McDonalds for dinner (I can’t believe I’ve been to McDonalds TWICE since I’ve been here - I’m a horrible person).
Tokyo is surprisingly different from any other metropolitan city I’ve ever visited; even though there’s a lot of Western influence here, hardly anyone speaks English at all, credit cards are only accepted in a handful of the places that I’ve visited, and only two banks in the city, Citibank and HSBC, accept American ATM cards. I’ll never make fun of trigger-happy Japanese tourists with their cameras in the States again - I’ve taken over 700 pictures since I’ve been here.
I’ve been trying to knock out school work for the last two days, preparing for Sarah’s arrival on the 20th, and making the final bookings for the India-Thailand-Cambodia trip. Here are some the better pictures that I’ve taken around Tokyo, and I’m going to try to find a better way to post the rest of them soon. For now, though, I need to finalize the details of tomorrow night’s trip with about 10 classmates to Mt. Fuji, which we’ve heard is no cakewalk – I’ll have lots more to post around this time next week!
Walking around all morning made me thirsty, so I grabbed the first drink I could find in a 7-11 down the street: the enigmatic Pocari Sweat. “Pokkari” means “cloudlike” in Japanese, and “sweat” is not a Japanese word; it’s said that Coca-Cola used this name for its branding campaign in Japan because sweat signifies “diligence, effort and refreshingness” here (I don’t quite get the third point, but they’re Coke, and I’m unemployed). I tried it, and to my amazement, it was spectacular, kind of like eating sweet, overripe watermelon sprinkled with a tiny bit of salt, and I ended up drinking at least 2 liters of it by the end of the day.
After my Pocari Sweat break, I took another subway ride out to Shinjuku, a giant commercial and financial district on the northwest side of Tokyo, and stopped at the Taisoji Temple and the Shinjuku Gyoen National Gardens on my way in from the east. The Taisoji Temple, founded in 1668, is famous for housing the city’s largest statue of Yama, the King of Hell, who was surprisingly intimidating for a big wooden guy. I then spent a couple of hours weaving my way through Shinjuku, which was another sensory-overload experience: tens of thousands of people and cars sharing the streets, 30-foot televisions on the sides of buildings at intersections barking about this shampoo or that car, thousands of 10-story buildings crammed to the top with lights and shops, and countless smells like fresh cantaloupe, car exhaust, grilled meats and fish, perfume stores and sewage hitting you from all sides. I wandered into the western side of Shinjuku to the skyscraper district and saw the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building, which puts any city hall in the world to shame, and then worked my way southward to the Meiji Shrine Inner Gardens. Saturday was extremely hot and sunny, so I was overheated by the time I arrived at the entrance to the Meiji gardens, but upon setting foot through the massive gate, the temperature must have dropped at least 10 degrees, as the entire pathway through the garden was covered by a canopy forest. I could have easily spent the rest of the day there because it was so cool, dark and relaxing; I’m definitely going back as soon as I get a chance. The shrine to Emperor Meiji (of the Meiji Restoration of the late 1800’s, which began the process of Westernization in Japan) was relatively simple and quiet, consisting only of a walled-in square with a large entrance gate and one main building.
Next, I headed back to Harajuku, which could not be a more stark contrast to the serenity of the Meiji shrine and gardens. It was packed body-to-body with crazy teenagers, cross-dressers and girls running around in Little Bo Peep outfits – I’m not really sure what that was all about, but who am I to ask questions? I walked through Harajuku down to Omote-Sando, a district with lots of restaurants and high-end shopping similar to the Champs-Elysee in Paris, and then ended up in Shibuya, in the southwestern corner of Tokyo. Shibuya is similar to Shinjuku in that so much is hitting you at once from all directions; three giant TVs blaring super-fast music videos in Japanese and broken English, colorful lights from advertisements covering the exteriors of the buildings, and the craziest intersection I’ve ever seen in my life – it was made famous by a scene in the movie “Lost in Translation” in which Scarlett Johansson tries to cross an insanely crowded street in Tokyo. I stopped at this intersection and stood on a bench there for at least 30 minutes, marveling at the thousands of people crossing the intersection each time the stoplight changed. An estimated 1 million people cross the intersection every day; I think that this number easily must be tripled on weekends. My pictures and video don’t do the mob scene any justice, but they can hopefully give you an idea of the countless number of “heads” bobbing their way across the intersection.
After I grabbed some dinner and walked the rest of Shibuya, I met up with my classmates back in Akasaka, and around 20 of us traveled as a group back to Shinjuku to go bar hopping; unfortunately, because of the crowds in the subway and on the street, most of us were separated from the group, so I ended up coming home early and going to bed, which was a nice treat after my all-day walk through Tokyo.
On Sunday, I met up at Omote-Sando with my old high school friend and we walked through Harajuku and Shibuya again, until she had to leave to go climb Mt. Fuji, which I’ll be doing tomorrow night. Afterwards, I found some of my classmates and we had some great sashimi at a little hole in the wall on a hill in Shibuya. That night, we caught most of the Wimbledon final, and then stayed up for the World Cup final at 3am, which unfortunately did not end too well for our French classmates. At about 6am, running on almost no sleep, a group of eight of us took an early morning trek out to Tsukiji, the world’s largest fish market, which is a tourist destination in itself. We had to fight our way through the place, as it was packed with vendors, trucks, carts and shoppers buzzing throughout the tiny walkways and driveways carved into the market’s 56 acres of space. We saw vendors slicing through 1000-pound tuna with band saws and sword-length knives, along with thousands of containers filled with anything that anyone ever thought of pulling out of the water and eating, including eel, octopus, crabs, snails, sea urchins, and mussels the size of my head – again, it was absolute sensory overload, and you can only imagine the smell... My friends and I enjoyed big bowls of raw tuna and salmon for breakfast after surviving the chaos of the market, easily our best meal of the trip so far.
Tuesday, after a trip to the Indian embassy to pick up visas for the Mumbai/Goa leg of the trek, my friends Tericke and Anthony and I visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which is dedicated to peace in Japan, along with the Yushukan Japanese War History Museum, which is housed on the same piece of land, ironically. The whole place was being outfitted with yellow lanterns in preparation for a holiday this weekend, but I haven’t been able to figure out exactly which holiday it is (we don’t have school on Monday or Tuesday, that’s all I know). That night, our teacher took the whole class to a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome to see the visiting Chiba Marines take on the Nippon-Ham Fighters. The dome was eerily silent between innings, and the stands were divided into cheering and non-cheering sections for each team, with the cheering sections only performing organized cheers and songs when their team was at bat (here's a good article explaining it). The fans of the team playing defense would all sit quietly, and only cheer if a big defensive play was made. It was really bizarre. They had what seemed like an army of beer girls with small kegs strapped to their backs, bowing to the crowd each time they hit the end of a row to serve the fans, and I was lucky enough to get on the jumbotron along with some rowdy teachers from Boston Public, although the crowd mostly just saw me shaking my American rear end like crazy.
A few of us left the game early to take a ride on Dome City’s Thunder Dolphin roller coaster, which was a lot more violent than any of us had bargained for, but it was a great ride. Afterwards, we snuck into the Tokyo Dome Hotel for a drink in the swanky lounge on the 43rd floor, and got an amazing view of the city at night; we then pulled a total about-face and ate disgustingly delicious fried shrimpburgers at an underground McDonalds for dinner (I can’t believe I’ve been to McDonalds TWICE since I’ve been here - I’m a horrible person).
Tokyo is surprisingly different from any other metropolitan city I’ve ever visited; even though there’s a lot of Western influence here, hardly anyone speaks English at all, credit cards are only accepted in a handful of the places that I’ve visited, and only two banks in the city, Citibank and HSBC, accept American ATM cards. I’ll never make fun of trigger-happy Japanese tourists with their cameras in the States again - I’ve taken over 700 pictures since I’ve been here.
I’ve been trying to knock out school work for the last two days, preparing for Sarah’s arrival on the 20th, and making the final bookings for the India-Thailand-Cambodia trip. Here are some the better pictures that I’ve taken around Tokyo, and I’m going to try to find a better way to post the rest of them soon. For now, though, I need to finalize the details of tomorrow night’s trip with about 10 classmates to Mt. Fuji, which we’ve heard is no cakewalk – I’ll have lots more to post around this time next week!
posted by corbinski at 7:20 AM
<< Home