Tokyo

This is the sixth part in a series - for the others see Beijing Day 1, 2, 3, 4-5, or Shanghai.

Our plane from Shanghai to Tokyo arrived at around 4 PM. The trip from the airport to the hotel was a good example of at least one difference between China and Japan: prices and labor costs are much higher. We caught a train for $35 - a taxi would have been prohibitively expensive. In China (and most of the third world), labor is plentiful and therefore cheap, while manufactured goods are (comparatively) expensive, so it's usually cheaper and easier to just pay somebody to do something. In Japan (and the first world), labor is expensive and goods are cheap, so any tasks which can be done by an automated process or a machine will usually be done that way. In Tokyo the most visible manifestation of this was the vending machines which were everywhere - there are vending machines to sell drinks (both hot & cold), cigarettes, toys, train tickets, and even to take your order in some restaurants. In China all of these tasks would be performed by people (or just as often, several people).

Our hotel was located in Shinjuku, which is one of Tokyo's many districts. It's big on shopping & business, with lots of stores and restaurants. After settling into the hotel we explored around outside a little bit:

Vending machines selling all kinds of drinks are everywhere

Most restaurants have displays outside the entrance with plastic versions of the food on the menu. This restaurant has plastic sushi, plastic soup, plastic vegetables, and a plastic mug of beer.

Real estate is at a premium, so things are built vertically. Any given building might have 8 floors of different businesses - effectively becoming its own mini-mall. The neon signs going up the building each advertise the shop or restaurant on the corresponding floor.

The next morning we went up to the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building, one of the taller skyscrapers in the area. The view was impressive - the city stretched on in all directions as far as the eye could see, which unfortunately wasn't too far since it was overcast that day:

Supposedly Mount Fuji is visible on the horizon on clear days. The large park in the picture above contains the famous Meiji Shrine, which I visited later on. Unfortunately the original shrine was destroyed by American firebombing in WWII (like most of Tokyo), though while I was there I was able to get a glimpse of some cherry-blossoms:

Apparently the cherry-blossoms are much more plentiful and impressive in early April, so we missed them by a couple of weeks.

After Shinjuku was Shibuya, another big shopping district, but with more emphasis on fashion. The train station has a popular statue of the famous dog Hachiko:

According to legend, he would meet his owner at the train station every day. One day the owner died while at work, but Hachiko faithfully went to wait at the station every day until his own death 10 years later.

Shibuya also has a large pedestrian crossing, supposedly the busiest in the world:

People amass on the sidewalks..

..until it's time to cross

The above two pictures show another big difference from China - there's nobody jaywalking, and the cars are stopping for the people. Street traffic is very orderly and predictable in Tokyo, which I much preferred to the chaos of the streets of Beijing. People seem to take rules much more seriously in Japan - almost as if it is a point of pride. I felt a little more at home when walking around, though it did take a while to get used to the cars driving on the left - people were even rigorous about walking on the left side of hallways or sidewalks.

On the next day I saw the sights in the central downtown district. The first stop was the famous Tsukiji fish market, which sold every kind of seafood you can imagine:

I didn't get up in time to see the big tuna auctions at 5 AM, but apparently they are impressive as well.

Next up was Ginza and the Imperial Palace. Unlike the Forbidden City in Beijing, the palace in Tokyo is closed to the public since the Emperor still lives there. You can walk around outside and get glimpses over the walls and moat:

The imperial palace takes up a large swath of the city - it's large enough that in the bubble of the 80's, Tokyo land prices implied that the palace was worth more than all the land in California. Needless to say, that bubble eventually popped, leading to a 20-year recession from which the real estate and stock markets still haven't recovered (hmm..).

After that was Akihabara, which is the "nerd Mecca" of the world: an entire city district devoted to video games, electronics, computers, manga, etc. This is the place where things like the Humping USB Dog are born (.. yes.. I bought one - but it was for a friend.. yeah.). The electronics stores were humongous - imagine a Best Buy, and then imagine it being 7 floors tall, stocked to the brim with all the gear you could ever want. One store had two long aisles devoted completely to USB hubs (Hello Kitty hubs, Star Wars hubs, etc.). I kept seeing rows of tiny Japanese laptops, and I eventually broke down and bought one (it had been getting pretty annoying browsing the web on my iPhone, so I was in need of a travel netbook, or at least that's how I rationalized it):

The laptop has a 7 inch 1024x600 screen (same rez as a 10" netbook), a 1.33 GHz Intel Atom w/ hyperthreading, a GPS, touch screen, webcam, swivel tablet screen w/pen, TV tuner, SD/CF card readers, an ExpressCard slot, and 1 GB of RAM (because of Microsoft's restrictions for selling XP - I've already ordered an upgrade). The keyboard is in Japanese, but fortunately also has the roman letters. All that for only 39,000 Yen, or about $390 (duty free - no tax!). So far I'm pleased with it, but ironically it's almost too small - it's hard to type on such a tiny keyboard.

On our last day in the city we had exhausted our list of things to do (again, mostly because we had failed to properly research ahead of time), so we did the most pathetic thing possible and went to Tokyo Disney. It's in the bay outside the city on a large plot of 'reclaimed' land. They have built a near-exact replica of the Disneyland in California - it's sort of surreal. On the other hand it sort of felt right - the dual crazinesses of Disney and Japanese culture were practically made for each other. Fortunately we finally had a sunny day:

Tokyo Disney was bearable and even fun, provided that you maintained a certain ironic detachment (or a childlike naivete and curiosity). One of the resorts is "DisneySea," which is unique to Tokyo and has a maritime theme:

At one point it got almost a little too weird when we ate lunch in the little "fake America" town and had NY deli sandwiches. One thing which did not work was the tendency for immense lines to form at each ride. I waited two hours for one ride and then decided that that was enough waiting in line for the day. At one point the line for the Indiana Jones ride was four hours long. I'm not sure that would happen even at Disney World in Florida at peak season. I could only surmise that Japanese people are much more patient and willing to wait in lines than Americans are.

On the last day our flight to Seattle left at 3:40 PM, so we didn't have time to do much other than check out and take the train back to the airport. The flight was 8 hours, and arrived at 8 AM, technically on the same date. Going 16 hours back in time made it a little hard to get back on a normal sleep schedule, but with a strategically timed nap on the first day back (and some Tylenol PMs for a couple nights..), I was able to get back to normal pretty quickly.