RTW Trip: Day 85-86 (5/19-5/20) - Yokohama & Kamakura

Day 85-86: What Lies Beyond

Tokyo has a lot to see, but Japan, with its thin shape and fast trains, is as much about the day trips, the little locales one or two hours away from the bulging metropolises, the little temple towns tucked away behind miles of steel track and Shinkansens. Well, over the past two days, I got to see two different areas about 1-1.5 hours outside of Tokyo’s Asakusabashi station, where my hostel is tightly situated. Yesterday was Yokohama, Tokyo’s sister city. Today was Kamakura, a city farther out the same direction as Yokohama. Both gave me a different perspective on Japan, the old and the new, as it were.

It is unfair to call Yokohama a ‘little locale… away from the bulging metropolises’ since it is a city of about 3 million people, making it the 2^nd largest city in Japan. I’m not sure how a major country like Japan can have its two largest cities within forty five minutes of each other, but it works. From Yokohama, you cannot see Tokyo at all. It is a nice city on its own, a city of culture and a massive urban experiment. The drive from Tokyo to Yokohama took me through many different tunnels, all brightly lit with massive lanes, and highways that criss-crossed up and down over the Japan coast. We also passed the Port of Tokyo, which was about thirty times cleaner and more organized (at least from afar), than the Port(s) that lines the New Jersey Turnpike. Finally, we reached Yokohama, and in particular my dad’s old work colleague’s section of Yokohama, home of the experiment.

The great experiment is really what I’m calling a new part of Yokohama, built on reclaimed land. It is structured and organized to be a self-contained city within a city, with tall modern housing buildings across from office buildings whose bottom floors are mainly malls. Everything is in this little area, the place to work, the place to sleep, the place to eat and the place to shop. My dad’s colleague’s only real complaint was that there was no place to play, as he had a young daughter and there are few parks or play areas in this little district of Yokohama.

We parked his car at the apartment garage and then set off to the heart of the experimental district, to Queen East, a large office building and mall. The mall part rises about five stories from well underground to a long escalator above it, with restaurants and shops at every level. My dad’s colleague and I found a nice little Kaiten Zushi restaurant –the sushi restaurants where they go around in conveyor belts. I was a little unsure what was going on when I saw approximately no one take sushi from the belt, but he told me that in many of these kaiten restaurants the ones on the belt are essentially for show, and the customer tells the sushi chef which one they want. We had a bunch of sushi, all tasting far better than anything I’ve had in the US. My favorites were probably the Unagi (eel) and Sea Urchin. I have a favorite sushi place in New Jersey, but Sushi Palace mainly serves rolls. After eating at these sushi places in Japan, it seems like a farce to go back (though I know I will).

After lunch we went for a walk around the waterfront of The Great Experiment (the area has a name, but I’m not quite sure what it is), which gives a side view of the real Yokohama afar. Walking around this area it seemed to be like any posh waterfront area in the US, or more recently, Australia. Instead of walking to the other end of the city, the normal end, we decided to take the ‘Sea Bass’ speedboat that runs through three of the most popular areas in the city. From the water, I got a good view of Yokohama. The ‘Great Experiment’ area is really nice, even with its own mini Amusement Park with giant Ferris Wheel and decent sized Roller Coaster. We then sailed past a few ship docks and then a giant pier, where the boat stopped for the first time. In true Japan style, this pier had a long, glistening glass building that took up most of it. On the roof of this behemoth of a building was a park. Not a rooftop garden. A park. A long, grass covered park that even had slight hills.

After we went back around that pier, the boat continued further down the coast of Yokohama into the Central area of the city. When we get off, we entered into I guess the original downtown Yokohama (much of what we had passed was reclaimed over the last 50 years). Another large park was right off of the pier, which my dad’s colleague pointed out as being one of the advantages of living more centrally in Yokohama. We spent the next two hours or so just walking around Yokohama Central. We walked through one of the oldest hotels in all of Japan, then through Japan’s largest Chinatown, which was so dense and packed, with lines queueing up in front of every stall despite it being well past conventional lunch time. We walked through the well designed government buildings, and even a quick trip inside the Cup Noodles museum, which was almost humorously full and busy. Finally, we returned back to the Queen East and to his apartment high inside one of The Great Experiment towers.

His apartment building is designed like one of those hotels where all of the rooms are on the walls of the hotel, with a large open atrium in the middle. I was a little surprised that there was no roof, since rain water would be quite annoying, but hard to argue with how beautiful it was. We then met his wife and daughter. The daughter was quite shy, even after telling her mom that she was excited to practice her English with me. We were in the apartment for a bit, where I played a board game with her, which got her to open up a little. In her defense, she was four, and I was exactly the same around strangers when I was four too.

We left from there to dinner at a Japanese Korean-BBQ place, which I was told is the term used for those types of restaurants. Despite me having gone to a lot of them in Osaka, I told them I hadn’t been as to not create any doubt in their mind whether they chose a good place to take me. We settled and I laid back, letting him do the ordering and the cooking, and while I would like to think I did an adequate job when I went on my own, I quickly realized how much better someone who knows what they’re doing is. The first course was tongue, roast (which I called ‘normal meat’, much to the delight of my dad’s colleague and his wife) and intestine. The next round was pork, more intestine, and little bowls of different innards, like stomach, heart, and two others. All were quite good, and cooked better than I ever had. In my defense, it cooks better when you put more meats on the grill at once, which was hard to do when I was alone.

After we finished dinner I headed to the train station deep in the basement of Queen East (the last part of ‘The Great Experiment’ which I guess does allow people easy access to leave it. I first took the subway to Yokohama station, then the train from there to Tokyo Station, and then the local JR train to the hostel. All those trips took about 40 minutes, another showcase of the breathtaking efficiency of the Japan Rail system.

My next day was a little quieter, as instead of going from Japan’s largest city to its 2^nd largest, I ventured out in the same direction as Yokohama, but a little further out, to Kamakura. My dad’s colleague told me about Kamakura as an option if the weather was bad, as I had planned to go to Mt. Fuji, or at least get close enough to get a nice picture. Since the forecast was a little dicey, I decided to put off Mt. Fuji and do Kamakura instead. From the quick overnight research I did, Kamakura seemed to be a larger version of Nara, an Old-Japan city, full of temples and shrines.

Kamakura was about an hour and fifiteen from Tokyo Station, making this my first long-distance trip on a train that isn’t a Shinkansen bullet train. Still, the long distance JR trains are extremely reliable and comfortable. The hum along smoothly without ever having to stop ‘because of traffic ahead’, the omnipresent nuisance of American train travel. The trip to Kamakura allowed me to do a little more planning of my trip. The forecasts showed the potential for rain in the afternoon, so I wanted to get everything done first.

Kamakura has a ton of temples and shrines, so it was quite an assignment to limit it to the ones worth seeing. In the end, after doing my research on the JR WiFi available on their trains, I settled on the Hasedera Temple, the Great Buddha, the Shrine of Tsurugaoka, and the Kenchoji Temple. These four are not only, at least to me, the four best sites but are also easily reachable from each other. Unlike Nara, Kamakura is not a small walkable city, but a large one that happens to have a bunch of sites to see inside.

The first site was the Hasedera Temple, at the end of a busy lane deep inside Kamakura. Once you enter the Hasedera Temple grounds you escape the business of the lane and enter into a scenic garden area with the temple partially hidden by trees. It really is a beautiful setting, unimaginable when you consider just how cramped the city seems outside. This was a little paradise. The temple itself was large but a bit hollow. The real treat was the gardens around it, the little ponds, and the rows of stone people representing the dead.

From there, I had to walk about ten minutes back in the real world (the busy streets – I can’t describe just how cramped and un-Japanese the streets of Kamakura are) to get to the Shrine of Tsurugaoka (there’s a second name that’s even harder to spell). The shrine is in an ever more open area, housed behind a ornate wooden gate and side pagodas and up a steep bank of steps. The steps looked a bit daunting, but after seeing older Japanese men and women climb up I really had no other choice. The temple from the top had all of the things most of the shrines in Japan do, like the smoke that people wave on them to wash away their faults and bless them with good luck, the little area where you toss a 10 yen coin and pray before you enter inside. Most of these temples and shrines are a little barren inside, with some nice paintings on the roof.

After I left that I went to the Great Buddha, which is as it sounds, a ‘Great’ large Buddha statue, that had I would estimate 200 people around it, most of them not tourists. The ‘Great Buddha’ area also had a little idyllic pond next to it, and that was a good hideout from the mob at the Buddha itself. Strangely, they keep the immediate area next to the Buddha empty, which did nothing more than make my head-on picture of it less cluttered without any people.

The Kenchoji temple was next, but it was a little disappointing compared to the others. It was also getting a little cloudy, so my pictures were a bit off and I was trying to hurry through the last stop before heading back inside the train and back to Tokyo. I was able to get in right as the rain started to come down hard. I made it back to Tokyo and that rain had changed to a constant mist, which is more annoying in a way. At least it let me walk around.

I had a place in mind for dinner, another Katien Zushi place, this time in Asakusa, a northern district of Tokyo. In the rain, I ventured down every nook and cranny looking for this place, called Maguro-Bito, but couldn’t find it. Tripadvisor had reviews of the place as recently as May 13^th. Of course, there is the fatal flaw with the site, you can review a place at any point. Hell, when I get back I want to go review everything I’ve seen throughout this trip. I have a recommendation for the people that run the site. They should make reviewers say when the visited that place.

Anyway, I finally gave up and returned to Ueno, which I know has another Gaiten Sushi place near Ueno station. This one is known for having all of its sushi 126 yen, which is a great deal. It doesn’t have any specialty sushi, but was still just way better than the sushi we get in the US. After, I walked around Ginza during the light mist that was subsiding, checking out the various bars that were still full near 10:00. Japanese work late (the trains are still full of suits around this time), but they party late as well, as most of the bars were full of suits at that time of the day on a Monday evening. I finally returned to my hotel around 11:30 ready to go to sleep after a long, long day, with an exciting one to come tomorrow as I get to spend a day with my long-lost friend.

My Thoughts on Game of Thrones

I started watching Game of Thrones on my flight from Bangkok to Tokyo. Thai Airways, much like its Star Alliance cousin Singapore Airlines, had the entire 1^st season on its in-flight entertainment service. I got through the first three episodes feeling that it was a good show. I continued watching it on the train ride to Osaka, as the trains had Wi-Fi, so while streaming it I was able to download the rest of the first season. By the time I left Osaka, I had finished the first season by just watching 1-2 a night. Including various train rides and nightly sessions that I use to sober up, I’ve finished Season 2 and the first four episodes of Season 3 (up to the point that Daenarys frees the Unsullied and reclaims the dragon in the bad-ass-iest way possible), and I think that I can at least start to make some judgements as to where I would put the show in my, admittedly far from complete, drama rankings.

I’ve already written about my love for The Wire, in painstaking detail as I counted down my favorite 50 characters. Game of Thrones isn’t The Wire. Now, considering George RR Martin hasn’t even finished writing the book series on which the show is based, this series has the opportunity to get better over time, but it is still very good. I’ve seen all (or all up to now, as far as Game of Thrones is considered) of the following drama series:

·         = The Wire

·         = Breaking Bad

·         = Oz (not all, but enough to make a judgement)

·         = Buffy the Vampire Slayer (not afraid to say it)

·         = Veronica Mars (even less afraid to say it)

·         = Treme (because, you know, David Simon)

That’s about is as far as I can remember. I’m not a big drama guy. I’ll probably do Boardwalk Empire when I finish Game of Thrones and return to the US, but that’s all for now. It’s hard to compare Buffy and Veronica Mars to the rest because of just how different they are (though the fantasy space that Buffy operates isn’t too dissimilar to Game of Thrones if you slant it enough), but out of the other five (counting Game of Thrones), which are all very good and all shows I would recommend in an instant, I would put Game of Thrones solidly in 3^rd, behind The Wire and Breaking Bad.

As I like to do, I’ll start with the bad news. The show, to me, is too complex for its own good. Now, it is unfair, really, to pin this on the show runners, but more about the fact that a TV show is not a book. George RR Martin can get away with a really complex ecosystem in his novels, but it is harder to translate that into TV form.

*I should mention that I’m only looking at Game of Thrones from the perspective of the TV show. I’m judging it as a TV show. I haven’t read the books and probably never will*

The Wire was also really complex, adding a series of new characters each season, but The Wire also either killed or incarcerated (or, in the case of the Port guys from Season 2, just left behind) a slew of characters each season as well. While Season 1 definitely had the fewest amount of characters, from S2 on, it was basically the same. The Game of Thrones added a bunch in Season 2 and then added a handful more for Season 3. Despite being a show that plays up how easy it is to die, few of the scripted recurring characters have, adding to the overload.

Due to this overload of characters, to me the episodes get a little choppy. While no character has been in every episode, most episodes have at least 4-5 different locations and stories to tell, and some are given incredibly short shrift. My best example would be the whole deal with Stannis Beratheon and his advisor Davos and witch lover Melisandre in Season 2, which was given far less screentime than its importance demanded. Again, part of this could be the books, which don’t spend much more time on certain characters, but when Stannis’ army is part of essentially the season’s climactic moment in ‘Bleakwater’, he should have been fleshed out more.

My other complaint is more general: I find the show a little too slow. There is way too much wasted time on Jon Snow, Theon Greyjoy, and magical little Bran. Now, this could be because they become the central characters later on in the books and are thusly the main stars of a potential Season 6, but that is the problem with shooting the show when the books are incomplete. We don’t know if the amount of time we spend with Jon Snow beyond the Wall, or with Bran dreaming of three-eyed crows will mean anything.

Both of those examples are from Season 2, which I found to be a moderately sized step down from Season 1. To me, Season 2 was a total bridge, with little actually happening. The main event was that the Lannisters reaffirmed their status as the leading house of the Seven Kingdoms by beating Stannis’ in ‘Blackwater’, a character we barely knew when Season 2 started. The rise of Robb Stark is important, I guess, but Arya went from a captive to a girl on the run. Daenarys went from a girl seeking a home at the end of Season 1 to a girl seeking a home, but now with larger dragons, at the end of Season 2. My biggest regret with Season 2 was how little Daenarys’ progressed, and I didn’t like her character through much of the season, after she was arguably my favorite storyline in Season 1. Thankfully, her storyline in Astapor in the first four episodes of Season 3 have been great, especially that incredible scene where she reveals she knows Valyrian.

Season 3 has been better in that regard, and from what I’ve heard, the Third book (which is being played out in Seasons 3 and 4) was the best of the series so far, so I have hope it can reverse course, but much of Season 2 I felt I was being dragged through the boring stages of a long game.

Now, let’s get to what I like. The show is incredibly well acted. Almost all of these actors are close to unknown, to the point where this will probably be the biggest role of each of their lives when it’s done. Tyrion might be the exception (I feel like I’ve seen Peter Dinklage in a lot), but still, their all guys, much like in The Wire, that I hadn’t heard of. What is really amazing is how good the child actors have been. The girl who plays Arya is brilliant. Emilia Clarke (Daenarys) has been as good, especially when she’s given material that is more than just yelling “I want my dragons” over and over again. I think the most popular star performer here is Dinklage, who’s made every scene with Tyrion incredible fun, but I really can’t think of one performer who’s done less than stellar work. Maybe Margeary Tyrell, who I find a little hammy, but in a worse acted show, she wouldn’t stand out at all.

Some of the characters are just great. I can watch Tyrion, Arya and even Tywin Lannister do just about anything (one of the highlights of Season 2 for me was watching Arya and Tywin match wits). I want to see Robb Stark with the game. I want to see Joffrey dead as soon as possible (which is the point of the character). I think there something of a ‘The Wire’ thing going on where most people are in the gray area between good and evil (think about how the bannermen and knights in every house are all rapey killers), and it probably doesn’t reach the levels of The Wire, it comes close in some of its characters.

The other aspect of the show that I find incredible is the photography and locations and sets. Considering the budget of the show can’t be that much (despite being on HBO), to get the shots they get is amazing. I was bored by much of the ‘Beyond the Wall’ story of Season 2, but their location filming in Iceland was a genius move. Their houses and forests are so real, so perfectly chosen. Even the deserts of Qarth or the Dothraki areas that we spent Season 1 in were great. Breaking Bad is the only show I can think of that comes close in terms of photography and camera work, and while Breaking Bad is more creative in the types of shots they get and the lighting, the set work and location work in Game of Thrones is unparalleled.

So far, Season 3 has reaffirmed my faith in the show long term. I probably would have kept watching anyway, but it is nice to see that Season 2 may just be the case of it being a transitionary book, like many second albums for artists. I don’t think any show has better toed the line between outright fantasy and realism at the same time. It is my favorite type of show: real problems, real conversations, real people, in an unreal world. They can mix in dragons (which are really well presented), and mysterious smoke-filled newborns, and seers, but this show is still about power, control, and the lengths and justifications for it.

Before I move on, I want to make two points:

 
1.) The magic does bring up an interesting issue: What’s the point of the internal Game of Thrones fighting for the Throne when there’s a Taergaryn with growing dragons and a bunch of Wildwalkers roaming outside of the walls. I like the dual movement of the stories of what’s going on outside and inside the walls, but at some point they have to meet. Also, I’m glad I got the answer to why Milasandre couldn’t just create an army of smoke children to do her killing. I’m grateful that George RR Martin has taken active steps to limit magic in the series.

2.) This show has made me think of an interesting hypothetical: would a TV Series have been a better format for Harry Potter? The one concern is that the books are way too famous where there’s no point of dragging out things that people know are coming for 10 hours a year (or 12, or 22 or whatever it would have been in this hypothetical). Game of Thrones works as an independent piece of art if you haven’t read the books, and I’m sure the Harry Potter movies (and hypothetical TV show) would as well, but so many people did read the books before watching the Harry Potter movies. Just say, the movies were coming out along with the books, and the books weren’t nearly as famous as they were (essentially, the Game of Thrones situation), wouldn’t the Harry Potter tv show been awesome? I would say you could combine books 1-2 (or even push it to 1-3), instead of making a 300-page Sorcerer’s Stone the same length as the 900 page Order of the Phoenix, but Harry Potter would have been an incredible TV show.

I still haven’t read anything of its length that is as well told as the Harry Potter series. Sure, there are plot holes, and it all got a little silly by the end after the Deux ex Machina of horcruxes were created, but the reveal was perfect. Everything outside the epilogue was perfect. Enough people die. The books would have been 100x better served in 10 hours than they were in two and a half. Everytime a movie came out, there were complaints of ‘they left ‘x’ out’. Well, that basically goes away in tv show form. Because of the immense popularity of the books, this probably never could have logistically worked. I mean, to me one of the biggest flaws of Game of Thrones is I can’t see myself rewatching it, and in Harry Potter’s case, the first viewing would have been like semi-rewatching it if you knew the entire plot. The better fit probably would have been The Lord of the Rings as a tv show, as far fewer people read those as did Harry Potter, but I haven’t read nor watched The Lord of the Rings, so I can’t comment. I’m happy we got the Harry Potter movies, and I found them quite good on the whole, but Harry Potter the tv show would have been awesome.

RTW Trip: Day 84 (5/11) - Tokyo

Day 84: The Main Event

With my first bit of train traveling out of the way, I can get down to business in Tokyo, the place that I have really come to Japan for. In the end, doing Osaka first and Kyoto last and putting Tokyo in one chunk in the middle is better than my initial decision, and because of the JR Rail Pass, as cost-effective. Tokyo is a large, large city. I don’t have too many days when you count the day trips and the fact that I don’t really get up early and the fact that I’m meeting a long lost friend for a day or two, but that only makes me more focused.

I got up rather late (big surprise) and decided to skip breakfast (even bigger surprise), so the first place I went to was Tokyo Central, using it as my main hub to wander around Central Tokyo (saving North Tokyo for later in the week). While the JR Rail Pass doesn’t allow you to use the subway, it does allow you to use the next best thing, the local JR lines that run through most of the main areas of the city. Someone inside the cavernous Tokyo Central station is the entrance to the Daimaru Shopping Center, one of the many large shopping department stores, all housing food courts on their bottom floor. Because of its cavernous-ness, and the fact that there are many others to choose from, I left the Tokyo Station and headed to the Nipponbashi Takayamashi (or something like that – look it up, there is little chance I’m getting even 50% of the names of Japanese locations right), another place that from the outside looks like Macy’s in New York.

The bottom floor of the department store was a giant paradise of ready-to-go food (along with groceries, which were less interesting to me, but still plentiful). There were so many different stalls selling packages of sushi, or bento boxes of meat, or both, or neither but stuff that looked equally interesting. Since no one really knows English, I had to go by appearance only in choosing my lunch, which was incredibly difficult. Since I wanted to expand my sampling of Japanese cuisine to include things that were not Japanese Korean-BBQ or sushi, I went for a beef bento box. I then wanted a beer, because I had read on a blog detailing cuisine in Japan (which listed this as the best Diamaki – what they call department store food hall) of the writer having a beer and a bento on the rooftop park seating area. I went up to ask one of the people where the beer was, and she looked at me like I had seven heads. I asked another and he shouted at me in Japanese and pointed up. I took the verbal cue, and took the elevator to the roof, hoping that I understood what he meant by pointing up. Luckily, I did, and I got my beer at the top and sat back at a table and had my beef.

Rooftop park is about as apt a description as this place can be given. It really is a small, clean park (equipped with fountain) full of lush greenery on the roof of this building, with a nice view of Central Tokyo around you. I read in my research about Singapore that Singapore had the 2^nd highest living standard of any Asian country after Japan. I don’t know why, but seeing this rooftop park made me believe it. After lunch finished, I took the elevator back down and headed out and down south towards Ginza.

My incomplete research about Ginza prepared me for a shopping district. I guess that is correct, but the more apt comparison or descriptor would be that Ginza is a larger, but shorter, Times Square. Ginza, like Times Square, is closed off for car traffic. All that did, however, is made me avoid the onslaught of people and hasty shoppers that careened down the street from store to store. The bottom floors of those building were all branded stores, with high glass and men in gloves manning the doors. Unlike similar stores in India or Australia, these were full. Makes sense, though, since the only people in those same stores in Australia were Asian.

Ginza stretches about 3-4 blocks in the heart of Tokyo, all closed off to cars, all full of stores and glitzy restaurants and bars, ensuring that this stretch of Tokyo stays full all day and night long. I walked into the Hermes store just to see the prices. I got a few awkward stares when walking in, probably because people with black Jansort backpacks and Nike sneakers don’t usually walk into Hermes. Anyway, I have no idea if the prices here compare to the prices in the US, because I don’t know the prices in the US. With my curiosity in these stores extinguished, I left Hermes to continue walking down Ginza. Eventually, the cars were allowed to return to the streets, which was my sign to leave Ginza and head for greener pastures.

Tokyo has many parks inside the city. The main two parks are the Eastern Park which houses the Imperial Palace, and the Ueno Park in Northern Tokyo which houses the Tokyo National Museum. I left Ginza headed in the general direction of the Eastern Park and the Imperial Palace. Of course, I say headed in the general direction because street signs are a little hit or miss in Japan. Japan tries to make up for this with large maps place throughout the city, and I appreciate that, but even those maps are mostly in Japanese. Anyway, when walking towards the Eastern Park I came across another park, a park I was unaware of, Hibaya Park.

Now, nothing was really special of the small Hibaya Park if I had come three days earlier. However, I didn’t come three days earlier, but I came today, which was Day 2 of a 10-day long Tokyo Oktoberfest. Enveloping the main square of Hibaya Park were about seven to eight stalls selling craft German beer and German food. The place was incredibly well attended, this being a weekend. To my dismay, the price of these German beers was not cheap at all. It was about 10 dollars for a pint, which isn’t terrible in isolation, but not great compared to the rest of Tokyo. Still, everyone there had at least one beer. The food was equally ridiculous, with schnitzels and similar fare being about another 10 dollars. I couldn’t help myself in the end and got a dark German beer, which was good but probably not worth it.

Still, having a beer in that square, with a live German Folk band playing on one side, and the hundreds of Japanese 20-somethings all in a great mood singing along to the music, was an experience unto itself. The whole place was done up well, with the server girls dressed in little German outfits, and each place with German names and their own cups (which had a 1000 yen deposit, refundable when you return the cup, which was smart for them since I would have probably jacked the stein if not for it). I would not have ever though I would experience Oktoberfest in Japan in May, but here I was.

With my dalliance in Oktoberfest Tokyo complete, I left Hibaya Park through its emptier, more quiet and picturesque side, and headed North (or what I hoped North would be) towards the Imperial Palace. The Imperial Palace is tucked away inside a large park that itself is right inside Central Tokyo, almost like Central Park (though not as large). Many were jogging and running by my on the walking path up the park towards the Palace. By the time I reached, I realized that there probably wasn’t enough time left before the Palace closes at 4:30 to see it all today, and without enough days left I decided to just walk around the park and enjoy the palace later next week.

The Park has extremely well-manicured tree s and shrubs lining a large weaving walking path through the park. It was a great walk, with little nooks and crannies along the way, and after about 40 minutes I emerged on the other end, a little tired. I left the park then and headed back to the hotel to freshen up for the evening.

I couldn’t have too late of a night since I was scheduled to meet my father’s friend and former colleague tomorrow. I decided to have a light dinner near the hotel and then leave to meet my friend in Roppongi. I remember quite a bit of what I did there, but instead of detailing those parts, I’ll talk more about my general impression of Tokyo on my first full day.

Tokyo is a large city, but with its parks and open streets, it seems more walk-able than it should. There aren’t a bunch of tall buildings, but enough shorter ones where it seems like a series of districts than a complete city, a shocking thing given the incredible size and population of Tokyo. What I really like is there is some space between the buildings. They aren’t built on top of each other and they aren’t fighting for room on the street. They are well spaced, well designed and well maintained. Tokyo is about as easy a major city as you’ll see. I never felt cramped, overwhelmed by the towering buildings. I never felt my neck crane as I had to look up for too long. As someone who lived in New York, that is a major plus. Also, my neck doesn’t crane because I’m taller than the average person here. That helps too.

RTW Trip: Day 81-82 (5/15-/516) - Osaka & (a little bt of) Nara

Day 81-82: And I thought South African Meat was Strange

To be honest, I didn’t do too much on my first day in Osaka. Actually, that might be an overstatement. I got up around eleven thirty on my first day, still sleeping off a couple nights with little sleep. I had to first figure out quite a complex problem, which is the issue of how to organize my stay in Japan. I thought two weeks would be more than enough, but with the incredible amount of attractive day trips, coupled with the power of holding the JR Rail Pass… well, it’s as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. Luckily for me, Osaka doesn’t have too many things to see inside its city walls, and because of its proximity to Kyoto, and therefore to any day trips from Kyoto, any day trips I do now I won’t have to do later. So, with the fact that there aren’t too many things to see, and the fact that I was starving which would push my earliest possible leave time from Osaka to at least 12:30, I decided to spend my first day in Osaka.

For lunch, I wandered back over to Dotonbori Street, which was no less crowded at lunchtime than it was last night. Instead of going to one of the restaurants on the street, I ventured into one of the many alleys that branch off Dotonbori, all as busy as the mother street. I kept walking down this covered street until I saw a restaurant where the signs outside showing the food gave off an interesting vibe while also being at a reasonable price. I finally came across a place that was advertising some interesting sushi meals. It wasn’t a real sushi restaurant, but served a lot of seemingly authentic sushi (it looked like what real sushi should look like) in different sets. I had no idea what was what. You learn quickly in Japan that only knowing English is quite a precarious position to be in.

Whatever I did order turned out to be very good. All the different varieties of sushi were excellent, with just the right amount of wasabi put on the sushi itself. The meal wasn’t too heavy, and a good enough first experience with Sushi in Japan. Considering that actually finding restaurants in Osaka is basically a nightmare, it could easily have gone totally wrong, but the place was nice and the food nicer.

After I finished lunch I had quite a few options for what to do next, but I picked to roam around Osaka on my way to the Osaka castle, the main historical site in Osaka proper. The castle is up on a hill surrounded by a slight moat, as all good castles should be, and quite regal. It isn’t that big, but as I found out, it is one of the bigger castles so centrally located in a major city. The castle has a complex of shrines that open up to hallways that are mostly empty. Honestly, it wasn’t that special (at least compared to the ones I would see the next day in Nara), but it allowed a great view of Osaka below it, a sprawling city that extends in every direction. From up high, I can understand why people are relatively down on Osaka. It doesn’t have the charm of the smaller cities and doesn’t have the height of bustle of Tokyo, but it is still damn impressive from up high.

I continued to walk around the rest of Osaka, which means walking around open areas and tall buildings, like any other major city. They had some glistening malls that I went in to, but I was put off by the prices as much as the nearly tacky neon signs and moving statues littered around. Soon, I gave up on trying to see all of Osaka, and it was near time to return to get a ‘Irish Tea’ at one of the many bars and pubs near Dotonbori Street.

I had a lot of options of where to go for dinner, but I chickened out and went to the same place as yesterday, that Korean-Grill type place that served all those foods that had I not been in Japan I wouldn’t think twice about eating. I just wouldn’t have Achilles or heart or intestine or necktie. I had all of them, and they were all decent to great, chewy little morsels of meat. I don’t know if this type of meat beats out the animals I ate in South Africa, because it still is beef or pork, but it is the part of the cow or pig that I’ve never considered eating. Did this open my eyes? Am I now going to start eating Achilles and intestines all over the place? No, probably not. But next time in Osaka, I definitely will.

So, I deleted what I originally wrote about Nara, which is a shame. I didn’t do a lot more than the usual tourist fare, like go to the Deer Park (where cute little deer run free all over the place), and the Todai-ji temple. I ate meat. I’m too far behind to try to write this all again. Anyway, let’s move on to Tokyo…