Thursday, July 2, 2009

We left Dallas, Texas for Tokyo, Japan at 3am Japan time. We had an hour late start and found out that the audio system on the flight is not working! Well correction, my sound system doesn't work! I'm watching my movie with Aveek's sound system. This sucks and this better not be how this trip is going to be! I really don't need this on this trip! This flight is 13 hours! Well, see how this goes!

Friday, July 3, 2009

It's about 7:30pm Tokyo time, 6:30am Pittsburgh time. We have been up for 25 hours now. I just took a bath. The Conrad Hotel is very nice. It's set up very similar to Marriott Hotel we stayed in Australia. We got to Tokyo about 3:30pm. We have an hour and a half bus trip to our hotel. We were quite amazed as to how fast we got through customs and we got our bags. Japan has probably been the most efficient foreign or domestic airport that I have ever seen.

Tokyo is quite green. When we landed, that's all I could see. The airport is a distant from the city. There were trees and grass everywhere. I really wasn't expecting that. I haven't seen an over abundance of people yet, but of course we got to the see pretty late. Ok, off to bed!

Saturday, July 4, 2009

6:30am

We went to sleep about 8pm last night. I woke up a few times last night. Then all of a sudden I heard a loud noise – it was Aveek playing with the blinds for the bathroom. It was about 4:15am. We decided that we were awake so Aveek wanted to go to the Fish Market. It's only about a ten minute walk from our hotel. After walking where all of the trucks were, we finally figured out how to get into the Market. We were able to see a fish auction (I have some video) but no throwing of fish. :( O'well. We then walked around the market a bit and the produce market where they were setting up. It's in the 70's right now but it is very humid and drizzling. So, of course, it feels all moist and damp.

Now, it's only 6:30am and we are sitting in the lounge waiting for breakfast – yes, I know, me up too early for breakfast. Today we go to Imperial Palace Garden and do some tourist stuff!

So, I'm not sure what I was expecting when we came into Japan. Something exotic? But it's just like every other big city. Our hotel is down in Tokyo. We are on the 34 floor and we have a nice view of the city. Everything is remote controlled in our room – the curtains, lights, blinds, etc. It's kind of funny. The toilet is very high tech! It has a warm seat which is kind of cool especially in the morning.

8pm

Tokyo is making me realize why I'm not moving back to Houston. It is so humid here! I think it is only in the 70's but the humidity is unbelievable! I do not miss that at all. We didn't wear shorts today because the Japanese people do not wear shorts. I only saw one Japanese person in shorts today. Tomorrow I'm wearing shorts, though. I can't do this again.

We went to the Tokyo Tower. It's taller than the Eiffel Tower by just a little bit. It looks like they make it just a little bit taller on purpose. We went to the main observation deck and got some good views. I went up to the top of the tower. Aveek didn't want to. It wasn't that bad. We also went over to the Imperial Palace (you can't go into the Palace only the gardens around it) and then the East Gardens. It's a big area but nothing great to note here. We did a lot of walking today and my legs are aching. We also went over to a major tourist shopping area. Very interesting. We ate dinner there – I had soup with noodles – very good and exactly what I wanted.

Friday, July 10

We are now back from our Japan trip. I didn't do so well in writing in my blog during the trip, so now I will have to write from memory. O'well. Aveek is already talking about going back but I can by pass that trip. I was kind of bored. He thought it was interesting to see the gobs of people. Me – not so much. It made me a little nervous. I will say that I felt safe in Tokyo and it did have all of the modern conveniences that I was use to, so I didn't feel out of place. I'm going to write my observations in a bit.

We took a trip to Mt. Fuji and then took a cable car ride in Hakone. This was a big disappointment to me. Word of advice – don't go to Mt. Fuji in the summer. It was raining and we couldn't see anything. We saw the Mount very briefly on the way up. I looked out and saw it and then I look up about a minute later and it was gone. We didn't see it again. Also, the cable car ride was a big disappointment. It was so foggy that we could not see anything on the way up or when we got to the top. I feel that day trip could have been spend doing something else. We did take the bullet train back into Tokyo. That was cool to see the train coming through and to ride it.

We spent another day going to about 5 temples. This was kind of interesting except for they all start looking the same. The best part of that trip was that we got to see the giant Budah. I was in awe as to how big it was. Apparently, there are 13 temples in that area we could have toured but I was tired after 5 – we did a lot of walking.

All the rest of our time was spent just walking around the city and looking in the shops. We really didn't buy anything – why? I couldn't tell you. One of my favorite areas was a man made island across the river from Tokyo. It has a lot of different maps and a big ferris wheel (no, we did not go on the ferris wheel). They had built a giant robot there that wasn't supposed to open until this weekend but they got it done early so we were able to see it early. It was pretty cool and got some pictures of it.

Observations that I made while in Tokyo:

1. The Japanese people are very quiet. The subway cars are unbelievable silent. Hardly anyone is talking. No cell phones are being used and everyone talks in low tunes.

2. They are very polite people. Unlike what Aveek said, no one tried to run me over on the escalator just because I was taking to long to get on it. In fact, this didn't happen until we got back in the US and then it was Japanese people who did try to run me down. So, I'm wondering if it has more to do with being in Japan and being Japanese.  Also, while we waited for the subway at busy times, they lined up for the subway.  Can you imagine that happening here?  :)

3. They are very clean. They take their trash with them until they find a trash can and the trash cans are not easily found. So, even though this is the case, there is usually not trash all of the place and if you do see trash it's very rare. We saw one case where two guys left their trash on the subway and everyone seemed so surprised to find the trash there. I was really expecting someone to pick it up.

4. I was expecting everyone to have high level phones. They didn't – most had flip phones and they tended to use them a lot – but not for talking. I'm not sure if they were texting on them or just playing games but it seems like everyone had their phone open and doing something with it.

5. I do find the Japanese language very interesting. Apparently, they do not have all of the sounds that we have in English and this is the reason they find our language harder. Plus, it seems it takes them a lot longer to same something that just takes us a few words. When they would make an announcement on the plane, it would seem to take forever and then they would make the same announcement in English and it would be like 2 sentences.

6. That leads me to my next observation. In most cases, everything is in Japanese and in English. This is something that I find more the case as we go to different countries. You can usually find things translated into English. Yet, we still don't make it our official language.