Tuesday, February 26, 2013

2/24 tourist in Tokyo


2/24/2013: My plan was to walk from the hostel to the Ryogoku neighborhood and visit the Edo-Tokyo Museum. Then visit some Japanese gardens nearby, eat some lunch, and grab a train to the west side of the city to check out Shinguku and see the Meiji shrine. I left the hostel around 9:15am and walked along the big river for about 20 minutes. Crews were out getting ready for the Tokyo marathon, which was happening later that day. I fairly easily found the museum around 9:50, bought my ticket, and found the spot where you ask about English-speaking volunteer guides. I was in luck, and I had a private tour of the museum, which was pretty interesting. Tokyo's original name was Edo until it was officially made the capital of Japan, at which point they changed the name to Tokyo, which means Eastern Capital (Kyoto was the previous capital, which means "capital city"). The history begins a little before 1600, where the city was a "military city," run by the shogun and half the population were samurai warriors. The guide was an elderly Japanese man with a thick accent, but seemed to know a lot. After almost 2 hours, we had finished the Edo section (up to around 1886), and he had to return to the desk to do another tour and I was left alone to learn about the history of Tokyo up until present time. A lot of the displays in the more modern section were dedicated to the Allied air raids of Tokyo in WW2, so it's probably best we parted ways before reaching that awkward section. In 1943, the Allies had bombed the city so much that it had been essentially levelled, and over 100,000 people had been killed. By 1964, 21 years later, Tokyo was hosting the Olympic games, which is an impressive turnaround. I was starving, since I hadn't eaten breakfast, so I left the museum and found a noodle shop nearby. I had Tempura Soba, which was delicious. I couldn't really find the gardens, and I was very cold, so I hopped on a train and headed to Shinguku. It wasn't any warmer there, so I forced myself to walk around for a bit but hated most of it. I decided to just head back to the hostel and get a warmer coat and do some touristy stuff in that neighborhood.

I was talking to one of the girls working at the hostel  about where I should grab my final dinner in Tokyo, and an Australian guy came up and introduced himself to us. His name was Sash (at least his nickname) and he had just landed in Japan about 2 hours ago. I invited him to dinner after the girl recommended Okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake). The place turned out to be very Japanese - we had to take our shoes off at the entrance, and the tables were short with just cushions on the floor for seats. I was glad Sash had come along, since it would have been intimidating on my own. We got a table after waiting about 10 minutes and each ordered the "pork and egg pancake," which is what the hostel girl had recommended. At Okonomiyaki, the table has a grill on it, and the customer is responsible for cooking the meal. Two Japanese girls sat at the table adjacent to ours, so we kept a close eye on their cooking process to make sure we weren't doing anything wrong or offensive. The pancakes ended up being really delicious, and we had tried some interesting drinks too. It was a great experience. We talked a little to the Japanese girls next to us - we had guessed that they were 16 years old but they said they were 20. An apparently drunk Japanese guy came up to our table and started talking to us in Japanese but didn't get very far before realizing we didn't speak any Japanese. He looked to the girls next to us for help but they only knew a little English. We ended up just exchanging "sorry" to each other (he said it in English, I said it in Japanese). I bet he would have been fun to talk to.

Sash and I headed back to the hostel and he said he'd be interested in heading to the Tsukiji Fish Market with me the next morning before I left for Korea. I went to bed somewhat early.

No comments:

Post a Comment