Preface to Japan
After a 10 hour flight to Narita airport via Cairns we were finally in Japan. Everyone was looking forward to going to Japan after spending nearly 3 weeks in Australia. Quite honestly, we really were let down a little by our Australian segment of our RTW trip. The scenery was without a doubt spectacular. We only saw the east coast of Australia so we can’t say we would never come back...it’s a big country! Even though we all felt this way, the funny thing is that Elaine and I both agreed that we would move and live in Sydney in a heartbeat if given the chance. Sydney is without a doubt world class city and I have rethought my initial feelings about cities that choose to take on massive amounts of debt to host the Olympics. The infrastructure was extraordinary, the waterfront never-ending, and the makeup of the city was very multicultural. I have a friend who was offered an incredible job in Sydney but choose to turn it down....were you crazy?? We were told that Melbourne would have been nice to visit but it wasn’t possible on this trip. Outside of Sydney, the missing piece for us was the singular culture......there were no faces other than white. I think this is why we were all so excited about Japan.
On to Tokyo...
We arrived on Sunday, September 14. We took an express train from the airport to Shinjuku station and then transferred to another train line to arrive at Nakano station. Shinjuku station is one of the busiest stations in Japan. About a million and half people travel through this station each business day between the hours of 8am-9am. Needless to say we haven’t traveled during these times very often.
Tokyo has met many of our expectations and at the same time been quite the opposite. First off, the city is immaculate; every piece of glass is sparkling from handrails to shop windows. The subways and trains are clean and of course without graffiti. There are a massive amount of trains, subways and busses run by several different companies but somehow they manage to keep everything working together in harmony. The stations, trains and platforms are numbered in a logical manner. The trains announce each station in Japanese and then English, which has worked out quite well for us.
The Japanese people in Tokyo are very kind, courteous and of course orderly. Perhaps in a city of such magnitude there is no other option but to conform and be orderly. We have all enjoyed and tried our best to conform to their standards while visiting. There are a lot of bikes in the streets, many taxis and certainly a lot of sushi which has made Jeff and I happy.
Top 10 things that really have shattered our initial perceptions about Tokyo:
1. The subways are not as crowded as we had initially expected. We have been on the subways during rush hour a couple of times but the crowds are not that much different then on the TTC in Toronto during rush hour, although everyone does line up orderly to gain access to each car on the platform!!
2. Food is not more expensive. In fact we have found prices to be significantly less than Australia. Now with that said it it possible to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a dinner for two...and $20 for a nice sushi or other suitably delicious meal.
3. The city is clean. With a population of 35 million it is incredible that there is little to no garbage on the streets or in subway stations. The garbage men are immaculate and come each day for various collections. Tokyo is very proactive in recycling. Get this.....the garbage men have neatly pressed (you can see their press lines) uniforms, wear white gloves and use very quiet trucks.
4. There is very little noise. We have heard only 1 horn beep in our 6 days here and that was from a Western driver! The traffic is silent.
5. The Japanese youth will do anything for the latest fashion. Case in point....A new H & M clothing store (all over Toronto Samantha tells me) opened in Tokyo earlier this week. Every young, fashionable, cell phone texting Tokyion had an H & M bag. We went pass the store..... there was a line over 10 blocks long. Police with white gloves were stationed on each corner to ensure no intersections were blocked, everyone was lined up in three’s to ensure that exactly half the sidewalk was available to regular traffic flow. The line was incredibly orderly and neat and no one had seemed to have any reservations about being in such a long line. Mental Note: open a new store in Tokyo.
6. Electronics are not cheap but they are plentiful. In fact we found electronic items cheaper in Sao Paulo Brazil than in Tokyo. This has certainly disappointed Jeffrey. We have read that China is far better off for great deals on electronics.
7. Having a sitdown meal and beer at a National Sporting Event is not as expensive as one might think.
8. There are dollar stores in Tokyo (well 100Yen stores).
9. People don’t stare at us all the time. We thought that being white and travelling with children would draw a significant amount of attention. This hasn’t been the case. We were told that people would not want to sit beside us on the subway but that has been far from reality.
10. A Japanese TV converter can be worked by a Gajjin (name for white guy in Japan). The gentleman who we rented our 2 bedroom apartment from in Tokyo gave us instructions on how to use various things in the apartment (bath, shower, hot water, doors, toilet, security, elevator and of course the TV). I think he exact words were....”whatever you do just push these two buttons on the converter to keep the English channels available”. Like any other 11 year old boy, Jeff decided to push one of the other 150 Japanese buttons and we were confined to Japanese only stations for a few hours before I figured out how to get things back on line again.
So what have we been up to for the last week??
Well first off we realized two days before leaving Australia that we didn’t have a Chinese passport. That became our immediate concern when we arrived in Japan. We had to find a Chinese embassy in Japan to process a Visa for our Canadian passports. Monday was a holiday (respect your elders) in Japan so we set out for the Chinese embassy first thing on Tuesday morning. We had researched the passport issue in the airport business class lounge and printed out everything we could find as well as firing off a couple of emails to the Canadian Embassy, the Chinese Embassy in both Beijing and Honk Kong. We finally got typical government responses back 3 days later. Fortunately we were able to get things accomplished on our own. The only thing we didn’t have was a travel voucher indicating we had arranged for accommodations in Beijing for our arrival. We found a 5 star hotel close to the embassy and I snuck into the business lounge and booked a cheap hostel for 2 nights and printed out a receipt and we were off. The kids and Elaine stayed in the hotel lobby and met some very nice people from South America and Europe. The visas were ready for our pick up yesterday (Friday) and Elaine took the subway herself to pick them up while I stayed in the apartment and began planning and booking accommodations for our travel to Kyoto, Nara, Osaka and Hiroshima. Jeff and Samantha slept in and then got a couple of hours of reading and math done, something we have been a little lax on.
We spent most of the day cooped up in the apartment and this was getting to all of us. Jeff and Sam made a fort out of the couch and some blankets, Elaine and I urgently tried to get some affordable accommodations for the next few days via email and the telephone.
We ended up going for a walk in the evening (it was grey and rainy most of the day) in the rain with our umbrellas. We are in a suburb of Tokyo (Nakano) which is about 3 minutes by train to the main core of the city. Nakano is quite nice, small streets, lots of restaurants, bars, stores, gambling parlours....something for everyone. We had a great sushi dinner in a stand-up restaurant. The sushi chef was a really nice guy and took care of Jeff and I. He spoke very good English and reminded us of our friendly neighbour at the cottage, Bob, who is also Japanese.
After we came home Elaine and I spent another couple of hours planning for the next week (if you call booking a room and winging it planning). We wanted to store 3 of our 4 knapsacks in Tokyo while we travelled around other parts of Japan. All the rail stations have lockers, but they are only good for a maximum of 3 days and we were planning on being gone for 6. There is luggage delivery companies that are quite popular but we decided to take them back to the airport and store them there. The charge for doing this is about 500Yen/day/bag. I instead booked a room at a Hostel for the 26th, the night before we fly to Beijing. We just need a place to sleep for a couple of hours and the owner arranged to meet me at the airport this afternoon to pick up our bags and store them for the week for less than the cost of the baggage storage (plus we get a place to crash and a drive to the airport). I am actually on the train travelling back from the airport to Shinjuku station as I type this. I have just arrived and have to run......
Jeff and Sam will post an insight into Japan from their perspective shortly. I think you will like their take on our week in Tokyo!!
After a 10 hour flight to Narita airport via Cairns we were finally in Japan. Everyone was looking forward to going to Japan after spending nearly 3 weeks in Australia. Quite honestly, we really were let down a little by our Australian segment of our RTW trip. The scenery was without a doubt spectacular. We only saw the east coast of Australia so we can’t say we would never come back...it’s a big country! Even though we all felt this way, the funny thing is that Elaine and I both agreed that we would move and live in Sydney in a heartbeat if given the chance. Sydney is without a doubt world class city and I have rethought my initial feelings about cities that choose to take on massive amounts of debt to host the Olympics. The infrastructure was extraordinary, the waterfront never-ending, and the makeup of the city was very multicultural. I have a friend who was offered an incredible job in Sydney but choose to turn it down....were you crazy?? We were told that Melbourne would have been nice to visit but it wasn’t possible on this trip. Outside of Sydney, the missing piece for us was the singular culture......there were no faces other than white. I think this is why we were all so excited about Japan.
On to Tokyo...
We arrived on Sunday, September 14. We took an express train from the airport to Shinjuku station and then transferred to another train line to arrive at Nakano station. Shinjuku station is one of the busiest stations in Japan. About a million and half people travel through this station each business day between the hours of 8am-9am. Needless to say we haven’t traveled during these times very often.
Tokyo has met many of our expectations and at the same time been quite the opposite. First off, the city is immaculate; every piece of glass is sparkling from handrails to shop windows. The subways and trains are clean and of course without graffiti. There are a massive amount of trains, subways and busses run by several different companies but somehow they manage to keep everything working together in harmony. The stations, trains and platforms are numbered in a logical manner. The trains announce each station in Japanese and then English, which has worked out quite well for us.
The Japanese people in Tokyo are very kind, courteous and of course orderly. Perhaps in a city of such magnitude there is no other option but to conform and be orderly. We have all enjoyed and tried our best to conform to their standards while visiting. There are a lot of bikes in the streets, many taxis and certainly a lot of sushi which has made Jeff and I happy.
Top 10 things that really have shattered our initial perceptions about Tokyo:
1. The subways are not as crowded as we had initially expected. We have been on the subways during rush hour a couple of times but the crowds are not that much different then on the TTC in Toronto during rush hour, although everyone does line up orderly to gain access to each car on the platform!!
2. Food is not more expensive. In fact we have found prices to be significantly less than Australia. Now with that said it it possible to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a dinner for two...and $20 for a nice sushi or other suitably delicious meal.
3. The city is clean. With a population of 35 million it is incredible that there is little to no garbage on the streets or in subway stations. The garbage men are immaculate and come each day for various collections. Tokyo is very proactive in recycling. Get this.....the garbage men have neatly pressed (you can see their press lines) uniforms, wear white gloves and use very quiet trucks.
4. There is very little noise. We have heard only 1 horn beep in our 6 days here and that was from a Western driver! The traffic is silent.
5. The Japanese youth will do anything for the latest fashion. Case in point....A new H & M clothing store (all over Toronto Samantha tells me) opened in Tokyo earlier this week. Every young, fashionable, cell phone texting Tokyion had an H & M bag. We went pass the store..... there was a line over 10 blocks long. Police with white gloves were stationed on each corner to ensure no intersections were blocked, everyone was lined up in three’s to ensure that exactly half the sidewalk was available to regular traffic flow. The line was incredibly orderly and neat and no one had seemed to have any reservations about being in such a long line. Mental Note: open a new store in Tokyo.
6. Electronics are not cheap but they are plentiful. In fact we found electronic items cheaper in Sao Paulo Brazil than in Tokyo. This has certainly disappointed Jeffrey. We have read that China is far better off for great deals on electronics.
7. Having a sitdown meal and beer at a National Sporting Event is not as expensive as one might think.
8. There are dollar stores in Tokyo (well 100Yen stores).
9. People don’t stare at us all the time. We thought that being white and travelling with children would draw a significant amount of attention. This hasn’t been the case. We were told that people would not want to sit beside us on the subway but that has been far from reality.
10. A Japanese TV converter can be worked by a Gajjin (name for white guy in Japan). The gentleman who we rented our 2 bedroom apartment from in Tokyo gave us instructions on how to use various things in the apartment (bath, shower, hot water, doors, toilet, security, elevator and of course the TV). I think he exact words were....”whatever you do just push these two buttons on the converter to keep the English channels available”. Like any other 11 year old boy, Jeff decided to push one of the other 150 Japanese buttons and we were confined to Japanese only stations for a few hours before I figured out how to get things back on line again.
So what have we been up to for the last week??
Well first off we realized two days before leaving Australia that we didn’t have a Chinese passport. That became our immediate concern when we arrived in Japan. We had to find a Chinese embassy in Japan to process a Visa for our Canadian passports. Monday was a holiday (respect your elders) in Japan so we set out for the Chinese embassy first thing on Tuesday morning. We had researched the passport issue in the airport business class lounge and printed out everything we could find as well as firing off a couple of emails to the Canadian Embassy, the Chinese Embassy in both Beijing and Honk Kong. We finally got typical government responses back 3 days later. Fortunately we were able to get things accomplished on our own. The only thing we didn’t have was a travel voucher indicating we had arranged for accommodations in Beijing for our arrival. We found a 5 star hotel close to the embassy and I snuck into the business lounge and booked a cheap hostel for 2 nights and printed out a receipt and we were off. The kids and Elaine stayed in the hotel lobby and met some very nice people from South America and Europe. The visas were ready for our pick up yesterday (Friday) and Elaine took the subway herself to pick them up while I stayed in the apartment and began planning and booking accommodations for our travel to Kyoto, Nara, Osaka and Hiroshima. Jeff and Samantha slept in and then got a couple of hours of reading and math done, something we have been a little lax on.
We spent most of the day cooped up in the apartment and this was getting to all of us. Jeff and Sam made a fort out of the couch and some blankets, Elaine and I urgently tried to get some affordable accommodations for the next few days via email and the telephone.
We ended up going for a walk in the evening (it was grey and rainy most of the day) in the rain with our umbrellas. We are in a suburb of Tokyo (Nakano) which is about 3 minutes by train to the main core of the city. Nakano is quite nice, small streets, lots of restaurants, bars, stores, gambling parlours....something for everyone. We had a great sushi dinner in a stand-up restaurant. The sushi chef was a really nice guy and took care of Jeff and I. He spoke very good English and reminded us of our friendly neighbour at the cottage, Bob, who is also Japanese.
After we came home Elaine and I spent another couple of hours planning for the next week (if you call booking a room and winging it planning). We wanted to store 3 of our 4 knapsacks in Tokyo while we travelled around other parts of Japan. All the rail stations have lockers, but they are only good for a maximum of 3 days and we were planning on being gone for 6. There is luggage delivery companies that are quite popular but we decided to take them back to the airport and store them there. The charge for doing this is about 500Yen/day/bag. I instead booked a room at a Hostel for the 26th, the night before we fly to Beijing. We just need a place to sleep for a couple of hours and the owner arranged to meet me at the airport this afternoon to pick up our bags and store them for the week for less than the cost of the baggage storage (plus we get a place to crash and a drive to the airport). I am actually on the train travelling back from the airport to Shinjuku station as I type this. I have just arrived and have to run......
Jeff and Sam will post an insight into Japan from their perspective shortly. I think you will like their take on our week in Tokyo!!
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