Spending New Year 2008 at Tokyo
My life is full of surprise these days. Until last Summer I never thought I would visit Japan so soon, but at the 29th December 2007 I was embarking on my second trip to Tokyo, to spend new year over there. This time I went to join Desmond at Tokyo, alone. The first night we stayed at the Cerulean Tower Tokyo Hotel, a really neat hotel with impeccable service and at walk distance to Shibuya [渋谷], it just can’t be any better!
|
|
We went to an isakaya [居酒屋] that night with a dozen friends of Desmond, at Shibuya area naturally, and later to a pub at the corner. Around 1:30am I was so drunk that I could barely walk back to the hotel room by myself. The next morning (it was more like noon) I heard that the other guys came to our room for sleeping until early morning, but I had no idea about that… Anyway, it was nice to know all those guys and gals. I hope they’ll come to visit Shanghai very soon.
After checked out, we had a ramen at [博多天神] and went to visit the Meiji Shrine [明治神宫]. For those who don’t know it, a japanese shrine is a place for meditation and prayer, just like a church or a temple, but it doesn’t have any god figure or any human symbol, it’s just a quiet place to pray, zen style normally. At new year eve people would go to their favorite shrine to pray, and bring back an arrow distributed by the shrine, if one can be ahead of the pack to get it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
At evening we drove to Moichi’s home at Sayama [狭山] and stayed one night there. We were greeted by a very warmhearted and welcoming family that is The Tanakas. We were served delicious japanese foods, great wines and excellent snacks such as fried grasshoppers which is perfect with cold beer or whiskey! For the first time in my life, I had a chance to taste a bottle of Opus One, probably the best California wine out there. In addition, I also had a rare chance to taste one of the best shojiu [烧酒] that money can’t buy, Hanatare, unless you know someone in the company. Around the table, we had great and lengthy conversation with Moichi, his father and his brother-in-law (the full-time drinker and part-time surgeon). It was all interesting to learn each other’s culture and perspective.
|
|
|
New Year Eve
At the night of 31st December, Desmond was so exhausted (after 4 nights of alcohol) that he returned to sleep at 8pm after our diner at Daidaiya [橙家], at Shinjuku [新宿]. So I went for a walk at the Meiji Shrine on my own. I heard that this place would be packed by huge crowd around midnight, that it would take 4 hours to make a round and get out, therefore I wanted to be there early to avoid the trap. There were indeed a scary atmosphere as one can see large number of policemen standing at every corner. I can easily count a hundred of them, visibly standing outside. I don’t know how many more are sitting inside. So I made a quick round and came out, within 30 minutes.
|
|
|
From there I took the JR train to Shibuya to see some street action. Expectedly, at midnight people go crazy, they all come outside for the countdown, hug each others (between strangers), jump around like if they just win lottery, and holding a bottle of alcohol. I can smell alcohol everywhere on the street, whereas japanese street is usually very clean and smell-less. But then, 1/3 of the crazy people are tourists, so that might explain the liberal behavior! It was a rather lonely new year eve for me, my phone didn’t work at Tokyo so I couldn’t phone anyone to wish happy new year, neither could I receive any wish… But it was a special moment standing beside those crazy youngsters at Shibuya, seeing all the policemen and special armed force.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Golfing at 1st January
The next day we went to have a game of golf at Showanomori Golf Course, at the west suburb of Tokyo. On the highway I can see the Mount Fuji [富士山] with its signature white-top look. Everyone we talked to were surprised that a golf course was opened at the 1st of January. We fully expected that nobody would be there to play with us, but surprisingly, there are full of cars in the parking lot! Nevertheless, we had a funny twosome game, without caddy. It’s interesting that they build a monorail system to carry the golf bags all around the holes, with a remote control to advance or stop it. So we just walk around hand free, stop the train at anytime to pick a club. (see photo at page bottom) This is perfect for a small golf course where you don’t want 8 people to stand on the field.
After the game, it was a stressful drive back to Tokyo as we had to rush for returning the car before the rental company close for the day. Despite the very complex but stupid and user-unfriendly Panasonic navigation system that insisted on splitting the screen even though we only want the most basic functionality, despite we ran out of gaz and Desmond’s cell phone has only 4 minutes of talk time left and we need to call the hotel asking for information, we actually made it back to the car rental place 5 minutes before they close for the day! I keep reminding myself that I won’t ever drive in Tokyo myself, unless I can get an English-speaking navigation system. Tokyo streets are small and curving, highways split all the time, in such a way that is hard to tell which side is the main direction, and there’s toll booths at about every 15 minutes of driving!
That night we stay at Chisun Grand Hotel at Akasaka [赤坂], went to an isakaya around the corner with Desmond and Yume. We didn’t drink so much, 2 bottles of shojiu for 3 guys, but at the end I wasn’t feeling good… The next morning Desmond had to fly to Hong Kong very early. I woke up quite late, took a long shower, didn’t quite recover yet. Then around noon I checked out and went to Akihabara [秋叶原] to see show electronic shops. I got lost into a huge gadget mall of 8 stories. It’s really amazing to see the modern gadgets available in the Japanese market that you can’t buy anywhere else, smaller, bigger, slicker, more colorful than what is sold in China or USA. For example: the >100″ flat TV from JVC, Sharp and Toshiba; the 3mm thin 11″ OLED TV XEL-1 from Sony; the Sony mp3 Walkman that you can use to watch TV; the newest digital SLR cameras from Nikon, Canon, Sony; all the big gun Canon lens; about 500 choices of earphones; etc. I only had 2 hours to spend there, so only visited 2 floors. After that, I rushed back to the hotel to catch the next Narita airport limousine bus, and that concluded my new year trip!
Tokyo Metro
After running around the city few times by myself, I finally figure out how to go from the airport to Tokyo, inside Tokyo and back to the airport. Tokyo has very well developed subway and railway system. The subway system is operated by Tokyo Metro, and railway by JR. They are very similar in the perspective of a passenger, so I was confused many times thinking that I was in a metro station while I was in fact in a JR station. They don’t share the station, but are close to each other sometime. Together they make very good coverage of Tokyo, as you can see in the map below.
|
|
The biggest problem, I think, is the transition from kanji [汉字] to romanized name. Maps given by hotels to tourists have station names in roman characters, while the map at the station’s ticket machine is only in kanji, and there is no way to relate them. Normally we could look at the line color and figure it out, but there are so many lines, and in some maps there are also JR lines in the mix, so it’s like a puzzle to tourists… Strangely, inside the station, all the maps have both languages and very good letter+number indicators for every station. For example S01 is Shinjuku, G01 is Shibuya and H08 is Ginza station, so that’s no mistake. But at the ticket machine, they don’t put such updated map, just the simple map with kanji only! Anyway, now that I know it, I’m no longer scare to travel around Tokyo, very conveniently indeed.
Six hours later, I was back to Shanghai home, sweet home!
March 29th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Cool Blog!
I found here through our Weekly news report~~
You are the only one guy using English to write the blog in IBM CN, awesome!
Reading the Japan pics caught a lot of memorys since I spent the Christmas last year in Tokyo too:)
Thx:)