Fish Markets and Carnies

Starting to update the rest of my adventures, finally. I started my trip by writing somewhat detailed entries into a notebook, but lost the energy to do so. Luckily, since I took pictures, I am reminded of at least the more exciting parts of my visit.

On the first of November, Mom and I decided we should go to Tsukiji and get in on some of the fish market action that takes place there. Since the most exciting part-- the tuna auction-- is apparently closed to the public (and is at 5am anyway), we decided just to wander around the gigantic market and eat lunch afterward.

We left Fussa around 9 in the morning. Although our original itinerary said to get off the Chuo Line at Yotsuya Station and switch to the subway from there, Mom thought that it'd be better if we got off at Tokyo Station and jump on a line bound for Hatchoubori, and then from there take the Hibiya subway line to Tsukiji Station. I don't think we saved any time or money, but it was an experience, trekking down, down, down, and down farther still in Tokyo Station until we reached the Keiyo Line platform. From there it was only one stop to Hatchoubori, and from Hatchoubori it was only one stop on the Hibiya subway line to Tsukiji. It was a tiny station, and the bathroom was yucky. I wasn't surprised.

Around the corner from the station was the Tsukiji Hongwanji, a rather large and very South Asian-styled Buddhist temple. The architecture was fascinating, and the inside was even more ornate than the outside. It reeked of incense, and Mom and I at first thought we had stumbled upon the latter half of someone's funeral. When we exited, we noticed that volunteers were busily packing welcome bags for an appreciation ceremony to take place later for rich people who contributed large sums of money to a local dentistry college. We didn't feel bad after that point.

Mom wanted to check out a museum that supposedly had exhibits with information on the fish market. Luckily it was right next to the market and we didn't have to go out of our way to find it because it turned out to be a single room with books and pamphlets on fish and maps to guide you through the different vendors in the market. It was a little disappointing, but we went ahead to the market itself.

Tsukiji's fish market is huge. Imagine, if you will, the largest warehouse you have ever seen, and multiply it by like, 5 or something. I may be exaggerating, but it's pretty dang huge inside, and it houses dozens (hundreds maybe?) of vendors. We arrived a bit before noon, when the market had died down and all the fish mongers were packing up to leave. It was still busy, still full of tourists, and many vendors were still selling fish (amongst other, less fish-like denizens of the deep). The alarming thing, though, was that through the narrow corridors zoomed guys on bicycle-powered carts, three-wheel motorbikes, and heavy-duty motorized carts that were probably zipping by at 15 miles an hour on the wet, fishy floors. It's not a place for casual tourists with large backpacks overflowing with Naruto posters and rolling luggage-- it's a place of srs bznss where restaurateurs and grocery sellers buy their fresh fish for the day, or for Average Joe to get a good price on his tuna steak dinner. Etiquette prevails at the market, and Mom read on the Japanese site that you shouldn't haggle prices with the fish mongers, as it's seen as being disrespectful and rude, challenging the price that an experienced fisherman places on his catch. "Can you make this cheaper?" is equivalent to calling him a liar, and may get you booted out of his 3x5 space with many harsh words following you.

After dodging carts, puddles, and tuna carcasses, Mom and I decided that looking at thousands of dead fish on ice in various states of dismemberment made us hungry for the real thing. We headed to the restaurant area where, even hours after they had opened, there were lines flowing out the doors to get the freshest of the day's catch for lunch. We were surprised at how popular the non-fish places were. Bafflingly, katsudon and ramen shops had the same humongous lines. We shrugged, and waited for a random place to seat us. Luckily, we only waited about 20 minutes or so for a table. Not too bad, considering people claimed to have waited for hours to get a seat at Tsukiji restaurants.

We chose a place called うまい鮨勘 (Umai Sushikan), which literally means "Tasty Sushi Sense." We were sat on the sushi bar, which Mom disliked, but I enjoyed watching the chefs work their magic by quickly squeezing together the nigiri balls and slapping the freshly-sliced fish on top, all at breakneck speed, and all while calling out "Welcome!" and "Thank you!" and glancing down at tiny hand-written orders. I got a plate with some variety, from tuna and salmon to scallop and roe. The egg was cute. While I usually don't care much for egg, this one had "うまい鮨勘" stamped on the side. That was a nice touch. The miso soup, however, was something I did not enjoy even slightly. It was made with fish scraps and tasted exactly like hot ocean brine with thin bones and vegetable particles floating in it. Mom drank both our bowls. I couldn't stomach it.

Mom had left her denim jacket at the library the previous day, so I lent her a long-sleeved shirt to wear for the day. Apparently she really wanted to lose my shirt, too, because she left it in the restaurant. Luckily we realized it was gone minutes after leaving the place, so we ran back and retrieved it. We briefly visited a small shrine just outside the fish market area and headed to a hospital where they had a free observation deck on the 47th floor. It was extremely warm, but the view was great. Mom rested her feet for a while as I took lots of pictures out the windows. She asked a lady for directions to the nearest JR station, and out we headed.

We walked through Ginza on our way to the Yuurakucho station. Although it's a shopping mecca, I wasn't impressed by the street we walked along. It was mostly office buildings with young men in suits, squatting on the sidewalk while smoking and chatting on their cell phones-- an odd sight, indeed. Just before the station, I was distracted by a troupe of girls doing a traditional drum performance outside of a newly-opened pachinko hall. I stopped to take video of them-- it was impressive how much energy they had. My arm was getting tired just holding the camera, and here they were jumping up and down beating enormous drums strapped over their shoulders. Crazy.

We hopped on a line bound for Ueno, as Mom wanted to walk from there to Asakusa. We briefly stopped in Ameyoukocho, an alley full of small shops and street vendors peddling cheap wares, to ask for directions before taking the very long and somewhat painful walk to Asakusa. It took us almost an hour to get to the Kaminarimon, which is the gigantic red lantern that welcomes you to the street where all the vendors set up shop. The road we took to get there was lined with stores specializing in 仏壇 (butsudan), which are altars for deceased family members. It was extremely creepy, and it was obvious that that part of town was probably aging and full of a lot of old people on the verge of kicking the bucket.

When we finally reached Kaminarimon, evening was rapidly approaching and we only had maybe an hour or two of sunlight left. The first vendor we came across on Nakamise (the road where all the peddlers set up shop) was selling fresh-made red bean-filled ningyoyaki, which is a small cake made of flour and egg. molded into shapes. We bought two bags to take home to Obaachan and a bag of hot ones to eat while we walked. The people selling them were exceedingly brusque, which totally surprised us. All of the vendors were loud, rude, and pushy, and I couldn't help but be reminded of dirty carnies in America. I felt this whole street was a giant tourist trap, and Mom agreed. We kept snagging samples at the osembe shops, and Mom deliberated on whether or not to buy a bag. She ultimately decided against it, as they were quite expensive (as were all the other things on that street). The ningyo were cheap, at least.

We visited the temple at the end of Nakamise, called Sensoji. It's the oldest temple in Tokyo and is something like 1500 years old. Plenty of people were milling about, clothing statues, washing their hands at the entrance, tossing money into the offering bins and praying. Prayer rituals are serious business in Japan, and people had some elaborate arm gestures and bowing maneuvers carefully choreographed to achieve maximum levels of Buddha-pleasing. It was impressive.

As the sun began to dip down, Mom and I discussed what we would do for dinner, as we hadn't eaten since lunch many hours previously, and although we weren't starving we figured we should eat something. We wandered around Asakusa looking for a good deal on food, but decided that perhaps Shinjuku might offer something better. Instead of walking back to the JR station in Ueno we hopped on the subway and took it back to Ueno station where we got onto the Yamanote heading south where we expected to switch to the Chuo line back to Shinjuku (the reason being that Tokyo is the terminus for the Chuo line and we'd be guaranteed a seat). However, since we were able to get a seat on the Yamanote in Ueno, we rode it the whole way to Shinjuku, even though it was like taking a route that went around 3 sides of the square. We didn't mind, and welcomed the rest.

When we got into Shinjuku, it was packed with people, like usual. We went into Kabukicho to look for a restaurant and ended up wandering for almost an hour, unable to find any place that was both inexpensive and tasty-looking. We did see a trio consisting of a drummer, a saxophone player, and a guy holding a banner for a bar; they were playing "Izakaya," a kayoukyoku song about a man trying to pick up a girl at a plain, generic bar ("There's no pictures, no flowers, no music, no words, no jokes or anything to decorate this kind of bar"). It was cute. We also saw advertisements for host bars full of tanned, bleached, airbrushed young men who would be more than happy to let you buy them expensive alcohol and food to fulfill your sad, lonely office lady life.

We got lost looking for the Isetan, tempted by its purportedly abundant food basement, and although we found it, it was close to closing time, so we sampled milk and tofu, pickles and salad dressings, weighed the benefits versus the costs of some of their produce, and ultimately left with nothing. We caught the train at Shinjuku station and headed back to Fussa. When we arrived, we had enough time to peruse the deals at the Ozam before they closed for the night. There we picked up dinner-- fried oyster bento box, korokke, and gyoza, all at half-price. We enjoyed our dinner at home, and although it was late and we were tired, it was oh-so satisfying (and probably a lot better than anything we could have picked up for 4 times the price at a normal restaurant). It was a fun-filled day, and exhausting because of all the walking we did.

Time to go on a Diet. No, wait--to the Diet. Whatever.

I woke up feeling significantly better than before, so Mom and I decided to head into Tokyo to explore a little bit. We had no real plans, other than find something to eat and some places to take pictures. We bought the Tokunai Free Pass, which allows the ticket holder to ride around the Tokyo area all day for a flat fee. There is a train that goes from Ome all the way to Tokyo, so we hopped onto that and rode the hour or so it takes to get into the city. From Ushihama to Shinjuku, a sleepy boy sat next to me, his head drooping into his lap the entire ride. Every couple of minutes, he would wake up, blink, sit up, and then nod off again, head dangling just above his knees. I wanted to take a picture, but thought better of it.

When we arrived in Tokyo Station, we stopped quickly at the bathrooms. When we were washing our hands, Mom told me she was unable to flush the toilet no matter what she did, and she felt bad for the next person. I told her that she needed to hold her hand in front of a sensor, and it would flush after a couple seconds. She said that she didn't know you have to leave your hand there-- she thought she had to wave it or something. "Can't you read?" I cried, amused because I can't read the instructions, yet she can. She laughed, and we shook our hands dry, as there are no paper towels in train stations. We left the station and decided to walk to the Imperial Palace and explore the grounds. Mom told me brief histories of the palace, and how it was first used during the Meiji period, after the Shogun had given the power back to the Emperor. We saw many school children taking tours of the grounds and foreigners taking pictures.

After spending a good chunk of time taking pictures, we headed to the Diet building. Along the way, we passed about half a dozen taxis full of sleeping cabbies. I found it fairly amusing. When we reached the Diet, we asked the gate guards if they were doing tours. We signed up for the next tour, which would be in an hour, and walked to the Kensei Kinenkan (Parliamentary Museum) and poked around for about half an hour, checking out the historical exhibits. We were a little crunched for time, so we hurried back to the Diet building and waited in their lobby. The lady at the counter was kind enough to switch the video language to English, so I could understand it. I felt a little bad, though, as a few minutes into the video about 10 Japanese people came in. They didn't make a fuss-- I assumed they didn't mind, or were too polite to say anything.

The building is quite fantastic, but sadly un-Japanese. While the builders wanted to use mostly materials from Japan, they still fashioned it into a very European style, albeit adorned with chrysanthemum seals everywhere. There were intricate stained glass ceilings that were made of glass from America, England, and Germany; they were the only things specifically mentioned that were foreign in origin. Mom kept mentioning how much money was dropped on the construction of the building, and how much money goes into the rooms the Emperor and imperial family use (which they only visit maybe once or twice a year). "Tax payer money at work," she kept saying, as we walked past the empty, lavishly decorated rooms. Many of the people on the tour began to nod off when we sat in nosebleed seats of the assembly room, looking down onto the very Congressional house floor. A chipper female voice told us all about how parliament works and what the building was made of, but since I could barely understand anything, I found myself desperately trying to stay awake by focusing on the maintenance men performing electronics checks on the vote counters. When we got to walking again, our tour guide told us that they had recently replaced the cushy red carpet that lines the hallways, but somehow these giant, dark stains of mysterious origins appeared. I am not sure why he told us this.

Probably what fascinated me the most were the smoking stations. There are areas in the hallways for smoking, but they are obscured by glass walls and the smoker must stand next to an air intake fan, much like a fume hood, just sans hood. I watched half a dozen office workers hunched over these smoke boxes, desperately getting their nicotine fix in what I found to be a rather odd fashion.

The end of our tour led us through the garden at the front of the building where there is a walkway full of plants from all over Japan. The garden starts with plants from the southern islands, and as you progress the plant species become gradually more northernly, ending with cute pine trees from Hokkaido. We took a few pictures of the building itself, and headed back to the train station.

Mom was bent on catching a free bus that ran to Nihombashi, so we walked through the crowded Toky Station to the other side, where we could catch the bus. As we waited, a protest for what we assumed to be a hospital worker union marched by. The people were all dressed in white hospitalish clothing and waving flags, balloons, and signs. After about five minutes, the bus arrived. It was tiny-- smaller than the DASH in Los Angeles, and we decided that in the time it took for the little bus to fight through traffic we could have walked to Nihombashi twice.

By this time, we were starving. Desperate for anything that came along, we ducked into a small alley and found a little noodle shop with a ticket vending machine out front. We found those endearing, so we decided to eat there. The restaurant turned out to be quite good-- the food was cheap, and on the tables they offered wasabi, noodle water (if you decided you needed something to help you get all the bits out of the bottom of your bowl when you're done with your soup), and karikari umeboshi, which I discovered that I like quite a bit (I greatly dislike normal umeboshi). Their napkins also solved a mystery that had been bugging me in Japan. A lot of restaurants offer some very shiny paper napkins, and I could not understand why they were that way. Printed on the napkins in this shop was the explanation that they were made out of sugar cane fibers and were "tree-free" as they did not contain any wood products. I thought that was clever. I like these funny shiny napkins even more now.

After dinner, we headed to the Yamamotonoriten, which is a store specializing in seaweed and teas. We bought some hojicha and sat down for a complimentary cup of ocha. After that, we headed into the Mitsukoshi across the street. We poked around the ultra-expensive clothes before we went down to the grocery level, where all of the food vendors were more than happy to give us a second dinner in the form of samples ranging from crusty bread and gyoza to chocolate truffles and cheesecake. It was fun and delicious. We left Mitsukoshi and started heading back toward the station, ducking into the Takashimaya and doing much the same as we did in Mitsukoshi, albeit with less free food offerings.

We caught a train to Shinjuku so we could look out the observation deck on the 45th floor of the Metropolitan Building. I tell you what-- that is a FAST elevator. We were on the 45th floor in what felt like about 30 seconds or less. The view? AMAZING. I always knew Tokyo was huge, but it's difficult to really visualize the enormity of the city until you see it with your own eyes. Even though it was night and all the lights of the city were on, the city seemed to stretch farther than what I could see. I snapped some pictures that unfortunately did not come out as well as I wished.

After we left there, we went to Akihabara just to quickly poke around, get a feel for where things were, and get a few pictures. It's definitely got a high density of electronics stores, and I will be sure to hit it up when I need to burn some DVDs to distribute my pictures. I was amazed, not at how tall the stores were, but how narrow and claustrophobic they felt on the inside. It was pretty weird-- it felt like being in a town house or something.

From Akiba, we unwisely took a train back to Shinjuku as opposed to Tokyo, which in hindsight would have been a better choice as that is where the line starts and we would have been guaranteed a seat on the Chuo line back to Fussa. Instead, we had to stand for a painfully long time from Shinjuku back to Tachikawa. I was able to snag Mom a seat about halfway through, though. Surprisingly, the train from Tachikawa to Fussa was fairly crowded, too, and she was not able to get a seat until the stop before ours.

We wound down the evening by watching some TV and drinking tea. After a shower, I was ready to crash out hard core.