Japan 2006, Part 5

Day 5

Day 5 started pretty early for us. The reason being was that Roy had to attend conferences in the morning, leaving us 3 to explore Japan. Today we decided to visit Tokyo! We took the local train to the Shin-Yokohama station, and then hitched a ride on the first class Shinkansen to Tokyo. Tokyo terminal is huge! When we first arrived, we got our usual swamp of people switching train as we tried to make it out through the crowd. For such a big station, it was pretty hard to find a city map. There were literally hundreds of pamphlets around the tourist office, yet none had a map of the city. The closest thing around was a map of the station on the wall. Phil asked a lady who worked in the tour services for a map and we were on our way.

Stepping out of the station looking right up into the tall buildings reminded me of New York City. Except the fact that I couldn't read much and didn't understand much of what people were saying. Our first destination was the Imperial Palace. The Palace is only open twice a year, once on Jan 2, and once during the emperor's birthday. Unfortunately for us, it wasn't any of those, so the best we could do is walk around the perimeter and take pictures. We got some good pictures of beautiful fountains that really combined ancient and modern architecture. We also got a picture of Edo Castle. It was built in 1457 by Ota Dokan in what is now the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo, but was then known as Ed, Toshima District, Musashi Province. Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Tokugawa shogunate here, and as the residence of the shogun and location of the bakufu, it functioned as the military capital during the Edo period of Japanese history. Along with the Meiji Restoration, it became the residence of the emperor of Japan, or in Japanese kokyo. Some moats, walls and ramparts survive. However, during the Edo period, the grounds were much more extensive, with Tokyo Station and the Marunouchi section of the city lying withing the outermost moat. It also encompassed Kita-no-maru Park, the Nippon Budokan Hall and other landmarks of the area. After walking around for a half hour, we decided to take a train to Tokyo Tower.

Again, if I'm ever back in Japan, Tokyo Tower would be another place to head to. The view was magnificent! To go to the top floor costs about $14.20, but it was well worth it. In the main observatory room, they had directions and descriptions of what we could see from there. Also, they had machines that had specific buildings labeled to help us find certain ones. On a clear day you can see Mt. Fuji (97 km away). As for me, I saw the intersection that I've watched from a webcam when I dreamed about going to Japan. Now seeing it in person was one of the happiest moments in my life. I watched that intersection for about 10 minutes before Hugh and Phil came over to let me know that we were going up some more. At the special observatory, we could see even further out. I found where TV Tokyo (my favorite Japanese tv station) as well as a couple of workers on the OTHER SIDE of the glass cleaning it. The announcements mentioned something about history, but it was all in Japanese and I couldn't understand most of it. We spent the rest of our afternoon there and headed back to the hotel.

We arrived back around 5:30 where we met back up with my Roy who was at conferences all day. We got all dressed up and headed for the planned banquet. The event itself was pretty high class, serving gourmet food and plenty of various drinks. Tonight was also the first time I actually enjoyed shrimp, which surprised the rest of the group. We mingled a little bit with our table mates. The gentleman sitting to my left was from France and was in charge of maintaining quality of high tech equipment. I didn't quite pay attention to what he did because I was enjoying the food so much. It was a 5 course meal, but they served such small portions that I'm still a little hungry as I'm writing this now. The entertainment tonight featured a 10 year old violin prodigy whose impressive record already included several international awards for music performance. She had such an understanding of the dynamics of music that it moved me as I heard her play. If I ever have a daughter, she'll be playing the piano or violin. After the music performance, I had to leave because my ankle was acting up from rolling on it in Tokyo this afternoon. Tomorrow we have a rough plan, but I'm sure it'll be another packed day.

**Note: At Tokyo we had lunch at this small restaurant that served excellent meatballs. The funny thing I found to this restaurant that we had to walk a good flight of stairs to actually get in there. The restaurant was nothing but a small room with 4 tables in very close range of each other. You could actually touch the person next to you by just extending your elbows a little. I liked it because it's a common Japanese accommodation to be in small places, which made it unique to me.