Having already toiled away our time in the apartment we were not ready to just go back and sit. Instead we decided to walk around a bit and see what we could find hoping that we just needed to wait a half hour or so before the trains started.
We walked around a short distance in our area of Asakusa. It was very peaceful and quiet though there was still a few people out and about. We got to take a bunch of pictures of the area and got on the train after it opened at 5am.
This is the entrance to our train station
A large percentage of the population here smokes, but they only do it in designated areas. There are also no cigarette butts laying around, they keep it very clean.
Ready to get some breakfast
Tsukiji:
It was only one switch and a few stops down and we found
ourselves in Tsukiji. Train exits are one thing here that take some getting used
to. Most stations have at least four different exits. These put you out at
different places in the area. Usually we just wing it and we can usually find
our way around based on landmarks. This
time we were sort of lost, or so we thought. To see how out of it we were we
decided to just start walking. We were getting a little nervous until we saw
some other foreigners also standing on the sidewalk staring at a map. As we
were passing them I was thinking “oh good, they must have some idea of which
direction to go, they have a map!” This only lasted a few seconds since as soon
as they saw us they just started following us. This may be a problem.
Thankfully, we were going the right general direction and after
a few blocks we did wind up running into the market. Somehow it took us walking
through a good part of it to figure it out though. The shops were just starting to set up and to
our dismay there were a great deal of signs saying no photos. As everything was
just getting started, and we were getting hungry, we decided to get some
breakfast. We had read that there were
many small stalls along the streets so we decided to just start walking to
check it out. Before long we were accosted by a woman who insisted that we sit
at her counter. She handed us a menu which included rules and a menu in
English. “Rule 1: No photos, except for your food” oh well, on to the menu.
As far as we can tell, there is no real distinction between
the types of food you eat for each meal time. It all involves rice or noodles,
some sort of fish or meat, and usually soup. This menu showed basically one
type of dish, rice with two different types of fish on top. There were about 15
pages of this. In general we try to stay
away from anything with a head after the prawn incident. We settled on 1 tuna and salmon, and 1 Salmon
and salmon roe. The food was delicious
and very filling and we were able to catch a view of Obama and Romney on the
news for a minute. By the time we were done with breakfast, the market was
already buzzing so we strolled around a little but decided it best not to stick
around and we kept seeing “no photos” signs and we were too chicken to try the
samples.
Tukiji-honganji Temple outside the fish market
Where to now?
Businesses here are a teenager’s dream. Nothing opens here
until 10 or 11 am. There are many convenience stores open and some restaurants,
depending on the area. In general however, shops do not open until at least
10am. Starbucks does not even open until 7, blasphemy!!! Thus far we are waking
up long before this time so we wind up having to waste time until things open.
As it was so close to the market we decided to go to Ginza
which is a famous shopping district…for fancy people apparently! When we cannot
actually pronounce the names on the signs, we are in the wrong area. You know, when there are only 15 things in
the shop and they are all displayed at odd angles. Thankfully the shops were
not open yet so we were able to walk around aimlessly for a while. As we did
the day before, we decided to look for a park.
A cool clock statue in the Ginza area
We'll be heading back to the Sony building later when it is open. They have a nice showroom there.
Hibiya Park:
We saw a large park on our map and decided to kill some time there. We had no idea how nice this park would be though and ended up spending a good deal of time there just wandering and taking pictures until it got too close to the morning rush hour and we had to head out to our Studio Ghibli meetup point.
The top of a former castle wall. The lake is a recreation of part of the moat.
The walkway leading up to the wall
The lake was full of enormous Koi
Next update: Studio Ghibli...
No comments:
Post a Comment