We met the new additions to our tour this morning after breakfast. Those of us who have been here for a few days were on the pre-trip. The others came in last night. We hopped on a bus and stopped at the Imperial Palace for a photo op. We didn't actually see the emperor's house, but the outside gates and buildings. There was a double bridge over the moat to the old castle grounds in the middle of Tokyo. This castle was the property of the last shogun. The setting was lovely, but the weather was rather drizzly so we didn't take too many pictures. From there we went to oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo which had a lovely Shinto shrine along side. These are not exactly religions here, but rather just a way of life. The Shinto idea is about nature and how one fits into and uses the natural environment to live your daily life and the Buddhism is mostly for the afterlife and to respect those who have gone on before. There was a large pot of incensed smoke in front of the temple and people were wafting the smoke towards certain parts of their bodies. This is supposed to help with certain ailments and to bring good things to whatever you get the smoke on. I saw a mother wafting the smoke onto her 5 year old daughter and then rubbling her chest. I asked Junko if the mom was trying to prevent or heal her daughter's cold. She laughed and said that the mother was wishing that her daughter would grow up to have big boobs! I got quite a chuckle out of that one. Outside of the temple was a long pedestrian shopping street lined with hundreds of tiny shops. They were selling everything from food, clothing, souvenirs, postcards, good luck charms, etc. It was very crowded, but a lot of fun to poke into some of the shops. Back on the bus, we drove to the famous Ginza shopping district. Wow! Hundreds of posh brand-name stores as well as huge department stores. We went into the Mitsukoshi department store which had 17 floors. The food floor was amazing! Every prepared food that you could imagine was there and below that floor was a huge grocery store. Everything was very high end though - I decided that I would have a banana for lunch as it was on the late side and we had a banquet later on. Now granted it was a very nice looking banana and did hit the spot, but it cost $2.25! From Ginza the bus took us over to one of the man-made islands where there are many new apartment and condominium high-rises. We also stopped at a large grocery store (a regular one with normal prices - still expensive, but much less so than in the Ginza district). Junko gave us each 300 yen (about $4.50) and a half hour to buy some snacks that we could share on the upcoming bus rides. The only rule was that is should be something unknown to us. Dave picked out two strange looking cracker type things. Later Junko told us that one was a sweet rice cake and the other was a shrimp flavored rice cracker). I managed to pick up a puffed rice cake and some type of strawberry flavored treat that is on a stick. It will be interesting to see how they taste!
When we got back to the hotel, we had to pack a small bag to take with us on our next part of the trip to Mount Fuji and Hakone. The larger bags will be shipped to our next big city. The reason for the small bag is that our trip from Hakone to Kanazawa will be by bullet train and it would not be practical to try to maneuver the large bags on the train. Our dinner tonight was in a local Japanese restaurant near the hotel. We were served small portions of several things (kind of like tapas in Spain). We had a small bowl of dried shredded radishes, tomato salad, rice (of course), tiny cucumber pickles, small skewers of chicken, a chicken dish that was cooked at the table on a hot lava rock from Mt. Fuji, broiled green peppers, broiled green beans, cabbage, tea, and a caramel custard for dessert. Everything was eaten with chop sticks except for the custard which was eaten on a shiny wooden spoon. We (except for me) also had sake with the dinner. Quite the experience. We got a chance to chat with some of the new folks. We will have to get to sleep soon as our big cases have to be in the lobby by 7 AM. There will not be any internet service in the Hakone region, but I will try to catch up when we get to Kanazama so sayonara for now.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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