In August 2009, I made my first trip to Japan. I didn’t have this blog then, so posted blog-like notes on my Facebook page.
In the interest of making this a small resource of information and experiences for Brits (oh, alright; and you English-speaking colonials as well 
), I thought I’d make them available here too.
Enjoy!
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Tokyo-blog #1
Monday, August 3rd 2009
So, I made it then.
I thought, when the check-in clerk said she had to call someone to “check my seat availability”, there were going to be issues, but it turned out she was sorting me out an upgrade! Only to Premium Economy, but I’m not complaining. I did see if I could push it and get and aisle seat, so I could stretch my legs out, but no. “All aisle seats are taken,” she said. “But maybe the person next to you will be a pretty lady girl!”
Alas no, it was a male German student.
I have to say All-Nippon Airways’ Premium Economy is probably nicer than the Virgin Atlantic equivalent. Bags of room, immaculately clean, comfy seat and nice food (Japanese-style fried mackerel with spiced rice, broccoli & tofu plus salmon & bacon salad/potato salad and cheesecake).
I managed about four hours of sleep, two movies (Monsters vs. Aliens (not bad) and Race to Witch Mountain (pretty damn good, actually)) and a couple of classic WCW tag matches on the iPhone.
I know it’s an odd thing to comment on, but the landing was incredibly smooth. No bumps and, even sitting right over the landing gear, I barely noticed the touchdown.
Immigration was a different matter. As a shifty-looking foreigner, I had to fill in two landing forms on the plane, be photographed and electronically fingerprinted and then had both my bags searched by an otherwise pleasant security chappy.
Not only that, but after Immigration, while sorting my stuff out in a public area, a tubby little policeman asked to take down my passport details (spelling my name wrong in the process, I noticed) and my home phone number, Anya, if you get a phone call from the Tokyo police regarding a “Mr. Kibran Leburt”, no funny business; I want to see out my trip in this country!
The journey from Narita Airport to Shinjuku station is a pleasant 90 minutes on a quiet, comfortable, spotlessly clean train, which, as I have a JR Pass, I didn’t have to pay any extra for.
When I reached Shinjuku, I didn’t really know where to go for my hotel. My phone doesn’t work over here and wifi isn’t as abundant as I was led to believe, so Google Maps was out. So, I walked in the direction I thought it should be and, lo and behold, behind a big office building, on the other side of the street stood the Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku Hotel! The room (1308; wasn’t that a “haunted hotel room” movie a few years ago?) is compact but really nice and, yep, spotless. The one English channel on the otherwise awesome TV (the picture quality and number of channels puts all other hotels I’ve stayed in in the shade) is CNNj, so I guess I’ll be watching a fair bit of that.
Somewhat frustratingly, Gaora, G+ and BBC World are selectable, but locked. I have since discovered that BBC World costs about £5 a month on satellite here.
My promised free wifi turned out to be a fib, but there’s an ethernet cable in the drawer and it’s a good job I brought my new little Powerbook. It’s free today; we shall see if I have to pay for the rest of the week…
I took a little trip to Korakuen Hall (supposedly a 25 minutes train journey away, mine took 15 minutes) to try and get my wrestling tickets for the week (NOAH tomorrow, Dragon Gate on Wednesday, All-Japan on Thursday). Whoever said on the UKFF to “follow the blue pencils” was right. That’s exactly what I did and made my way to the 5th floor box office in the Blue Building only to find there would be no ticket purchasing today as I’d arrived 15 minutes after they had closed for the day. Balls-u desu.
Through a combination of the clerk’s bad English and my far worse Japanese, we established that I need to go back tomorrow at 10am.
Tonight then, all that remains is a shower then bed. Tomorrow, after breakfast and a return to the Blue Building, Tokyo is mine to explore. There some enormous shopping centres nearby, so I might start there.
Good night.
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Tokyo-blog #2
Tuesday, August 4th 2009
I didn’t sleep well last night. Got to bed about 00:30, woke up about 3:00am then couldn’t get back to sleep so I passed the time watching videos on my iPhone and surfing the interwebs.
About 8ish, I wandered down to the little buffet thing for breakfast. They’ve tried to cater for all by having both Japanese and Western items, so you get little signposted areas like “Rice Corner”, “Fruit Corner” (I’m sure Muller could sue for both of those), “Drinks Corner”, “Bread Corner”, “Warm Food” etc.. Unfortunately, the Japanese idea of a Western breakfast is an odd one. Alongside the expected stuff like toast, croissants and corn flakes there’s salad and a three-bean mix.
I headed to “Warm Food”. Among the sausages (which just looked like little willies), tiny hamburgers and worryingly orange scrambled eggs were such delights as “boiled broccolli” [sic] (actually potato wedges) and something that looked like bread and butter pudding, but was labelled as “roasted potato”.
I stuck to (allegedly) fried eggs and strange, small, uniformly sized and shaped bacon.
I was pretty hungry after yesterday, so ended up downing four of the (I think maybe poached) eggs and three slices of toast. Speaking of which, the toaster was one of those conveyor dealies and had a little sign on top instructing the operator to only put the traditional sliced bread in, not the croissants, although I’m sure they would have fitted… And, anyway, what’s a guy like me who likes his croissants warm supposed to do?
All in all, it filled me up a treat for the day ahead, but tomorrow I shall seek breakfast elsewhere as it wasn’t worth the £9 it cost.
The exchange rate shifted in my favour today, which was good as my first stop was a return to Korakuen Hall Blue Building to buy my wrestling tickets. The two guys running the box office booth were lovely, smiling fellas both in their fifties and speaking pretty good English.
It turns out I was fed some duff information: there is no NOAH show tonight at Korakuen. Instead there’s boxing. They asked me if I’d like to go and see that instead, but I declined. Still, I was able to get my Dragon Gate ticket for Thursday and my All-Japan Pro Wrestling ticket for Friday and it looks like I’m 3rd row for DG and 7th row for AJPW.
A quick look at the train map told me that two stops up from Suidobashi (“swede-oh-bash-ee”; the station near Tokyo Dome City) was the electronics district, Akihabara. The gadget nerd in me could not resist.
It’s not just gadgets though; I also found toy stores, video game emporia and DVD stores, all both new and second-hand. The crowning glory of all this has to be the Akiba branch of Yodobashi Camera.
Imagine, if you will, a floorspace the size of your average Homebase. Now, take out all the DIY stuff and replace it all with a branch of PC World and a large Carphone Warehouse…
On top of that, plonk another PC World and an Apple Store…
On top of that, a Currys…
Now a Comet…
Now a Toys ‘R’ Us…
Now a flagship-sized HMV…
Now a Waterstones and, I’m not kidding, a Tower Records…
Now a 24 restaurant food court…
Finally, at the top, stick a massive golf department and you’ve got Yodobashi Camera. Nine floors of utter shopping madness.
I’ve been trying to use my smattering of Japanese when I can and I’ve gotten through my fair share of “Hello”, “Thank you”, “Excuse me” and “Do you speak English?” (usual answer: “a little” and then they turn out to be pretty good) and the guys in the Korakuen box office were impressed that I knew the Japanese for “All-Japan Pro Wrestling”, but at lunchtime, I suffered a Nihon-go breakdown and was reduced to pointing at pictures of pizzas to get food.
You may sneer at my choice of pizza, but A) it was a mushroom pizza in Tokyo and therefore benefitted from the inclusion of lots of tasty Japanese mushrooms, B) I was tired & hungry and C) fuck off.
Also, it was a vast improvement on breakfast.
All that walking around has knackered me, so I’m back at the hotel for a rest. As there’s no show tonight, I’m probably going to have a wander around the local area. There’s the amusingly-named “Mylord” shopping centre up the road, so I think I shall check that out.
Catch you later.
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Tokyo-blog #3 – Odaiba, food & telethons
Wednesday, August 5th 2009
When I left you last night, I was off to the big Mylord shopping plaza over the way.
The only way I can describe Mylord is Debenhams on steroids… possibly also acid. It’s made up of lots and lots of womenswear concessions. Six floors of them in fact.
Once you’ve struggled through that lot (I think I was one of three men in the building), you come to Odakyu; another shopping centre, this time 14 floors (!), at least six of which are womenswear again. I spotted one floor that had men’s clothing listed. I bumbled around the technology floors for a bit, then retired to the hotel to collapse into bed.
Today was rather full, so forgive me if I miss anything. I’m having to work with my photos open in another window to help remember stuff!
As I don’t have a show to get to tonight, I decided I would spend today in Odaiba, about an hour’s train-ride from my hotel, down on Tokyo Bay. The main lure of this area for me was the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation or “Miraikan” (“Future Museum”). Now if the Brits had one of these, it would contain exhibits of things to keep a cup of tea warm for longer. As this is Japan, I was expecting something a bit more than that.
Before Odaiba though, I stopped off in Shiodome, where I was due to change trains anyway, for breakfast. Despite laughing at and photographing the name, I settled on Doughnut Plant for an undertoasted bagel and coffee. I don’t know what it is, but the Japanese seem to have a real fear of burning toast to the point where, if you don’t do it yourself, you just end up with warm bread. Still, this was pleasant enough and meant I could sit outside and eat whilst watching the incomprehensible festivities unfold in the public area.
Doughnut Plant, you see, is part of the NTV Tower complex and NTV is possibly the biggest broadcaster in Japan. Today, I think was their annual telethon “24 Hour Television: Love Saves the Earth” and I had arrived at the beginning, so there were stages and stalls set up all over the place (over two outdoor levels to boot), lots of people scurrying about in yellow jackets, activities for kids, TV presenters, a camera crew and people in cartoon character costumes. I have photos.
To reach Odaiba, I would have to take a train not covered by my JR Pass. 620 yen (£3.85) got me a (tiny) return ticket from Shimbashi (the signs were confusing and I ended up walking to the previous station by mistake) to Odaiba-kaihinkoen station on the Yurikamome, which is an automated, elevated train service, not unlike London’s Docklands Light Railway.
Odaiba is an artificial island built for military purposes in the 1850s (not a typo) and underwent a massive redevelopment in the 1990s, now containing residential and commercial properties. The Yurikamome reaches the island by way of the Rainbow Bridge, the view from which can be very impressive. Some of Odaiba is still being developed. I saw lots of unused and recently-prepared land and the whole place has a slightly unfinished look to it.
I took a little detour on the way to the museum and had a little walk along the bay. The cool air off the sea water helped take the edge of today’s ungodly humidity. The Accuweather.com “RealFeel” index had Tokyo listed as 39 Celcius today and I sweated every last degree.
The Miraikan is amazing! It’s London’s Science Museum and Natural History Museum combined and spread over seven floors (although you seemingly only have access to the odd-numbered ones, but the escalators are set up in such a way that you’d never notice) and housed in a pretty spectacular building. Helped by a young staff member with impeccable English at the ticket machine, I plumped for an all-in 1600 yen (less than £10) ticket, which allowed me into the special exhibition they currently have set up on the ground floor, but a 600 yen (£3.69; a fucking steal) ticket will let you into the permanant exhibitions on floors 3 and 5 (not as miserly as it sounds; there’s plenty to see and do on both). Suffice to say, I spent over four hours in there and didn’t come close to looking at everything. That would take a few days, I suspect!
The true highlight was that I got to see one of my heroes and, in fact, stayed later than I was intending to do so. Yes, I got to see the ASIMO demonstration. ASIMO is Honda’s ongoing robot project and the current model is jaw-dropping in its lifelike manner. Have a look at the pics and video, then look him up on Wiki. Definitely the high-point of the day and probably the trip so far.
Next stop was the Fuji TV HQ building. Supposedly they have an amazing observation deck in their bizarrely designed building. I wasn’t able to get to said deck as, much like NTV Tower, they had an event in progress. This was called “United States of Odaiba” and I don’t really know what was going on, but it certainly was, what with stalls, games, demonstrations, a stage with a boyband (“Square Hood”) jigging about on it and information girls in funny hats.
By now, the tummy was beginning to rumble, so I headed back into Aqua City and the adjoining Mediage (big shopping mall and entertainment complex), through a wacky artificial cave to go to a restaurant I had seen online and had been recommended: Gonpachi.
Gonpachi is a relatively small chain (four restaurants in Tokyo, one in Fukuoka and one in… erm… California), but it’s good food, reasonably priced. I had two courses, two drinks and seconds of one of my main course items for 3300 yen (£20) and it was fantastic. Something of a leisurely meal because A) I had to wait for things to cool down and B) there were chopsticks involved. The staff all spoke very good English and one of them was asking me where I was from, why I was in Tokyo and if liked the things I’d seen on Odaiba. The staff shout (and I mean shout) greetings as customers enter and also have nicknames on their nametags. The chatty one was “A-Hiro” and I also clocked a “Show-Go” and a “Bob”. One of the other branches in in Shibuya where I intend to head at some point later in the week, so I shall sample more of the menu then.
By this time, the sun was starting to go down, so it was back on the Yurikamome to Shidome, where the NTV hoo-hah was still in full swing, then over to the Oedo line back to Shinjuku in my first proper crowded Tokyo commuter carriage.
A busy, but damn fine day all-in-all. Tomorrow sees the first of three wrestling shows (Dragon Gate at Korakuen Hall) and a trip to the Toyota Auto Salon Amlux, a free entry, interactive Toyota museum/playground.
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Tokyo-blog #4: Toyota, Shibuya, ‘rasslin’ & Osaka
Monday, August 10th 2009
Just because I’m home doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about these.
Thursday began with a trip to Toyota Amlux Auto Salon near Ikebukuro station. It’s essentially a very large car showroom in which you can sit in every model Toyota currently makes (although I did note that they hid their Scions at the back and I didn’t spot any Lexus cars on display), play about in various simulators and what-not. It was a fun way to spend an hour, but I imagine I would have gotten more out of it if I could drive or read Japanese.
I had had a quick trundle back to Shinjuku to have a look for a shop Anya had asked me to look for (found it), then back to Tokyo Dome City for food at the Baseball Cafe. It’s exactly what you would expect: “American” theme, large portions of fried and grilled food, full of baseball memorabilia and staffed almost entirely by small cute Japanese girls in replica baseball uniforms. Also, you don’t pay at your table, you go to a baseball stadium style ticket window and give your money to the person on the other side. Cool.
I was then stuck in an odd place, where I didn’t really have time to go and do anything else, but it was a bit too early to go to Korakuen Hall for the Dragon Gate show. I opted for the latter anyway, navigating my way around the MASSIVE queue that had formed for the evening’s baseball game at the Tokyo Dome itself and headed up to the fifth floor of the blue building to wait.
I won’t bore non-fans with any lengthy descriptions (my full write-up is here:http://ukff.com/index.php?showtopic=113304&view=findpost&p=1971402 if you’re interested), suffice to say it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen live and it was a great honour to see my favourite wrestling promotion in person in the Mecca of Japanese pro wrestling.
I also met Greg, a wrestling fan from Tazmania (also the only other Caucasian man in the crowd) who was really cool, even though the crazy bastard was wearing a leather jacket on such a humid day. I guess you just get used to that kind of heat in the southern hemisphere…
I didn’t sleep so well overnight, so ended up running about an hour behind on Friday. In the morning, I took a quick trip down to Shibuya to see the world-famous crossing. I had the world’s campest breakfast (Mocha, something called a “lemon scone” (which actually turned out to be a really nice lemon-iced cake), a raspberry macaroon and a lemon frappucino) by the window in the Starbucks that overlooks the crossing and snapped some pics of the hundreds of people that cross every time the green man shows.
From there, it was a little bit of shopping in the Shibuya stores (they have an amazing Tower Records there, among others), then off to Akihabara for another riffle through electronics, second-hand games (Trader is a great shop; it’s Computer Exchange, but on a grand scale and most of the second-hand stock is in amazing condition that looks almost new) and toy robots (I bought a Soundwave MP3 player and Rumble & Frenzy earphones in the end).
I had a late lunch in the recommended Mos Burger, then back to Korakuen Hall for All-Japan Pro Wrestling. Not as good a show as Dragon Gate, but still very enjoyable (write-up here: http://ukff.com/index.php?showtopic=113304&view=findpost&p=1973477). I also met Dave, a man originally from Michigan, who now lived in Japan with his Chinese wife (who was very nice and I don’t want to insult by getting her name wrong here). Dave was here with a Japanese man who introduced himself to me as “Tats”, Dave’s colleague and a big wrestling fan who was taking Dave & his wife to their first live wrestling show.
Dave had no real idea what to expect, but seemed to have a whale of a time, particularly when a couple of the matches brawled their way through the public area between our rows, sending he and Mrs. Dave running up the stairs to escape.
When I got back to the hotel, it was time to pack as there was no way I’d have the time to do it the next day and then to bed in preparation for Saturday’s trip.
Osaka is over 600 miles away from Tokyo, which meant I had to be up early if I wanted have a day there. Thankfully, the Shinkansen train does the trip at a top speed of 186mph in just over three hours. Awesome.
The train itself is comfortable and roomy. Even in standard class, I had more legroom than I could need as well as an airline-style tray table and a nice, soft reclining seat. Hungry or thirsty? Then a lady comes around with a trolley of snacks and drinks and there also vending machines in every other carriage.
Like Tokyo, the Osaka public transport system is in English as well as Japanese. On top of that, the stations are also numbered (can’t remember Nishinakajima-Minamigata Station? then fret not because it’s also station M13 on the red line) and I was able to pick up English-language city, railway and underground maps from the (fluent English-speaking) information office in Shin-Osaka station. The JR Pass isn’t valid on the Osaka subway, but for 850 yen (£5.30) I bought a day-pass which let me travel anywhere on the extensive underground system.
Osaka is a really nice city and I wish I’d had more time there. It’s a little rougher around the edges than Tokyo; the buildings aren’t quite as clean and you may very occasionally see a lone piece of litter in the street, but it’s still a beautiful place.
I was glad I packed some sunblock as on Saturday, it was 39C with very few clouds and I worked up a hell of a sweat searching for the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium. It took me over an hour to find the place from Namba, the closest subway station. Turns out, I’d taken the wrong exit (Namba has over 20, so y’know…) and, had I taken the right one, I’d have found the building in under five minutes. Yeah…
The box office was still an hour away from opening when I arrived (something I couldn’t have known without actually going to the venue), which, again, left me not enough time to embark on one of the excursions within Osaka that I’d planned, but not worth just hanging around, especially in the heat. I opted for a wander around Dotonbori (the entertainment district) and Ebisubashi (the main shopping street) and a sushi lunch. I have no idea what I had (apart from “Set 1, kudasai”), but some was very nice and some wasn’t.
Back to the box office for the cheapest ticket (4000 yen). There was a strong chance I’d have to duck out of the show early to catch the last Shinkansen back to Tokyo at 8:35pm and with Namba station a five minute walk, then Shin-Osaka another 15 minutes on the subway from there, even though there was front row available, I didn’t want to spend too much on a show I might not get to see all of.
From there, I decided on a trip to the Kaiyu-kan Aquarium to the south-west of the city. This was somewhere I’d seen recommended and, believe me, it’s worth the trip.
The aquarium in Syndey is a great day out, but Kaiyu-kan is even better. It has the theme of covering the whole sea from top to bottom, so you start on eight floors up with land and surface water, so there’s everything from monkeys and sloths to penguins and rockpool-dwelling crabs. You then head down along a long, shallow spiral through the sea’s eco-system to all the crazy shit that lives at the bottom. On the way, you’ll see innumerable types of fish, plus otters, sharks, dolphins, turtles, seals, sealions, giant spider crabs, jellyfish and a whole load more. The idea is everything lives in an environment as close to its natural one as possible. A fantastic place,.
From there, it was back to Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium for New-Japan Pro Wrestling. Another really good show that I did, in fact, manage to see all of, then ran like hell at the closing bell back to Namba Station and made back to the Shinkansen platform at Shin-Osaka with ten minutes to spare before my Tokyo train left.
Sunday, I had to be up at 6:45am to make sure I made it onto the Narita Express to the airport at 8am. The ANA check-in system at Narita isn’t as smooth or efficient as the one at Heathrow. They’ve got rows of automatic check-in machines by the desks. Unfortunately, nobody knows how to use them, so each desk is manned by two staff, one to work the machine for you and one to weigh your bags. Then two of the machines broke down, so we had people milling about trying to fix them while several flights-worth of passengers attempted to check in. Chaos.
It’s a good job I arrived two hours before my flight time because by the time I was done with check-in and security, there was only half-an-hour left to find breakfast before boarding time.
No upgrade this time and some nasty turbulence, but I made it back in one piece and relative comfort. I even managed to sleep a little and got through a couple of movies.
Overall, I had an amazing holiday, but six days just isn’t enough. I didn’t manage to do even half the things I had wanted to in Tokyo, plus I now want to spend more time in Osaka and I hear tell that Kyoto’s pretty special as well.
Return trip already being plotted…
