Beware Godzilla!
I was glad to have got up to date with all our travels and impressions of Japan in this blog before reaching Tokyo. Because Tokyo is quite different. Possibly no more so than London is from the suburbs, but many of the things we have noted in Japan seem a little more muted in Tokyo.
The place is still clean, but there is litter around (not much!). People are still very polite, but a little less so than in the quieter towns and cities. It is a very busy place (twice the population of London), and in some areas this is very noticeable. In others though, it seems much quieter, maybe because the main roads around the city are much wider and the cars seem a lot less noisy (lots of hybrids around) than in London.
All of this pales into insignificance when our hotel comes into view. Because it has Godzilla looming over the balcony from the 8th floor to the street below. I think our hotel (Hotel Gracery in Shinjuku) must be fairly new, as it does not appear on any maps, and there is no mention in the guide books of a Godzilla ‘attraction’ in the very popular Shinjuku district. As guests of the hotel, we were able to visit the ‘Godzilla head' up close and personal – it was much less impressive from the 8th floor, but there were some nice friezes on the walls depicting scenes from the various films.
We are staying in one of the very busy nightlife districts – think Leicester square and you won’t be far wrong. Even on a weekday evening there are crowds of mainly young Japanese wandering around the various restaurants and bars. We also seems to be on the edge of the red light district, which seems to be mixed in with the restaurants and less sleazy bars. Neon lights abound, as was expected, but even with the crowds, the lights and the noise, we didn’t feel surprised or out of place here. Maybe we are just used to London.
The hotel is nice. Once again, posher than we are used to on holidays, and we are on the 17th floor, which gives us a good view over parts of Tokyo – impressive at night as we are in the neon light district. We went for a wander to, as usual, find some food we could eat. Restaurants and cafés aplenty, and many with English menus, but none with anything even remotely vegetarian. Still, we had the vague address of a veggie place within walking distance, so made our way there. Once out of the neon light area, it does quieten down a lot – still plenty of traffic, but fewer people and shops, so it felt a lot less busy. Wandering back to our hotel afterwards, we could take in a bit more of the atmosphere, which, for a Sunday night, was quite hectic.
Halloween is only a few days away, and it seems to be pretty big in Japan. At least on a commercial front, as many shops have Halloween displays, and a lot of the eateries have special Halloween food – generally pumpkin based snacks (the pumpkin always seems to be used as a sweet thing rather than savoury).
I’m not sure at what point in my life ‘fancy dress' became ‘cos-play’. I don’t know what was wrong with the term fancy dress in the first place, but is does seem to have been usurped, both here and in the UK. I mention it because fancy dress cos-play seems quite big here. It may just be the Halloween thing, but there are plenty of cheap places to buy cheap costumes, and not just the scary ones. Nurses outfits, schoolgirl outfits all seem to have their place amongst other samurai and geisha outfits on the stalls. And not just in the red light area either. The karaoke bars also seem to have costumes you can use if you wish. In the electric city area there were girls dressed up as French maids trying to convince you to go to one of the ‘maid cafés’ nearby. We didn’t visit one of those cafés. Though we did go back to the electric city area twice. Only to take another view at the gadgets, of course.
I was a bit disappointed with Akihabara – electric city. I was expecting rows of little shops, some selling electronic components and modules for building your own gadgetry, some selling personal assistant robots that would make you your morning coffee and wash your car for you. What we found was much more basic – a bit like Tottenham Court Road, lots of shops selling TVs, cameras, computers and all sorts of accessories for your mobile phone. I know there are robotics shops in the area, but we didn’t find any, and the gadgetry seemed pretty standard stuff to me. Certainly nothing you couldn’t get back in the UK, and prices were no better either. Maybe it’s just a result of globalisation – you can get anything anywhere (speaking as a privileged person from a first world country of course) – or maybe we just didn’t find the right shops. On our second visit to the area we did find the small stallholders selling electronic components but even these were pricey and nothing special.
A robot fix was needed however, and if electric city wasn’t going to provide it, then we tried elsewhere – the museum of future innovation (or some long-winded title like that) that was located out across the bay on an island. And we found out it was closed on a Tuesday. It was at the time late on Monday, and we were leaving on Wednesday morning, so we rushed out there by train, to arrive with an hour before closing. 30 minutes of that was to be taken up with a (in my opinion rubbish, in Emma’s opinion not bad) 3D presentation on the universe. So in 30 minutes we rushed around the museum to see some interactive ‘zones’ talking about the latest science. All pretty average, though at least up to date – it talked about quantum computing for example, though I was more confused after seeing the exhibition pieces than before. The highlight, and what for me was worth the relatively inexpensive entrance fee, was seeing a demonstration by Asimo, the Honda humanoid robot. It was very impressive.
Our second, and last, full day in Tokyo was spent wandering around some other areas. A visit to the imperial palace gardens was nice (on yet another lovely, sunny day), though our hunt for turtles in the garden lakes was unfruitful. There are only so many koi carp you can take before they lose their impressive impact. Emma went halfway up Tokyo Tower, and we ended up in another ‘neon’ district for the evening, Shibuya. The station here has two claims to fame. This first is that it is home to the story, and commemorative statue, of Hachiko, the Akita dog who, in the 1920s used to walk with his master to the station each morning, and greet him at the station when he returned home from work. Until one day his master died at work and didn’t come home. But Hachiko continued to walk to the station to meet the same train every evening for the next 9 years, until he died. It was made into a Richard Gere movie in the 90s, Hachi: A Dogs Tale, which for some reason they decided to set in America, rather than Japan.
The second reason for the station being famous is that just outside is the ‘busiest pedestrian crossing in the world' – busy primarily because it consists of four crossings of the incoming four main roads, and a crossing across the middle too. Unlike most other crossings, all the pedestrian bits go green at the same time, and then you have to wait for ages while the various queues of cars are allowed to go. That, coupled with the Japanese attitude of not crossing until the green man appears, even if there is a gap in the traffic, makes for a pretty busy crossing. However, even given all that, it wouldn’t be a particularly hectic crossing if it weren’t for the fact that it is labelled the busiest crossing in the world. Which means at least half of the people crossing each time are tourists, western and Japanese, who are only crossing because it is in all the guide books. And they are filming themselves, or others, crossing, which means they are bumping into everyone else as they are too busy looking at their camera phones while walking across.
Overall, we liked Tokyo. We could have stayed longer, but having seen much of the standard tourist fare, to have enjoyed Tokyo more we would have to get more ingrained into the culture there – which would take much longer than a few more days. Much of Tokyo reminded us of London, which is no bad thing. Other than our own problem with getting a good variety of vegetarian food, which would ease as we got to know the place, we felt fairly at home there. But on a whistle-stop tour of Japan, two or three days in Tokyo is enough for us. Time to move on.
The place is still clean, but there is litter around (not much!). People are still very polite, but a little less so than in the quieter towns and cities. It is a very busy place (twice the population of London), and in some areas this is very noticeable. In others though, it seems much quieter, maybe because the main roads around the city are much wider and the cars seem a lot less noisy (lots of hybrids around) than in London.
All of this pales into insignificance when our hotel comes into view. Because it has Godzilla looming over the balcony from the 8th floor to the street below. I think our hotel (Hotel Gracery in Shinjuku) must be fairly new, as it does not appear on any maps, and there is no mention in the guide books of a Godzilla ‘attraction’ in the very popular Shinjuku district. As guests of the hotel, we were able to visit the ‘Godzilla head' up close and personal – it was much less impressive from the 8th floor, but there were some nice friezes on the walls depicting scenes from the various films.
We are staying in one of the very busy nightlife districts – think Leicester square and you won’t be far wrong. Even on a weekday evening there are crowds of mainly young Japanese wandering around the various restaurants and bars. We also seems to be on the edge of the red light district, which seems to be mixed in with the restaurants and less sleazy bars. Neon lights abound, as was expected, but even with the crowds, the lights and the noise, we didn’t feel surprised or out of place here. Maybe we are just used to London.
The hotel is nice. Once again, posher than we are used to on holidays, and we are on the 17th floor, which gives us a good view over parts of Tokyo – impressive at night as we are in the neon light district. We went for a wander to, as usual, find some food we could eat. Restaurants and cafés aplenty, and many with English menus, but none with anything even remotely vegetarian. Still, we had the vague address of a veggie place within walking distance, so made our way there. Once out of the neon light area, it does quieten down a lot – still plenty of traffic, but fewer people and shops, so it felt a lot less busy. Wandering back to our hotel afterwards, we could take in a bit more of the atmosphere, which, for a Sunday night, was quite hectic.
Halloween is only a few days away, and it seems to be pretty big in Japan. At least on a commercial front, as many shops have Halloween displays, and a lot of the eateries have special Halloween food – generally pumpkin based snacks (the pumpkin always seems to be used as a sweet thing rather than savoury).
I’m not sure at what point in my life ‘fancy dress' became ‘cos-play’. I don’t know what was wrong with the term fancy dress in the first place, but is does seem to have been usurped, both here and in the UK. I mention it because fancy dress cos-play seems quite big here. It may just be the Halloween thing, but there are plenty of cheap places to buy cheap costumes, and not just the scary ones. Nurses outfits, schoolgirl outfits all seem to have their place amongst other samurai and geisha outfits on the stalls. And not just in the red light area either. The karaoke bars also seem to have costumes you can use if you wish. In the electric city area there were girls dressed up as French maids trying to convince you to go to one of the ‘maid cafés’ nearby. We didn’t visit one of those cafés. Though we did go back to the electric city area twice. Only to take another view at the gadgets, of course.
I was a bit disappointed with Akihabara – electric city. I was expecting rows of little shops, some selling electronic components and modules for building your own gadgetry, some selling personal assistant robots that would make you your morning coffee and wash your car for you. What we found was much more basic – a bit like Tottenham Court Road, lots of shops selling TVs, cameras, computers and all sorts of accessories for your mobile phone. I know there are robotics shops in the area, but we didn’t find any, and the gadgetry seemed pretty standard stuff to me. Certainly nothing you couldn’t get back in the UK, and prices were no better either. Maybe it’s just a result of globalisation – you can get anything anywhere (speaking as a privileged person from a first world country of course) – or maybe we just didn’t find the right shops. On our second visit to the area we did find the small stallholders selling electronic components but even these were pricey and nothing special.
A robot fix was needed however, and if electric city wasn’t going to provide it, then we tried elsewhere – the museum of future innovation (or some long-winded title like that) that was located out across the bay on an island. And we found out it was closed on a Tuesday. It was at the time late on Monday, and we were leaving on Wednesday morning, so we rushed out there by train, to arrive with an hour before closing. 30 minutes of that was to be taken up with a (in my opinion rubbish, in Emma’s opinion not bad) 3D presentation on the universe. So in 30 minutes we rushed around the museum to see some interactive ‘zones’ talking about the latest science. All pretty average, though at least up to date – it talked about quantum computing for example, though I was more confused after seeing the exhibition pieces than before. The highlight, and what for me was worth the relatively inexpensive entrance fee, was seeing a demonstration by Asimo, the Honda humanoid robot. It was very impressive.
Our second, and last, full day in Tokyo was spent wandering around some other areas. A visit to the imperial palace gardens was nice (on yet another lovely, sunny day), though our hunt for turtles in the garden lakes was unfruitful. There are only so many koi carp you can take before they lose their impressive impact. Emma went halfway up Tokyo Tower, and we ended up in another ‘neon’ district for the evening, Shibuya. The station here has two claims to fame. This first is that it is home to the story, and commemorative statue, of Hachiko, the Akita dog who, in the 1920s used to walk with his master to the station each morning, and greet him at the station when he returned home from work. Until one day his master died at work and didn’t come home. But Hachiko continued to walk to the station to meet the same train every evening for the next 9 years, until he died. It was made into a Richard Gere movie in the 90s, Hachi: A Dogs Tale, which for some reason they decided to set in America, rather than Japan.
The second reason for the station being famous is that just outside is the ‘busiest pedestrian crossing in the world' – busy primarily because it consists of four crossings of the incoming four main roads, and a crossing across the middle too. Unlike most other crossings, all the pedestrian bits go green at the same time, and then you have to wait for ages while the various queues of cars are allowed to go. That, coupled with the Japanese attitude of not crossing until the green man appears, even if there is a gap in the traffic, makes for a pretty busy crossing. However, even given all that, it wouldn’t be a particularly hectic crossing if it weren’t for the fact that it is labelled the busiest crossing in the world. Which means at least half of the people crossing each time are tourists, western and Japanese, who are only crossing because it is in all the guide books. And they are filming themselves, or others, crossing, which means they are bumping into everyone else as they are too busy looking at their camera phones while walking across.
Overall, we liked Tokyo. We could have stayed longer, but having seen much of the standard tourist fare, to have enjoyed Tokyo more we would have to get more ingrained into the culture there – which would take much longer than a few more days. Much of Tokyo reminded us of London, which is no bad thing. Other than our own problem with getting a good variety of vegetarian food, which would ease as we got to know the place, we felt fairly at home there. But on a whistle-stop tour of Japan, two or three days in Tokyo is enough for us. Time to move on.
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