First full day in Japan
Jun. 2nd, 2005 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sierciaSo, yesterday we got up at the crack of dawn and went to the Tokyo fish market. Apparently, it handles 25-35% of all the fish sold in Japan. And they eat a LOT of fish here. It was interesting, to say the least. Most impressive was the half tunas we found. They are ENORMOUS. HUGE. I took pictures. There were all kinds of strange and exotic looking shellfish, squids of every possible size (smaller than my pinky to larger than my arm) and all these guys careening around on these tiny trucks that are nothing more than a large gas tank, a place to stand with a steering wheel, and a back deck to carry fish on. All zooming around with abandon. As William said, "no matter where you stand, you're going to be in the way".
We also wandered through the vegetable market. The neatest thing there was the edamame so fresh it was still on the stalk. We found sushi for breakfasy, and I have nigiri with so much wasabi on it that my sinuses still aren't speaking to me.
After that, Carrie and I said goodbye to William as he headed off to work. We hopped on the train and headed for a folk house museum - essentially a collection of transplanted houses from different regions of the country. It was kind of neat, but after a while they allstarted to look very much the same, and is seemed as if most of the good information was in Japanese.
The real fun part was trying to get there from the train station. We made it through our connection point (apparently, one of the busiest train stations in the world) at rush hour, and found our train. Rode out to the suburb where the museum was, got of the train, and there were no signs we could read anywhere about the museum. William had provided us with the kanji for the name, the pronunciation of the name, and how it is spelled in Western letters. We found one sign where we could match the kanji, but then the rest of the sign was also in kanji. Not so helpful, really. We tried to figure out which bus to take, and eventually gave up and took a taxi. Once we got there, there was a docent type who spoke enough English to explain that it was only a 10 minute walk back to the train, so we just walked back.
We had some lunch before hopping back on the train. I'm so glad that many restaurants here have picture menus, but it's still dauntiung, since you can't really tell what all the ingredients are (Like Carrie ending up with mountain yam all over her rice at lunch. That might be the first thing I've eaten here that qualifies as naaaasty.) Got back to the huge train station and roamed around the dapartment store in it for a bit, where I tried something else that ended up being naaaasty - bread with fish roe butter spread on it. We got a bunch of pastries for breakfast today and then headed home.
By then I was dragging. We had originally planned to meet William near his office for dinner, then decided to instead meet him somewhere closer. I decided to lay down for a quick nap, and 2 hours later Carrie was waking me up, telling me I should probably get up and go eat so I had a shot at getting my clock reset. She said that she actually couldn't wake me up when she tried earlier. So we ended up going to Denny, which is around the corner from Carrie's apartment. It was surreal - it LOOKED just like a Denny, but with a totally Japanese menu. The only thing vaguely American was the "American" clubhouse sandwich - which contained fried egg and weird sauce. I had yummy fried pork instead.
Came home and enjoyed what might be one of the nicest Japanese things - a soak in the tub so deep that it came up to my neck just sitting, which helped somewhat with my stiff sore neck muscles. Sadly, that is back this morning.
I slept a little longer this morning, I'm slowly adjusting to the time change. 13 hour hops, not so easy to handle. This morning, we're hopping a train to go south of the city and see a bit of more rural life. I'm not sure exactly what all we have planned, although I think on Sunday we're heading up to see Mount Fuji. Sadly, it's too early in the year to climb it (which, it seems, most people do overnight so they can see dawn from the top of the mountain), but I'll at least get to see it. I'm excited to get out of the city and see some more stuff.
But to that end, I should go pack up my stuff and get ready to head out.
We also wandered through the vegetable market. The neatest thing there was the edamame so fresh it was still on the stalk. We found sushi for breakfasy, and I have nigiri with so much wasabi on it that my sinuses still aren't speaking to me.
After that, Carrie and I said goodbye to William as he headed off to work. We hopped on the train and headed for a folk house museum - essentially a collection of transplanted houses from different regions of the country. It was kind of neat, but after a while they allstarted to look very much the same, and is seemed as if most of the good information was in Japanese.
The real fun part was trying to get there from the train station. We made it through our connection point (apparently, one of the busiest train stations in the world) at rush hour, and found our train. Rode out to the suburb where the museum was, got of the train, and there were no signs we could read anywhere about the museum. William had provided us with the kanji for the name, the pronunciation of the name, and how it is spelled in Western letters. We found one sign where we could match the kanji, but then the rest of the sign was also in kanji. Not so helpful, really. We tried to figure out which bus to take, and eventually gave up and took a taxi. Once we got there, there was a docent type who spoke enough English to explain that it was only a 10 minute walk back to the train, so we just walked back.
We had some lunch before hopping back on the train. I'm so glad that many restaurants here have picture menus, but it's still dauntiung, since you can't really tell what all the ingredients are (Like Carrie ending up with mountain yam all over her rice at lunch. That might be the first thing I've eaten here that qualifies as naaaasty.) Got back to the huge train station and roamed around the dapartment store in it for a bit, where I tried something else that ended up being naaaasty - bread with fish roe butter spread on it. We got a bunch of pastries for breakfast today and then headed home.
By then I was dragging. We had originally planned to meet William near his office for dinner, then decided to instead meet him somewhere closer. I decided to lay down for a quick nap, and 2 hours later Carrie was waking me up, telling me I should probably get up and go eat so I had a shot at getting my clock reset. She said that she actually couldn't wake me up when she tried earlier. So we ended up going to Denny, which is around the corner from Carrie's apartment. It was surreal - it LOOKED just like a Denny, but with a totally Japanese menu. The only thing vaguely American was the "American" clubhouse sandwich - which contained fried egg and weird sauce. I had yummy fried pork instead.
Came home and enjoyed what might be one of the nicest Japanese things - a soak in the tub so deep that it came up to my neck just sitting, which helped somewhat with my stiff sore neck muscles. Sadly, that is back this morning.
I slept a little longer this morning, I'm slowly adjusting to the time change. 13 hour hops, not so easy to handle. This morning, we're hopping a train to go south of the city and see a bit of more rural life. I'm not sure exactly what all we have planned, although I think on Sunday we're heading up to see Mount Fuji. Sadly, it's too early in the year to climb it (which, it seems, most people do overnight so they can see dawn from the top of the mountain), but I'll at least get to see it. I'm excited to get out of the city and see some more stuff.
But to that end, I should go pack up my stuff and get ready to head out.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 11:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 01:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 01:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 01:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-03 03:29 am (UTC)And a lot of the appetisers, like the cheese sticks and the quesadillas they don't bother with.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-03 01:07 pm (UTC)*sigh* Now _I_ want to go to Japan. Well, almost. I prefer places that speak French, Spanish, or Italian, because I can communicate to some degree.
What is a folk house museum? Like houses that were set up/decorated to look like different periods of history, or what?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 01:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-03 02:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 01:10 am (UTC)