Day 3 in Japan

June 3, 2013 Of course because we went to bed at like 9pm last night, we were up super early (again) this morning. I blame this on Ben, he fell asleep before I did and didn’t want to set the alarm to go to the fish market super early and try to see the tuna auction. His words “I just want to wake up when I wake up”. That time ended up being 5:15am; he really knows how to relax and sleep in when he’s on vacation. So we decided since we were awake we might as well get up and get moving and go to the fish market and not worry about missing the tuna auction, since we wouldn’t know what was going on anyways. So we left our apartment at about 6:30am and headed towards the fish market, which was about a 25 minute walk away. Along the way we came across Tsukiji Hongan-ji Temple and took a couple pictures; we couldn’t go in because there were people in there for morning prayers. The fish market wasn’t much farther and Ben led us down a little street where I guess all the fish are unloaded and then redistributed, so it was madness down there. Everywhere there were men driving around these little motorized dolly things moving fish, and in between there were people walking, on bikes, on mopeds, and in cars. We narrowly escaped with our lives. Beyond the madness were many streets of stores selling fish and other assorted goods, such as beans, spices, smoked fish, kitchen goods, etc. There were also several restaurants. Of course we had planned to have a delicious breakfast of fresh fish, so we were on the lookout for a specific restaurant that we found online called Sushi Dai, which apparently is THE place to go for breakfast sushi and is said to have a line out the door. Amazingly, we actually found the right place and a bunch of people were leaving when we got there and there was no line, we must have missed the early morning rush. We grabbed a seat and ordered the Chef’s Special, which consists of miso soup with clams, 12 different pieces of Nigiri sushi, 3 salmon rolls and 3 other little rolls. We watched the chef prepare our sushi and then we savored it, so amazingly fresh; we started eating our amazing sushi breakfast at about 7:45am. The funny thing is, there isn’t really such a thing as “breakfast food” in Japan, so what we ate is pretty normal to eat any time of day. There was even a man having a beer with his “breakfast”. Also there was a picture on the wall of Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield eating there.

 


After breakfast, we left the fish market and headed toward Ginza, which is a fancy shopping area. However, once we got there, we couldn’t remember what the points of interest we were going to see were…so we decided to head back to our apartment and regroup and before walking over to the Imperial Palace Gardens.

As we are walking around and trying to figure out why we can’t get very close to any of the buildings, we come across a gate with a sign in English stating the gardens are closed on Mondays & Fridays, inconvenient to say the least, however the gardens aren’t far from our apartment so we will probably have time to check them out in the next couple days. Of course it was still before noon and now we didn’t know what to do with the rest of our day so we had to regroup. We decided to take the train to Akihabara, which is a shopping district full of multi-level stores selling everything anime (not Sailor Moon, sorry Sarah, Sailor Moon is crazy old and no one cares about it anymore). Anyways, it was nuts, I almost wish I knew more about anime because the experience was a little wasted on me, although I did still find it all very fascinating.

 We also saw women dressed up in French Maid costumes trying to solicit people into their establishment; we didn’t go in as I was a little afraid of what we would find in there. We also found a normal shopping mall that we poked around in for a while. Mostly I was trying to keep out of the sun. By this time it was noon and the morning clouds had burned off, and even though I was wearing sunscreen, feeling the sun on my skin was making me anxious and upset and fearful that my burn would worsen. We did find a pharmacy and when I pointed at my sunburn the lady gave me a cream and said it was “no steroid”. Ben tried to use Google Translate on his phone to see what the writing on the box said and all he could get was that it was for reducing inflammation. So with really no other options we bought the cream and went to hide from the sun for a bit. Again, because we started our day so early, it was only about 1pm at this point in time, so we had all afternoon to continue exploring. We decided to take the train to Asakusa and see the Sensoji Temple. When we came out of the subway we ended up on a covered street lined with little shops perfect for poking around in, and of course the huge bonus was we were safe from the evil sun. I actually ended up buying a sun umbrella which I’m sure will come in handy for the rest of the trip. After all this time spent thinking that sun umbrellas were ridiculous, I have been converted into a huge fan. Everyone here has them (for good reason, as I found out the hard way). They also have lots of other products that advertise as being for UV protection. Besides umbrellas and hats, they have scarves, sleeves and gloves with signs saying they protect from UV rays. If I hadn’t found my umbrella, I probably would have bought one of those huge visors (thank goodness it didn’t come to that). After wandering the shops we found Sensoji temple; it was very busy and there and there was a smoking pit thing and people were fanning the smoke over themselves, I’m guessing some sort of Buddhist ritual.

Very near the temple we found a little amusement park, which seemed out of place in such an old part of the city. We were both pretty tired at this point and decided to go for lunch; I had a soup with noodles and shrimp, Ben had a weird mixed plate of spaghetti with hot dog slices, a hamburger patty, a tempura shrimp, salad, chicken broth, and rice with scrambled eggs on top with ketchup. After lunch we went and picked up some food at a grocery store we encountered during our wanderings; we got some noodles, rice cracker snacks, and some random beverages to keep ourselves refreshed. Luckily in Asakusa we were very near the train line that goes right by our apartment, so we were able to take one train directly back. We decided that tomorrow we would plan our day to have a mid-day break at our apartment so we don’t burn ourselves out so early in the afternoon. Also, there were guys pulling rickshaws in Asakusa and we may go back tomorrow and get a ride to the Tokyo Skytree. Anyways, we came back to the apartment and crashed for a bit. Ben was desperate for entertainment so he downloaded the latest episode of Game of Thrones for us to watch. Let’s just say we were both shocked and appalled.

Some random observations so far:
- Our apartment is stocked with pink, peach scented toilet paper and the roll holder says “Fill & Fit: Reasonable & Sympathetic”
 - There are no garbage cans anywhere, but there is also no garbage on the streets anywhere. People bring any garbage they have home and throw it away there.
- It’s impossible to find water in vending machines, and there are vending machines EVERYWHERE