The Tawaraya Ryokan

Hi, it's Jerry! We've returned to Tokyo for our last night before we leave for LA...here's the first of (probably) a few posts about our trip to Kyoto and Osaka. I will discuss the ryokan that we stayed at named the Tawaraya. A ryokan is a Japanese style hotel where the rooms are that of a traditional Japanese room, with tatami mats and futons to sleep on. It took a while for us to actually get to our ryokan since it involved a subway transfer and some walking around, but after we got some help from another tourist, we finally found it off the main road.

The front of the Tawaraya, with it's lanterns and artfully places bamboo railings, gave us a hint of what we would expect when we entered. There is no reception desk when you walk in. Instead, we were immediately greeted by two women, one who asked for our names, and the other who asked to take our luggage to our room. We were then escorted to the steps to leading to the lobby of the ryokan, where we took our shoes off and changed into red slippers...and of course, Nick's pair was waaaay too small. The floors were made of wood and polished, and the interior was intimate, but not so cramped that one would feel claustrophobic. We rounded a corner and were given our first look at one of the sitting areas--a seat placed next to a small garden with a well.

Our room was rather close to the lobby, so we didn't get a chance to see very much of the rest of the ryokan, but that was fine because our room was quite extraordinary. And it was a bit surreal that next to the ryokan is a very busy street, yet you'd never know it was there since it as so peaceful and quite.

After the man who led us to our room left, we were immediately greeted by a woman dressed in a kimono. She entered into the living room area, shut the door to the small entrance area of our room. Once she stepped up onto the tatami, she bowed and welcomed us to the Tawaraya and then brought us green tea and some rice crackers. She asked if we were having dinner with them, and we were, so we ordered the Kaiseki, or traditional Japanese meal. After she took our order, she left and we decided to rest a bit and explore our room. Here are some pictures of it:

From the main room, looking at the dining area (where Jerry is) and the entranceway on the right.
Jerry sneezing, now sitting at the table in the main room. Note the sliding glass doors reflecting light on the far right, they go out to the garden.
Looking across the entranceway into the bathroom.
Peering into the bathroom, with the wooden tub (Suzu always left it full of hot water when we came back in the evening). The glass next to it faced the garden also.
Looking out at the garden from the main room. The sliding wood and paper doors between this room and the garden had a section on each of the doors that could slide up, as seen here, to allow you to see through them. Kinda like a shade.


We noticed that our luggage was delivered during the time that the woman was welcoming us...we never heard the door open or anything that would indicate that someone else had entered. It was quite impressive.

We decided to walk around the area until dinner time (that will probably be detailed in a later post).

When we returned to our room, we were greeted by another woman named Suzu. She would end up being our attendant for the rest of our stay. And this was the start of our journey into the world of extraordinary Japanese service. Suzu greeted us and then started to serve us dinner. She started wiping off the table in the living room area, but then I think she noticed that Nick was a bit uncomfortable sitting on the ground, so she asked if we wanted to move over to the other table which had an opening for our legs to hang underneath. So we moved over there and she proceeded to wipe that table. Then we were served the first of our 8 (I think) course meal, each brought to us by Suzu who would explain as best as she could what we were eating. The presentation of the food was so beautiful that I was compelled to take some pictures:


During the last course of the dinner, Suzu closed the screens to the living room area and started to make our futons. It was quite strange sitting at our table knowing that she was moving furniture around while we were eating. After 10 minutes, the screens were opened and the room transformed into this:


Suzu would serve us breakfast every morning we were there with the same attention that she did for our one dinner there.

But what amazed us even more was that whenever we left the ryokan, either to go sightseeing or to find dinner, we were greeted at the door by one of the bellmen, Suzu, and another woman. They would each bow to us wishing us well on our excursion, and after we actually left the ryokan, they would walk outside the entrance and watch us as we rounded the corner of the street, bowing as we made the turn. And every time we returned from our trips to wherever, Suzu would come to our room with cups of green tea and some type of sweet treat.

It rained on our last day there. After we checked out and headed to the taxi, we were, once again, met at the door by Suzu, the bellman, and another woman (I never knew who this was). They immediately opened up umbrellas as we walked under the uncovered areas of the entrance, and as we walked to the taxi, the owner of the Tawaraya bowed and said "Arigato" as we entered the taxi. When the driver drove the taxi to the nearby stop light, we turned around and there they were, bowing.

It's incredibly difficult to describe the experience we had there, but at the end, we were very happy that we stayed there and I'm a little sad that we won't be there again until our next visit to Japan. Waking up to a view of our garden, taking a bath next to the garden, and just simply relaxing in an environment that was so serene was a once in a lifetime experience, and one that we'll never forget.

[Nick's commentary: It was a great experience; we lived as feudal lords might once have, but the doorways varied in height from small enough for Jerry to hit his head (aka my chest) to perhaps my nose. I managed to only hit my head once, though, and the futon was surprisingly fine, even for my height.]

Last day in Tokyo before leaving for Kyoto

Hi! Unfortunately, I didn't charge my phone last night, so I wasn't able to take any photos of our trip today, which is why today's post is pictureless. It'll also be a short post since it's past midnight right now and we need to go to sleep so that we can wake up early in time to get ready to leave for Kyoto.

Today, we went off to Kamakura to see a big Buddha statue, but along the way, we saw a few shrines and temples. And then we went to Yokohama for the evening. There was a big amusement park area which had a 9 story tall ferris wheel, which we decided to ride on. There were also a bunch of those crane games where you can win small toys, and I found a few that stocked some Mario themed ones, so I played a few. The result was two small toy power-up mushrooms and a small stuffed cheep-cheep (the flying fish that would pop up from the bottom of the screen during any stage involving a bridge). We also had a wonderful dinner at a restaurant that overlooked the entire waterfront.

And that's all that I can write for now before I fall over. We're not sure if we can update our blog during the next few days since our hotel might not have internet access. If that's the case, we'll try updating as much as we can when we return to Tokyo the day before we leave for LA.

Rainy day

Today was rainy, so we didn't do much. We attempted to visit the imperial palace gardens, but it seems they're closed Friday. Not a big deal, since it was raining pretty hard in the morning.

They have a whole bunch of moats around the palace, though the modern bridge system would make it totally raid-able.. though I guess warfare doesn't work like that anymore. The moats had swans.
Pretty swans. :-)

Then we wandered over to Ginza instead, to enjoy shopping in the rain (see last blog post for the stores' rain prevention measures). Within Ginza, we visited Gucci and some more interesting small shops.
You can't see it well in this picture, but there's a five-story Apple store in there. Admittedly not as pretty as Rodeo, but as Victoria Beckham says, lots of good shopping in here. [Jerry's editorial note: Nick got that last sentence all wrong. I did not say that Victoria Beckham said that there was a lot of good shopping in Ginza. What I did say was that Kylie Minogue commented on how Milan has lots of good shopping. There is a rather amusing clip of Victoria Beckham coming out of a Tokyo Starbucks being very amused by the automatic doors and analogizing them to the panels of a Bang and Olufson stereo system.]

This is the floor plan for a stationary store. Yes, they sell paper, writing implements, greeting cards, and, um, more paper.

This is the famous Kabuki theater near Ginza. What really struck me (that I failed to capture a photo of) is how this very traditional building is surrounded by totally modern businesses. A show was letting out as we walked by.


We also went into another toy store that was pretty cool, called Hakuhinkan Toy Park; a kid would have had a ball in there, though yet again not as cool as the FAO Schwarz that used to be in NYC. :-P

Oh, and we went into the Shiseido gallery. You see, it seems Shiseido is from Ginza, and beyond their flagship store ("The Ginza") and the other store that's across the street from the flagship one, there's also an "art gallery" which this time was focused on lipstick. Rouge, to be precise. They had some beautiful photography exhibited... of women putting on lipstick. Oh, and they had a bunch of lipsticks dating back to 1922. And advertising for the lipstick. To be honest, it was actually pretty interesting. Though I'll never again put my face into an interactive makeup computer thingie. It showed me how I'd look with rouge lipstick, and it was freaky.

Smallness and Japan go well together

Rather than describe a day in Japan, for once I'll just leave some commentary about size. Jerry will get to the daily summary later, perhaps.

While walking around, we've found some areas have nice tunnels that connect into both the subway and nearby buildings (such as department stores) as well as having their own restaurants and magazine shops. It's like a whole new world underground. A world where the signs hang down to my eyes, so I duck... a lot. It was pretty cool, though, being able to get from place to place on a rainy day like today underground. And the restaurants and storefronts down there are pretty nice.

The next place where Japan is short is in the subway. We rode the subway during a Friday rush hour today. Probably a bad idea, because at every stop, people crammed in until the car was really full. Nevertheless, we were there, shoulder-to-shoulder with lots of folks going home or going out. Well, not really shoulder-to-shoulder; in the case of the four-foot-six man behind me, his shoulder kept bumping into my bum, and sometimes I felt an elbow hit my hamstring. And there was a woman near me that I nearly bashed in the head with my elbow. When the train jerked around you could get just a touch too friendly with your neighbors. Sigh. The other fun part of the subway was looking down the length of the train and seeing the tops of so many heads with very little variation in hair (straight black hair being the norm). It would make for a fun photo, but Jerry thought that would be rude. Oh, and in the theory that Tokyo subway trains can hold an infinite number of people, one woman was trying very hard to make the proof by induction: she pushed herself into the door of the train rear-first. :-)

My final complaint about the, um, size issues I've been having here has to do with clothing. Yeah, I know, I shouldn't have expected to be able to buy clothes here at all, but I saw this great shirt by a Japanese designer that I've never seen in the US. I thought, what a great opportunity to get a unique shirt that doesn't exist back home. So, looking at the small one that was on the rack, I asked a nearby friendly clerk (the clerks are so friendly and helpful here!):

Nick (in broken Japanese): [gesture to shirt] Me big.
Her: [gesturing to shirt] "L" (pronounced "ehlu")
Jerry: I think she's saying this is a large
Nick: Oh.
Her (in Japanese): I'm so sorry...

She was nice about it. And now I know, the Japanese are short. Some say I'm just tall, but I don't buy it. It's not me, it's that everyone else is short. :-)

Seriously, though, Jerry's the largest size here.

And now for something completely different.

Plastic

Today was rainy, and it taught us a lesson about wrapping things. It seems the Japanese already have a propensity to wrap things. For example, individually wrapped Q-tips (left), toothpicks, and sugar cubes (actually, the cubes come in pairs, see left).

But, a new abuse of plastic, back on the rainy subject: wrapping anything that might get wet or is already wet. Namely, there were umbrella wrapping stations at every store, so as to avoid dripping all over the store. Most of them came with this cool yet simple machine. It has a hole that you stick the umbrella into, and when you pull it out, it's shrink-wrapped. Fast and easy. Some places even had spring loaded umbrella check racks, where you push in the umbrella and a key pops up. When you put the key back in, the umbrella pops away from the rack.

This umbrella is coated in plastic. There's a trashbag in the background (also plastic) where you can discard the umbrella bag on the way out of the store.

When going shopping, they cover the shopping bag they give you with its own little poncho (with holes for the handles). Note that the contents of the bag are also wrapped up.

No trash

This is Nick again. I always start these because I upload all the pictures while Jerry takes a bath. You know, for such a clean city, there's almost nowhere to throw out the random garbage. We walk around with an empty starbucks cup for an hour before finding another starbucks to throw the cup out at. Not that we've been going to American chains like Starbucks. Much.

Anyway, we've got some fun tidbits from today to share before we pass out.

Meiji Shrine (and nearby gardens):

(Jerry) We decided to start off the day with something very touristy, the Meiji Shrine and the surrounding park. It's easy to get to, just a short train ride. Here's what the entrance to the Meiji park looks like:


The post and lintel gateway is called a Torii, and there were a few more of them on the way to the shrine itself. The park itself reminded me of Central Park since they share the common characteristic of being a huge park in the middle of a very urban setting. Although we could hear the train pass by while walking down the path, it wasn't so obtrusive that we couldn't enjoy the scenic walk. Along the way, we came across this display:

I'm not sure what it is, and the only description of it was in Japanese. My guess is that it's a set of drums used for some ceremonial event, but I'm sure that I'm completely wrong.

The entrance to the shrine itself included another Torii:



Past the Torii above was the gate to the Meiji shrine court:

And here's the actual shrine itself:
You couldn't actually walk up to the shrine, and I'm not sure if it is ever open to the public. They do have three wooden donation boxes where people drop some yen into and pray for good fortune. We saw a few people do this while we were there. While we were walking out of the shrine, we came across some sort of procession:


We aren't sure what this procession was for--a wedding perhaps? It's hard to tell from the photos, but the women were all dressed in beautiful kimonos. We couldn't get a close look a the woman in white. After bowing to the man in front, they continued their procession across the courtyard...we decided to walk to the Meiji Treasure Museum. Here's a picture of it from afar, providing a contrast of the traditional architecture in front of the cityscape of modern high-rises:

Ok, so it doesn't look that ancient and traditional from this picture, but being there and seeing it in person really made the contrast more apparent. When we reached the entrance to the museum, we were met with a notice that it was only open on weekends. We then decided to walk to the Meiji Gardens. According to the brief historical information that I read, this area was frequented by Emperor Meiji and Empress Shokan, and it has been preserved ever since. Below is a picture of one of the teahouses:

And here is the South Pond, where many koi and turtles reside. We got a sense that they were being fed a lot by visitors because anytime one of us was standing by the side of the pond, a huge crowd of koi would gather in front of us.

We walked further into the garden and came across this:

It was supposed to be an iris garden, but I guess we were there too early since they seemed to have just planted them...you'll have to imagine what this would look like if it were filled with blooming irises.

At the very end of this path is a well:

Legend has it that this well is special because of how it rises and falls, I think. Also, it's the source of water for the South Pond and the quality of the water coming out of the well is wonderful. There was a sign to the right of the well that said "no drinking," so we cannot vouch for the water's purity, but it looks very clear and pristine.

Afterwards, we went to an exhibit showcasing the attire of the Emperor and Empress. Many intricately embroidered kimonos were displayed as well as decorative fans and headwear. There was one kimono that was a traditonal cermonial woman's dress that was quite impressive. It seemed to be composed of five layers of fabric and looked incredibly heavy. I'm amazed that anyone would be able to walk in something that looked incredibly cumbersome to maneuver in. [Nick's editorial note: Judging by the clothes, they were short. Smaller-than-Jerry short.]

Harajuku (and Aoyama):

Nick here, I'll be finishing the commentary, I guess. We left the Meiji area and crossed into Harajuku. You might find this word familiar from a certain Gwen Stefani song that references Harajuku girls. They basically are young girls who do cosplay and hang out in certain public areas. We actually saw some in Shibuya yesterday, but none in Harajuku itself. :-)

We started by finding lunch. It was a simple cafeteria-style place with pasta, roast chicken, and curry. For cheap, simple food, it was quite tasty. I felt like we should try harder to seek out Japanese food, but to be honest, there's quite a lot of non-Japanese food in Japan. Notably, Italian and French, but also Indian, British/Irish, hotdogs and other random things. We were hoping for ramen-ya or some form of real, simple Japanese food, but those places are mostly the cheap standing restaurants (yes, where you eat your food standing up) that salarymen go for lunch or for a light dinner before heading to a bar to drown their day's stress.

So, we wandered down the street, found Kiddyland (sorry for not getting a picture of this), which was a glorified children's toy store, though I'd prefer the old FAO Schwarz on 5th Ave that no longer exists. We found a couple other nifty stores; Harajuku is a good area for the quirky boutiques.

We saw this clothing store and thought of California. :-) We wandered further down the street and the shopping went way upscale. We passed a mall called Omote-Sando Hills (I've noticed a few places that use the words "Park" or "Hills" to add an upscale note). It had some nice stores, but the really nice stuff was in Aoyama, particularly the Prada store.

This is psychotic, ne? ('ne' is like the canadian 'eh'.) The inside was all white. And I mean all. The white tiled floor led seamlessly into white carpet. The walls were white plaster that would curve into shelves in some places. The white staircase that followed the angle of the windows up the side of the building went up five floors. Men's was the top floor, of course. There was actually a great view up there. Oh, and the dressing room was interesting. I only saw from the outside; it looked like a pod set into the floor with couple steps down into it (it had a round top like a submarine). The anteroom of the dressing room had a tv and seating. Jerry went inside. Here's his description: Well, Nick pretty much described the lounge area of the dressing room rather well. It had a nice view of Harajuku since it's located on the 5th floor. The dressing room, which there was only one of, was covered by a semi-transparent plastic curtain with some pattern to it. It did make me a bit self conscious whenever the salesman came down into the lounge area to bring me a smaller pair of pants or shirt 'cuz he could basically see in while I was changing. The room was also white, which wasn't surprising at all, and it was sort of egg shaped...basically, the room was very round. About the only non-round part of the room was the floor. And that was it for the only dressing room on the men's floor. I wonder what would happen if they had more than one person needing a dressing room?

Akhihabara:
So, I've heard a lot of things about this place, mostly from Anime. "The home of the latest electronics" is actually kind of mundane. The things that really make this area interesting are:

1. Just about every store for a few connected blocks is an electronics or anime / video games store.
2. You could build your own computer, and with very good specs, while saving a lot of yen, if you buy all the parts here.
3. Narrow shops would go up 6 or 7 floors, all with electronics or anime.
4. As mentioned, lots of anime, lots of manga, CDs of anime soundtracks, and dojinshi.
5. Dojinshi is manga porn, basically.
6. There's a lot of dojinshi.
7. And non-dojin anime.
   
8. Oh, and a couple girls doing cosplay.
9. But still, lots of porn. Good thing they make it clear where the 18 plus areas are, so it's hard to find yourself lost there.
   

We also liked the pretty lights and the games to play. Oh, and there was this train overpass where they'd built small buildings underneath it (such as a KFC). I love the efficient use of space in this city. When real estate is this much of a premium, you can invent new real estate, if you're creative enough.
This was a sega arcade-type place. Lots of those machines where you move a crane around and then try to pick things up. I always assumed you could never pick anything up with those, but Jerry succeeded a couple times, mostly looking for Mario stuff. Oh, there wasn't much chococat among the Hello Kitty stuff, so Jerry was sad.

(Jerry) So yeah, the whole not being able to find anything relating to Chococat was disappointing, but not all that surprising. But it was a shock that none of these stores sold any Super Mario toys, and having to play those crane games in order to get them was rather frustrating. In fact, the only Mario thing I got from those games was a "fire flower" mini, which seems to serve no other purpose than being a mini. It's not a magnet, or a keychain...and it can't stand up when placed on a table, so I can't even display it on the window. Maybe I'll have Chococat hold it in his hand...

There were lots of otaku here. Otaku have a certain look about themselves, which is much like what some Americans think of as dorky: unkempt hair, poorly dressed, and possibly overweight and wearing glasses. That and they walk into the dojinshi section unabashed. I suppose I should stop harping on that. There were some cool electronics, actually, new phones that we don't have in the US yet. Ipods are big there, but they're the exact same as ours. Video game systems are cheaper by about 15% than the US, but that may have more to do with the exchange rate than anything else.

By the way, for dinner we came back to Shinjuku, and found a building that was five floors of restaurants. In Tokyo, one could say that the "when it rains, it pours" concept applies to commercial concepts quite frequently. What I mean is that there are whole neighborhoods of electronics, bookstores, clothing, and food.

Tokyo: Day 2

(Nick) I'll start today with some commentary on Japanese culture. Well, maybe not an interesting observation, but it made my morning. You see, it seems I'm tall. And white. As it turns out, that combination isn't too common in Tokyo. Not unheard of, of course; we've seen plenty of European and American faces around. But still, I guess I stand out in a crowd. Most Japanese are incredibly polite, so they glance up at me and then move on; a few stare briefly. This morning, we were walking toward a subway station when I noticed a gaggle of (well, 3) school girls, in the classic Japanese schoolgirl uniforms. When I glanced around, one waved at me to get my attention. Then the three of them said "Hello!" in unison. I replied with a startled Ohayo, and they giggled. Yeah, giggled. It was strange, but very entertaining.

Meguro:
With the goal of working our way up the region west and southwest of central Tokyo, we started at the bottom, Meguro. It turns out there isn't much down there, though it was a really cool area. If I were to live in Tokyo, that's the kind of neighborhood that would be friendly, quiet, but with plenty of small eateries and the normal small shops.

Tokyo has pretty rivers! This is Meguro-gawa ("gawa" means river, as Jerry pointed out). We went to this nifty modern art museum housed in a complex also containing a pool, community center, and daycare. There were kids, and trees, and a couple interesting freestanding bits of architecture, such as this bell thingie:


I like it. And then I got us lost on a long walk in many directions, trying to get to Ebisu from Meguro. They're maybe 3/4 of a mile apart, but with the winding, disconnected streets, lack of signage (most small streets in Tokyo don't have names), and my terrible sense of direction, Jerry nearly killed me. On the upside, there are vending machines all over, including in the residential area we were wandering in (later identified as Ebisu-Minami). We ended up at the Yebisu Garden Place where we had a very delicious and beautiful lunch.

Here's the thing about lunch; the prices seemed (well, are!) very reasonable. Most entrees were in the 1500-2000 yen range (about $13-$17), and it was Japanese food, which is what we wanted. Going in, it seemed perfectly normal, but then they took us into the back room. It extended down this long gentle terracing, with tables on these terraces. In the middle of the room was a rock garden with a fountain and flowers. Beautiful, I declare! Downside: we ordered using the point-and-pray method. We were able to understand the coffee-or-tea question, at least, but my answer of "iced coffee" led to some confusion. I needed the ice; we were sweaty from hiking in the warm weather.

The food arrived. Here's how it looked:

Isn't it amazing? Just a work of art. And delicious. Considering that tax and gratuity are included in the cost, this was such a cheap meal. I never thought I'd say this about Japan, but the food is cheaper than LA for even better quality and service. One weirdness: they leave a check and you're expected to take it to a cashier up front, Denny's style, even in a very nice place.

After lunch, since we were in the grounds of the former Yebisu brewery (owned by Sapporo for 40 years now), we visited the free beer museum.

It was nice, but brief. The highlight for me (being me) was the cheap beer tasting room. 200 yen ($1.70) for a Yebisu black? That's a good price. It was 400 yen for a sampler of four half glasses, but I avoided that, given that we just ate and had some walking to do.


Shibuya:

It's Jerry, and I'm going to finish the rest of our day. After we left Yebisu Beer Museum, we headed off to Shibuya. The first thing we wanted to see when we got there was the famous statue of Hachiko, the dog...and here's a blurry picture of him:


The story goes that Hachiko's master was a professor and one day, his master left to go to work but never returned. But for the 10 years following his master's death, Hachiko would return to the Shibuya station to wait for him. I guess the residents were so moved by this that they built a statue of him. Apparently, it's a very popular meeting place.

We then started our Shibuya journey by crossing the street:





It's a very big street with tons of people walking through it. I couldn't get a picture of the swarm of oncoming walkers becuase I was too busy trying not to run into any. We visited a few stores including an arcade place that housed Pachinko, a popular game involving balls falling down a machine. I was tempted to play, but really didn't know where to start.

After walking around a bit, we wandered through the Love Hotel Hill, which is known for their hotels offering "rests" to those interested in a hotel room for a few hours. The interesting part about this area is that it's completely filled with these hotels and they are all very different from the outside...some of them were quite odd in design, but they were all unique.

Oh, and along our walk, we came across this store:

When I first saw the sign, I read "Three Minutes Happiness" and I can't remember the accompanying tagline, but the combination really suggested a different type of store than what it really was--a clothing store.

We decided to go back to the hotel after our trip to Shibuya. For dinner, we went to a Tempura House that was mentioned in both of our travel guides and was also recommended by the hotel conceirge. It was a fair walk, but sooooo worth it. The tempura came out fresh and hot and the prices were really good considering what we were being served. On the way back to the hotel, we saw more Pachinko arcades, which is starting to become tempting...

Oh, and neither of us have mentioned that while waiting in the immigration line at the Tokyo-Narita airport, we noticed a Japanese girl who was crying while talking to some man. Neither of us recognized who he was, but I overheard someone ahead of me saying that it was Orlando Bloom...and it was! And at one point, he was two feet away from us since he was on the other side of the Tensabarrier of the winding line. Once we left immigration and went to the main area trying to find a Citibank ATM, we noticed a huge crowd of people surrounding some doors. And then we heard women screaming and that was when we realized that all these people were waiting to see Orlando Bloom. We actually started walking to the other side of the terminal, not because we were trying to avoid the crowd, but because we were still trying to find the Citibank ATM. And while we were walking, a bunch of Papparazzi came running past us to go to what appeared to be another exit out of baggage claim. And there were also a huge crowd surrounding those doors.

So that was our celebrity story...tomorrow, we're going to try to see the Fish Market, although I'm not sure we want to wake up that early.

Tokyo: Day 1

Hi! We made it to Tokyo, and after a bit of wandering around, we found our hotel, the Park Hyatt. Here are some pictures of our room:







Since it's night time, we're not quite sure what our view is. Hopefully we're on the side that faces Mt. Fuji. Supposedly the pool in this hotel has incredible views of the entire city because it's completely surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows...we'll be making a visit there one of these days.

But right now, we feel like crashing since we didn't sleep on the plane ride here and we've been up for almost 24 hours, and we need to rest in order to have the energy to see the sights of this huge city. We're not sure what we're doing tomorrow, either Shibuya or Ginza. I'll post pics of wherever we end up going to.

Jerry Liu

Nick's favorite flight

(We're half asleep, since we've been up for 24 hours straight, so forgive my rambling!)

Flying to Tokyo was possibly one of the most pleasant experiences I've had in a long time on an airplane. We flew Singapore, business class (best use of airline miles ever!). The food they served was fantastic, better than the office food in SMO (though not Pinxto quality). The service was great, staying out of the way when not wanted and refilling my wine glass with riesling when I merely nodded.


This is me in the Singapore Airlines lounge. It's nice. They had cookies and little sandwiches and an open bar (not that I needed a drink for lunch).











This is the airline seat. If you held down one of the thousands of tiny buttons for a while, it laid down to an eight degree angle. What I really liked was the LED reading light. Bright, but directed, so it didn't disturb other passengers. One of the amazing things about this flight is that we left at 2:35 and flew for 11 hours without ever running out of sunlight.







There was even a power outlet to keep my laptop fresh. Now if only they had internet...