The last of Tokyo

Dawn broke on our last full day in Japan. The Daily Yomiuri arrived with news of HD-DVD's demise and we headed down, once again, to the Kiwk-e-mart for breakfast. Before setting out, we managed to check in for out flights – Japan seems completely topsy turvy with regards to internet access – in room wifi was free, but the communal PCs charged £1 for 10 minutes which is the exact opposite of Western hotels. Of course, with no wifi devices, we ended up racing through websites at break-neck speed trying to find the best seats and finish checking in before our credit ran out. We finally set out to the museum in Ueno – apparently the only museum in Tokyo worth visiting according to the Lonely Planet. We walked through a large cherry tree-filled arena to the museum. Amazingly, with money running low, we were gifted a pair of entrance tickets to not only the museum, but also the special exhibit from a couple who hadn't had time to go into the exhibit. After getting confused and buying some superfluous entry tickets, being told we'd bought superfluous tickets and getting a refund for said superfluous tickets we finally got into the museum. We wandered through halls of Japanese artefacts and tales of the past we ventured into the special exhibit. It's a very good job we didn't pay for it as the entire thing was a display of Japanese literature and other manuscripts – entirely in kanji with no English descriptors.



Eventually we had seen it all and headed back via Mos Burger to get packing. We had agreed to meet James in Shibuya for a big night, so being packed for the early departure was essential. We met up outside the station and wandered into Shibuya. Once again we found a restaurant on an upper floor with no obvious (ie English) sign it was there. This time we picked out a Korean all you can eat BBQ. Once again we went for the all-you-can-consume option - £15 for food and only £5 for all your can drink for 2 hours! Needless to say we totally cleaned up. These restaurants have no equivalent in the UK and it's not hard to see why. Within half an hour, we had completely incinerated most of the food to the point where our chopsticks caught fire. The entire atmosphere was smoky with the charring of other people meals. On the floors above and below the situation was no doubt being repeated and in Nanny State UK it's several steps beyond feasible. After the 2 hours had expired we were absolutely stuffed. We had definitely come out winners in the value for money game. James lead us to a nearby gaijin bar that was full of foreigners. Set out like an American bar, Japanese girls wandered around taking orders and when I said full it was very full. It was the most offensive place I've seen in ages: typically loud Americans dressed like gangstas. James reminisced about frequenting places like this before finding them equally offensive. After debating getting the last train home (especially for James who had some stupidly small amount of money to live on for 2 weeks) we decided to find an izhkaya. We settled down to a quiet beer and snacks. Or so we thought... The couple at the next table – or more specifically, the guy – cottoned on to us as English speakers and decided to practice his English on us much to the embarrassment of his girlfriend. His English was extremely broken and he ended up talking to James in Japanese before trying with us again. For some reason, in his inebriated state he decided I was the spitting image of a Japanese cheesy celebrity. After getting me to repeat his catchphrase for the next hour or so we decided to bail. As we left, James reassured me that I did in fact look nothing like the celebrity... For all it's advances over the West, Tokyo still suffers from a train network that shuts down at midnight. Spending the night in a karaoke booth was looking like the best option when we decided a taxi would be the best option as we definitely had a sofa that James could crash on for the night. We found a taxi but it appeared to be sans driver. It would have been better if he hadn't appeared, as when he did he was clearly half cut. He stumbled into the car to find the button to open the door. Eventually we were driving through Tokyo back to Ikebukuro. After a final visit to the Kwik-e-mart, we retired to the hotel. We then realised that the sofa we definitely had was in fact in the Sapporo hotel an the Tokyo Metropolitan only had an armchair. No doubt this is what comes from about 5 hours constant drinking. After passing out we woke up early and finished packing before heading out to Nippori to catch the Skyliner to the airport. Getting off at Nippori we heard the platform melodies for the last time. The current Skyliner trains were designed in the 80s and it shows – very boxy and lots of plastic. An hour later we pulled back into the underground station at Narita airport. We'd had to wait longer than we'd anticipated at Nippori and time before our flights was getting short. Unfortunately, the station is in the sub-basement and departures is on the upper levels which meant a lot of slow escalator rides as time ticked away. Further joy awaited me as we reached the check in floor – my flight had actually been allocated an earlier departure time – just 35 minutes away. James ran off to the BA desk as I traversed the concourse eventually finding the Air France desk at the far end. The staff looked confused when I started to put my stuff through the x-ray machine. They looked even more confused when I explained I was on the flight leaving in half an hour. Thankfully as I'd already checked in online there weren't any problems (maybe they were just confused in general) and soon we had been relieved of our suitcases and were heading downstairs to join the back of a massive queue (a BA 747, AF 777 and KLM 777 were all due to leave within 15 minutes of each other) to get through passport control. Time ticked on and just as we were next to be seen, they announced that our flights were being fast tracked. Even so I made time to go to the toilet. I said goodbye to James and boarded the 777-200. After all the rush we ended up being late pushing back anyway. After push back the captain applied forward thrust to the engines and from my window I saw a load of smoke shoot out of the back. Even James saw it from his plane. Not the most inspiring start to a journey. The AF inflight entertainment system is behind that of KLM's AVOD system so I only had a handful of films to keep me entertained. Pretty soon were over France and slowing down (these planes slow down pretty quickly which always makes me feel it's about to stall) on approach to Paris. Even though the return flight is against the winds I had once again managed to avoid the need to use the toilet. Score! Charles De Gaulle is a pretty bland airport and the less said about the plane back to Newcastle the better. I was soon back in Durham – thankfully I'd again hardcore'd the trip and beat the jet lag! Yes!

More of Tokyo

After an early night we got up at the obscene time of 5 am to head across town to the Tsukiji fish market. Somehow, despite the hour, there were a lot of people around and they weren't pissed salarymen coming home from karaoke! We caught a train to Shinjuku at 5.30 and then got the subway across to Tsukiji.



Thankfully, we weren't exposed to the horror of Tokyo rush hour and we got there at about 6.15. After coming out of the station we smelled the fish straight away and followed someone carrying a large bag and wearing large wellingtons. He lead us to the outskirts of the markets. Swarming around were a fleet of speeding carts – essentially Segway scooters with trailers for driving around fish at high speeds. After avoiding death and navigating through the lorry bays we were amongst the fish. The narrow pathways were filled with people going about their business. The smell wasn't as strong as you might expect as all the fish was exceedingly fresh. We carried on deeper into the market and after playing real life Frogger with another lane of carts we found the tuna auctions. The floor was covered with frozen tunas, just in from the boats. Potential buyers were swarming around hacking at the tails to inspect the colour of the meat. A single auctioneer stood on a box conducting the auctions at breakneck speed. Needless to say we had no idea what was going on. Luckily for us this was before the recent clampdowns on tourists.




One by one the tunas were dragged away and loaded onto carts. With each tuna costing the same as a small car, there was clearly a large amount of money flying around. We wandered away and on our subsequent wanderings saw what became of the tunas – some people took hatchets to them, some used band saws and some just attacked them with very sharp knives.




The range of seafood on display was amazing – a lot of it was still alive in tanks. The entire market was full of activity and the small passageways between stalls frequently became blocked by people eager to examine the wares on offer. As we left, the motorised carts became less frequent and we began to stop worrying about being run down by boxes of fish. Most of the sushi joints in the market were rammed, but the lonely planet guided us to a restaurant a few hundred metres away that was almost empty. We ordered the platter which came with a wide selection from the common through to the unusual. we set about it until only 2 were left: crab paste and salmon roe. We decided to take one each... In hindsight, we shouldn't have left these until last.



We emerged to find it was still only 7 am. We got the subway back to Shinjuku – again without any sign of a Tokyo rush hour. As with the rest of East Asia, nothing really opens until around 10 am so we wandered around Shinjuku's red light district taking some of the back roads walking through the seedy areas complete with strip clubs and back alley bars. In the early hours of daylight, the streets were peaceful and uneventful.



I am a big fan of the classic Jrock band X Japan. They are the latest band to hop on the reunion bandwagon despite the death of lead guitarist Hide. The reason I mention this is that I'm fairly sure we nearly got run down by their tour bus (a big black bus with X Japan decorations all over it) just outside Bic Camera. We meandered back to the Government building to get a daytime view. Thanks to the crisp cool February weather we got some great views of Fuji San. We had a look around the nearest multi-storey Bic Camera store marvelling at all the gadgets. Surprisingly, there was a lot of xbox360 stuff despite it selling less that 3000 units per week. More expected was the whole host of BluRay equipment and not so much HD-DVD. Eventually we took the train out to Mitaka and, after stopping at the kwik-e-mart to get some more biscuits, walked down the small river to the Studio Ghibli museum. James had never seen a film from the Studio before, but the museum is very inspirational – even though it's all in Japanese. It's a shame that the film we saw, the whale hunt wasn't as good as the day I harvested a star, but the museum is still an excellent introduction to the animation basics and production. We walked back through Inokahira Park before getting lunch in one of the many French-style bakeries.
That evening, we met up with James' friend James (confusing?) and his girlfriend. James did 2 years on JET before going back to the UK and working for Accenture where he met James. He's now back in Japan doing an MBA (in Japanese!) We met up at Shinjuku and then went for shabu shabu – the traditional Mongolian self-cooking style at one of the many restaurants hidden away on the upper floor of the buildings. These are the places that foreigners never find. We set about an all you can eat/drink in 90 minutes deal getting through more than our fair share of beers and plates of meat. Afterwards we went for karaoke before catching the last train back to Ikebukuro. I haven't improved at karaoke since the last time.

Due to our very early start and late finish, we had a late start on Friday. We got our brunch from the kwik-e-mart before heading out to Tokyo station to wander around the Imperial Palace gardens. The temperature had picked up so we walked to our next destination: the Tokyo stock exchange. The exchange was computerised in the 1990s so visitors can wander around – the only people there were the computer security staff there to ensure no one hacked in and the news teams who report the financial news from the exchange historically. As seems to be the style of the time, the stock market lost ground whilst we were there.




We caught the subway to Ginza to look around the Sony building. As someone who works with OLEDs I was interested to see if they had the X-EL1 on display. The centre featured a LOT of large LCDs playing the Spiderman 3 trailer on endless replay. The X-EL1 was indeed on display. The picture quality was amazing – the clarity and “realness” of the picture was only let down by the small size (11”) and low resolution (960x540) compared to the cost (200,000yen), but once the cost comes down, they are definitely the future.

From here we decided to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine where recent Japanese prime ministers have drawn condemnation from Japan's neighbours for visiting. Various war criminals are enshrined there, but never ones to shirk away from controversy we went anyway.



The shrine appeared like most others. The Yūshūkan museum was adjacent, where the exhibits claim the Pacific War was fought in self-defence and hosts many war relics alongside a memorial to Radhabinod Pal – a justice who, the memorial claimed, rallied against the war crimes trials following the war. As the shrine closed we walked away from the setting sun and walked toward Akiba. On the way we stopped at another vending machine restaurant for our first taste of katsu kare – a dish almost entirely unlike curry. We carried on our way through the musical instrument district before hitting Akiba just as the last light from the day vanished, playing up the neon and overwhelming noise even more.



We browsed around the various shops – electrical, manga and toys/collectables half looking at the items on sale, half looking at the clientèle buying the goods. Not the otaku we were maybe expecting, but tired looking salarymen on their way home from work, browsing through the rows of scantily clad manga statuettes as if it were the most normal thing in the world: and in this city, it is.

Tokyo days one and two

We landed at Haneda and retrieved our luggage. In Japan they actually check you have taken the right suitcase – I've often wondered if you could just take any bag you liked from the carousels. After finding where to buy a Suica card (The information people pronounced it say-ka and didn't understand us when we asked for a su-we-ka card. We took the monorail into the centre of Tokyo and then the Yamanote line to Ikebukuro where our hotel is. Anyone who's been to Tokyo will know that some of the stations are mini cities and Ikebukuro is no different. There are 2 department stores – Tobu and Seibu which used to be the biggest in the world. We found our hotel – the 4* Metropolitan – just a few yards from the station exit. It was a very fancy hotel and our room was big and had a nice LCD tv and a fantastic view out towards Shinjuku.



Thanks to BA we were paying £58/night for a room which should have been £150! After dumping our stuff, we headed out for some food and travelled the few stops to Shinjuku and took in the vast amounts of neon. We walked out to the government building and looked down on Tokyo by night – the gentle pulsating of the red aeroplane warning lights on all the buildings is ubiquitous and very soothing. Only one tower was open so we walked back into Shinjuku to get some food. We settled on an anonymous vending machine cafe – you buy a ticket from a vending machines (complete with pictures of the food), give it to a waiter and then wait for your food to arrive.



We both went for the steak option and settled back over an Asahi to watch the tired salarymen traipse in on their way home from the office. In fact, as we walked through Shinjuku station we came across a middle aged salaryman sprawled on the stairs at about 8pm – clearly hammered with a look of shear confusion on his face as he tried to understand why his legs wouldn't work.

We woke up the next morning to find a copy of the Daily Yomiuri outside our room. This paper, would come to sum up our time here – today there was a feature on how the Sapporo sculptures had been torn down with jcbs to prevent them weakening and falling on passers by – maybe we should have sacked off the beer museum... We set out to tour the west of the city and started by getting the train to Shibuya. We walked past Hachiko and across the scramble crossing and down the street to Tower Records – it's gone bust in the rest of the world but noone seems to have told the Japanese – this time around the Jpop floor made a lot more sense to me, even if the prices are still shocking. We carried on toward Harajuku and walked through Yoyogi park and to the Meiji shrine. Afterwards we walked through Harajuku and found a small cafe for lunch.



In the afternoon we caught the automatic railway across Tokyo Bay to the feminine-sounding Venus Fort shopping centre. Out here was the Toyota Web showcase where Toyota show off their range of cars and a range of attractions for people of all ages. We took a ride on the Gran Turismo driving simulator, walked through some F1 exhibitions and then walked past the giant ferris wheel to the Toyota technology centre. Here there was an exhibition about how various aspects of cars had evolved, from steering wheels to gear sticks and, more amusingly, Toyota's vision of the future.




At the doorway is a robot whose only function seems to be to play a trumpet (which it wasn't doing). In the same mould as the homeless robots from Futurama, you can only guess at the reason a trumpet-playing robot was even conceived, never mind built. Also on show were a very odd personal vehicle that Toyota can see us all driving very soon. It's essentially a chair on wheels where by the wheels move apart and the chair slants the faster you go. The conceptual cgi video shows people driving these things on the motorway overtaking lorries. I don't think it's be safe going 20 mph in one of these let alone at motorway speeds. To our amazement, there was a prototype available to try out in a small area of floor. Unfortunately, you needed a Japanese driving licence. There were also a worryingly large amount of fire extinguishers lying around the edge of the driving arena which didn't inspire any confidence. Alongside was Toyota's “chair-on-legs” prototype. Looking like a cross between the powerloader from Aliens and ED-209 from Robocop, this wasn't in working form, but it doesn't look like the most comfortable ride. Just outside the museum was another arcade. We followed up our poor show in Sapporo with an equally poor show on the DJ game. Luckily, this time noone saw us.

We ventured into the Venus Fort to try to find somewhere to eat but finding a very creepy pet shop with the animals crammed into small boxes awaiting an owner. Unfortunately with most people living in very small flats themselves, they may be waiting quite a while. We eventually found an okonomiyaki restaurant and then slunk out of the very pink shopping centre.

Sapporo snow festival 2008

It was a trip that I didn't think would happen. Over the previous 6 months the trip had been on again and off again pretty regularly. Eventually, a last minute decision saw James and I book flights and hotels. It was on. We decided to take the hard option and meet in Tokyo rather than a hub airport en route as James could get a cheap deal (and hotel) on BA where as I opted for AirFrance-KLM. The first order of business was to actually get to the airport. I left my car at one of the nearby airparks and got the bus to the airport. Despite the 10am KLM flight being very popular I was the only one on the bus. As always I'd checked in online to reserve my precious window seat. After wandering around duty free for a while I took my seat on the 737-400 and soon we were off to Amsterdam. The flight landed on time but as the arrival runway was the new one it took another 30 minutes to taxi to the stand. A quick check of the screens showed my onward flight was on time and I had a couple of hours to kill. After wandering the lengths on Schiphol I did the most important thing I did that day – I went to the toilet. Going to the toilet on planes is just about my least favourite thing ever so anything I can do to reduce the possibility of needing to go is essential. We boarded the 777-200ER – even though I was one of the last to board there were still some of the free papers left. The KLM 777 fleet has a great AVOD system – there's about 80 films to choose from. As part of my “beat jet-lag” plan, I watched a load of films: Michael Clayton, Stardust and Superbad were among the offerings I watched. Like last time were only offered one meal and at about 2/3 distance we were offered the usual AF-KLM choice of “cup noodle or ice cream.” As I was expecting this my answer to the question was, “both please.” In what seemed like no time at all we crossed the coastline of northern Japan.



The northern regions were under a blanket covering of snow which certainly boded well for the Snow Festival. Soon we descended as we hit the east coast and spun round to land at Narita. After getting off and finding my legs didn't really work (and visiting the toilet) I got through immigration and got my bags. James' flight was the next one due on the luggage belt so I sat and waited (much to the puzzlement of the Narita staff). Brits started arriving and more and more came but no James. Just as my mind was starting to believe our decision to meet here was a bad one he turned up. We got through customs and went down to the trains. After trying to be sold a bus ticket to Haneda (3 times the cost of a train ticket) we managed to get a train timetable. For a country with one of the world's most famous train services, you'd have thought there would be a direct train between the two airports, but no. We had to get the local commuter service which stopped at every intermediate station. After an hour we still hadn't reached the changeover station and were finding merely being awake tiring. Eventually we limped into Aoto and changed trains. Pretty soon we were at the internal airport Haneda. After finding that the automatic check-in machines weren't as easy to decrypt as the train ticket machines we checked in the regular way. We still had several hours so we wandered up to the viewing area. It's like how UK airports used to be – free and close-up views of the apron and runways. We went back down to a conbini (from this point on, conbinis will be referred to as “kwik-e-marts”) and bought some sushi. Haneda used to be Tokyo's main airport so it's pretty big. It took us 20 minutes to walk to the gate (and this terminal was only for JAL flights: ANA has its own terminal). We boarded the 767 and found that there were only about 30 people on the flight so we could choose where to sit. The plane had pilot cam, that allowed us to get a pilot's -eye view, but after taking off the long day caught up and we fell asleep. Soon we arrived in Sapporo and there was a lot of snow. Despite Tokyo-Sapporo being one of the busiest routes in the world, Sapporo airport is pretty small. The train link to the city was easier to work out than our cross-Tokyo journey and soon we were at the main station.





Thankfully our £150/night hotel (the perils of booking late in Snow Festival season)was very close and we were soon in our cramped (but plush) room. To continue the “beat jet-lag” plan we had to stay awake for a few more hours so we ventured out into the cold to check out the festival. We headed to the Sapporo tower and soon were among the ice sculptures. To say some of them were big is a massive understatement. The big ones are carved from 20x20x20m snow cubes. They depict various things from promotional items (prince Caspian) to just random collages of world landmarks. As it was dark, the sculptures had light shows and one had a small booth with children playing music. At first we though they were simply playing keyboards along to a backing track, but it soon turned out that they were also playing all the percussion, selecting individual drums via a battery of foot pedals. I dread to think how many hours a day these kids had to practice, but it was amazing and a bit spooky. The main street is very long so eventually we headed down a side street and found a MOS Burger. We wandered back to the hotel via a Kwik-e-mart where James purchased a box a of chocolate-covered Leibniz biscuits that were destined to become the snack of choice for the whole trip.



We woke the next day at a good time (jet-lag beaten-Yes!) and soon set off (via a kwik-e-mart for a sushi breakfast), taking the subway to odori koen. We had a wander around the park which was under several inches of snow. It was the end of the Snow Festival so there were plenty of snowmen and other displays still around. Then we started walking back towards town taking in the “smaller” ice sculptures, along the way shelling out 500jpy for possibly the worst sake in Japan. Soon we were drawn into the enticing environment of an arcade. The ground floor contained the usual grabber and print club machines, but as we ventured downstairs we found the real games. As I found out on my last trip, traditional arcade games have given way to shooters and rhythm games with the odd 1 on 1 fighting game knocking around. The level of skill on display was amazing (as ever) with small girls blitzing through the DJ game and skinny geeky-looking guys getting perfects on Guitar Freaks. Eventually, when noone was looking we sneaked on and had a quick go on Drum Mania (easy level of course). After feeling pretty smug with our good scores we were shown hos it's done of hard. We fared a bit better on HOTD4 and then got the hell out.





We continued back to the main street and continued browsing through the vast amount of sculptures. We had the local speciality (well, one of them as we couldn't afford the hairy crab) miso ramen from a side stall. The sculptures became smaller – the entries from the unlikely snow-sculpting nations of Hawaii, Singapore and Malaysia joined other country's entries in the sculpture competition and there were more smaller displays including those featuring Totoro, hello Kitty and Space Invaders. The week had taken its toll on some of them though giving us a glimpse of the insides – including a wooden frame. Is that cheating? I don't know. We also so a sculptor repairing a castle. Now by this point it was COLD. Taking you hands out of your gloves was unbearable after a couple of minutes, but this guy was happily reshaping beams of snow and fixing them them on - he can't have gone home with too many fingers.



We headed back to the hotel via a 100jpy shop and then back to the shopping centre around the station. We settled on an okonomiyaki place in the food court of the big department store. After 2 years of trying to make them myself from the vast array of recipes on the internet this was my chance to see how it's actually made – the secret seems to be yams instead of flour. Afterwards we headed out to find an izakaya. After completely failing to find the recommended places from the Lonely Planet guide we settle on a back street place – thankfully it had an all-you-can-drink offer so we had 2 hours to drink more than 4 pints which we managed – I know who won that one. On our way back to the hotel we stumbled across the clock that our guidebook described as "the most famous sight in Sapporo" and "One of the top 3 disappointments in Japan." As we weren't especially looking forward to seeing it it didn't really disappoint us.



We got up for our last day in Sapporo. Although we'd heard rumours that the snow sculptures we demolished on the day after the festival ended, we decided to go to the Sapporo beer museum. We got the subway out and trudged through the snow to the museum. We got in and after some broken English and equally broken Japanese we were ushered into the lift and up to the 1st floor where we found precisely none of the exhibit was in English. We finally found the reason we'd gone when we got to the sampling section taking a selection of 5 beers (including the Hokkaido-only version).





We headed back to town, got some tempura for lunch and then caught the train back to the airport in Chitose. Whilst our flights out had been near-empty, we weren't so lucky on the way back – and ANA 747 was filling up rapidly and our 777 was bursting at the seems as we were hemmed in the middle seats (3-4-3 seat configuration in a plane designed for 3-3-3!). And both ANA and JAL fly at least one flight an hour to Tokyo each!

Next up - Tokyo! Now if I could just stop playing Mario Kart Wii long enough to write it!