Tsukiji Fish Market - Mar 28

Today we decided to visit Tsukiji Fish Market. But we were lazybones and didn't get up at 2 a.m. so we could take a taxi to the market before 3 a.m. (the subway is closed at that time), in order to line up so we could be in the first 120 people and get a chance to stand at the back of the tuna market for 1/2 hour at 5 am, or 5:30 am. Instead we slept in until 7 or so, took our time getting showered and up, and managed to hit the subways at peak office going time. We were packed in like sardines, which seemed appropriate considering our destination.
When we reached Tsukiji we needed a breather and hit Starbucks for a quiet coffee before heading down the block to the market. In the end we only visited the outer part of the market, but overheard others saying that the inner part was boring - all huge crates and forklifts (it's the wholesale part), and people yelling for you to get out of the way. The outer part was bustling, filled with people, fish, eating spots, other food stuffs, knives, and a bit of shoving  and transport vehicles trying to get through. Colourful enough for us to enjoy.
We managed to find a quiet restaurant and ate a breakfast of nigiri (raw fish on top of pressed rice) and sushi rolls (the usual, with the rice on the outside instead of the seaweed). The restaurant was quiet because they policed the door and only let people in when others left. We managed to hit it when we could walk right in, but by the time we left there was a long line-up outside.
When we left we decided to go to Ueno Park for a little more hanami, but the cherry blossoms weren't very impressive there - they have a few days before they peak. So we went for another quiet coffee (at Tulley's this time) and then took the subway home.
We did some packing in the afternoon, and saw Sean for supper.  We decided to go to the local sushi place on the corner with Sean, as it had been packed last time we tried to go there and we had decided not to wait. So we went in, were seated, and on perusing the menu noticed it was exactly the same as the place we went to in the market in the morning. Sean was quite happy to have another story to tell about his parents who, because they can't read Japanese, ate at two locations of the same local chain on the same day. The nigiri was good at supper too!

Quiet day - Mar 27

Today was a quiet day. Sean came around about 10:30 am and we went shopping in Shinjuku and then had lunch there (Korean). I took no photos of anything. But it was a nice day anyway.

Hanami - Mar 26

Sean got us this morning and we went to Asakusa, where we needed his help with a gift. We had a pancake breakfast together (and they were just fine). After breakfast Sean had a date with his friends who were all going to Ueno Park for hanami (cherry blossom viewing). Today is the weekend, the cherries are blossoming, and hanami is the thing to do. I believe Sean and his buddies picnic in the park, as it were, and visit, and perhaps drink. Dave and I did a little shopping in the Asakusa shrine area, then we went to Shinjuku Gyoen Park to take part in cherry blossom viewing ourselves. Shinjuku Gyoen had guards out checking bags in the hopes of enforcing their no drinking policy. Our shopping passed inspection, and we strolled - as did thousands of others. Picnics, walking, taking a lot of photos, and even an Easter egg hunt were going on all over the huge park. Massive crowds to look at trees in bloom seems very Japanese. I guess it is the event that says "Spring is really here."

Sean's office - Mar 25

Sean picked us up for an early lunch and then escorted us to his office. We got to inspect his desk (which was clean and pristine, but so were all the other desks) and met his boss, a couple of managers, and several co-workers. A lot of handshaking and bowing and nodding. They said nice things about Sean and we tried to say nice things about Japan, but kept mispronouncing every name and place.
After this excitement Dave and I carried on to the Edo-Tokyo museum. This required a change from a subway to a train, and the reverse on the way back. We managed the transfers but each time ended up going outside and walking a block. I'm pretty sure there was a more efficient manner in which we could have done things. Partly our inefficiency was likely caused by our efforts to avoid long flights of stairs, and we ended up doing stairs anyway.
The Museum is right beside the Sumo Stable. I think referring to a place where men live and work as a stable is dehumanizing and thus wrong, but it doesn't seem to bother anyone here.

The Edo Tokyo Museum is interesting, but we wore out after the Edo part and didn't learn about modern Tokyo. As we managed to enter for a half-price ticket (due to our senior status) we didn't feel bad about skipping a portion of the museum.

East Gardens of the Imperial Palace - Mar 24

Dave feeling quite a bit better today. So after breakfast and a rejuvenating post-breakfast nap, we went out and about again. It is quite chilly today, but it appears to be colder back home again too.
We went to the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace. It was also our intention to view the Museum of the Imperial Collections, aka Sannomaru Shozokan, but although the website told me the usual opening hours, it did not tell me it was temporarily closed until Mar 25. The Gardens themselves were quite interesting, several old guardhouses, wonderful stone walls, moats, etc. And in season there are various gardens - a slope of plum blossoms, a rose garden, a tea garden, and so forth. We saw some cherries blossoming.  There is a cool tower called Fujimi-yagura - for viewing Mt. Fuji. The view of Mt. Fuji is interfered with by skyscrapers and a haze in the distance (not bad enough to be called smog, but in the way of 100 km views.)
We came home from the gardens and ate a bland lunch (ham and cheese sandwich at Subway, with tomatoes, green pepper and olives - no miso, no funny little pickled things, no fish, no rice - quite a treat!) Lunch was kind of late, so it was nap time again. Sean came over after work and escorted us to someplace else to eat. After wandering around a bit we ended up across the street at a beef barbeque place across the street - cook a few pieces of raw beef and veggies at a brazier on your table - yummy. I am beginning to think wasabi and soya is the best go to sauce for everything.
We choose to have a slow day to aid in Dave's recovery, and it seems to be working.
For some reason my shared photos haven't been shared yet, so I'll add a couple in later.

Quiet day and local shrine - Mar 23

Yesterday Dave developed a cold. We went to a pharmacy and got some cold medicine, with Sean's help, then waited until morning in Canada and phoned the kidney clinic to check if he could take it (he could). This morning we got up late and went to the restaurant complex near Akasaka subway to get breakfast, and whiled away some time, and went for coffee at Tulley's. This was all to give the staff time to clean our hotel room. Came back to the clean room and Dave laid down.
I got bored so went out to visit our local Shinto shrine. As you can see from the two tori gates to it, it is now located among a lot of high rise office buildings. It is the Hie Jinja shine and has been around forever, moved to its present location in 1659 by shogun Tokugawa. It was burned down in the 1945 bombing of Tokyo and rebuilt in 1958. So I'm not sure if it's old or new. I think it counts as old, because it is the same plan and the same place as before. Some shinto shrines are rebuilt every 20 years, as a part of the belief of the death and renewal of nature and the impermanence of all things and as a way of passing building techniques on to the next generation. Its surroundings definitely count as new.
I saw the wonderful escalator and was so pleased! It wasn't until I got to the top that I realized it only went up. There were two long escalators and one shorter one, so I had a lot of stairs to trudge down.

Kabuki Theatre and Tokyo Tower - Mar 22

Sean was at work all day today, so Dave and I had to navigate our own way through Tokyo. Thanks to Google Maps we were fine - though I neglected to look at my i-phone compass one time and took us a few blocks in the wrong direction. And Google Maps doesn't say "this station has no escalator or elevator" so I did a few more sets of stairs than I prefer to (my Fitbit says I did 15 flights).
We arrived at the kabuki venue, called Kabukiza Theatre, in good time for the second act. On the day of a kabucki performance you can purchase a ticket for a single act, which lasts around an hour, and is enough for most neophytes. It is at the top of the theatre - 60 seats and standing room for more. Most kabuki shows, in a one-half day performance, have one traditional formal act, one dance act, and one domestic soap opera type act. We got the dance one, which was in two parts. Thank goodness for that. The Kabukiza theatre was made for shorter people than us - my knees were screaming with pain pressed up to the seat in front, but I got to stand up for a couple of minutes between dances. They are very stylized plays, with traditional Japanese music and singing (the orchestra/chorus is onstage too), a lot of white face make-up and beautiful kimono. Unfortunately photography is forbidden during the performance.  A good experience, but I'd opt to stand if I went again. We had an English translator machine, which told us what was going on onstage.

We had a quick snack after the theatre, and then took the subway to Tokyo Tower. (No prizes are offered for a correct guess as to what famous tower it is modeled after.) We took the elevator up to the main viewing platform. There are more tall buildings in this part of Tokyo than in Asakusa area where we went up the Skytree, so the view was more what I expected it to look like. Right below Tokyo Tower is Zijo-ji Temple and grounds, so there is a patch of green in all the concrete.
After we came down from the tower we went to visit Zijo-ji Temple - it was the family temple of the Tokugawa shogunate, and the Tokugawa mausolea are there - 6 of the Tokugawa shoguns are buried there. There is also an unborn children garden where rows of stone statues of children represent unborn children, including miscarried, aborted and stillborn children. Parents can choose a statue in the garden and decorate it with small clothing (most have hats and bibs) and toys (a lot of whirly-gigs) and fresh flowers. They are known as Jizo statues, as Jizo is the Buddhist god of unborn children. Quite touching. After this we took the subway back to our hotel, arriving in time to be here when Sean came by after work to accompany us to supper.  A busy day.

Sean's apartment - Mar 21

Sean came and picked us up in order to escort us to his apartment. It is a fairly long, but quite direct, subway ride. That's apparently when he gets his reading in. From the subway it's about a 15 minute walk to his apartment.
On the way to his apartment we stopped for lunch in a Western steak and burger restaurant. The waitresses were dressed like cowgirls, but it wasn't particularly American western food, just non-Japanese (except for the fact everything was served with rice). Burger means what we used to call Salisbury steak. Sean had a burger with curry, Dave had a burger with pineapple, and I had a burger with cheese sauce. In Japan burgers in a bun are hamburgers, burgers without a bun are burgers.
It is a high rise building in a complex of similar apartment blocks that used to be public housing, and as such, is fairly new and well planned (grocery store, post office, etc. included) and is right next to a park. Sean is on the 5th floor.
His apartment is really quite spacious, particularly for one person. It has an LDK (living dining kitchen) which runs across the building from side to side, so he has a smallish kitchen window (on the walkway) and large living room and bedroom windows (on to a narrow balcony, largely used for drying clothes). His LDK has wood floors, and his bedroom has tatami mats. His bedroom furniture consists of a futon (in Japan, futon means "mattress" for sleeping on the floor). His living room has a large TV (also used as computer monitor) accompanied by computer and game console, exercise bike, hand weights, "couch" (kind of - a mattress that folds up into a couch shape), and low coffee table. When he needs more furniture he can take a legless chair out of the closet. His dining room contains a wood table with two normal height chairs. His kitchen is much larger and better equipped than I envisaged - he has a frig, microwave, toaster over, and rice cooker of his own, and it has two built in burners. And both open and closed shelves for storage (he did purchase some of the open shelves himself).  His bathroom contains a shower/bath room, a toilet room, and a sink room with his washing machine. Everything a single man could need!
Sean then escorted us back to the subway station, and our train. We managed to get the rest of the way home by ourselves. We celebrated with a Starbucks! 

Yoshonogarikoen Historical Park - Mar 19

We got up and said good-bye to Blaine and Debbie who had been touring with us, but left the group this morning to carry on touring on their own for a few days.
We caught the train to Yoshonogarikoen Historical Park, which is part way between Nagasaki and Osaka. The park is an archeological site and contains a reconstructed village of Yayoi period, 3rd century BC to 3rd century AD. Just as May was buying our entry tickets a volunteer guide came up to us and started chatting. He first asked where we were from, and upon hearing Canada said he was in Vancouver and Victoria last year. He'd been in San Francisco a couple of years earlier, and was a helicopter pilot. By this time he was our friend, and when May came he carried on giving us our tour (I think he wanted to practice his English). Sometimes he spoke to us in English, and sometimes he spoke to May in Japanese and she translated, but the two together ended up giving us a very good tour of the reconstructed village. So good that we ran out of time to see the burial grounds. We did look at their little museum and saw the huge pottery jars they buried people in.
After a lunch at the cafe in the park we cabbed back to the station and carried on to Osaka.
At Osaka May left us (she had a high school mini-reunion tonight) and Mike (the owner, who had been our van driver) took us to the hotel. He later met us and took us for dinner at a very nice meal, a little more modern Japanese cooking than the keisiki meals we have had. This time the rice was flavoured!
When we check out of the hotel tomorrow we are on our own again - we've got train tickets back to Tokyo tomorrow afternoon.

  

Hashima (Gunkanjima) - Mar 18

Another Japanese breakfast at the ryokan. Today it is raining, so it was rain jackets and brollies for our tour. We took a "cruise" to the island of Hashima. It was a barren shelf of rock out in the ocean when coal was first discovered there in 1810, in 1869 mining began there and in 1890 full-scale seabed coal mining operations began when acquired by Mitsubishi Corporation. In 1916 they started building concrete apartments on the island to accommodate the people living there. They built schools, a hospital, shops, cinemas and pachinko parlours on the rock (which they kept enlarging). At its peak the island's population density was 5 times that of Tokyo - 5300 living on a space 480m by 160 m. With it's surrounding sea wall and multi-story concrete apartments it resembled a large battleship, and became known as Gunkanjima Island - Battleship Island. All very cool and I really would have liked to see it, but it was rainy and the boat was crowded.

I will finish with a photo of the actual view through the plastic window, and another one the limber guide managed to take out the back of the boat. The boat was meant to dock, but the sea was too rough so we just circled the island and then went back. The circling of the island was the downfall of many passengers and the crew was busy handing out barf bags. Luckily our family has iron stomachs. This afternoon is a free afternoon, so we had lunch at the mall (katsu) followed by a visit to Starbucks. Dave is now napping on the floor (he put a futon down first). Tonight we have one more kaisiki dinner (formal Japanese dining) at our ryokan.