First Weekend in Tokyo

It's Sunday evening here now, almost a whole week since I arrived. Since my last post I've mostly been working. Days here are long and it doesn't leave much time for anything else, but we've been eating well! Food and drink is possibly more expensive here than anywhere else. It doesn't help that we get back from work too late to eat in most of the restaurants, so we have to resort to the bar at the top of the hotel (where a couple of beers and some fried chicken each is 60 quid - urgh).

Anyway, on Saturday we had a chance to see some sights. We went to the temple at Senso-Ji as we'd heard it was one of the best, and indeed it was. There are many tourist-tat shops that line the street (Nakamise-dori) between Asakusa Metro station and the temple compound and are interesting to poke about in. The temple itself is interesting but we were unlucky that when we visited there was some restoration going on, but there was still plenty to see.

After the temple we decided to take the Sumida-Gawa river cruise to see the city from a different aspect. Unfortunately the boat was completely enclosed with no deck to walk about on, so it was hard to see much! What we did see was mostly bridges and skyscrapers, so it was a lot less interesting than something like a cruise on the Thames. I wouldn't recommend it unless you manage to get an open boat anyway.

The boat took us to a commercial district near the Tokyo Tower. Everything was closed and nobody was around - it was a bit bizarre really. There was a McDonalds in the bottom of one of the office buildings where we reluctantly bought lunch before heading into whatever bit of Tokyo we were in, in an attempt to find a Metro station to get home. We walked under a monorail, which is an excitingly futuristic thing to have, and we saw a bullet train too. Very Japanese! Eventually we randomly found Mita station and got the metro back to the hotel.

On Sunday we had to move hotels. We're now in the Crowne Plaza Metropolitan, and I have another decent view from my room. The hotel is in a much busier area than the Akasaka Prince, so it looks like there will be more to do. We're right by Ikebukuro station which, like many Japanese stations, is absolutely massive. Still, it's a bit closer to the office so we'll shave half an hour off each leg of the commute from tomorrow.

In the afternoon we went to the Meiji-Jingu shrine. To get there you have to walk through an interesting bit of Japanese culture - Cos-play-zoku, or the 'costume play gang'. These are teenagers who dress up in goth and punk dress and then hang around every weekend, while tourists come and pose with them for photos. It's very bizarre. We had to walk though them to get to the shrine so it was an interesting diversion, although I didn't take any photos as it felt a bit 'wrong' to take photos of scantily-clad 14 year olds. Anyway, the shrine itself is in a massive (by Tokyo standards) site full of trees and 'countryside', which is very pleasant. I think I saw more tourists there than anywhere else in Tokyo. Most days you don't see any Westerners, but the shrine was crawling with them. It was an impressive site, and we saw a couple of traditional Japanese weddings taking place. It must have been a bit weird for the people getting married as they had loads of tourists taking photos, but I suppose they wouldn't have done it there if they had minded. Odd though.

After the shrine we went back to the area of the hotel and poked around BIC Camera, which is a bit like Richer Sounds. I don't think things are really that much cheaper in Japan though so I haven't succumbed to any impulse purchases yet. From BIC it was a short stroll back to the hotel where we had a rather nice meal. Hurrah! Bizarrely, an English sixth form college and a ballet company are staying at the hotel at the moment, so there's an interesting mix of people. It's a lively hotel so I'm happier about staying two weeks here than I would have been in the Akasaka Prince...

Big In Japan

So here I am again in yet another country with difficult to read signs. I don't know what it is about countries that use different alphabets that makes my company send me there, but I'm not complaining. Actually Tokyo isn't too bad as most signs have the English on them as well, which is rather more user-friendly than China was.

The flight over here was ok. I caught Babel (not great), Flags Of Our Fathers (better than I thought it would be), and The Illusionist (really good), which took my mind off my increasingly cramped legs during the 12 hours. Tokyo airport is a model of efficiency and we were out of there literally 20 minutes after landing, and straight onto a bus that stopped at our hotel. The hotel itself (the Akasaka Prince) is nice enough - I've got a great view and a large amount of sofa space. The many restaurants in the hotel do seem to close bizarrely early though, which is inconvenient when we get back late from work. For example, on Monday night we went to the office after checking into the hotel around 2pm and ended-up getting back at 11. No food being available when you've not slept for 36 hours just makes you feel annoyed!

Getting around Tokyo is pretty easy using their rather good underground system. It's not particularly cheap but it runs on time and is very clean. The famously crowded trains certainly exist but are very directional, so our train (heading out of the centre in the morning) is going against the main flow and is practically empty, while trains going on the same line the other way are absolutely rammed. A fair number of people (about 10% I'd guess) seem to wear surgical masks for some reason best known to themselves. There are also 'women only' carriages for the trains at busy times thanks (I assume) to groping men. On the outside everyone looks like they wouldn't step out of line at all, so the idea of this seems odd. I don't doubt it happens though.

Japanese people seem very friendly and quite genuine about it. On the way back to the tube station today a girl bumped into me and apologised far more than she needed to. A few minutes later at the tube station she came up and apologised again before starting a conversation about where I'm from, her plans to visit Britain to improve her English, and so on. It says something about Britain that when she started talking to me I assumed she was after something or trying to con me or wind me up in some way. It's little things like that which give you a good impression of a place.

The work is hard and the hours long, but I'm looking forward to the weekend when I should be able to actually go out and see something. Even at this early stage I can forsee it being difficult not to automatically bow to people on returning to the UK. Not a bad thing though - I think all of this mutual respect thing is pretty great.

Billie is a Treat

Last Thursday we went to the theatre to see Christopher Hampton’s Treats, starring the lovely Billie Piper, that guy from 'My Family' and the BT adverts (Kris Marshall), and Laurence Fox. It was an odd play really - you know the film 'Closer' with Clive Owen? Well, it was a bit like that in that you didn't really feel for any of the characters. It was well acted and produced, but at the end there was a general feeling of 'ah right, so is that it?' in the theatre. Some random bloke said "Well that was a load of old rubbish wasn't it?" to me on the way out, which I've never had before! I didn't think it was rubbish, but then it wasn't brilliant either. After the performance there was a brief (and well attended) Q&A session with the actors. They all seemed quite nice and their answers were pretty interesting, but I can't remember any of them well enough to repeat here.

We were a bit peckish when we left the theatre so we nipped into the Garrick's Head for a bite to eat. I had the excellent Devilled Kidneys, but everyone else's food looked great too, plus the beer was good. A top end to the evening!

Hot Fuzz

Last night I was at a preview showing of Hot Fuzz, the new comedy from Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. Yes, that's right, the guys behind the brilliant Spaced and Shaun of the Dead. So, apart from the excitement of seeing a film a week or two before general release and getting a bag full of goodies, what can I say? Basically it's very good - starts off a bit slowly and you wonder where they are going with it, but it soon turns into the highly amusing nonsense that you expect. It's vaguely interesting from a local perspective for me as well since it's filmed in Wells, just down the road. While I enjoyed the film, I did think that the cinema had the volume cranked-up a bit too much. Perhaps I'm getting old but some of the load bits hurt my ears... I thought age was meant to make you deaf!

The Most Fantastic Alarm Clock Ever

This has to be the most fantastic thing I've seen all week. Completely brilliant! The story behind its creation is also very interesting, especially for budding entrepreneurs.