A bit of illumination, in the cold and dark

So, Monday evening after sunset I decided to go down to the middle of Monzennakacho, down by one of the canal/rivers that run through town, to see what the illuminated cherry trees looked like. It was really cold, about 42 degrees with a steady wind making it feel like the 30s, but I layered up and walked down. For a stretch of one of the rivers, there were lanterns hung in the trees on both sides of the river, and a dock where brave evening tourists could ride an open tour boat along the shore. I took the landlubber route, and just walked the 3 or so blocks that were lit. The trees were still not 100% full, in fact there were quite a few that were still in the bud stage, so there’s still time once it warms up to go see them later this week or maybe the weekend. I also plan to go to the more touristy places over the weekend and early next week, if the blossoms hold up. I may have to head to other places as well, where blooming is taking longer.

At any rate, I saw these Monday evening.

A nice Sunday in the park

So Sunday was a nice day, relatively speaking, as it wasn’t bad temperature-wise, it almost made it to 60 degrees, and the sun was shining. Towards the afternoon, though, the wind picked up and started to have a wind chill, a prelude to an ugly week. But I did manage to see a few cherry trees blooming, and found a neat little thing for kids along the way.

So, the cherry trees I found in Etchujima Park, along the bank of the Sumida river south of my apartment were mostly full.

There was a short section of the trail along the river where they had an area set aside for kids. What was neat about it was that it was a place where kids could learn street and traffic signals, safely and without interfering with actual traffic! The section had painted crosswalks, and working, timed stop lights and walk-don’t walk signals, but smaller than the real thing, and made lower to the ground so little kids could see them. I thought that was a really neat idea, I think it would be good for kids in the US to learn on! It was also helpful that kids were learning how to ride their bikes on the same trail, and they could learn to be responsible drivers, too!

I didn’t get many more pictures, as I met a couple and their son, tourists from California, and talked with them for a while. We talked about what they planned on the trip, and I gave them some (hopefully) helpful things that I’ve learned about being a tourist in Japan. It started to get cold, and I didn’t want to keep them, they weren’t really dressed for it, and I needed to get to the drug store to get some soap and laundry detergent. I did manage to see a few more neat things before it got too cold to hold a camera for long. In hindsight I wish I’d gotten an earlier start.

Some pictures on my first walkabout.

So, Wednesday morning broke nice and clear, except for the dust blowing over Tokyo from China, but otherwise the day started nice. I decided I would walk around the neighborhood a bit, to see if I could see any cherry trees blooming along the Sumida River, which is about a quarter-mile from my apartment. I made my way down to the riverbank, which has a park and walkway all along the river on both sides, and started north.

After walking for a while, I found that I was very close to one of the city’s parks, Kiyosumi Gardens. I decided to go ahead and check out the park, which is a nice, well laid-out Japanese garden, with hundreds of interesting rocks from all over Japan, and some wildlife in the form of birds and turtles, as well as hungry koi fish in the large pond/small lake. They charge a small admission fee, and I was able to finagle the senior rate, which was 70 yen, or about 45 cents! Who says Japan is expensive! 🙂 Sadly there were no cherry blossoms, but there were some flowering bushes, not sure what kind though.

After strolling through the park for a while, making a full circuit of the paths, I decided to get some lunch, and on my way out the gate I saw a Denny’s down the block! Unfortunately, at 1:30 PM they had a lot of people waiting, especially families, so I changed my plans and started walking down the street. I ended up going into this little ramen shop and having a big bowl with a side of rice and pickled cabbage. The ramen had a piece of pork so well cooked it practically fell apart in my chopsticks, and the noodles were cooked just firm enough, and the broth was really really good and salty.

Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures of the shop or the food, I didn’t ask permission and I didn’t want to be one of “those” tourists and act like I owned the place, so you’ll have to use your imagination. It was a whole universe better than any cup ramen you might have had, though!

From there, my trek took me on a subway ride to Shinjuku to the apartment office to tell them of a maintenance issue I had, and then back to Monzennakacho on a different train line. When I got back to the apartment I checked my health app on my phone and found that I had walked over 5 miles! I hadn’t intended to walk quite that far on my first day, but thankfully I have been working up to it over the past year or so.

Anyway, that’s all for Wednesday! I took Thursday off so I could get these pictures ready!

Science fiction boat in Tokyo!

One of the neat things in Tokyo is a tour boat company that runs different types of tour boats up and down the Sumida River, in the heart of Tokyo. Three of the boats were designed by famous Japanese science fiction creator Leiji Matsumoto, and the boats are designed to resemble space ships. The interior of the boats are very 70’s sci-fi, and have retro-style tables and sofas. I happened to catch one while I was walking on the walkway along the Sumida.

Nerdtour 2016 Japan: Day 2, discovering exhaustion amongst the blooms…

After walking around a whole lot Wednesday (about 7 miles total), Thursday was not a “wake up at 5 AM” day. I barely woke up when the alarm went off at 7:30, after having fallen asleep Wednesday night about 9:30, so I decided to put the “Do not disturb” sign out and start into working on yesterday’s blog post and sorting through the day’s photos. I made it pretty far, but as the morning wore on I discovered that I could either blog about my experiences, or I could actually go out and HAVE experiences to blog about!

Samidagawa_Asakusa-005So, I set out to find more places that should have cherry trees in bloom. According to promotional literature, the Sumida Park area near Asakusa was supposed to have a bunch of famous trees planted by one of the shoguns a long time ago, so I decided to set off for there. Fortunately it was a relatively straight shot from my hotel, so at the end of the Asakusa Line, I came out into Asakusa proper, which is just across the Sumidagawa River from the newest “big thing”, Tokyo Sky Tree. Sky Tree is the tallest structure in Japan, and is one of the tallest structures in the world (tallest non-office tower, I think). I plan to go there on this trip, and take pictures from the observation decks, over 1000 feet up. I will find out if alcohol defeats acrophobia, or, how much sake will it take to get me to stand on the “glass floor”.

 
 
 

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I soon discovered from the map that Sumida Park actually sits on both sides of the Sumidagawa, so I crossed over one bridge to the east shore, and took in the views from that side. The part on that side had one wide “park” area, which was wide open, but the main part is a narrow strip right along the river, where people gathered in groups for “hanami”, or “cherry blossom watching.” This is basically an excuse for companies to let their employees gather in groups to drink, eat, drink, socialize, drink, and build camaraderie with their fellow workers, while sitting on tarps (traditionally blue) under the cherry trees. And drink. Other groups are made up of old friends, college students (drinking age is 20), and families.

 
 
 

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That day there were also continuing “matsuri” or festivals along the banks, where you could buy grilled chicken on a stick, or various other kinds of snack foods, along with beer. I forgot to mention that the headquarters of Asahi Beer Ltd. is right there near the Sumida Park, so they were kind enough to provide lots of beer for sale. Near one of the booths I struck up a conversation with two of the people standing around, a man and his wife. I say “struck up a conversation” but I really mean “exercised my minimal Japanese while actually understanding and being understood about 30% of the time”. It was fun, and we three had a good time for a few minutes, while I rested for a bit before moving on.

 
 

Samidagawa_Asakusa-022I crossed the “Sumida Friendship Bridge” and continued on back down the Park towards Asakusa. I got to see some of the tour boats and “dinner boats” that cruise up and down the Sumidagawa, which are very interesting and which go back a couple hundred years into Tokyo history (not the current boats, obviously, but the idea of them). Once I got back to the Asakusa area, I stopped to eat a huge bowl of soba noodles and a “katsudon”, which is a bowl of rice topped with a fried, breaded pork cutlet. The noodles came in a huge bowl at least 8 inches across and 3 deep, with miso broth. The katsudon was almost as big, so between them the meal was probably about 2 pounds of food, all for 720Â¥, which is about $7. The secret to saving money in Japan is to eat where the locals eat, not where the tourists eat! There were no tourists there, just middle-aged locals who came in for a quick meal.

After eating I walked further down to the Sensoji Temple area of Asakusa, but that’s going to be the next blog post.

Have some cherry blossom pictures for now! Enjoy!

Nerdtour 2016 Japan: First full (frustrating) day in Tokyo…

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Tokyo Metropolitan Building

So, today opened bright and early for me (well, early anyway) as I woke up at about 5 AM again, so after fitfully trying to get back to sleep I gave up and got up. I hadn’t planned anything specific, but as I was checking web cams around the area of Mt. Fuji, I saw that there were crystal clear views of the mountain, so I decided to try to take a highway bus out to a town called Oshino. I made it to the bus terminal in Shinjuku, and found out that you need to book ahead, as all the morning buses were booked for the next few days. The afternoon buses ran after 2 PM, which since it takes 2 hours to get to Oshino, I abandoned that plan since I couldn’t get back until the next day. I decided to try for Plan B, go to a high spot in Tokyo and look for Fuji from whatever observation deck I could find. I discovered I was within walking distance of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, which has observation decks on the 45th floor of each tower, so I thought this was my chance. Wrong. Turns out it was clear air near Mount Fuji, but in Tokyo there was major humidity which caused major haze, thick enough to hide Mt. Fuji and most of Tokyo. My luck continues on the Fuji viewing front.

View from the observation deck

On a positive note, there was an exhibition on the observation floor, where each of the prefectures in Japan were displaying and selling products specific to those prefectures. I looked each display over and decided to buy something from Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, since they were hardest-hit by the earthquake and tsunami five years ago. Yes, I bought food from Fukushima prefecture, and no I don’t expect to glow in the dark as a result.

After a light snack of an apple strudel-like thing at the observation deck cafe, I set out to go back to the hotel to drop off my purchases. On my way out, I stopped at the Tourist Information Office on the first floor, and picked up some tourist brochures. Sadly, I don’t think Tokyo’s going to be ready to handle a bunch of foreigners when they come for the Olympics in 5 years, since probably about 95% of the “tourist information” brochures were in Japanese only. Not a very welcoming sign.

Blossoms on the Meguro River

When I got to the hotel, the cleaning crew was still working on my room, so I went back out to the 7-Eleven across the street, bought a small salad with tuna, a sliced hard-boiled egg, lettuce, carrots, and corn, and ate lunch at a small city park near the hotel. I finished a bit after the cleaning crew, so I was able to drop my stuff off, and drop myself in front of the laptop to scope out some cherry blossom sites. I had read about the Meguro river, which is lined with cherry trees on both sides, and which has a loooong street festival with food vendors of nearly every kind. The trees are lit at night and there are lanterns ever couple of feet, so folks can enjoy the view until late. So, since the Naka-Meguro station is at the end of the subway line that runs by the hotel, I figured I’d try it and see, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about being able to see it all.

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Riverside meal

I got there just before sunset, and as I was wandering around I was amused by one of the vendors who was selling a square slice of pizza, and so I had to buy a small pizza and beer from them. Corona beer and Japanese pizza, while looking at cherry blossoms, the life of a modern world traveler!


At any rate, that was the day, I wandered around the area until well after sunset, and got some nice pictures of the blossoms lit from below! Enjoy!

Nerdtour 2016: Naritasan!

_MG_7989Okay, this is going to be a short one, although today was eventful and productive, I’m about out of energy for the day, and the bed in my new hotel room in Tsukiji is inviting.

I checked out of the hotel in Narita early this morning, and after a very small breakfast at Mr Donut down the road, I set off to find the Naritasan Temple complex and “Peace Park”. When I got there I was disappointed to find that my camera had gotten damaged sometime earlier, not sure where during the trip. Somehow a couple of camera batteries had slipped down beneath the camera, and the live-view screen got cracked when the camera bag was set down or banged around on one of the flights. Fortunately the camera still works fine, the part that cracked was a protective screen to help keep the body of the camera waterproof. It will still need to be fixed though.

At any rate, I managed to get quite a few nice pictures of the temple, including a few of the first cherry trees blooming in Narita. The season just started, and they won’t be in full bloom in Narita until I’m ready to leave. I will be staying the night at Narita before I leave, so I might just get a chance.

After I saw the temple and park grounds, I grabbed lunch at a small shop that was serving barbecued eel, unagi. I had never had it before, but it was good, especially since I was hungry!

Finally I got my suitcase from the hotel and set off by train to the hotel in Tsukiji, not far from the famous fish market. The room is the smallest I’ve had of all the hotels I’ve stayed at, it’s so small I have to step outside to change my mind!

At any rate, here are a few pictures from Narita. Enjoy!

Nerdtour Japan 2016: Once More With Sakura!

Sakura by moonlightSo, once again I prepare to depart for the Land of the Rising Sun, where the cherry blossoms (sakura) are in bloom!  This will be a relatively short trip, only two weeks, but the goal is to take as many pictures of cherry trees in bloom in as many iconic Japanese places as possible, given the short time they bloom.  Plus since the Tidal Basin here in DC is full of cherry trees from Japan that are now also in bloom, I hope to take pictures of them before go, too!

Blogging may be spotty, but I’ll try to at least post something each day.

The Nerdtour 2016 starts Sunday, March 27!