So you're probably wondering where the post about the wedding is. I'm skipping it for now (check back and/or remind me about it later) because there are a couple nice (and clear) pictures of people who aren't me taken at the wedding (which is not a public place) and I'd like to have explicit permission from those people before posting those photos on the web. As the happy couple is currently on their honeymoon and I'm leaving town in not too many days, I thought it might be best if I wrote up the rest of the trip first.
After stopping off at the hotel to change, we meandered toward Roppongi Hills (a giant shopping/restaurant/mixed-use building complex), to the Mori Art Museum, to which Kumiko had kindly provided us with some complimentary tickets. On the way, we happened to pass Tokyo Midtown, an even newer (the grand opening was the previous day), giant mixed-use building complex with the tallest building in Tokyo (this photo is the view from the bridge to the entrance of the main shopping building, I think).
Inside the actual building, it was pretty packed. Anyway, it was just a short walk to Roppongi Hills, where I took this picture of the Mori Tower
and this picture.
On the 52nd floor of the building there is an observation deck. We just happened to arrive at dusk, so I tried to get some nice twilight/night pictures. Here you can see Tokyo Tower to the left and Rainbow Bridge fading into the mist on the right.
It was a little hard to get a good picture because there were lights behind me. In this shot, I think you can see the projected images of cherry blossoms on the wall behind me, where there was a nice seating area and live music. That bright spot near the middle is Shibuya, where they have an incredibly busy intersection -- the intersection that gets filmed to show how busy and full of people Tokyo is. Shibuya is also the location of a statue of a dog near one of the exits to the Shibuya subway station, which is a very popular meeting point for people. To the far right is Omotesando, an upscale shopping area.
On the right you can see Tokyo Tower again and Ginza (the shopping area, there's a lot of shopping in Tokyo) on the left.
The art museum (on the 53rd floor) was pretty interesting, with two different exhibits exploring the theme of laughter. By the time we got through them, we were all pretty beat and headed back, stopping off at a curry place for dinner. Back in Akasaka, they'd been blocking off streets all day for a marathon and a few other events (making getting to and from the wedding that morning a little tricky). The last event of the day was a draft horse race down the winding streets and up this steep hill (ending across the street from our hotel). We didn't wait around to see the races, but I caught one round on the TV.
Two horses line up and behind each is a sled (not a cart, a sled). On the sled stands a driver and in front of the driver sits a passenger. I assume the passengers are local celebrities since they didn't seem to do anything but yell encouragement. The race seemed ill-advised and rather dangerous, as sparks flew from the bottoms of the sleds (I wouldn't think that was good for the asphalt) and the horses careened from side-to-side (I think at one point, one of the horses ran up the sidewalk).
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Tokyo (Saturday - Post-Wedding)
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Tokyo (Sunday)
On Sunday, some of us went to the Edo-Tokyo museum (i.e., local history) in the morning. The first thing you notice about the building is that it's behind the building you assume is the museum (a big square building with a bright green roof). The next thing you notice is that it looks like an AT-AT (just to refresh your memory).
Finally, you start to walk across the giant plaza with the building hanging over you and somewhere from the back of your head, you think "that's no moon, it's a space station" and you start to hum "The Imperial March."
That said, the museum is pretty neat. After catching some lunch at a noodle place (I got coupons if anyone is interested), we met up with Takemi and Kumiko and the rest of the gang in Akihabara. Akihabara Electric Town is well-known as the place to go to get all the latest electronics and computer stuff. It's also well-known for anime otaku culture. On the weekends (or maybe just Sunday), they close off the street and turn it into a pedestrian mall.
Somewhere in that crowd are a couple of men dressed as cutesy female anime characters. We stopped at a store (after a quick spin through a pachinko parlor). The top-floor was devoted to selling maid outfits. It also featured a maid cafe (waitresses dress up in little maid outfits and act the part) and a partitioned area where you could pay to take pictures of scantily clad young women. Classy.
After Akihabara, we hit Omotesando Hills (by hitting Roppongi Hills, Omotesando Hills, and Tokyo Midtown, my friend Meg remarked, we were going to all the trendy Tokyo shopping complexes) and then some souvenir shopping. After all this walking around, clearly we needed a drink. So here we are at the Park Hyatt, at the bar featured in the movie Lost in Translation (here's a still from the movie for comparison).
After, we had a very nice dinner at an all-you-can-drink (for two hours, off the drink menu) place, where we sang "Happy Birthday" twice: once to Katie and once to a fellow diner as we were heading out the door. We capped off the day with karaoke. Here's the view out of our room. I'll spare you pictures of actual singing.
Fine. Stop begging.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Tokyo (Monday - Ueno Park)
Monday, I decided that I needed to binge on cherry blossoms before I left town. We went to Ueno Park, which is what I bet people think of when they think of cherry blossoms in Tokyo -- wide avenues with rows of cherry blossoms trees and people everywhere.
We ate lunch in the park under falling cherry blossom petals; there were a bunch of food stands selling squid and noodles and other food, as well as drinks (including sake).
You can see that the end of the season is approaching; there are leaves on some of those trees.
I like how the flowers bloom straight out the trunks.
I've heard that for the hanami, the office will send out the junior member to save a spot all day. I saw quite a few blue tarps taken by suits (by the way, everyone in Tokyo wears a suit, it's uncanny) with red faces, drinking something alcoholic.
This is a very pretty tree.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Tokyo (Wednesday/Thursday)
I'm back from Japan and have a week and a half to catch up on blog posts before I leave Germany again. I'm going to back date the posts to match the days of my trip.
Getting to Japan from Bonn takes 22 hours door-to-door: a short walk to the train station, an hour train ride to Dusseldorf, an hour flight to London, an 11 hour flight to Tokyo, a 2 hour bus ride (damned traffic) to the Akasaka district of Tokyo, and a 10 minute cab ride to my hotel. I left 9am on Wednesday, and with only an hour nap on the plane I arrived at 3pm Thursday -- 9 hours away from finally sleeping: ate lunch, looked for some caffeine, tried to go to a park and found it closed, wandered around Ginza with Takemi and Eugene, ate dinner at a hot pot place, saw Takemi's apartment (he has a Wii!).
Some random notes on traveling. I flew a 1:30pm British Air flight from Dusseldorf. I, of course, ate lunch at the airport before getting on the plane. On the plane, however, they gave out little chicken wraps the size of half a sandwich. A direct flight from Chicago to Honolulu is 9 hours and they serve no food. An hour flight, and they served food. Amazing.
At London Heathrow, I went to buy a book (Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, by the way, which I never started and packed in my check-in luggage on the way back). After months of being in Germany, it was very nearly blissful to walk into the tiny airport bookstore and see all the books in English (Yay! English!). The near irony was that all the books were priced in British pounds and 1.) I haven't a clue how much a pound is and 2.) I didn't have any British pounds (hooray for credit cards).
I finally gave my Bose QuietComfort3 headphones the workout they've been craving. I must admit that my expectations were too high. The background level after noise canceling might be similar to being in a car. But I can't imagine flying without noise canceling headphones again. The difference in quality of experience is remarkable and if you -- yes, you -- intend to listen to anything (music, TV, announcements from the pilot), you need them.
Terminal 1 at London Heathrow is a big pain. For one, I went through security twice in the 2 hours I was there. For another, they don't tell you what gate your flight will be departing on until it's basically time to board. There are electronic boards posted around the terminal which lists all upcoming flights and you wait and wait for a gate number to pop up on the board. When your full flight to Japan pops up as "boarding now" with 30 minutes until takeoff and at one of the furthest gates, there's going to be mad rush. When there is an additional security check before the gate, it's pretty crazy.
Finally, on the descent into Narita, there was some turbulence. And for some odd reason, the background music that is piped in when the plane is on the ground and boarding had started. So, I was a little nauseated, and disoriented, and there was music that I couldn't quite hear coming from somewhere. (I'll pause here for any Battlestar Galactica related jokes readers would like to make. Everyone good? Okay.)
Friday, March 30, 2007
Tokyo (About Getting Around and the Gang)
I once spent a couple days in Madrid. I had a guide book with several detailed maps, a phrase book, a notebook, and a stash of Euros that my Mom pushed into my hands before I got on the plane. Every night in my hostel, I'd pore over all my materials and make a detailed plan (with notes!) of where I was going and what I was going to do the next day and what simple Spanish words and phrases might come in handy.
When I arrived at Narita Airport on Thursday, I had zero of these things. I had a bunch of Euros to change in to Yen (cash is still king in Japan), a couple pages of instructions from Takemi on how to get to to my hotel, and a reservation for a rented cell phone.
Luckily, a bunch of Takemi's Stateside friends had all convened for the wedding and some of them were very prepared (read: not me or Eugene). Here's fuzzy picture of the at least part of the gang (Peter, Crystal, Randy, Katie, Carol, Debbie, and Eugene) on the street at night:
We got around Tokyo mostly through the subway (more accurately, either Takemi or Peter would herd us through the subway). Subway ticket prices in Tokyo are based on distance traveled. In addition, there is more than one subway operator, so it's lucky for us that just recently they've created a unified stored-credit subway card, Pasmo. And it's a a prox card too, so no worrying about which way to insert it! The only drawback is that it's the exact same shade of gray as our hotel key cards and I constantly attempted to use it to open my hotel room.
One last almost neat-o technology note. I have a SkypeIn number. That means people in the know dial a local suburban Chicago number and my computer rings -- the caller pays whatever local suburban Chicago rate, I pay for the subscription for the number ($30/year). This alone already freaks me out (you call a number, my computer rings?!). But Skype will also forward incoming calls to up to 3 different phone numbers. In principle, this means that someone in the States could call me for free on their cell minutes and my rented Japanese cell phone would ring and Skype would charge me only their usual minute rate (2 cents/minute). Awesome. Sadly, it wasn't to be. Some technological glitch made is so I would get many a 'missed call' notice but my phone would never actually ring when someone called my SkypeIn number.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Tokyo Redux
Oh so very very late, here are a few pictures from my trip to Tokyo in May. I heavily blogged my last trip to Tokyo, but this time around not so much. So here are some highlights.
1.) We stayed at one hotel with hilarious 1960s-vision-of-the-future decor. Everything in white. Everything in our room in molded white plastic. Awesome view, though. I tried to get some pictures: 
2.) Watching tv in Japan is great. Every commercial has an adorable animated mascot. And I correctly guessed that the tv show were were watching was a boy band talk show.
3.) Food. You know what's surprisingly good together? Foie gras and daikon. I know, sounds terrible. But it was really really good. We went to a tiny, classy, old-school bar where the bartender chipped ice from big blocks by hand. And, most importantly, the ninja restaurant!
4.) Last time, I went to the Roppongi Hills (indoor) observation deck. This time, they had opened up the helipad for tourists. It's not like any other outdoor observation deck. No rails or fencing. Just standing out in this big open space way up on the roof (floor 54) and you can see city as far as you can see. 
5.) Finally, we went to the Studio Ghibli museum. It's a bit out of the city. But so very worth it. It's not a regular museum: there are no maps, no little plaques explaining the historical context of the exhibits. It's really looks exactly as you imagine it would look in a Miyazaki movie or possibly what the inside of Miyazaki's mind looks like. There's a mock-up of an animation studio. There's a room with a giant Catbus for (and, sadly, only for) little kids to play on and in. And their theater shows shorts that are only shown there. And there's no video screens. Just drawings and models and film being projected. Here is someone else's photos and description of the museum and my favorite (and this blogger's too) part of the museum is described: the zoetrope. You're not allowed to take photos inside, but here are some from the outside. 
Totoro's in the ticket office!
On the roof of the building there's a giant statue of one of the robots from Castle in the Sky. You can go have have your picture taken with it.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Tokyo (Cherry Blossoms)
I thought I'd get in a few words about cherry blossoms now, although there will be plenty more in the Saturday and Monday posts. The trees can be found all over the city and bloom for only a week before the petals fall and the leaves comes out; while in bloom, the trees are covered in blossoms like snow on trees after a storm. Here's a couple pictures taken a few blocks from the hotel:
When the trees bloom, many Japanese will go to parks for hanami -- a cherry blossom viewing party. Not surprisingly, it's also a popular time to get married. My friend, Meg, who lives in Tokyo tells me that we were very lucky; it seemed like the flowers would bloom earlier with the warm winter, but there was a cold snap before we arrived. Here are some close-ups of blossoms:
Tokyo (Friday)
Friday morning, we all took the subway to Hama-rikyu Gardens (Shimbashi station, 300 Yen entrance fee), where we met Takemi and stopped for a snack and some tea before heading to the wholesale fish market for sushi.
At lunch (a tiny little place with just a counter), I bravely ordered the large (12 pieces) over the small (7 pieces). All the raw fish was very fresh and some of the pieces were fantastic (best raw squid I've ever had, crunchy not chewy). But I sat right next to the proprietress, so when the piece that she said wasn't unagi but certainly visually resembled unagi tasted like a cigarette butt (seriously), I still felt obligated to eat it. It didn't kill me, so I will assume it made me stronger. Also, the 12 pieces defeated me and I had to have Eugene eat 2/3 of my maki.
In the afternoon, Takemi signed us all up for a Hato Bus tour. First stop, Tokyo Tower. There's our bus at the bottom.
From the Tower, you can see in the direction of the gardens and the fish market we visited in the morning (left).
A little to the right you can see Rainbow Bridge.
Next stop was the Imperial Palace Plaza. It was so sunny and bright that most of my pictures seem to highlight the dust on my lens, like this one:
But this one is pretty nice:
Party boats!
We left the tour at Asakusa. At the temple, somewhere behind me in the photo, you can read your fortune on a little slip of paper for 100 Yen (mine was all bad).
We went out to dinner (mmm) then called it a night. Big day tomorrow.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Tokyo (Tuesday)
Time to go home. After the traffic delays getting from the airport to the hotel, I decided to take the train back to the airport. It took a taxi ride to Tokyo Station and a not too short line to buy a train ticket (the Narita Express). After 10 very disorienting minutes where I couldn't figure out how to get to my platform (it's a big place!), I managed to find the right track and ask someone where to stand (the tickets have reserved seats). After that, the hour long train ride was very relaxing.
At the airport, I noticed that at the next counter there was a little girl dressed up like the English rapper, Lady Sovereign, with the side pony tail, the big round ring, a purple sweatshirt, jeans and gym shoes. She was pulling several pairs of gym shoes from one bag and putting it into another. (By the way, I know next to nothing about Lady Sovereign, except that she looks like this.) That's funny, I thought, she's not even that famous. Then it occurs to me that 12 year old girls dressed up as their favorite rapper are rarely 20-something year-old young women with lots of makeup on, traveling to London on BA with their posse, meeting their personal airline representative after ticketing. Yeah, I dozed off on that train ride, why do you ask?
After getting my boarding pass and returning my cell phone, I had some time for shopping. I'd bought some sweets to bring to work in Ginza the day before, but I was looking for some adorable Studio Ghibli stuffed animals to give to my friends' kids in Germany (okay, and a couple for me too). Jackpot. And luckily it cost basically what I had left in cash. I took a picture of all of them when I got home (I haven't had a chance to give out the presents yet, but I don't think 3 year olds read blogs, so I'm not ruining anything).
But now I had my shoulder bag and a little shopping bag. Heathrow still only allows one item per flyer. While a little shopping bag would probably pass muster, I really wasn't interested in taking that chance. But my shopping bag wouldn't fit into my shoulder bag or vice versa. I did have, however, a coat with 5 zippered pockets. That's right, I shoved stuffed animals into my pockets (it was even funnier when I arrived in Dusseldorf and it was cold and I put the coat on).
After a one hour nap on the plane and a layover in London, the trip was now running 21 hours and I still needed to get to Bonn from Dusseldorf at 10pm. 10pm at night means it's way too late to buy a train ticket from a human in Germany, so I was stuck trying to get the ticket machine to work at the airport as the minutes ticked down to the one train per hour leaving the airport. I just made it, but I needed to change trains at the Dusseldorf Hauptbahnhof before arriving in Bonn, walking home and falling into bed.
This is what I've noticed about train tickets in Germany. In the U.S., you'd expect that your ticket would say, what train(s) you're riding, what time(s) the train(s) is(are), where you're traveling from and your destination, at what stop(s) you are switching trains, and maybe the platform(s). This is what my ticket (at 10pm at night after 21 hours of traveling) read: today's date, where I was traveling (Dusseldorf Airport) from and my final destination (Bonn Hauptbahnhof), and how much I paid. Fantastic.
So that's it (mostly). From Germany to Japan and back again. After most vacations -- even if I really liked them -- I'd think to myself that now I can cross that place off my list because there are plenty of places I haven't been to yet. But that was definitely the best vacation I've ever had and by midway through, all any of us could think say to ourselves was "I have to come back here." So thanks gang, thanks Takemi and Kumiko, thanks Meg, and thanks Japan. See you next time around.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Where Does the Time Go?
It's been far too long since my last blog post. But it feels like yesterday it was winter and today it is summer. I haven't got a lot of bloggable stuff (although if you are patient, I'm going to Italy at the end of June) but on the recommendation of one of the students I took my bike down Heerstraße on Sunday and went back to take some pictures today. If I had made it there the weekend before, I'm sure the trees would have been full of giant bunches of flowers and no leaves. That would have been impressive. Still, the piles of falling and fallen petals was pretty neat -- reminiscent of the cherry blossoms in Tokyo, but bright pink and on a small street in Germany. 
Look how pink the street is.
And this car is.
And all the piles are ... well, you get the idea. 
I tried to get a shot of the petals flying and landing on me, but my camera wasn't cooperative.
These are the same trees I blogged about here, but those trees were little and I didn't realize there was a whole street full of mature trees just across the train tracks. 
If anyone knows what kind of tree this is, let me know.