Introduction to Tokyo

We decided to take it easy our first day (sort of) by limiting ourselves to two city districts and just wandering around. I sketched out very general routes in the morning using various maps and guide pamphlets I've been obessesively picking up whenever I see them. I realized recently that this is my first big international trip where I (and my travel companion of course) am doing all the planning, paying, and navigating by myself. No itineraries picked out by my parents, or adult supervision guiding my way, getting me from point A to point B. I guess I'm the adult now (shudder). At least for today I seemed to take on the navigator role and did a pretty good job using mostly physical maps for someone who usually considers Google Maps her best friend. We started in Ginza, the fancy shopping district full of Gucci, Armani and Chanel, to window shop and get our first real views of the city. I expected the American brand names, but keep getting blindsided by restaurants and stores I never would have guessed would pop up in Japan. Today the winner was Shake Shack. My planned path did not take as long as I was expecting, so we took our time in the park I had chosen as our first real destination. It was gorgeous, sunny and full of greenery starting to show signs of fall. Highlights included a large pond that had one solitary giant carp in it and a grassy area where some outside the box thinker had decided a random circular patch of Palm trees would look good. We sat on a park bench to look up a good place to have our first Japanese meal and settled on an udon place. Google Maps' directions in Japan are pretty useless because so few streets have names and the directions say helpful things like "turn left at crosswalk" and "turn right at street". It's better to rely on the little dot that shows your current location, but I saw some mention of going down stairs. With that vague direction we headed off. We eventually found an underground of many restaurants that seemed to be located near the destination dot but couldn't see our specific restaurant. We headed down anyway to find most places closed since it was Sunday. We wandered for a bit until we found an open place. I compared the Japanese kanji on Google maps to the kanji in the sign and discovered it happened to be the exact place we were looking for. We ate our udon in triumph. Before we left the restaurant complex I stopped in a bathroom. It wasn't my first Japanese toilet but it was my most startling as it talked to me when I sat down and then played bird and stream noises until I stood up again. Japanese toilets definitely live up to their reputation with a bunch of buttons and features including a butt warmer and bidet.

We headed off next to a district called Roppongi / Asakasa. Our first stop after a few wrong turns was a store called Don Quixote. I don't think I can adequately describe what this store is but I'll try. It's like if a Target was combined with a department store and then squished together into a tall building. It was six floors of everything. Toiletries, food, high-end designer clothes and jewelery, electronics, candy, bedding, and I would go on, but it would take awhile. We stocked up on a bunch of candy and stuff we didn't know we needed. I decided we should do at least one really touristy thing and we finished our time in this area by going up Tokyo Tower for a view of the city. We returned to our hotel for some quiet time. Although I was reluctant to have another noodle meal I could not resist the allure of trying my first Japanese ramen. An experience I had waited for for a long time. It did not disappoint. We found a place with good reviews that was English friendly. In many Japanese noodle places you order by machine and then hand your ticket at the counter (America get on this!). Some places don't have any pictures or English but this machine was well marked. We got to see them make the noodles which are much thicker than your American instant variety. It was a great end to an overall successful day.