Our hotel is right above the Shinigawa train station. We can hear trains coming and going at all hours. Not too loud, a very light train clicking sound. They are rhythmic.
The view is outstanding. 180 degree's of the area out our two walls of windows. The clouds are broken and quite low today. Morning haze fill the area.
We have no plan's today and i'm really excited to just do nothing but sit in bed and stare out my windows. But what would a trip 1/2 way around the world be just sitting in a hotel room doing nothing? I LOVE Japan so far. It is far better than Bangkok. Japan is clean, friendly, modern, and abundant of choices. Bangkok was very dirty. Uncared for. Like Tijuana Mexico.
Japan is so modern. Beat't the USA by far. Makes us look like we are in the dark ages!
My sinuses are kicking in. My head feels like it's going to explode. Good thing I brought the Zertec. I'm in major need of coffee!
Ok so since we are not doing much today, which will end up being a low blog day, I thought i'd share some answers to some of the questions we have been receiving.
1. How did you plan your trip? We planned our trip ourselves. We did a lot of research over the past 9 months. We created a spreadsheet on Google documents and broke out the trip by days, including important stuff like hotels, transportation, and sight seeing venues. We also created a spread sheet for the trip broken out by days for costs. We put in the local currency and formed a macro to convert it into dollars in the end. It included Hotel, food, transportation and venue items. It did not include foo foo money. Our budget for this trip was +/- $2,000 each. So far departing Thailand we are well under budget. The hotels obviously were most costly. However we also used some of our travel point we all have earned to get free rooms, and discounts. We did stay in higher end hotels. Japan may kill the budget a bit as we have under budgeted for food.
2. How did you plan your tourist stuff? We did a lot of research before we left and had ideas of what we wanted to do. We also found some tours online that were very reputable. One of the largest helpful items we used a LOT was the hotel Concierge. In both countries they write out the venue we are going to on cards both in English and the native tongue. The card says "Please take me to XYZ" in the foreign tongue. This has been helpful in many situations. For those of us that don't speak any Asian languages it was helpful. They also helped direct us to reputable places, and taught about some of the intricacies to watch out for. For Example: when we went to the temple we were told that people would stand out front by the gate and tell you "it's closed. please come back at 3:30pm" The temple closes at 3:30pm. Well it happened and we walked right past them.
3. How did you get past the Language barriers? uhm Did we? We carry around with us a card we received from the concierge from both hotels that state "please take me back to XXX hotel." If for any reason we get totally lost we can just hand that to a taxi driver. It's written in both English and the local languages. Thailand was easy as many of the things were in both English and Thai. Many people in Thailand also spoke some or a little English. Enough to get us by at least. Japan so far we are having a little bit more language issues. Everything is in Japanese and not as much in English. Here in Japan we have been using sign language and pointing at stuff. Many of the restaurant have a short menu in English if not the full menu, and also some have photo's. Especially the coffee houses. I will also hold out my hand with my coin's and they will help me pick out the amount i'm suppose to pay. But I'd caution you to not hold out too much and try and figure it out yourself. Sign language works well too. and also the Concierge and his little English/Japanese notes. We are still experiencing major Communication issues. We'll keep you updated as we learn to cope in Japan! But overall Sign language and picture cards are the most helpful!
4. What is your overall experience between the difference of Bangkok and Tokyo? Bangkok is dirty but the people are very helpful and nice. They call and map alley's as streets. People in Thailand were in your face selling or advertising stuff for you to buy. Tokyo is much more like the USA. It's extremely clean, orderly and well laid out. This can be a much longer answer. We reserve the right to keep it short!
We learned how to navigate the super easy subway system here in Tokyo. Here look at the map yourself. See how you can do! This is just the photo of the Tokyo Metro subway system. Overlay this with the Private train routes, the Tokyo Train routes, the Japan Train routes, the Japan subway system and the Other venues and you have your self a perfect Spaghetti!
First let me tell you it's HOT! 32 Celsius. 98.6 Degrees in Fahrenheit. and it's very HUMID. This took a toll on us right away. Especially me. We drank so much water and iced tea. We tried to spend more time on the subway than we did outside. That is HOT. At least it's a beautiful nice blue sky sunny day. Just wish it was cooler!
We ended up going to Asakusa and visit the Kaminarimon gate.
No disrespect meant to the culture here. But I thought this was very funny. A little boy asked his dad what are they doing? (referring to the following photo's, where the people would stand around this kettle of burning incense and fan the incense to their body. They would also "WASH" their body with the incense.) Dad answered "They are fumigating themselves of all the bad things they have done." I thought that was hilarious.
We got to pull sticks out of this tumbler which would reference which "Fortune" to pull from the drawers. Nick didn't "give an offering" his wish "will not come true". I gave an offering but not as much as was requested. My wish "was a Regular fortune and will come true." So i folded it and tied it on the clothes drying rack looking thing. Nothing here was in English, so i did not know what i was doing. Just going with my gut instinct.
Here is a big tower they are building!
We ate lunch at Owariya up in Asakusa area. We actually needed air conditioning really bad. It was too HOT and we were dying of heat exhaustion. The challenge we had was the name of the restaurant was in Japanese. Our information lady wrote out the characters of the restaurant but she is a little sloppy. We walked around until we decided to just go in and point at the name she wrote. The receptionist mimicked "here". They had a menu in English which we were able to point to as no one at the restaurant spoke English. The food was delightfully good. I had soba noodles with chicken in Broth. It was Yummy.
Due to the heat we decided to cut this trip short and find a mall. which we did in the Ginza area. the mall was 8 stories tall but very small. We decided to do afternoon tea at the tea shop in the mall. Now think of Nordstrom's and Nordstrom's Cafe. This little tea place was much more expensive. The challenge here is that no one at the restaurant spoke a lick of English and the menu was in Japanese, Chinese and FRENCH! Not English. Well we did our best to make out the French words and ended up pointing to items on the menu. We all made it through lunch ordering sorbet and coffee.
Then we trekked home and just laid in the room for a while. It's HOT!
There are vending machines all around the city. Just like off to the side along the sidewalks. Kind of different.
Here are some additional photo's from today with no comment!
Dinner went out for Sushi. Yup i did say it Suhi! Uhm what did I order uhm....
Or DID WE?
I ordered Fried Salmon and Rice. Oh and 2 beers! I needed something to help me deal with the sushi that was being eaten around me! It smelled like FISH in the restaurant! YUK I HATE FISH!
