Avanti
Today was a bit of exploration in downtown Tokyo.
I started with a tasty room service breakfast, very western, very welcome. Then while waiting for Adam to get moving I decided to explore Shinjuku Park which is next to the hotel. I fully plan on going back there when I have a little more time, it was very nice though not the Japanese Garden atmosphere I was expecting. Spring is getting underway but many plants are still bare, I think it will be very nice in a week or so.
I met up with Adam and he showed me an area that is essentially a market section of town. The food store he took me to was the most completely foreign thing I've seen so far - a very very big open room with little similar kiosks and glass counters staffed by mostly women in cute little uniforms and hats and displays of colorful foods of all sorts and kinds. And he showed me a $30 cantaloupe... no joke!
We then went a little farther out and visited an electronics store which had a video camera he wanted. It was many floors (all the stores go up rather than sprawl outward) and each floor was themed - a camera floor, a computer floor, and audio floor, a cell phone floor - crazy amounts of stuff, but surprisingly not really much different from the states. I can't imagine working there though... their idea of a salesman is a person who yells marketing propaganda and rings bells and stuff until someone wants something, then they go fetch it (most things on the floor are display only), bring it to the counter, and then go back to yelling. Every store seemed to have at least one crier, if not many many within the store - very obnoxious.
Adam then went back to the hotel not feeling well and I proceeded into the "mall" - 14 stories each about the size of a really big Walmart filled with various Macy's/Target like stores, but it was still mostly an open floor, each vendor just has display's for their wares unless they are a major store or a restaurant. I didn't find much interesting there though. Honestly, I really didn't find much anywhere today other than some better headphones to seal out some of the engine roar on the plane home.
I stumbled upon a Wendy's on the way home and man it never tasted so good! Of course, when I got back Dave wanted to go eat dinner so I went back out with him and we found an agreeable little restaurant. We sat down, looked at the menus (happily the majority of menus have pictures, and each picked a mystery meat dish that looked relatively appealing. Once we ordered I noticed a little sheet of paper in English which essentially said Dave had just ordered beef tongue and ox tail soup. The look on his face when he read that was priceless, this sort of incredulous defeated look! It wasn't bad though.
As promised, I've posted some pics of my hotel room. I got a few snapshots today, but not enough good ones so I'll wait to post them later. The first batch is at:
http://homepage.mac.com/jeremyhammer/PhotoAlbum1.html
I started with a tasty room service breakfast, very western, very welcome. Then while waiting for Adam to get moving I decided to explore Shinjuku Park which is next to the hotel. I fully plan on going back there when I have a little more time, it was very nice though not the Japanese Garden atmosphere I was expecting. Spring is getting underway but many plants are still bare, I think it will be very nice in a week or so.
I met up with Adam and he showed me an area that is essentially a market section of town. The food store he took me to was the most completely foreign thing I've seen so far - a very very big open room with little similar kiosks and glass counters staffed by mostly women in cute little uniforms and hats and displays of colorful foods of all sorts and kinds. And he showed me a $30 cantaloupe... no joke!
We then went a little farther out and visited an electronics store which had a video camera he wanted. It was many floors (all the stores go up rather than sprawl outward) and each floor was themed - a camera floor, a computer floor, and audio floor, a cell phone floor - crazy amounts of stuff, but surprisingly not really much different from the states. I can't imagine working there though... their idea of a salesman is a person who yells marketing propaganda and rings bells and stuff until someone wants something, then they go fetch it (most things on the floor are display only), bring it to the counter, and then go back to yelling. Every store seemed to have at least one crier, if not many many within the store - very obnoxious.
Adam then went back to the hotel not feeling well and I proceeded into the "mall" - 14 stories each about the size of a really big Walmart filled with various Macy's/Target like stores, but it was still mostly an open floor, each vendor just has display's for their wares unless they are a major store or a restaurant. I didn't find much interesting there though. Honestly, I really didn't find much anywhere today other than some better headphones to seal out some of the engine roar on the plane home.
I stumbled upon a Wendy's on the way home and man it never tasted so good! Of course, when I got back Dave wanted to go eat dinner so I went back out with him and we found an agreeable little restaurant. We sat down, looked at the menus (happily the majority of menus have pictures, and each picked a mystery meat dish that looked relatively appealing. Once we ordered I noticed a little sheet of paper in English which essentially said Dave had just ordered beef tongue and ox tail soup. The look on his face when he read that was priceless, this sort of incredulous defeated look! It wasn't bad though.
As promised, I've posted some pics of my hotel room. I got a few snapshots today, but not enough good ones so I'll wait to post them later. The first batch is at:
http://homepage.mac.com/jeremyhammer/PhotoAlbum1.html