Summer journey - Week 1: Flashy Roppongi, Serene Ueno

I don't want to write about work in my blog - did plenty of that in my many emails to friends from Tokyo itself. So, I will restrict myself to my travels in and around Tokyo. But first, a snap of my home in Tokyo - a small WIMWI-like room (but extremely cozy) in an apartment hotel called Tokyu Stay, in the central part of the city (across the Sumida river from the Nihonbashi business district). I liked my room a lot, especially on each Thursday night, which was the weekly cleaning day!


My first weekend in Tokyo began with a quick trip to Ginza after office on Friday. Ginza is the poshest shopping district of Tokyo. In fact, it is reputed to have the costliest real estate in the world. Walking in Ginza on a Friday evening is a delight. The crowds are bustling, but not overwhelming. Ginza-yon-chome is a magnificent sight - flanked by the classy Mitsukoshi and Wako department stores, overlooking a mass of humanity just waiting to cross the road.


A few words about the Metro in Tokyo. The Metro is the lifeline of the city and connects virtually every nook and cranny of this sprawling metropolis of 1.5 crore people. There are some 13 different lines criss-crossing each other at various stations. Each line is distinguished by its colour, which is an easy way to identify a signboard from a distance in a subway station. Every morning I took the blue "Tozai" line from my home to my office - a short 5 minute ride. The crowds in the train during this commute, both to and fro, reminded me of Bombay - which is saying quite a lot! But the metro system is quite efficient with frequent and punctual trains.

On Friday night, I and some others went to Roppongi, the party district of Tokyo. It's a bright and gaudy area, with many strip-bar equivalents of pimps lining up the footpaths to encourage people to try out their joints. After walking for quite a while on all the four paths emerging from Roppongi Crossing, we finally acceded to one of them and I entered a strip joint for the first time in my life. Had to buy a Coke for one of the performers there - the most expensive Coke that I have bought in my life! In doing so, we missed the last train home and had to take a cab. And cabs in Tokyo cost a bomb - with a minimum fare of Rs. 250 equivalent, and a rapid ticks thereafter! The ride home cost over 3000 yen (Rs. 1200). It was the first and last time we used a cab in Tokyo (except for the ride to the bus station on the last day to catch the bus to the airport).

On Saturday, I walked in Ginza some more, and in particular went to the Sony Building to see some cool electronics and also to find a laptop. The electronic products on display in Sony's flagship store, while quite sleek and high-on-performance, were frankly not very different from what is available in Bombay. Globalisation has had this commoditising effect - good or bad, I am not too sure.

In the evening, I went to Akihabara - the electronics district of Tokyo. I looked around for some laptops, but gave up quite quickly. I also entered and strolled around in Shosen bookstore. Tokyo has many large bookstores. Shosen has eight floors of books, on topics ranging from current affairs and computer programming to manga (three floors of manga in fact!). Unfortunately for me, every single one of those thousands of books is in Japanese :( I went to Akiharabara again the next evening (while returning from Ueno Park) with Jolly. Got myself a 1 GB memory stick there - had not been able to take any snaps since leaving HK as my existing card was completely filled up and I had nothing to dump the photos into...hence the sharp-eyed will notice that none of the snaps posted in this entry actually correspond to my first weekend (April 15-16) in Tokyo.

At night, I went to Shibuya - a fashion and youth-culture oriented part of Tokyo. Jolly and C* (another intern whom I'll not name for reasons of propriety) were there too. The visit itself was not very remarkable, but I did have my first experience of eating in Mos Burger that night. Mos Burger is a burger chain in Japan (there are many local competitors to MacDonalds there - though I can't recall the names now). I found a veggie burger in that restaurant - the bun was made from rice and stuffed with seaweed, among other things. I did not like it much on my first try, but I developed a taste for it later. Had that rice burger 3-4 times during my stay in Japan - actually missing it now :) Mos Burger has a very funny tagline - I the clicked the following photo later in Kyoto.


Jolly and I went to Ueno park in northern Tokyo on Sunday. I suspect it is smaller than NY's Central Park, but still quite huge. We walked around three ponds for a while. The ponds are dirty, but the serenity of the place is quite awesome. The slightly nippy air accentuated the effect. We also went to the zoo in the park. There were many exotic animals there (penguins, polar bears, meer kats, etc.), but the experience was not a very pleasant one for me. I think the zoo is much too cramped and the animals seemed quite distressed :(