Since we hadn’t eaten we were pretty hungry when we got off the train in Tokyo just before 7. We had no idea what we wanted to eat but about 2 blocks from the subway station, just before the market, we found the side of the street bustling with people and lined with numerous stands selling sushi, ramen, and other good looking stuff. Each of these stands probably takes up about 3 meters of space on the sidewalk (that’s 10 feet for you Americans) and the bigger places have seating for about 5 people as long as you don’t mind touching the person next to you. Most people grab food and either take it with them or eat it right on the sidewalk. Since it was pretty chilly out we decided that a particular stall looked especially good. What drew us to it was the sight of tempura which we thought we would be eating, but we then realized that they did not sell tempura by the piece but instead the tempura went into a bowl of soup with soba noodles and other good stuff. We first ordered one bowl. Since the menu was not in English and it was very likely that the guy who ran the stall spoke any English we watched two other people order then pointed to the tempura we liked and said “soba”. The guy running the place who seemed to be the cook, cashier and dishwasher worked very quickly and you could tell he did not have time for messing around. He did have another person working with him, presumably his wife, who was probably no more than 4 feet tall and whose job it seemed to be to wipe the counter down after people left. She did not stand behind the counter but instead out on the sidewalk wiping the counter as people left. The guy prepared our food in about 30 seconds, handing us a bowl of soup while shouting out a price at us in Japanese. Since the menu on the wall had nothing over 750 yen we handed him 1000 and he gave us 350 in change. We were not about to fit at the counter so we started eating right there on the sidewalk. We immediately fell in love with the dish and decided that we would not be sharing this so Chris went back for a second bowl. This time he ordered something different. An old man sitting at one of the seats ordered something with three different pieces of tempura so Chris asked for the same. It cost 750 yen instead of Jackie’s 650 yen dish but it too was really good.
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| Jackie's dish |
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| Chris's dish |
The fish portion of the market that we visited is laid out
much like the non-fish portion. Tons of
alleyways, passageways and stalls are everywhere. There are loading docks where they load trucks
with fresh fish to distribute probably all over Japan. There are people EVERYWHERE. We will attempt to describe the level of
activity and the organized chaos that we witnessed but we probably will not
give it justice. While 23 football
fields may seem large imagine cramming probably thousands of shops in
there. Now add loading docks where you
load probably all of the fish that is consumed in Japan onto trucks. Then add in all of the non-fish stalls and
restaurants, again probably well over 1000 of them. Now throw in the 60-65,000 people who work
there. Cram all of that into tiny
alleyways about a person and a half wide at its narrowest and as wide as a car
at its widest. Now put motorized
scooters into those alleyways. Throw in
some “turret trucks” which are three wheeled motorized vehicles a little
smaller than a forklift which transport goods around at dangerously high
speeds. Throw in some actual trucks in
the wider places. Then throw in a couple
of 1000 tourists getting in the way of all of this activity. These people take their jobs very seriously
and they move very quickly. We can
safely say that we probably got in the way of all 65,000 of those workers. We can probably guess that we came close to
being run over by a truck, a scooter or some other kind of motorized vehicle no
less than 100 times. That is no
joke. If you were not constantly looking
over your shoulder, to your side, in front of you, at your feet (lots of
slipperiness everywhere) and anywhere else you can think of you could get
seriously hurt at worst, or at best, yelled at.
At one point we tried crossing a street within the market. This was a wider street where two trucks
could almost squeeze by but it took us almost 5 minutes to find a break in
traffic where we could run
across. This is a road about two car
widths wide, not a 5 lane highway. 5
minutes to cross. Notice we didn’t say
safely cross.
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| Tuna eyes |
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| These are the little trucks that want to run us down |
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| Cutting a tuna |
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| Packaging and loading onto trucks |
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| Notice the blurry image...not because it is a bad shot, but because everyone is in motion. |
On the way out of the market we saw a bunch of people
including possibly a TV crew taking pictures of a guy inside a window with a
large fish. We had no idea what it was
all about at the time but the fish was huge and very impressive looking so we
snapped a few pictures ourselves and didn’t think much more of it. On Sunday, when we read the international
paper that was delivered to our hotel room, we saw the same guy on the front
page with the same fish. As it turns out the fish was a blue fin tuna weighing
222 kg (500 pounds). The tuna was bought
by that gentleman who owns a chain of restaurants that very morning at the
auction for a record 155.4 Million yen!!! In dollars that is $1.8M!!! According to the article that tuna will be
cut up and served piece by piece in sushi between 128 and 398 yen per piece, or
between $2 and $5 each.
After exploring the fish portion of the market for a bit we
headed back towards the non-fish portion which was far less crowded. We didn’t really buy anything and we didn’t
explore too much more for fear that we would want to buy something. We were happy to escape the craziness of the fish portion of the market and get somewhere where we would not be run over.
We were running low on cash, we only had
about 3000 yen left and we still needed to get back to Yokohama which would
cost us close to 2000 yen. Japan is a
cash society. Only the biggest places
really take credit cards. To complicate
things, cash for foreigners is not as
convenient to get as it is back home.
There are ATMs everywhere just like at home but only a small number of
those ATMs take foreign cards. You
typically need to find a post office to find an ATM you can use. So we tried not to spend the rest of our
money for fear we would not be able to find a post office. Then we ended up seeing something we wanted
to buy, so we bought it and now found ourselves with not enough money to get
back to the hotel. So now we had to find
a post office. We first tried a
convenience store just to try our luck and we struck out, it did not work. So we ended up first asking a woman on the street
if she knew of a close post office. We
probably had the wrong word in Japanese so she was not able to help us. Then we asked a security guard outside of a
building. Not only did he speak English
but he pointed us to a post office only two blocks away. We walked that way, got some cash, and
started making our way back to the subway.
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| ATM..notice the button on bottom right that says English..Very handy indeed. |
The subway ride back was more crowded this time but we did get one seat which Jackie took and Chris grabbed his normal spot looking out the front of the train. Before boarding we took a picture of another sign on the platform. Subways in Japan have women only cars for use during rush hour. Given the crowds on the trains we can only assume that groping and touching is a problem, thus the women only cars. The platform tells you where to board and what hours those cars are in effect.
We got back to our hotel in Yokohama a little
before 11. While Jackie talked to home
on the computer, Chris went outside to find a couple of geocaches. We finally left the hotel sometime in the
early afternoon and made our way to the Shinkansen station.
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| Our hotel in Yokohama from a distance |
The Shinkansen is the bullet train. In Japan intercity travel is only really done
by airplane for really long distances.
The train is much more convenient and in just about every case, much
quicker. Stations are usually right in
the middle of town vs airports that are usually many miles outside of
town. All local train lines radiate from
these downtown stations making transportation between major cities and then to
areas within those cities quite convenient.
The only drawback is the price. For
our particular trip, from Yokohama to Nagoya is 323 km, or 202 miles, or
roughly the distance from NYC to Boston.
While the time it takes to make this trip was only an hour and 28
minutes, the price is anywhere from 9400 to 13600 yen ($110-$160), depending on
the class of service. Had we flown the
trip would have cost probably $100 more but it would have taken us close to 2 hours
to get to the airport in Tokyo, another half hour to get from the airport in
Nagoya, plus flying time and the time you need to get to the airport before
your flight. Plus the trains run at
least every ten minutes on this route so really it is a no-brainer. The only drawback is the lack of luggage
space. At the end of each car behind the
last seat is room for up to 6 suitcases
but that space is first come, first served and there could very well be no
space available for your stuff. Overhead
space is probably even less than you would find on a plane. This is why the black
cat service that we used a couple of days ago is popular. Driving between these city pairs or even
taking a bus is likely cheaper but it would take the better part of a day.
For our trip we bought a green car ticket, which is a first
class ticket. Chris’s company encourages
this and they were footing half the bill so we went for that. The other classes or service are regular
service which gets you a seat and unreserved which gets you a ride but not necessarily
a seat. Green car is least crowded but
it is also the most expensive, in this case the $160 ticket. JR (Japan Rail), the company that owns many
of the railroads in the country, has a rail pass available to foreigners which
allows you unlimited rides on trains that JR owns within the country, including
the bullet train. The pass must be
bought before arriving in country (you can’t buy one once you get here) and for
a flat fee you ride as much as you want for either 7, 14, or 21 days, depending
on the ticket you bought. The days are
consecutive so once you use it for the first time, the clock starts
ticking. We bought a 14 day pass before leaving
but we did not activate it for this trip.
We will use it later.
The train arrived in the station right on time, we got on
and it left less than a minute later. We
quickly found our seats, put our bags on the overhead and relaxed for our trip
to Nagoya. Before the conductor came
around for tickets a woman came by with moist towels to wipe our hands. This seems standard in Japanese restaurants
and in the green car. A girl later came
around with a cart selling food and beverage and we bought a beer, some
chocolate covered almonds and some green tea ice cream. We still hadn’t eaten lunch but we planned on
an early dinner once we got settled in Nagoya.
Along the way Chris made the comment that it felt like we “were going
home” to our hotel in Nagoya. Of course
nothing beats your own house, in our case back in MA, but the familiarity of
the hotel in Nagoya (we spent 3 months there in 2007) made it kind of feel like
home to Chris. Jackie did not agree.
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| inside of the bullet train |
We arrived at the Nagoya station right on time at 3:11 PM. We grabbed our stuff and headed inside the
busy station to our hotel at the Nagoya Marriott which is 59 stories high. The building that the hotel is in is one of
two twin skyscrapers that sits on top of the station. The non-hotel building is an office
building.
We made our way to the 15th floor where the front desk is located and quickly checked in. As was the case the last time we were here a 4 foot something 80 pound Japanese girl approached us to take our luggage which likely weighed more than her. She put our bags on a cart while we checked in. They gave us a room on the 30th floor which turns out was right next to the room we stayed in for 3 months back in ’07. Our luggage had been delivered the day before which we last saw at the airport in Tokyo and it was waiting for us in our room. Our room has a view looking west towards some mountains where we get a very nice sunset each night. It also overlooks the train station which including the bullet train is 20 tracks wide and has a train arriving at the rate of a train every minute or so until around midnight when they mostly stop running. We seem high enough that the sound of the trains is not really an issue. You can hear them coming and going but they don’t sound their horns and are not at all annoying.
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| Our luggage with the Black Cat tags still on them |
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| View from our room |
After settling in we headed downstairs to the basement area
of one of the attached department stores.
The basements of department stores in Japan all have 2-3 floors of food
for sale. You can buy just about
anything, already prepared, so we got some gyoza, a pork cutlet with miso sauce
sandwich (Pork cutlet with miso sauce is a Nagoya regional specialty) and some
spring rolls. We then took off our shoes
and started unpacking.
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