October 9 – Tokyo, Japan

Giants stadium

Weather

lunch!

– 22º, rain until about 2, pleasant evening,
16º

Steps – 17,985

11 hours 31 min of daylight

Latitude – Calgary 51º, Tokyo 35º (Los Angeles is 34º)

Last day in Japan. Home tomorrow. We made the most of the last day.

The Toyko Giants baseball stadium is 4 subway stops away from our hotel, which about an hour’s walk. We decided to take the subway there and walk

at shrine

home – the rain was supposed to stop later in the

day time route

day. On the way home it had stopped more or less. A subway ticket was about 2CAD one way.

The stadium area is a whole entertainment district complete with a roller coaster. They had numerous Giants’ shops, each specializing in one type of gear or other…jerseys in one, t-shirts in another, hats in yet another. We both got a shirt; Chris also got a hat. I’ve found indoor shops here blast heat. Between the moisture in my jacket and the heat, I was sweltering!

Shopping made us both hungry and thirsty. We found a baseball stadium food court, which at first I wasn’t too into, but it turned out to be great. We settled on 2 beers, 2 kinds of dumplings, and spring rolls – YUM!

Shinjuku street crossing

After lunch we popped into a Pachinko

Shinjuku streets

parlor. I’m still not totally sure what Pachinko really is, but what I’ve figured is that it’s kind of like a slot machine/video game/almost zero strategy game. Gambling for money is illegal in Japan, but Pachinko parlors get around this. Most people playing were men, and on their phones at the same time. It seems like you win tiny silver balls that can be redeemed for prizes and then in a separate

Izkaya sarea

location, outside of the parlor can be converted to cash. These prizes are then sold back to the Pachinko parlors. I may have some de
tails wrong…google it.

On the way home we wandered through another large shrine. While wandering through Japan, you tend to stumble upon temples and shrines. We learned that Tokyo has somewhere around 1,450 temples and shrines – temples = Buddhist, shrines = Shinto. But also learned that, they can also be together. Many Japanese people consider themselves to be both Buddhist and Shinto.

this is 2 thirds of the bar!

Once at the hotel, we hit the lounge for afternoon tea and then napped.

grapefruit juicing for cocktail

The evening’s activity was “Tokyo Bar Hopping Night Tour in Shinjuku”. The Shinjuku area of Tokyo is 3 stops away from our hotel or an hour’s walk. The plan was to take the subway both ways. We got off at Shinjuku Station – this is the world’s busiest subway station; more than 3.4 million people use this station EVERY DAY. That’s about 2 times all of the people in Calgary going through

karaoke crew

there each day!!

We were about half an hour early for tour but found the meeting point and wandered around for a while. Shinjuku is

the next Japanese idol

a commercial area with tons of restaurants, bars, shops, and karaoke bars.

This is the first time since being in Tokyo that we are in tourist-ville. Before this evening, we are usually the only people around who look like us. In Sinjuku there are many tourist looking people.

We finally met with Kuzu, our guide, and thought we might be the only ones on

COCKROACH!!

the tour because the other 3 were LATE! In fact, we met one of the other participants at the first Izakaya. There ended up being 5 of us (all from Canada) which was a great number.

random tiny alley

We got to our first stop, an Izakaya by snaking our way behind Kuzu through super narrow, smoky, back streets lined with the tiniest restaurants - Izakayas. Most of the places were grilling skewers, hence the smoke. I had minced chicken (kind of like a ground chicken patty) that came with a raw egg yoke for a dip – normally, I’m not too into egg, but this was interesting. I also had grilled chicken skewers. This was all washed down with a plum wine and an oolong tea cocktail, I think it was just tea, which was just fine with me!

We wandered again through the Shinjuku streets, stopping a few times for Kuzu to tell us a few bits of interesting info and to take some photos. The whole

Shinjuku area was pretty packed.

At one point we found the Godzilla head. This thing ‘goes off’ throughout the day, I’m not entirely sure how often. Like the transformer unicorn thing we saw on Sunday, this drew a crowd of people recording, but only lasted a few minutes.

new Japanese friends

We finally made it to our second stop on the tour – a dumpling spot. According to Kuzu, this place used to be mostly filled with locals, but now is filled with tourists. I had chicken dumplings and a couple of chicken drumstick things, that weren’t drumsticks at all, but a chicken meatball on a drumstick covered in skin…delicious. I drank a pear wine, a plum wine and a hoppy. Hoppy is basically Japanese non-alcoholic beer.

Our last stop was down a tiny back alley at the smallest bar I’ve ever been at in the world! This place couldn’t have been more than 75 square feet! 3 of the 5 seats were taken up by 2, 60ish Japanese men in suits and one Australian guy all listening to Billy Joel videos. Behind the bar was a high shelf lined with jars of booze, each flavoured with cockroach, viper, sea cucumber, lamprey, and other

viper

unrecognizable creatures – oh and…horse penis!

I had a viper and soda, and Chris had a sake. All 5 of us on the tour were fascinated by the creature flavoured booze. I couldn’t leave without tasting the c

2 Japanese and 5 Canadians

ockroach. The cockroach wasn’t included with the tour, so Chris opened his wallet so Kuzu and I could try the cockroach. These were just shots…Kuzu was lucky and got a whole cockroach in his…I only got a couple of legs. Can’t say exactly what this tasted like kinda just…booze. By this point,

giant sake bottle

Kuzu told us “the tour is now over”…the way he said it was so matter of fact, it was pretty hilarious. Chris was chatting with the guy from Australia and I was chatting with one of the Japanese guys who insisted I sit on his bar stool.

Although the tour was officially over, we figured we couldn’t just leave our conversations, so we had one last beer. The guy I was talking to spoke a bit of

overflowing sake

English so we could communicate a bit. He said he knew 2 Canadian cities…Toronto and – I figured he was about to say Vancouver, but he said CALGARY. He said many Japanese people know Calgary because of the Olympics.

Although I could have stayed there all day…it was time to head for home. I didn’t have high hopes for the toilet facilities
here but had to go…the bathroom was tiny, but FABULOUS. I was prepared for a squatter down the  back alley, but there was a full-on toilet that was clean with paper, soap and a sink attached to the back of the toilet, so the water used for hand washing was used for flushing!

tiny alley with a tinier bar

following Kuzu

We were headed back to the subway when we saw another small, but not as small (maybe 100 square feet) bar with 2 other people in it that we just had to stop at. We had a beer, listened to the 2 Japanese guys sing karaoke, sing karaoke with the guys ourselves and chatted with the guys and the bartender from Venezuela. The guys didn’t speak English, so the bartender translated. This was another super fun experience, but it was so late,

dumplings and chicken

and I could not drink another drop – good thing for all the food, so finally we headed to the subway.

We bought tickets and found our platform

Godzilla

when a worker came by to tell us no more trains were coming today! WTF!?! According to google maps there should have been one more train, but…there wasn’t.

It was actually super easy to find a taxi right outside of the subway station, probably lined up because the subway was OVER. Anyway, 10 minutes in a

Shinjuku street scene

cab and we were finally back at the hotel. WHEW!