Tokyo Electric, Zen and Fishy

Hi everyone,

Yesterday, we decided to visit Akihabara, which is the electric city. We suffered complete sensory overload. The ads, the music, it was all very stimulating, and oh so cool. Surprisingly, the prices were not much better than they are at home. We took quite the detour to get there, but thankfully found a massage chair display, where I relaxed, and Ilana was in pain from the chair. We also went out for lunch around there, which was quite good.

Afterwards, we decided to go to Meiji Jingu (The Meiji Shrine). It was spectacular. We wandered about for a while before getting there, but once we did it was absolutely worth it. Essentially, upon the emperor's death in the 1920s, a huge forest was planted in his honour. The planted trees are now indistinguishable from a natural forest. We also paid our respects by following the directions before entering (okay, after we realized what we were supposed to do, so after we left for the first time). It was serene.

At night we went out for dinner and then decided to look for a bar around the hostel. This part of town is rather dead, but we did end up in a small Japanese bar with a few other hostel dwellers. It was a lot of fun, as going out tends to be.

Today, we woke up early (see 8am) to go to the Tsujiki Fish market. There was no way we were going to make the 5am tuna auction. We walked into the market, basically through a warehouse, to get to the main area. We saw a whole lot of live and dead fish. It smelled something fierce, but was really cool to see. We also watched a man cut up a fish. Business was quite brisk, especially at the various sushi restaurants (extraordinarily expensive). We walked into one, which seemed reasonably priced, and they refused us based on race. They handed us a printed card which said if you don't speak Japanese, we won't serve you. A very nice Japanese lady offered to help, but we could tell we weren't wanted. In fact, an older lady was busily wagging her finger at us as soon as we arrived.

After our sushi search (and a quick store bought sushi snack) we made our way to Odaiba, which is an island directly east of Tokyo. We took the light train. The public transportation in this city is amazing! There were a few shopping malls and Sega world (which we did not enter). (insert something about monkeys and handstands). We crossed the street and went to the palette mall. This houses a Toyota demonstration. We rode in an EV car which drives itself (so cool). We also saw some personal robots. We also rode the ferris wheel to get a nice view of the city.

A few things we noticed in Tokyo:

-everyone has a similar phone, and the phones are huge to accomodate the vertical text
-everything is incredibly organized, people line up single file to wait for escalators
-everyone works incredibly late, it is not unusual to see people in suits at 9 or 10, and again at 8.
-everyone has an umbrella, and no one wears a raincoat
-society seems very gendered, men hang out with men a lot and women with women

Thanks for reading!