TravelMoxie JAPAN

In Retrospective (Part II)

This is the second in a series of posts that will be dealing with the time spent in Japan before I was able to write it down here. I'm hoping that I will be able pull my thoughts together in an organized manner as well as offer all my possible insights when they come. So, let's start then.

Tsukiji Fish Market

Tsukiji is the home of a vast fish market in the Tokyo area and we woke up extra early for this day because most of the action that one we see there occurs about or around 5 o'clock in the morning. I remember we were hopping trains left and right in order to make sure that we'd get there on time but it didn't exactly work out as planned. As it turns out sometimes even the Japanese people get a little mixed up about which trains take you where. We had asked a few station attendants for some directions and they all seemed to be giving a small case of the run-around. I think it was most likely due to the fact that there are a multitude of ways that you can get to places but some might be more convenient than others. As soon as we arrived there and walked up the flight of stairs that lead to surface streets you could already smell the fish, which to me was a very welcome smell and to others not so much.

I almost couldn't tell exactly where the fish market was because the entrance seemed more like it was made exclusively for car traffic (which is where we entered from). Carefully avoiding all the incoming traffic we passed the area that would have held the auction which Tsukiji is most famous for. As early as they can people will arrive and buy off auctioned fish that has just been caught and hauled in to the city, from what I hear its quite a frenzy and unfortunately for us we missed one too many trains for us too witness it first hand. In either case we kept walking to the back where many stands are set up in which vendors sell everything from cutlery to fresh vegetables. In this general area it was easy to see how busy these workers were because they never stopped moving! Almost everyone, save for the shop owners who were stationed in their respective places, had something to do and was doing it! All in all the fish market was a very busy place that could lead to you getting run over by a forklift or two if you weren't careful. A must see though for travelers of Tokyo.

General Tour of Tokyo

This day we were all set for a tour of Tokyo. We were shuttled from place to place and at most stops actually got off the bus. We visited a place that sold various articles of jewelry that were pearl related. If my memory serves me correctly they also had some manner of award that they had received numerous times. Tokyo Tower was another place that we visited and in that funny twist of fate I eliminated one of the things that I absolutely had to do in Tokyo. For starters, Tokyo Tower is like the Eiffel Tower of Japan not just that it looks similar to it but that its a very big tourist spot. When we rode up to the observation deck which was somewhere past 200M we saw not only many tourists but students that seemed to be on some kind of school trip as well, even Japanese natives visit places like that. If you stop to think about it, it still makes a lot of sense. I can easily say that I have not seen 'everything' in America so there'd still many places that I would be a tourist at, Japan was no different.

Probably the most special of places that I visited during the tour, Tokyo, and all of Japan maybe was Asakusa. Asakusa is a small area within the Taito-Ku district in Tokyo that's home to a very impressive temple know as the Sensoji Temple that we were able to go inside. To get there we rode a ferry the carried us through 12 different colored bridges and as soon as we got off we walked through the Nakamise Shopping Arcade which was a long line of stands of either side of us as we walked down a long long stretch of land before the temple. I remember that it had been raining for a good portion of the day and luckily for myself I brought my umbrella for the unlikely event that it did. When we got to the temple I was already pouring wet but I didn't even care by that time because it was far beyond impressive to see it up close. We ran into many young students who were very eager to practice their English with us which was a really awesome experience because it gave us a great chance to practice Japanese as well. Upon going inside the temple we learned how people pray and pay their respects and even gave it a try ourselves. In words I almost can't describe what that day was like but like most other things I saw while in Tokyo, Asakusa is an absolute must.

~ Joshua

Posted on July 18, 2007