Wednesday January 22, 2003 ....
Well I woke up after a nice nights sleep in a good bed. Considering my previous day’s sleep was done in bus seats and cramped on a plane with 400 other people I enjoyed it.
My plan for my first full day in Tokyo was to meet my friend Ai and her boyfriend Nathan at 11 Am for lunch. I think Ai is my longest continuous penpal, we’ve been writing for about 1 year or so. She is a very nice girl about 25 years old from Fukuoka but living in Tokyo working in the travel industry.
The Four Seasons Chinzan - So hotel is located in a residential neighborhood of Tokyo. So I decided to explore the area and walk the 20 minutes down the road to the Mejiro JR train station where I would meet them rather than take the taxi to the station. It was a nice walk and interesting to see how smaller businesses operated along side of schools and houses. It was different than the usual commercial districts I would see on my trip. Urban suburbs kept up
neat and orderly versus the downtown commercial districts one usually see's I suppose. I had to get used to seeing traffic drive on the other side of the road than I am used to I never did quite figure out which side of the road the oncoming traffic would be coming from. I tried to mentally make a note to keep to the left side of the sidewalk also but I discovered on my trip that it is a free for all on the sidewalks and the bicycles will do what they had to weave in and out of traffic. Yet for the most part the bicycle riders (and there are many of them of all ages) are orderly and not reckless. It was interesting to see Pizza hut on 1 side of the street and Domino’s almost directly on the other side of the street, each with their squadrons of delivery scooters parked inside ready to deliver.
I passed an area located near a Women’s college and it was nice to see an influx of young mostly attractive girls walking to college. I found a bakery and of course I stopped in to get some pastries for breakfast. Hmmm a nice roll with cheddar cheese chunks baked into it and a Chocolate croissant to boot. Nothing like getting Powdered sugar and flaky croissant flakes all over your sweater as you are walking. But who cares, it hit the spot! later on I found a pastry Shop on the other side of
the street and I bought an individual raspberry cake that we would share after lunch. I stopped by a koban (Police Box) and I asked the Policeman in my broken Japanese If I was close to Mejiro station and he assured me that I was -- 500 meters down the street -- oh oh time to do a quick metric conversion
ha ha ha.
I made it to the station and I plowed through the Japan times in my bag, as I waited to meet Ai and Nathan. Japanese newspapers at least the English editions that I got from the hotel mostly are a little bit wider than standard American editions but they are a lot thinner and generally lacking in content compared to their American counterparts. 10 minutes and
you have read the paper cover to cover. Ah there is Ai and Nathan we got organized and I told them that I did not have any plans other than to see them. I used my rail pass
for the first time and we took the train a few stops to the Shinjuku area and got off. Shinjuku is one of the commercial areas of Tokyo with the biggest skyscrapers.
After telling them that I had seafood allergies we decided to go for Indian curry. It was very James Bondish though -- actually kind of fun. we entered a game arcade full of machines to try to win Winnie the Pooh stuffed toys. It was just like any game arcade in the states except we got about 1/3 of the way in and we went to an elevator on the side wall. That took us upstairs to the Indian restaurant -- welcome to a totally different tranquil world than downstairs full of arcade noise. I would have never thought that the restaurant would have been there.
We had a nice lunch and we talked about many different topics. Nathan (from Wisconsin) met Ai while he was attending college (term in Tokyo). he majored in languages finished
his degree and returned to Ai where he is now teaching English somewhere in the Tokyo area. he certainly is a lucky guy! It was nice to pick his brain about how his daily life is. What did he miss the most from America -- Why good cheese of course. he gave me a little insight about his teaching career too. Then Nathan had to depart and go to work but Ai had the rest of the day to spend with me.
We went off to the Tokyo metropolitan government towers picked 1 of the 2 towers and we went to the 50 Th. floor observation level. It was free. I liked it as I have been to many of the tallest towers in America also, to do the same thing and see the sights. It was slightly hazy out
though so the view was limited but I wasn’t complaining Ai pointed out where she lives approximately and we talked a little about sizes of our respective apartments and rents. Ai
spent about 1/2 a year in San Diego and she loves Santa Monica too. needless to say she is an outgoing friendly girl and her English was excellent.
