NO SHOPPING, PLEASE!

Day Two: 8/28/2016  Finally got a good night’s sleep and down to breakfast at the excellent buffet, made even better by it being on Colette’s dime this time.  The pastries continue to be excellent. Someone over here knows what they are doing.  We again sampled the strange bacon, which seems to be steamed instead of fried.  It looks virtually raw, is quite limp, but fully cooked.  This proved to be the case everywhere we ate breakfast in Japan.  Chalk it up to a cultural quirk.  Still, it tasted ok, sort of like eating a slice of baked ham.  The omelets were these little egg torpedoes with nothing inside them.  All extras were added externally.  This plate was my first go-through; they had dozens of options, including full Japanese courses of noodles, etc.  We stuck for the most part with the Western fare, at least for breakfast.

Our first stop of the day was Asakusa, Tokyo’s oldest Geisha District, and a tea ceremony that supposedly dates back to the 1400’s.  We were ushered into the premises by a non-geisha and our guide, Yoshiko, and listened and watched a demonstration of the proper etiquette.

I won’t go through all the rigmarole, but there’s a lot of steps involving washing the cup, rotating it just so, eating some bean paste to lessen the astringency of the tea, and so on.  On the wall behind her is a scroll bearing the four cardinal tenets of the tea ceremony: harmony, respect, purity, tranquility. A few intrepid group members got to go up and kneel alongside and try to mimic what she was doing.  Below, we hopefully are  properly holding the cup in an appropriately reverential manner. Hold on left hand, cradle with right.  Sigh.  We look like alms supplicants.  Just gimme a cuppa, mate.

The ceremony was interesting, but not a gripper.  Our next stop, however, simply reinforced that shopping is antithetical to a good travel experience.  We traveled across Tokyo to the shadow of the newer Tokyo Skytree broadcasting tower (not in this pic), built in 2012 and nearly twice as tall as the original back by our hotel.  We didn’t visit the Skytree, although we might have made it over and back if we were in running shape.  Instead, we “toured” the Nakamise Shopping Arcade, which was packed with humanity and lack of bargains.  This is THE Toyo tourist trap but, this being our first day of touring, it was a form of cultural experience.  Heck, nearly all the tourists were Japanese, so maybe it’s a real thing.  The gauntlet of shops are under the long parallel roofs in light green.  You enter through the large roofed gate in the foreground, and inch your way along the street to the a large temple, the Sanjorji (or something), at the far end.  But it was closed, so all you could do was tour the courtyards or peek through a screen to the inside.

Note the billboard for Asahi “Dry” beer.  They also make this in a non-alcohol version and it is remarkably good.  I had it nearly everywhere we went.  When we returned home, I searched for it in vain.  Seems it’s not imported into the U.S. at all.  Too bad, it’s hands down the best Non-A I’ve tried, and that includes all the German versions. 

Below, Yoshiko-san gives Loni some shopping tips, the mass of humanity in this mall, and the Skytree Tower.

As this was late August in Tokyo, it was hot and humid.  We purchased ice cream “burgers” to cool off a bit, but Chuck found just what he’d been looking for.  Actually, they were making peach shakes, so I couldn’t resist either.  But, honest, this was the only US fast-food detour of the whole trip.

A typical mid-scale restaurant window displaying the wares:

We all met back at the main gate to follow Yoshiko’s flag back to the bus for our next stop . . . a neighborhood shopping street that is more typical of the non-tourist areas.  Colette really needs to trim these stops from the tour.  We had an hour to kill in a totally uninteresting venue.  This is about the last carping I will do about the tour, as the rest was pretty darn good.

We motored back to the hotel and collapsed for a couple hours of shuteye before dinner on our own tonight.  The culinary adventure begins! We first thought we’d wimp out and just try the beer garden on the hotel premises, but they were setting up for a private function so we set out in the vague direction Yoshiko had recommended as the nearest collection of restaurants.  We cruised up and down small streets and alleys looking for something with understandable pictures of their dishes and reasonable prices.  We also had to ensure to avoid shellfish plates for Loni.  Some places we couldn’t figure out what was in the pictured dishes, others were already full with folks waiting, and yet others were Indian food with touts out front trying to lure us in.  Well, we didn’t come to Japan to eat Indian food no matter what.  A fruitless half hour later, we were in a dark alley, stopped at a possible spot, and promptly were joined by our Aussie friends who were similarly in the dark.  The pictures looked like stuff we could eat, $10-13 a plate.  Deal!Once in and seated, I used Google Translate on my phone to alert the waiter to Loni’s allergies.  He seemed to understand and said, I think, “no shrimpa.”  Whatever.  The whole evening was like playing charades in a foreign language, but it turned out good for all of us.  Loni and I each had a pork plate with rice, noodles, veggies and miso soup. Not exactly haute cuisine, but filling and tasty and no surprises.  Flushed with our international urbanity, we strolled back to the hotel in the balmy night air.  It wasn’t hard to find our way, as the adjacent Tokyo Tower was lit up like a Christmas tree.  As we went, it looked like the natives were just getting started on the evening.  Indeed, as we walked past the beer garden it was in full swing with live music.  Bed, for us!