Monday, October 8, 2012

Saturday, September 22, 2012: So This is Tokyo

In the small moments in my mind, I begin to wonder if my stamina will hold out for long days of sightseeing. My back, particularly, objects when I stand and objects strenuously when under strain. Perhaps I should have thought more about my 77-year-old physical abilities before booking such a physically demanding schedule. But I’m booked, and I’m going! Just armed with a full bottle of Aleve.

Today is the tour of Tokyo itself, still cloudy and threatening to rain. Umbrella? Or no umbrella? Leave my camera case in my room and take some strain off my back and carry only the camera itself? And so down to the lobby to meet (yet another) bus.

It looks like rain so I got another umbrella from the concierge and to lighten the load on my back, have brought only my camera, slung oh so touristy over my shoulder instead of schlepping the whole camera bag. Again today, the same routine: a representative of the tour company meets me in the hotel lobby and loads me into a waiting bus already filled with tourists like myself. Then to the main bus terminal where we all off-load, present our daily tour voucher at the tour office, get an assignment, with designated seat, for yet another bus for our particular tour. It seems like a logical system but there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing.

In this process, I’m again impressed by the ever-present courtesy shown by all Japanese. Even the lady who directs me to the next elevator in my hotel bows deeply after the elevator is loaded and maintains that bow until the elevator door closes. And Japan is very clean and orderly – no trash on the street, no cigarette butts. I wondered where they all go but while at a stop light this morning, I saw a man smoking on the street. Before the light changed and we moved on, he took a compact-looking thing from his pocket, flipped open the top and deposited his cigarette ashes inside. Nice. No-litter smoking.

(I’ll stop here to say that I’m typing this from a handwritten copy I wrote some days ago, and doing that on the only keyboard and computer on the Silver Shadow that allows Word, the word-processing software. The computer guy on the ship took pity on me and released the Word program so I could do this, but only on one computer and keyboard. So I have no choice but to use this one, which is very “mushy.” The keys stick and the spacer bar is not very responsive. This creates a lot of mistakes. So please bear with me as I labor on.)

I’ve given up trying understand our guide. Again, I could get only a few words. I’m sure it’s my hearing. I already know I’m losing my highs and lows. My seatmate today was Georgia, a not very attractive young lady from Australia who wasn’t particularly friendly but who was wearing a long – to her ankles – Jersey dress with wide black and wide horizontal stripes. Like a lighthouse for a fog-bound ship, this dress could be seen from some distance away and since I often missed our guide’s instructions – not being able to hear them – I just followed Georgia’s dress and she became my own personal guide, although she never knew that.

We first went to the Tokyo Tower, called “The Sky Tree,” an observation building 634 meters high and vaguely reminiscent of the Eiffel Tower, a spread-legged erector set of a building with a funny tinker toy top that constitutes a TV antenna. A swift elevator, loaded with typical Japanese efficiency, took us to the observation level where our guide shouted out, above the general din, the important buildings in the distance. Tokyo, with a population of 13 million, goes on and on. Not able to hear the guide, I took photographs of those sights I thought interesting but they all began to look much the same. Like similar cities all over the world; so much concrete. One view that caught my eye was a modern Shinto temple with an ancient cemetery around it, the temple all sloping roof with the tiny dots of graves all around it. The Sky Tree made its debut only in May of this year and its publicity says that it is “drawing international attention.” No wonder. It’s visible from all over Tokyo.

Then to an ancient tradition, a tea ceremony in a tea house 140 years old – please don’t lean against the walls – where we sat crowded together while a woman in traditional dress performed the rigid ritual of serving green tea, a somewhat thick and foul-tasting concoction that when drunk is supposed to take a year off your life. A gallon, anyone? The tea house was nestled down deep within an elaborate and carefully manicured garden with rocks and trees and azaleas, not in bloom, but smooth, with not a branch protruding to disrupt the eye. Of course, I got bitten twice by a mosquito, which crashed an otherwise perfectly controlled event. The garden is a favorite place for bridal photographs and there were two couples posing, one couple in modern dress, all white silk flowing out behind, and the other in traditional costume that our guide said was always rented, at about $3000 per day. Even getting hitched in Japan is not cheap! The route to and from the tea house was a complicated path paved with heavy stones that formed irregular steps. With my balance still not perfect, I had to be especially cautious and careful not to fall.

Moving along to lunch – in a hotel restaurant where, like Japanese restaurants in the US, there were hot cooking surfaces in the middle where ladies in traditional dress cooked little pieces of meat and vegetables in a beautifully artful combination. Each piece was then dipped in a Japanese version of barbecue sauce and then served. It was as pretty as it was delicious. And rice, of course. When in Rome, and all that jazz, I tried, reasonably successfully, to eat with chopsticks even though I had to cut some of the meat into pieces I could then manipulate with my tools. Dessert was ice cream, thankfully served with a small spoon. The meal was served with cups of green tea – another year younger? – and then brown tea, loaded with herbs that are supposed to be good for the digestion.

Although the Imperial Palace itself is carefully shrouded deep in a private park, we were able to wander through an adjacent park, carefully manicured so that, like bonsai, every tree and bush was perfect. It a long wander from the bus to a gate to the Imperial Palace grounds and I was delayed and separated from my group by a traffic lane. Thank God for Georgia’s dress! The Imperial Palace is open only two days a year and as man as 70,000 people parade through. And anyone can make an appointment to see the emperor; the wait has recently been reduced from 10 years to 6 months. In that time, it would be easy to forget what you wanted to ask him!

Then a boat trip on the river that runs from Tokyo Bay into the city, a half-hour ride under many bridges, and the ubiquitous high-rise buildings, all beginning to look the same, on each side of the river. Not much else to see but I had an interesting conversation with a woman from Hawaii intent on getting to a shop where she said one could buy an old kimono, worth $3000 for $300 from a retired former drag queen. I can’t wait!

The conclusion to our day was a walking tour – oh my by-now-aching back – down a mile-long alee with souvenir shops on each side. The process began at “the main gate” of Akakusa and progressed through the Nakamise shopping arcade to “the middle gate,” by a five-tiered pagoda, and ended at “the main hall” of a Kannon temple, a huge Shinto shrine all done in red and gold leaf. I hurried through the shopping arcade – I became rather claustrophobic in the intense crowd with proprietors hawking their wares on either side. The crowd was a little like the press of people all leaving a sporting event at the same time and I couldn’t help but thin about fans in Ireland being crushed at a soccer game.

At the Shinto temple, one can buy one’s fortune – for 100 yen, about 50 cents. In front of a high wall filled with many little drawers, you shake a long metal container, shaped like a kaleidoscope, until a long bamboo stick finds its way through a tiny hole in one end of the container. On the stick is a number that corresponds to the drawers in the wall. You open your drawer and there, in a pile, is your printed fortune. Mine could not have been worse. Here, in its entirety: “No. 39. Bad fortune. You can’t tell your request to others, having to hold it in your own mind. Misfortune happens to you repeatedly, just like fire burns your house. Trouble danger be at you continuously, you should be very careful, that you loose the most important article for your life. Your request will not be granted. The patient will get worse. The lost article will not be found. The person you wait for will not come. Stop building a house and removal. Stop starting trip. Marriage and employment are both bad.” Well there goes the lottery, and any hope for a tall, dark stranger!

After that, a drive through the Ginza district was anti-climatic. It’s actually more like Rodeo Drive than Times Square…Gucci, Tom Ford, Armani, Hermes, all crowded together like the Nakamise shopping arcade but much, much more expensive.

By the time I got back to the Imperial, I was again exhausted. I had my $16.00 vodka and tonic and went to bed. I have to stop beating myself up like this. But tomorrow is easy: pack and go to the ship and then a following day at sea. Now that’s a future I can look forward to. And all the vodka and tonics I want will be free!

Stay tuned.





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