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August 29, 2004: Japan Trip Day 2 |
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August 28
Flight to Japan |
I was happy to undertake this trip to Japan for Pervasive. The one other instructor who could have opted to take it preferred to stay home and spend Labor Day with his family in Roundrock, and in any case he doesn't like to travel long distances. So I got it, and this will be my first trip to Japan since the R&R trip I took there from Korea in 1970 and the stopover I made there on my way home in 1971. I can only imagine that things have changed a great deal; I was actually surprised by how much they seemed the same.
Flight to Japan and Arrival at Narita Airport
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Riding the Airport Limousine Bus into Tokyo
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The bus was moving so rapidly that I didn't think pictures out the window would really turn out well, so all I took were movies on the way into town. As it turned out, they were pretty plain, but you might want to use the links below to view them in any case:
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Getting to My Room in the Royal Park Hotel
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First of all, Narita Airport is about thirty miles or so east of Tokyo near the town of Narita, and to get into the city, the bus heads basically due west. Just across (to the west) of one of the small rivers that divide up the city is the airport bus terminal and the Park Royal Hotel. This aerial view is about eight miles side-to-side, so you can see that the Hotel was only a couple of miles from both the Imperial Palace (a location I have visited before), the offices of AG-TECH (the company where I will be doing the training) and the Ginza (that very upscale shopping and entertainment district which I have also visited before). Tokyo Tower is about four miles away, southwest of the hotel. The commercial center of the city is west of the Imperial Palace and Tokyo Tower another few miles- just outside the aerial view used here.
I'll repeat this aerial view on later pages when I think it might help you (and me) chart my trips around the city.
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In the last section on this page, I'll talk about my first walk around the neighborhood near the hotel; the area I am talking about is north of that major street and extends out of the picture on the north and east. I didn't think that an aerial view of that part of the neighborhood would be particularly interesting for you; it all looks the same on Google Maps, and it would be impossible for me to more than generalize about where the restaurants or shops that I visited were located. The one place I WAS able to locate, and have marked on this aerial view, is the noodle shop where I had dinner that night.
While you are looking at this aerial view, note the buildings that I have circled; you will see them in a couple of the pictures that I took from my room at the hotel, but when I was there, in 2004, the buildings were under construction, giving you some idea of when the satellite image was taken. (You will be able to deduce that the view from my window was towards the neighborhood pictured here.)
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My room was fairly small, but I have come to expect that in center city hotels all over the world; I had an even smaller room last time I was in New York city. But it was certainly more than adequate. there was a comfortable bed, with bedside controls for the lights and television (not much good, although there was precisely one English-language station- CNN). And the little desk area was fine for my computer. (I have already turned it on to the place I left off on the plane working on some new course materials for Pervasive.)
The afternoon was kind of yucky- overcast and drizzly- so the first pictures I took from the windows aren't all that great. Here is the view northwest and here is the view northeast. Remember the buildings I circled on the aerial view? Well, here you can see them still under construction.
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Exploring the Neighborhood and Getting Some Dinner
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I turned off the main street and headed into the rabbit warren of side streets; these were the really interesting places as I remember from wandering around Seoul and Tokyo over thirty years ago. Right away, I was greeted from a reminder of my last trip here, a reminder that has been the subject of anecdotes that I've told through the years since my last visit. I came across a little neighborhood restaurant, and, right out front was its menu showcase. The showcase is full of plastic replicas of the dishes served inside, and from my last visit here, I know that the artists who fashion those plastic replicas work from examples of the actual dishes- endeavoring to make the fake dish look EXACTLY like the dish they are copying. It is something of an art, and firms that can provide good plastic replicas are in high demand. For example, if the dish the artist was copying had three pieces of pork floating in the soup, you can be CERTAIN that the plastic replica will have exactly those three pieces of pork in exactly the right positions.
There are stories told of this process, and I read a magazine article about it some years after my last visit. In that article, one of the most amusing stories was that when new cooks come into these establishments, they are often given the plastic replicas and told to copy them in exact detail when they actually prepare the dish! Talk about life imitating art!
Just down the street from this little restaurant, I stopped to buy a "shrimp stick" (at least that's what the little menu called it in English) from a small vendor stand. It turned out to be a few small shrimp battered and deep fried. It was really quite good. And just across the street from that was a florist shop, with its flowers and plants still out on display for the evening shoppers to pick from. I took a few pictures of some of the colorful plants because I thought that Fred might like to see them, and I have put thumbnails for these pictures below. You can see the full-size images by clicking on the thumbnails:
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I wandered around a bit more, stopping at a convenience store for a soda and dessert, and then headed back to the hotel, where an hour later I finally got to bed.
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August 29, 2004: Japan Trip Day 2 |
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Return to Main Index for Japan Trip Pictures |