Ellen Isaacs: Travel journal: Travel home

Nogi-jinja flea market
Our flight left today at 4pm, and we were leaving the hotel at noon, so we just had the morning. Walendo stayed in the room and finished packing and generally futzed. I'd read about a flea market that was walking distance from us, Nogi-jinja flea market, so I decided to go check it out. I was out by around 8:30am and the streets were very quiet. I did see a few people jogging, which we hadn't seen before. The flea market turned out to be tiny, with maybe six or seven "stalls" where people put down a blanket and some tables on which they displayed their stuff. Maybe it fills in more later in the day. It was next to a small local shrine, so I checked that out too, seeing a mini-version of the wooden plaques with wishes, but this one had only Japanese writing. There was also a globe made of wires with pieces of paper tied on it, much like the one at Sensoji. It was interesting to see these customs repeated in a neighborhood shrine. I went back to the flea market, not expecting to find anything, but then I saw a simple wood abacus and thought it was kind of cool. I figured I'd learn how to use it, which I've always been curious about. It was much more than I'd expect at Y1,000 ($8), and probably I was supposed to bargain but I didn't feel like it so I just paid. So I made some Japanese man happy. (I later learned it's a soroban, or a Japanese abacus, which has only one bead in the top section instead of two. This may be a little more difficult to learn, but I'll figure it out.)

Local shrine by
flea market
I walked back and spent the rest of the morning packing and catching up with this journal. The trip home was reasonably straightforward (with one mishap). We took a cab to the Hotel ANA, where we got the bus to the airport (Y3,000 or $24 each). Once again, the people were very helpful and the bus left right on time. It was kind of sad as we drove out of the city, since we'd had such a nice time in Tokyo and really came to like it, especially the people. We'd like to come back again, this time maybe to Kyoto and the countryside.

Long hallway of people
movers at Narita Airport
We'd tried to check in online at the hotel but they wouldn't let us (maybe because we were in another country?) so we had to wait in the long line to check out, but it moved along. We returned the cell phones and started heading to the gate when suddenly Walendo realized one of our carry bags was missing. We quickly retraced our steps and found the bag sitting on the floor where we'd left it, with a policeman standing by it. We told him with great relief that it was ours and he asked us to show proof. This stumped us for a bit since there weren't many papers in it, but then we remembered that the little camera was in it so we showed him photos with us in it. He let us take it. What a relief. After that we got to the gate and the flight home was fine. Walendo was happily absorbed in his tiny 2-inch screen, watching TV shows and movies.

We'd left at 4:00 Sunday afternoon and arrived back in San Francisco after an 8.5 hour flight at 9am Sunday morning. How odd. But it was nice to get the day back that we'd lost. It took forever to get our bags but finally we made it out of the airport, picked up our car, and had a very happy reunion with our dog Cassie and her dogsitters Eric & Tania. We were glad to hear she'd been a good girl. After stopping at a grocery store, we finally made it home at 1pm, and quickly took a nap. My advice to get back onto the local time is to sleep for four hours and then force yourself to get up and stay up until a normal bedtime. Then sleep a full night's sleep. That worked for us.

Overall impressions and observations:

Our strongest impression of Tokyo is that the people are exceptionally kind, helpful, and accepting. Everyone we met was friendly and tried to be helpful in any way they could. Most times when I stood somewhere with a map looking around me, someone would come up and offer to help. Most people spoke at least a few words of English and didn't seem to mind that we didn't know Japanese. Even though we were sure we were violating conventions, we never had a feeling that people were upset or impatient with us. The people at the Japanese company, whom Walendo got to know a little bit, seemed to have a good sense of humor and frequently laughed and joked with his group. It's more than just politeness. I think of the Brits as exceptionally polite and helpful to strangers, but in Japan, I also felt a sense of acceptance that made me feel comfortable in this foreign place. I'm sure people must get angry here, but it doesn't seem to express itself in public. (I wonder if people are generally happier living in a place where they are by default kind and polite to each other, or whether you just come to take that for granted.)
The city itself isn't particularly pretty and it doesn't seem to have a main downtown area with a major landmark. It's more about neighborhoods with attractions in each area.
The city feels very safe. People seem to follow conventions and any sense of rebellion shows in the outlandish outfits worn by the younger people. In the subways people walk on the left, and on the escalators they move left if standing so people who want to walk the stairs can pass on the right. (Out on the street they were a little less consistent about choosing a side to walk on.) I don't remember seeing any graffiti and there was rarely any litter on the street (which is odd since we could never find any public trash cans and everything is individually wrapped, so how does that work?). Usually when I put my photo backpack down to change lenses I put it right back on again, but in this city it felt okay to leave it on the ground next to my feet, comfortable that no one would try to steal it. All this and yet the people are kind and tolerant, not rigid and judgmental.
In the metro and in some other public areas there are strips of bumps in the floor or sidewalk. They generally follow the path of the stairs or sidewalk and the pattern changes when you get to an intersection or other barrier. We learned that these are for blind people. I was surprised how common these were. I never saw a blind person using them, though I wish I had.
Most people seemed to wear black, white, or other subdued colors. The standard outfit for men was a black suit with a white shirt and dark tie. We saw this everywhere. Women wore skirts or pants but generally of subdued colors. Most women dressed stylishly, whether in a conservative skirt or a funky long sleeveless loose top over jeans and a shirt and maybe some clunky boots. Lots of women wear high-heeled shoes that are impractical in a city where you have to do a lot of walking.
Not many private cars
on busy street in Shinjuku
The streets seemed to be filled mostly with buses and taxis and not a lot of private cars. This is probably because the metro and train systems are so good. And maybe also because of the next point.
I'm not sure how people find addresses in this city. Tokyo has a bunch of wide boulevards and many very narrow streets coming off of them. The maps we saw labeled only the major boulevards. I never saw a street sign on any of the narrow streets, although there's generally so much writing that looks like advertising on each block, maybe some of those include street names. We were told that the addresses, given in three digits (e.g. 8-3-1) indicate first the region of the city, then an area, then the building, but the regions aren't that regular or predictable. Whenever we went somewhere by taxi, someone would bring a map of where we were going and show it to the cab driver, who would study it a while before heading off.
All the cabs had GPS displays in them, but they didn't use them for routing, only to track where they were. I'm not sure why they didn't route with them.
There's a lot of clever technology and design in use here for everyday things. One example is the toilet, which was designed so you could wash your hands in the water that was used to refill the tank (described in the Day 1 entry). Another example is that in our elevator, you could turn off a button to a floor after you'd pressed it if you realized you'd made a mistake, an obvious improvement. At the Japanese company cafeteria, food was served in small dishes with RF tags, so when you check out, they can swipe the whole tray and quickly get the price for all the items.
I'd mentioned that even though I'd always say "arigato" (thank you), I hardly ever heard them say it as well. Instead, we'd get a flurry of words ending in something like "animaaaaas." (It's possible that flurry of words started with a very quick arigato, but I was hardly ever sure.) Same goes for "konichiwa" (hello). The one phrase that did seem to have the right effect was "sumi masen," which means "excuse me." When we said that, we immediately got someone's attention. They also use "hai" (yes) all the time, to mean "yes" or "yeah," but they also use it when we might say "okay" or "sure" and sometimes even "good," as in, "that's good, thanks."
People say how expensive Tokyo is, but we found that most prices were comparable to the States, at least the San Francisco area. Our hotel was a great buy at $150/night for a studio apartment in a nice area. Groceries cost about the same as in the US. Meals varied a lot as they do here, but when we went out for sushi or yakatori, I think we spent about $20-$30/person (without drinks), which is no big deal. I'm sure the fancy group meals were a fortune, but that would be the same in the States as well. Taxis weren't unreasonable. All in all, unlike in some places in Europe, prices in Tokyo weren't a big issue.

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