Japan Day 2-3

Japan Day 2

I’m writing this while on the Shinkansen, or Japanese bullet train.  We’re speeding out of Tokyo on our way to Kyoto, home of environmental accords and the like.  Today has been a busy day.

I woke up around 3AM after collapsing around 9PM the night before.  I found the toilet down the hall, which had the curious knob on the side and a hand washing basin on the top.  The knob was labelled in characters that I could recognize:  Big and small.  These characters I knew from Chinese.  When you twisted the knob towards Big, the toilet would flush.  I think they deliberately disabled Small.

We made our way out back into Taito City and it’s markets around 6;30AM, finding shopkeepers arriving at their posts.

On our way to find something to eat, we went into the senso-ji, a temple in Asakusa, the neighbourhood we were walking around.  The faithful brought inscriptions and gifts as offerings, bowing and tossing them to what appeared to be monks.  we watched silently from the sidelines,hands clapsed in solemn respect.  It seemed like the appropriate action.

We found a local convenience store and attempted to buy something to eat for breakfast:  I found a curry and egg bun which looked and ended up tasting much like something from a Chinese bakery in Toronto.  I really like going to supermarkets and convenience stores when I travel, it gives me an unusual insight into what people buy.  It appears the Japanese are very big on packaged items. Their ice cream freezer includes cones with the soft serve swirl already
premade and encased in a protective sleeve.  There are also packages of instant coffee, but not in the way you’d expect:  The deal comes with two cups, bundled with coffee mixture, creamer, sugar and two stir sticks, all wrapped together.

The plan, once back at the hostel, was to pack up, arrange for return in a week or so, and go towards Tokyo Station.  There we could drop off our bags, exchange our voucher for a Japan Rail Pass, key to our whole trip, then explore a bit of Tokyo before heading out to Kyoto where we could also commute to Expo in Aichi.

Getting to Tokyo Station, was not easy.  For one, it required us to get onto the Ginza line, then figure out how to transfer to the Marunouchi line, somewhat backtracking.  This of course, was during a weekday rush hour.  Escaping unscathed from the subway, we managed to find our way into the station, but not to the exchange office, which was on the other side of the building through fare control.  After much ado, we did find the office where a fantastically helpful young man got us our passes, booked us on the 17:06 to Kyoto and even directed us to the baggage storage desk with a handy map.

The baggage desk was really amusing:  It was hidden on a corner of the terminal behind several loading docks, but at least now we were free of our luggage.

We headed out towards the Imperial Palace, which was behind a tranquil moat and manicured gardens.  The lawns were being cut by grounds staff and their riding lawn mowers and each tree seemed individually positioned and trimmed.  A few were being adjusted with wood braces, which led me to believe they were being sculpted somehow to grow in certain forms.

We walked to the far end of the grounds, but only got to see tourists lining up in front of the gatehouses:  The palace was closed to visitors due to imperial functions today.  Instead, we decided to head towards the Ginza.

The Ginza is the high street of Tokyo, known for fancy shopping.  On our way, we found ourselves looking at various little restaurants and eateries tucked underneath the main train line, which rides elevated like in Berlin, cutting through the center of the city.

We wanted to get something to eat, but couldn’t decide.  Each restaurant seemed to either have pictures or elaborate plastic models of their offerings in front.  But nothing seemed appropriate until we happened upon small door in the wall of a building.  When we got inside, we found a sushi bar with a snaking conveyor belt that ran across a square of bar seating.

We were welcomed loudly and ushered into a pair of seats at the end.  Deciphering the menu, we figured that the prices were based on dish colour and that at the end, the dishes were counted and your bill tallied. I picked a few common items: Egg, salmon, clam and that rice wrapped in sweet dried tofu skin.  It was pretty good.

After the sushi bar, we proceeded to the Ginza area, where we found the Sony building.  Inside, was unfortunately only a display of existing products: Very shiny but nothing beyond what could be termed a giant Sony store.  They did have the Qualia display of inordinately high end electronics, but it was hard to tell what you really got with Qualia, especially with the $2500 headphones, which sounded honestly no better than the Sennheiser pair I grabbed from the junk bin at Tormac.  There was the concierge desk, and demonstrations of the really expensive
Qualia 004 video projector (25200 yen, about $25K).  The Qualia 016 digital camera was there too:  It’s ridiculously small, overpriced and only 2MP.  But the optics look really fantastic.

Another place we visited was the Bic Camera store, a sort of Future Shop on steroids.  The best way to describe it would be a cross between Best Buy and Honest Eds:  Not an inch of the walls was left without an ad, yet it was very bright, clean and there were hundreds of different models to choose from.  Outside was the white PlayStation Portable, recently released in Japan, while inside was everything from wall mounted air conditioners to the 17-85mm EF-S lens I wanted.

One of the most interesting things was the fact that Japanese cell phone buyers have a very large variety to choose from, which makes for fantastic customer choice.  The Bic Camera store first floor was dedicated to cellphones of various kinds.  Some items we hadn’t seen yet: Blue-ray DVD recorders, for example.  Others surprisingly trailed:  The only regular iPod on sale was a lonely 20GB model.

With a few hours before going back to Tokyo Station, we turned to the Shinjuku area which features skyscrapers and busy shopping with large department stores.  We visited the equivalent of City Hall for Tokyo, which featured a 45 story pair of towers, bristling with microwave antennas at the very top.  You could go up the very top of the tower, which we did, and peer out, seeing the sprawl of Tokyo below us.  This made for a impressive sight.

Shinjuku Station is Japan’s busiest, with 2 million riders going through every day.  We took the Metro back to Tokyo Station, and retrieved our bags from the lonely baggage desk.

Getting to Kyoto would involve a trip on the Shinkansen, or bullet train.  Using our rail passes, we got onto the Hikari 421 service, a high speed affair with a blunt nose, iconic of a bullet train as if drawn by a child raised on cartoons.  Without the elegant lines and grace of the TGV, the Hikari seems to mean business as you can feel it lunge towards corners, banking into curves.

The trip got us to Kyoto within three hours; departure and arrival was executed with military precision within a minute of posted times.

The rest of this evening’s adventures would be less rapid:  We spent about an hour trying to find the guesthouse, missing bus stops and walking around nameless streets in the dark.  However, two very friendly locals on bicycles helped us out, kindly finding the location and giving us directions.

Day 3
Today the plan was to go to Expo 2005 in Aichi, around the city of Nagoya.  Nagoya is pretty far away from Kyoto, yet by Shinkansen, it’s only about 45 minutes.  One of my favourite childhood memories was our family trip to Vancouver for Expo86, entitled Transportation and Communications.  That year, we saw displays from Germany, France and Japan about high speed rail and magnetic levitation, promising regular service within a decade.

Like the Americans, who promised the space station would be aloft by 1996, they were a bit off. But nonetheless, those memories stayed with me for a long time.  Expo 2005’s theme is more about harmonious coexistance with nature and humanity:  It’s a bit vague but features each
country’s interpretation of these goals.  The night before we were concerned there wouldn’t be any directions from Nagoya onwards to Expo.  When we got to Nagoya, bright green signs were all over, with people herding us towards the train.  We were packed in a local EMU, standing room only towards another station where we stood in line for the Linimo, a linear motor driven train.    It was hard to tell if the Linimo was just a regular train with linear motors, like the UTDC ICTS, or a real maglev which floated.  Either way, it was packed pretty heavily.

At the end of the Linimo ride, which was only two stops, was a huge crowd.  Huge doesn’t really begin to describe this crowd:  A hundred thousand people or more, all waiting in line for Expo to open.

The Expo site is set up as a ring, called Global Ring, which encircles a large pond and some key exhibits.  Around the ring, which features an elevated board walk, are international and corporate pavilions.  The most popular, it seems, are the corporate ones run by large Japanese
conglomerates, such as Hitachi and Toyota.  What’s inside that causes four hour lineups, is still unknown:  We couldn’t get a ticket for them.

We aimed for less crowded fare at the India pavilion, then onwards to the Canadian pavilion, featuring a large iron maple leaf structure out front.  Inside was a narrationless video about Canadian diversity, following six Canadians through their day with dramatic music.  I’m not sure what it really meant, but at least it was pretty.  At the end of the exhibit, you could go and play with a number of multimedia displays about Canada and have your picture taken with a Mountie or, strangely, one of a few Canadian tour guides.  Why no one asked to have a photo of me, is still up for debate.

The United Nations building featured photographs from around the world, as part of a competition called ‘Focus On Your World’.  All the photos were really good: National Geographic grade material, which appeared to be mostly from amateurs.

I had something to eat at the food court, which had stations clearly marked in very efficient signage reminiscent of Iron Chef’s narration:  I had Japanese noodles, Nagoya-style.  What Nagoya style means I’m not really sure but it had thick noodles in a broth with meat-flavoured shavings, deep fried shrimp in tempura batter, and some processed fish loaf.

We stood for a long time (almost two hours) to see the Japan pavilion, which featured a huge bamboo superstructure with an ecologically friendly building underneath with living walls and box truss construction.   Inside the main attraction was a spherical 3D simulator akin to a CAVE
environment, taking the crowd underwater and through a forest.  That drew the most crowd applause though I enjoyed the graphs on rail network development and power usage over the last fifty years which they showed in an exhibit before the cave.

Next door to the Japan pavilion was a stark metallic obelisk of building which was the Nagoya pavilion:  Supposedly there is the world’s largest kaleidoscope inside.  We also saw a frozen mammoth as part of Global House.

Afterwards, we went to Robot Station, which featured little robots that did various tasks.  The Japanese, it seems, feel that robotics is the Next Big Thing and are putting a lot of research effort into it.  They also believed AI would be the Next Big Thing in the 1980’s as part of their
Fifth Generation Systems initiative, but I’m not sure how that or this robot thing will work out.

Of note was a small pet like robot which would babysit children (but only Japanese children as it only spoke Japanese).  Guides encouraged kids to come up and pet the robot, which was shaped like an unarmed mole, blinking and twirling it’s head like Stevie Wonder.  Another display was slightly more pragmatic, with a demonstration of robot wheelchairs that used a combination of laser, DGPS, RFID tags and other sensors to drive seniors around.

At this point, Nadine and I separated to look at different exhibits:  I went to the Japan Railways Group building, where they had the MLX maglev prototype out front.  You got to walk through the cabin, which sounds a little of a disappointment except that it was the actual machine that
hit the 581 km/h speed record.  They also showed an amazing 3D video presentation, which featured footage from the maglev test track.  It was, in a word, awe-inspiring.

Wait, that’s two words.  But impressive nonetheless.  They had a stirring orchestral score driving 3D visuals where it was clear the director was thinking ‘What other cool shots could we use to blatantly abuse this 3D camera rig?’.

The video presentation, followed by a live demo of a magnetic coil and a miniature model of the test track, underscored the idea that a technology, could revolutionize a society, hopefully for the better.  The railway believed that the Shinkansen had changed Japan, and that somehow, magnetic levitation would do the same.  I wish I had that idealism some days.

We eventually headed out of the Expo site, trying an adventurous new route:  Foregoing the maglev train for a comfortable, airconditioned bus, which took us direct to Nagoya with no stops, rush or lineups.  The bus operation was very efficient, herding people right onto hundreds of clean tour buses, complete with dedicated right of way on the highways to Nagoya.

At Nagoya we had some time before the Hikari departed, so we went into yet another sushi-conveyor restaurant.  Much to my delight it was even cheaper than the previous one.