Tokyo, Japan (Apr 18-22)

Tokyo

Day 1
The flight into Tokyo is all luxury, even in coach class. They come by often for drinks, the meal is good. The TVs are filled with movies that we want to see. Best of all, the airplane has a camera in front. When taking off and landing, you can see what the pilot sees. SOOOO cool. You feel like you are in a real flight simulator.

Day 1 –
We got to our hotel, the Shinagawa Prince Hotel, in all its humongousness, and settled in. Happily, our rooms were was much bigger than we had expected them to be. We got lucky (and had a good travel agent). The hotel, in true Japanese way, had an 80 lane bowling alley (packed at all times of the day with groovy Japanese Youth), about 10 restaurants, a cinema, shopping center (3 of them actually), and much more.

Like all first nights, I was exhausted from travel. But I was also incredibly excited about being in Tokyo. At 12:30 at night I had my clothes on a ready to go…..and then decided that it was too late and we had three nights here. I needed sleep but because our air conditioner was broken, I wound up not getting anyway.

Our tour the next day was OK, but not as exceptional as I thought it would be. Our first stop was Tokyo tower, which, though the view was OK did not provide the thrill that other views had given. (In a few nights, we would be wowed by the amazing view from the Park Hyatt.) At 150 meters, we already had bunge jumped off of the height! We then went to Imperial Palace, which we could only walk for 5 minutes along the outside wall and couldn’t see anything inside. Asakusa Temple was a beautiful temple complex, with a 5 story high pagoda.

We came home, slept and prepared for our first night out in Tokyo. We were told the place to go was Rappongi. Upon arrival, we were immediately knocked over by dozens of Nigerians hocking a range of different strip clubs. We learned quickly that there were very few Caucasian woman (ratio of 10 to 1) And this pushed Caucasian guys into pretty expensive "alternatives". Strip clubs were 60 dollars to get in and 60 dollars a dance (3-4 minutes). In addition, there are clubs where you pay about the same amount to have drinks with a woman. Drinks and conversation, that’s it. And we met a woman on the street that works at one of these places. You would almost have to pay me to talk to her.

Our nights out in Tokyo were interesting, but it definitely is a different scene. Some locals we met took us to a “great club”, which had a $30 cover charge. Crowded it was. Great it was not. Located in a suburban area basement, it had a DJ spinning what would have been good live jazz/fusion music, but it was not live. It was a DJ. When the artists (on the album) would finish, people would clap. Ummm, guys, it’s a recording. Instead of dancing with each other, they faced the DJ, like lost sheep in need of a leader. And, they couldn’t dance to save their lives. So, its definitely different.

We did have some amazing experiences in Tokyo. On our last day, we took a beautiful walk though Yoyogi Park. It was Earth Day and thousands of people were all around, enjoying the ‘60s being relived, the groovy bands, the tie-die colors, the people playing drums like they were in central park, and just enjoying picnics on the endless gardens. It was an idyllic day and the people seemed happy.

Also, we went to the Park Hyatt where they filmed Lost in Translation on our last night. Except for the steep prices for drinks, we had a great time enjoying the magnificent view and meeting some interesting (though somewhat frigid) woman.