The Building Got Me

My office building in Tokyo is sort of crazy. First of all, it is impossible to get into the building at off peak hours as a first time visitor. Also, all the doors are push doors when I am expecting pull doors and vice versa. Even the door to my bathroom in my hotel room opens outwards, which is a little weird.

At about 6 pm or so, I learned not to take the stairs the hard way. I went into the stair well to get one of the other floors of the Google office and realized that the doors are all lock behind you and nobody comes into the stair well to let you out. I figured that I would just go to the bottom floor and take the elevator but the bottom floor just led to some emergency shelter or something of that sort and then I had to climb back up to the 6th floor and start knocking on the door to our office. Luckily, it wasn't too long before some nice person let me in again.

The last thing that got me was that you need a visitor card to get into the building on the first day and then you need to give that visitor card up to a machine when you leave the office. My main visitor card would not start working until the second day and I didn't quite realize this until I left for dinner but left my stuff in the office on the first night. Consequently, there was no way for me to get back into the building even with another Googler (because of this machine) to get my stuff. I did manage to sneak in though so all was not lost.

Meeting new people

Today was the first day at the office. I usually try not to talk about work in my travel blogs but I might stray from that a bit during this trip. Since I have been in Tokyo, I haven't heard my morning alarm clock go off. I am usually up and out the door before the time that I set my alarm because I wake up way too early due to jet lag. I got to the office at 7 am and realized that I couldn't get into the building without going through a lot of bureaucracy, and that the office wouldn't officially open for another 2 hours. So, I managed to find a nice little cafe with some eggs for breakfast and some wifi and camped out there.

It was pretty cool to come into the office and actually see a familiar face from Mountain View. I had expected to see noone I knew here, but perhaps make some friends in the office. Little did I know that I would already have a connection to hang out with.

After work today I went out with some coworkers for dinner at a ramen restaurant nearby. It was pretty good.... spicy soup with ramen and pork. Later, we went out for drinks at a couple of the local bars. One of the bars we went to was a funny little place, and I mean that pretty literally. This place was a very tiny bar restaurant with about 3 seats on the bottom floor and then you can climb some steep steps to get to about 3 tables on the second floor. The guy working there will bring drinks and food at request. It's a very rustic wooden shack with low ceilings and dismal incandescent lighting. I felt like I was really experiencing Japan though.

Experience Japan

Today started off with me waking up just a half hour later than yesterday. It gave me an early start to go and see the imperial palace gardens. This was an amazing garden area and park area inside the imperial grounds. The garden is the only place that is open to the public right now, but it is well worth the stroll around the area. It's extremely hard not to take amazing pictures with such nice scenery. I spent a few hours walking around and taking in the scenery and also made it to Yasakuni Shrine which is nearby.

After a quick lunch, I went to my first Sumo Wrestling Tournament event. Today is the first day of a 15 day long May tournament, and I got tickets to see it. The event starts early in the morning and fights happen all day long. The inexperienced wrestlers are usually in the morning and the main attraction is in the afternoon. I got there at about 1 pm so I saw a little bit of the morning event. People really got excited at around 4 when the larger and more experienced fighters came in. After watching 5 hours of match after match, I think I finally figured out the Sumo Wrestler's 5 minute ritual performance before actually starting the 10 second bought. There are 3 times that a wrestler enters the ring before the fight actually starts and each time includes throwing white chalk into the ring, slapping himself in various places multiple times, stomping the ground, squatting, practicing the initiating ground touch, and in general synchronizing his movements so that he looks good. But really, how good can you look when your 500 lb body falls 3 feet off the ring mound and onto some poor guy sitting ringside in the audience.

Adventures

Today was awesome. I think I figured out this place.... yeah right. Here are some of the main visits:

Tsukiji Fish Market:

Since I was jet lagged I got up at the crack of dawn without an alarm clock (which is quite an unusual experience for me). I decided that it was a good day to see the fish market since all my reading suggested going very early in the morning. Unfortunately, figuring out the subway was a little slower than I expected and I learned that a lot of people here don't speak English well at all and aren't that helpful in Japanese. But I made it to the fish market early enough to see lots of crazy things happening. There are huge warehouses which enclose numerous shops of merchants selling fresh seafood out of styrofoam boxes. The isles are narrow and tourists abound with cameras in hand. Me too! It was impressive to see so many fish all in one place. Work was being done to kill and prepare the fish and cut the meat. The stench was strong and the ground was covered in water, some areas with fish parts and blood. In larger isles, small electric vehicles with beds carrying crates, meat, and other goods zoomed around. You have to be careful to avoid them as they transport items to the larger trucks that wait outside the warehouses getting ready to make deliveries.

Edo-Tokyo Museum:

This museum tells the story of old Tokyo from 16th century onwards, when it was still named Edo. The capital of Japan was previously Kyoto but was moved to Edo and that city was renamed to To-kyo (New Kyoto). This museum was nice because it had an English guide that took me around for about and hour and a half and explained everything. The signage was decent in English, but I am pretty sure I got more out of the place with the guide and it was nice to have someone who spoke English. One of my favorite things was the life sized Kabuki theater that was built inside.

Senso-ji Shrine:

This is a magnificent Buddist temple, and it was so magnificent that they had to cover it up during my visit. Well, it's under reconstruction so it is covered with scaffolding and a nice mural. The surrounding area is very pretty though and has a 5 story pagoda, a few shrines, and some nice gardens. It is very crowded so there are a lot of shops and restaurants in the area. Also, I walked to Sunshine City, which is nearby and has a with gambling establishments all along the way. I went into a Pachinko room to experience Pachinko up close and personal. It is extremely loud inside the place. Think Vegas slot machine noise times 10. There was this one guy really winning a lot of ball bearings so I was pretty excited for him and took some video.

Ginza and the Sony Building:

Ginza reminds me of Manhattan's Times Square. There are tall buildings with large screens on them and the whole place is really brightly lit. One of the main buildings is the Sony building which has a expo with their latest and greatest gadgets. I tried out viewing a 3d TV for the first time ever and it's pretty frickin cool. I wonder if, when I read this in 30 years, I'll have some kind of nostalgic moment about way back when we had to watch TV in 2d.... gosh.

Making it to Tokyo

The trip to Tokyo was pretty smooth. I got out of the airplane got my bag and got on the train to Tokyo all within like 30 minutes which I thought was pretty impressive.

The train ride provided a really nice view of the countryside and got me psyched for visiting Tokyo. The view of the landscape was very picturesque with many flooded crop fields with small sprouts emerging from the water. Everything was very green.

My train took me to Shibuya station and the next task was to find my hotel, which proved quite difficult. Although it was in the same building as the train station (practically) I couldn't find the place. Also, without internet access, and not having written the hotel name down, I was stressing a bit, but luckily I found a sign with what I thought was my hotel and by golly, they had my reservation. I have a nice view of Shibuya from my hotel room on the 12th floor.

Tonight, the weather was a little rainy, but I wanted to venture out and figure things out. One thing I learned was that cash is king and finding the Citibank was also quite hard. Without cash, you are pretty much screwed. After getting quite soaked, I found the bank, and great things started to happen. I got water, an umbrella (since I forgot to bring one) and some food. Shibuya is really really crowded and walking around is quite crazy.