My day started with my new found friends, Emma and Tom who were students on a gap year from England. As we had similar plans for the day we decided to just head out together which made things easier for photographs and other group activities. As our alarm clocks rang at a really bright and early 5 am so that we could make it in time for the first subway to Tsukiji. Our first stop was to visit one of the most famous fish markets in Japan and notably one of the largest in the world. The Tsukiji fish market. There has been a bit of controversy over this fish market and tourists over the years, and due to this caution is to be advised when visiting. After all it is a working fish market and tourists getting in the way and taking photos distracts sales staff and also get in the way of the operations of the market. Currently the market still remains open to foreign tourists but who knows when this will change. Be aware that when you visit here that you are a guest in their domain and that you shouldn’t expect any friendliness from the hardworking staff and moving utilities that zoom their way around the market. You are the guest and thus you should be the one to take all cautions. Knowing this we went on inside what was a pretty amazing sight. My first impression was amazement at how huge this market actually was. We snaked our way through the maze of fish stalls so that we could make it in time for the tuna auction. Nowadays tourists are zoned off into a small area and are not allowed flash photography. It is important to understand that these fish go for several thousand dollars each (the top fish) and flash photographer distracts the buyers and sellers and could cause communication problems. Feeling lucky enough that we got to witness this fish auction was good enough for us and we stood there in the zoned off tourist area with a guard on either side of the line making sure that no one was taking flash photography pictures. The pace of this auction was quite incredible the auctioneer was spurting out more Japanese words that I knew and at a speed that was faster than I could talk – all to sell a single fish. We stayed for a little while and just immersed ourselves in the idea of being in a possibly closed off area for future tourists, before heading off to explore the rest of the fish market. The markets open earlier and stay open till about lunch time, and host a huge variety of every single possible fish and crustacean in the ocean – most of which are still flapping and breezing. There were more species of fish than I could name, with more stalls than I could fathom. Navigating the hustle and bustle of these aisles was hard enough due to having to constantly dodge the moving vehicles that don’t give way to tourists. Not being my place to complain we always had to watch our backs to avoid being hit. Continuing to walk around, we enjoyed watching the fine artistry of the tradesmen here slicing up the best portions of tuna and cutting up a squid or to. For those who come to Tsukiji most want to try some of the freshest sushi that they will have ever tasted; This was the general idea but as we went to the sushi stalls the lines were huge and opted to not get some sushi at this time. Did I miss out? Who knows, but I have tried some pretty amazing fresh sushi in other parts of Japan – so I’m not really too fussed about it. We got out Tsukiji fish market fix and went to check out the close by Hama Detached Garden Palace.
Hama Detached Garden Palace is a gem of a park that is conveniently located only a short 5 minute walk away from the Tsukiji fish market grounds. It does have a small entry fee about 500 yen from memory but this entitles you to the full extent of the grounds – which is home to some pretty awesome photo taking opportunities. Now there may be better parks and gardens around Tokyo, but this one is definitely worth a visit. Plenty of flora and a lake with skyscrapers in the backdrop allow you to take some pretty impressive looking photos. It doesn’t take too long to navigate the way around this area, but towards the end is a small little traditional building on the lake that allows you to partake in your very own Japanese Tea Ceremony for a small price. To start this isn’t a real tea ceremony but it is pretty good for what you pay. For less than 1000 yen you get a small Japanese sweet, some traditionally made green tea, and an instruction sheet detailing how your suppose to drink the tea and eat the sweet. It was my first time to partake in any such a ritual but it was interesting way to spend some time with my new friends. We followed the instruction sheet and completed our very own tea ceremony before we started taking photos and just sat and enjoyed the view in one of the most interesting cities on Earth. (Tokyo – if you are confused of where I was at the time) After we wandered a bit more through the remaining sections of the Garden Palace grounds we made our way to the next stop of the day: The famous high end streets of Ginza!
As my friends were on a bit of a tight budget we decided to walk the 20 minutes or so to Ginza from the Tsukiji fish market, but the walk was quite technologically scenic so in the end it was worth the effort. Heading towards Ginza buildings started to get higher and higher and before we knew we were in one of the most famous high end streets in the world. There are several boutiques and famous fashion lines from Louis Vuitton, to Chanel and Gucci, but I didn’t come here to shop; Instead I really wanted to see the Sony Building and the Kabukiza Theatre. The Kabuki theatre houses a traditional dance style Kabuki and there are several shows daily. This particular theatre though is scheduled to be demolished and rebuilt in 2010 so it was a must that I could take a photo of it. Lucky for me it was still standing in its former glory of over 100 years old when I arrived and taking photos of this soon be removed building was as good as sitting inside and actually watching a show. As I had seen a Bunraku (Japanese traditional Puppet dance) in Himeji I wasn’t all too interested in watching Kabuki as the former almost made me fall asleep (possibly because everything is in Japanese) so I got the photos I was after and we headed across the street to go into the famous Sony Building. I had seen this sony building on a documentary and it looked like a really good addition to the day. It was still a bit too early for the building to open so we went into a near by department store to look at some of Japans fashion. As time approached we worked our way through the department store back to the entrance of the Sony Building to scale this complex one by one marveling at all the good gadgets that they had on offer currently and possibly in the future. There are several floors that make up this building and any guy who loves his gadgets would love this place, they had the latest gear, to the most futuristic gear that I hadn’t even seen released in Australia yet, but most impressive to me was the huge movie room on the top floor. This place was awesome shut off to light, the best quality screen and projector displaying movie trailers in super HD even before LED technology was released overseas. I sat in here and marveled at how great humans are to actually be able to create all this technology before browsing the goods of the bottom floors once more before heading over to another mammoth technology conglomerate BIC Camera. BIC Camera is very similar to Yodobashi Camera as both sell all the technology under the sun, from futuristic washing machines, to fridges that play your latest movies to every type of MP3 player available. If your a technology buff heading into one of these two chain stores someone in Japan is a definite must see even if you don’t have the money to buy anything. As I had been to the Yodobashi Camera back in Osaka several times I mainly went in here as my new found friends wanted to check it out. But me loving technology quite a bit, I wasn’t too fussed that we had to spend a bit of the day looking through this place. After my friends finished looking around our next stop was the Tokyo Imperial Palace.
The Imperial Palace of Tokyo is the current residence of Japan’s emperors and as such visitors are restricted to visiting only certain sections and are not normally permitted entry. There is however 2 or 3 days a year where the gates of the imperial palace open to tourists, foreign and domestic alike to take a look at this impressive structure. Outside the palace grounds the parks and rivers and streams make for some good cheap picnicking and photographer, but if you have a good enough zoom on your lens there are certain spots which allow you to take pretty good photos of the building itself. As we weren’t allowed entry our time here was short and our next stop was another famous landmark of Tokyo. The Tokyo tower which looks similar to the Eiffel tower but is in fact a much taller structure and colour….
The Tokyo Tower is one of Japans most famous landmarks and its main purpose is to broadcast zombie signals to the people of Tokyo making them work harder. Ok thats a lie but it does broadcast several stations on their local TV’s but knowing Japan’s technology it would not surprise me at all if it did have the former capabilities. There is two sections of this impressive tower the lower observatory and the top observatory. Both of which you need to pay for. Unfortunately there are not many free towers that you get a good view from unless you expect to be paying to use the elevator. The view from the first observation deck was not too bad but it certainly was not as high as some of the other views I had been up for example Taipei 101 in Taiwan, but it did give me a feeling of being closer to the surrounding buildings. Heading up here is reasonably cheap at less than 1000 yen, but heading up to the second observatory offers much better views of a city that never ends is a definite must if you had already forked out the money to go on the first observatory. From the two pictures below you can easily see the difference in views from the two observation decks, but I guess it is just personal preference of whether you want to fork out the extra money or not. A good extra incentive to go the top observation deck though is that there are parts which house glass floors where you can literally see the ground. Although they are probably highly reinforced standing on these glass panels give you the feeling of standing on nothing but air. I reckon everyone who stands on these panels has the same thought going through their heads at least once: Will this break? Thus far it was a pretty tiring day so I decided to head back to the backpackers to get some rest before heading to Harajuku to catch my Cirque show that I had tickets for.
At the time of travelling there were two Cirque shows in Japan, ZED which is a home show of Japan (near Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea) and Corteo which was currently touring. Cirque Du Soleil is a pretty amazing circus and I was lucky enough to see Dralion in Australia, and although after this Japan trip, ZAIA in Macau. I jumped back on the Tokyo Loop line and got off at Harajuku which was were the show was located and walked for a bit before running into a bit of trouble. Now I made it to this huge stadium where all the crowds were gathering, the people ripped my Corteo ticket and ushered me inside. My first thoughts were: What on Earth is this? Where is all the Cirque signage? This looks nothing like Dralion in Australia? Only after asking around at where Corteo was playing only didn’t I find out to my horror that I was in a stadium for another performance for some singer! Now I was quite angry at the incompetent staff who had ripped my ticket! I went back to them and tried to communicate in sign language, trying to tell that, that this was the wrong show and i needed the other half of my ticket back. So several staff all came out of no where and opened up all the ticket bags and tried to search for the other side of my ticket stub. After a good 30 minutes with me stressing that I was going to miss the first half of Corteo they did find the ticket and I power walked a couple extra hundred meters down the road where the real Corteo was. Seeing the Corteo sign (the picture on the left) was a huge relief and with a good 20 minutes to spare before the show started I could finally relax a bit. I wont get into detail of the particular Cirque show but it was just as amazing as I had hoped and for the ridiculously expensive ticket that I had paid (about $200.00) AUD for front row seats it was well worth the money. My only complaint is that I didn’t really feel like sitting in the front row was a good idea as there was a lot of sky acrobatics and my neck was extremely sore from looking up all the time. But other than that the performers made little mistakes and the show did go pretty smoothly. Until all of a sudden the show was halted for some reason and we were all stuck sitting in our seats with announcements made only in Japanese. From what I interpreted there was a malfunction with something to do with the show and they were fixing it. 10 minutes later the show went on and went off without a hitch. After everything was over I went to pick up my traditional Cirque purchase of the show CD and souvenir program before heading home after a very tiring day through several parts of Tokyo. I’m pretty sure if I was with a large group there would of been no way I could of accomplished todays activities on a group time frame, so for that reason I was happy it was just me and my two new friends.
Travelling with Sig! 