Ye Olde Tyme Tokyo

When I booked our hotel I was a little concerned by how cheap it was. Especially being so close to a major attraction like the Imperial Palace. It was actually very nice. The rooms are small, but so is every hotel room in Japan. It was on a small residential street, directly across from a subway line. It was nowhere near all the pop and parties, but we liked the neighborhood.

The day was half over by the time we checked into the hotel. I had a list of things I wanted to see and I knew we would be wasting an entire day at DisneySea. Pi Chi was recovering from the flu, so she was not as hungry as usual. This gave us much more time. She also must have been a little delirious because she readily agreed to go wherever I wanted to go. I told her there would be shopping, which there was, but I had an ulterior motive. I knew there was also a Krispy Kreme.

The Krispy Kreme in question is very hard to find when you have no idea where it is, but very easy to get to once you know. I knew it was near a station but that was all, and none of the subway maps happened to mention Krispy Kreme. That may seem obvious, but sometimes they mention 7-11 or McDonalds, so it is worth a try. There was also heavy construction between the station and Krispy Kreme, which did not help.

When Pi Chi found out we were looking for donuts, she was less than excited. We walked around the very large subway station and through at least two shopping areas. Pi Chi gets a little grumpy when she has not eaten in several minutes, even if she has the flu, and she does not especially care for donuts. She repeatedly wanted to give up, but I was persistent. She had never had a Krispy Kreme before so I could forgive her lack of enthusiasm.

We eventually went over a bridge and I saw the green and white sign in the distance. It turned out to be rather close to the exit where we originally left the station. Had we simply turned right instead of left we would have found it much earlier. Such is life.

The “hot now” sign was on, so Pi Chi’s first ever Krispy Kreme was less than a minute old. She was unimpressed. I thought about how I should pack my things when I move out. But it must have been the flu because we went to that and another Krispy Kreme a few times on this trip and she ate almost as many as I did. And I found the other Krispy Kreme by accident.

How dough becomes ambrosia

Pi Chi wanted to eat department store basement food for dinner after we left DisneySea, so we went to the Ginza. It is easy to get to by train from the Disney area, and there are more than enough department stores to satisfy Pi Chi. Interestingly enough, everything was closed. Even the seizure lights were off. We left DisneySea a few hours before closing time because it sucked so much, so we assumed finding dinner would be easy. The Ginza is arguably the most popular shopping area of Tokyo. But it either closes at 8pm on Sundays or it was some special holiday we knew nothing about.*

Pi Chi wanted to give up and go back to the hotel. Ordinarily, she would never give up on finding her dinner, but that flu was still lingering. I knew of a restaurant near another subway stop, but it could have just as easily been closed as well. I thought it was worth a try, and I was still confident from my Krispy Kreme triumph. We never found the restaurant, but we found a Shakey’s Pizza. They are almost completely gone in California, but apparently there are quite a few in Japan, and more in the Philippines than anywhere else in the world. This particular Shakey’s was very open. It looked and sounded like a Shakey’s, although with Japanese signs. They had the Dixieland music and lunch buffet. They even had mojos. The most amazing part was that the pizza tasted like a genuine Shakey’s pizza. In my experience it is unusual when somebody opens an American restaurant and the food actually tastes American. But Tokyo Shakey’s has that distinctive Shakey’s sauce and crust. They also have toppings like squid and chocolate and marshmallows, but I generally stick to mushrooms and olives anyway.

It may seem strange to travel to a place like Japan and seek out Shakey’s and Krispy Kreme, but I live in Asia. I eat Asian food all the time. Japanese food is not at all hard to find at home. You can even get bad Japanese food at any 7-11 if you are so inclined. But prior to this trip, Seoul was the only place on the continent I knew to find Krispy Kreme. There is a reason everyone says they are the best donuts in the world. And I grew up on Shakey’s pizza. For me, eating a Shakey’s pizza is probably what it is like for other people to eat their mother’s cooking. I may never be quoted by the tourist bureau, but those pizzas were the highlight of my trip.

Westernland
The Frontierland of Tokyo Disneyland

You may think that we went to the Imperial Palace as soon as we got DisneySea out of the way. You would be mistaken. The next day we went to Disneyland. Nobody knows why. But it was nice to see a real Disney park after that travesty of an imposter. Walking down Tokyo Disneyland’s World Bazaar is just like walking down any other Disneyland’s Main Street. Except the name is different. And it looks different. But there are still millions of Japanese people running around.

I think I already described Tokyo Disneyland, but this trip was different. The park was relatively empty the first time we went. Not Hong Kong empty, but California empty. This time there were a few more people. The ride lines were almost as long as the popcorn lines. If you know anything about the Japanese you know how long they are willing to wait in line for popcorn. The wait for any food was ridiculous. Fortunately, we thought ahead and brought our own. We ate our leftover pizza and department store food next to the vending machine at Space Mountain. This is notable not only because there is only one vending machine in the entire park (in a city that elevates vending machines to an art form), but also because sitting on a concrete bench near the vending machine next to Space Mountain and eating leftover pizza and department store food (and probably a few donuts) was worlds better than that lunch we had the day before sitting in real chairs at a real table in a fake Italian restaurant.

Outside of Hong Kong and Paris, you are going to get crowds when you go to any Disney park. But Tokyo Disneyland on this day was completely absurd. We had been there before and it was reasonable. On this day you could not see the ground. I went to California Disneyland on a Christmas Eve or possibly Christmas Day when I was in high school and the park was so crowded that we spent some of our time in a walk-in phone booth just to get away from the people. That was empty compared to Tokyo. I understand that the purpose of the park is to make money and the more people you let in, the more money you make. But eventually there is a satiation point. If the park is too crowded, the people in it do not enjoy their experience. If they do not enjoy it they are less likely to return. This is an aspect of business strategy that many Asians simply do not understand. Customer satisfaction is meaningless to people who are only looking at how much money they can make today. Repeat customers are not something you worry about when you do business in a very crowded marketplace. Tokyo Disneyland has lost two potential customers because of their greed. Pi Chi and I shall not return.

There is still plenty of room to cram in more people

When we finally spent an actual day in the actual city of Tokyo, Pi Chi wanted to go shopping. I wanted to go to one of the skyscrapers and see the city. I like to find the tallest building in whatever city I am in and look around. Pi Chi likes to go shopping. I like to go to thousand year old temples and cathedrals. Pi Chi likes to go shopping. I like to walk through city parks and see the juxtaposition of trees and grass against tall buildings in the background. Pi Chi likes to go shopping. If I am somewhere that has a river cruise, I want to take it. If she is somewhere that has shopping, she wants to go shopping.

When Pi Chi and I travel together there is a constant struggle between what I want to do (culture, history, get some sense of what the place is about) and what Pi Chi wants to do (shopping). In this case she agreed we should go up the building first and go shopping later after I convinced her that the shopping is open all night (except Sundays) and the view from the building is very different in daylight. There was a threat of rain the entire time we were in Tokyo and it was mostly cloudy. But it was relatively clear at this point so I decided we should go to the tallest building, which also happens to have a free observation deck. Free is a good thing in Tokyo.

It is rare that I get to do what I want to do when Pi Chi wants to do what she wants to do. What really does not help matters is when she agrees to do what I want to do and it turns out to be the weakest observation deck I have ever seen. It was all indoors, which is bad enough, but the glare on the windows from what little sunlight there was made it difficult to see much of anything. It was not the most exciting area of Tokyo anyway. The harbor was covered by other buildings and Mt Fuji was lost in the haze. Pi Chi spent more time in the tiny gift shop than I spent looking out the window.

Diligent readers may have noticed that I might complain about Pi Chi’s shopping. I do that more to her than I do to you. Believe me. But this shopping excursion brought us to Shibuya, which we had never been to before. If you know anything about Tokyo, you know how strange it is that a shopper like Pi Chi had never been to Shibuya. The lights of the Ginza will give you seizures at night, but Shibuya is shopper’s paradise. It has the overpriced department stores that Pi Chi prefers and the cheap little shops that I prefer. And it has food. All kinds of food. Everything from Pi Chi’s department store basement food to my pizza and donuts. And plenty of Asian food, but we pay less attention to that.

We eventually saw a temple and more than enough shopping. We saved the Imperial Palace for the last day because of lack of time and the constant threat of rain. The last day was the sunniest and our flight home did not leave until evening. Our hotel was right around the corner and it was an easy walk. The nearest gate into the park to our hotel was closed, so we walked around to the main gate. It was also closed. I knew a reservation was needed to get into the inner grounds, but most of the park is usually open to visitors. This day it was not. So I have still never seen the Imperial Palace. And I think I know why our hotel was so cheap.

We knew that we needed two tickets to take the express train back to the airport, but I still have no idea how to do that with the ticket machine. There is an English option, but it has far fewer choices than the Japanese. The woman who operated the machine that got our tickets pushed many buttons from many screens that simply did not exist in the English version. I have bought many train tickets from many machines in many languages. This was not my first pony ride. I have read several times how difficult Tokyo’s subway system is. I find it very simple. It is no more difficult than New York’s or Seoul’s. It is simply in a different language. But I have no clue how to get a train ticket to Narita without dealing with a person.

Our return flight arrived too late to take the train home. It was delayed because the plane was falling apart. There were problems with the radio and electricity that kept us on the runway longer than is generally comfortable, and later at 30,000 feet the window at my seat leaked water from outside. I think that might be bad. So we spent the night at another airport hotel before taking the train home the next morning. And I had to work that day. Pi Chi wisely took the day off.

In the end, our travel voucher for a free plane ticket cost us one round trip plane ticket, three hotel rooms in two countries, eight train tickets and several taxi rides getting from one to the other. This is why I do not do coupons.


*[Update: It was some special holiday we knew nothing about.]

A wedding procession at Meiji Jingu in Shibuya

One If By Land, Two If By Sea

Tokyo is about a million years old with more culture than anyone can stand. The history alone is enough to drive one to seppuku. There is so much to see and do in Tokyo that you need at least 10 years to see it all. So on our first trip Pi Chi and I stayed for a few days. And what is the first thing we saw? The Imperial Palace? Meiji Jingu? Shinjuku Gyoen? Nicholai-do? Mt Fuji?

We went to Disneyland.

To make up for this cultural oversight, I booked a hotel near the Imperial Palace for our second trip to Tokyo. On our first full day in the city we went to DisneySea.

While at Disneyland during our first trip we discovered that next door is DisneySea, a water-themed Disney park. Most of the world’s Disneylands are essentially the same. DisneySea is completely different. We decided that if we ever went back to Tokyo we would give the sea park a try.

Through accident and coincidence, I have been to every Disney park in the world. This was never a goal and I have little respect for the Disney empire. They made Kurt Russell a star. Need I say more.

My favorite parks are the original Disneyland in California (probably because I have been there the most) and Disneyland Paris (probably because all the Mickey Mouse spiel sounds somehow sophisticated in French). My least favorite before this trip was Hong Kong Disneyland. It is too small and does not have many of the best rides. They only recently built a small world. There is more than enough space to make a California sized park, but they have yet to use it.

Now I can say that DisneySea is easily the worst. It may not be a Disneyland, but it is part of the rat’s empire and they want you to think it is a different version of a Disney park. Overall, it blows. Even Pi Chi was unimpressed and she is the kind of person who is easily impressed by short people in animal costumes. But DisneySea does not even have any of the familiar characters running around. The A-lister while we were there was some dog named Duffy. I still have no idea who that is.

Mediterranean Harbor

DisneySea is divided into sections just like Disneyland, but the names are all water based. Main Street is Mediterranean Harbor, which looks like a hotel in Las Vegas and is the most like Disneyland. Like Main Street, it is essentially shops and food. It is also one of the docks for the boat that goes around the entire park with docks in each section. This was far and away the best ride at DisneySea.

American Waterfront 

To the left is the American Waterfront. Part of it is supposed to be New York Harbor at the turn of the 20th Century. Except that it is clean and full of Japanese people. The only rides are a train that goes from one section to the next and a free-fall ride in a faux Gothic building that is supposed to look like it is falling apart and has nothing to do with 1900’s New York. There is also a full-sized reproduction of an old ocean liner that holds more shops and restaurants. On the border of the American Waterfront is a tiny Cape Cod that looks nothing like Cape Cod (especially with the volcano) and only has shops and food. Most of the people there were in line for popcorn.

Port Discovery

Beyond the American Waterfront is Port Discovery, their Tomorrowland. But the vision of tomorrow looks like something out of a Kevin Costner movie. I would not be surprised if the people who designed it also worked on “Waterworld”, or at least watched it more than once. The moral question being whether it is worse to have been paid to make “Waterworld” or repeatedly paid to see it. Port Discovery has all of two rides and is one of the two places to get on the train that goes to and from the American Waterfront. One of the rides looks like tiny helicopters without rotors that ride along a water track and spin around in circles for about a minute. This ride is probably best for children or people who smoke questionable herbs that should not be smuggled into Japan. You can ask Paul McCartney about that.

To the right of Port Discovery is the Lost River Delta. This has the Indiana Jones ride, the only Disney-familiar ride, and seems to be based around it. There is also something that might be a roller coaster, but we did not go on it because the line was ridiculous. This section looks like Adventureland, but there is no Jungle Cruise or any of that tiki crap because they are at Disneyland across the street.

Arabian Coast

On the far right of the park is the Arabian Coast. When I first heard about DisneySea, this was the place I wanted to see the most. It seemed like it might be the most interesting. It was not. The two rides are the carousel, which is sufficient as carousels go, and a small worldesque ride about Sinbad. Only it did not seem like a Disney version of it’s a small world. It was like some cheap state fair version. While on this ride I imagined how much Walt Disney would vomit in disgust. In case you were wondering, imagining Walt Disney vomiting violently while on a cheap theme ride is not the best of combinations for such a sensitive soul as myself.

Mysterious Island

In the middle of the park is Mysterious Island, centered around a large volcano. This is the castle. The entire section has a Jules Verne theme, but both rides had a waiting time of at least two hours and the only restaurant served Asian food. The uniformed person at the end of one of the lines said that the waiting time was 2000 minutes. I decided that this was not true.

While I was explaining to Pi Chi who Jules Verne was and giving a painfully brief synopsis of the two books represented (Journey To The Centre Of The Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea), we discussed the differences in our native educational systems. Children in my country were always encouraged to read books, and most people probably know who Jules Verne was even if they have never read any of his work. In her country they did not and do not. I probably read more books in high school than she has read in her entire life, and I was a lazy reader. Ask Mrs Orsinger.

DisneySea is nothing if not educational.

Next to Mysterious Island is Mermaid Lagoon, the Fantasyland. This had all the children’s rides based on jellyfish and koi. There was an indoor Toontown type area that was interesting. Mostly because it was indoors and heated. We went on what turned out to be one of the coldest days of the month and as a sea park, almost everything is outdoors. The park’s location in Tokyo Harbor is a great way to get free water, but not so great when spring takes its sweet ass time coming.

We had lunch at an “Italian” restaurant in Mediterranean Harbor. Since this was a Disney park, I was not expecting much, but Pi Chi was disappointed that we waited an hour in line for undercooked Disney food. One of my main complaints about Disney food has always been that it is much more expensive than food outside the park. The great thing about Tokyo’s expensive food is that their Disney food prices seem reasonable.

Pi Chi and I both found DisneySea lacking. Most sections were little more than shops with a few restaurants here and there. They also had various shows in various sections, but they were all in Japanese, and I do not even want to watch them in English. The novelty of some dude in a plushie costume screaming in Japanese wears off quickly.

There were plenty of popcorn carts with extremely long lines, usually longer than the lines for rides. But we were unimpressed. Each section had about two rides and none were any good. The boat that goes around the park was the best only because it lasted longer than 30 seconds and it is the only way to really see anything. There is no monorail at any of the Asian Disney parks, probably because the locals ride similar trains to work every day and may not be as excited about the concept of mass transit as Americans.

When I first heard about DisneySea, I thought it was a good idea. The problem is that it does not feel like a Disney park. As soon as you walk into any Disneyland you know you are at Disneyland, whether the Haunted Mansion is in New Orleans or Fantasyland. Even the lesser Hong Kong Disneyland has that Disney feel if you give it a chance. DisneySea feels like a Las Vegas impersonation. And not a good one like Steve Lawrence or Scatman Crothers. DisneySea is like a Charo impersonator.

Waiting in line for popcorn at Old Cape Cod

Goin’ Tokyo

When Pi Chi went to Minnesota, her flight home was overbooked and the airline asked her to take the next day’s flight. This happened to us in Amsterdam, and KLM gave us a nice wad of cash and a room close enough to the city for me to show Pi Chi one or two of the sights in the very limited time we had. This was a good experience for her so she did not hesitate when Northwest asked her to spend an extra night in Minneapolis. The airline booked her a small room at an airport hotel and gave her a travel voucher for future flights with Northwest. The hotel was nowhere near the city and too far away from the food she likes for her comfort. The travel voucher was not quite as good as a wad of cash for obvious reasons, one of the least of which is that Northwest flies directly to only two cities from an airport two hours away from our house by train. There is an airport about the same distance from us as the train station, but Northwest does not go there.

We found that the voucher was enough for two tickets to either Tokyo or Bangkok, the only two cities available. We could fly elsewhere, but then we would have to connect with another airline and the prices went much higher. I have been to Thailand repeatedly and Pi Chi has been to Japan almost as much. We already went to Tokyo together once, but only for a very brief stay. I could easily show her around Bangkok since I consider myself familiar with that city in the way foreign tourists do while the locals laugh at our ignorance. Given the choice, we opted for Tokyo since it is a much more expensive town than Bangkok and if we have any kind of discount we might as well use it at the place it is needed most.

After reading everything I could find on Northwest’s website about their travel vouchers I felt that using it would be a simple operation. I was as wrong as a Republican who thinks they represent family values. Despite everything I had read to the contrary, their travel vouchers can only be used for the person in whose name it is printed. If you have a voucher for $100 and want to buy two tickets for $50 each, the voucher can only be used toward one of those tickets. According to the website, the remaining $50 is lost.

Being us, we decided that one free ticket was better than nothing. We would go ahead and pay for the other one and fall right into the airline’s web. The punishment for making Pi Chi miss her return flight from Minnesota was that the airline sold an extra ticket to Tokyo they would have never otherwise sold. KLM foolishly gives away cash, which customers can easily spend on frivolous things like food and shelter. Northwest is clearly better at making money.

Yet Northwest Airlines is no more. They are now part of Delta. This change took place while we were trying to book our flights. When I tried to use the travel voucher online, their website was under redecoration from one company to another. What was available to me would not recognize the voucher. This forced me to do something I had thus far had the rapturous pleasure of avoiding for years. I had to call an American customer service office.

Where I live, companies are backward. If you need to talk to someone, you talk to that person. If your electricity is off, you call the person who can turn it back on. If you run out of gas for the stove, you call the guy who brings a new tank. For more complicated situations, you let Pi Chi make the calls. I have not been on hold in years.

After listening to recorded messages about how important my call is for a good 20 minutes, I was greeted by a Northwest customer service operative. I asked him if he was a real person. He assured me that he was and I took him at voice value. During our conversation he explained that the voucher could only be used for one ticket, regardless of the balance, and I explained why that sucked fat ones. He laughed knowingly when I made some derisive comment about working for a soulless corporation and said that he was impressed by my “good English”. At that point he knew where I was calling from and where I wanted to fly from and to. I told him that I watched a lot of American television growing up. I never bothered to mention where I had watched these shows. How is that any of his business. 

With an electronic confirmation number from a website that was closing and a company that was no longer in business, I went ahead and found us a hotel. Pi Chi and I have been to Tokyo together. She has been there by herself. Neither of us has seen the Imperial Palace. This is like going to New Jersey without visiting a shopping mall or Paris without the Eiffel Tower. The Imperial Palace is the only prominent part of Tokyo that has never been bombed by Americans. It is an important historical, cultural and architectural part of Japan. And it looks pretty in pictures. So I booked the cheapest hotel I could find within walking distance. It was very cheap by any standards. Alarmingly cheap by Tokyo standards. I assumed there would be something wrong with it, but had no intention of spending much time in the room anyway.

When you fly to most countries, they want your passport to be valid for at least six months. Mine expires in five. Renewing it before the trip would have been the smart thing to do. But Pi Chi’s travel voucher was about to expire and if my passport was still in the mail I would not be able to go anywhere. I decided Japan would let me in anyway since I have always had such good luck with uniformed officials in the past. As usual, the immigration clerks dutifully stamped my passport and sent me on my way while I had to wait for them to question Pi Chi and her motives. Because of the seal on my passport, I can go almost anywhere in the world without suspicion. Because of the seal on her passport, every country Pi Chi wants to enter questions her at length. The only revenge she gets is when we get home. If there are 1000 foreigners and 10 locals waiting to pass immigration, they will still open more lines for the locals. While I wait behind 1000 foreigners to enter the country where I live, she waits behind one or two of her own kind.

Since our flight to Tokyo left very early in the morning (by my standards) we took the train to the airport the day before and spent the night at a sex motel. Pi Chi booked the hotel. Not because it was a sex motel but because it was close to the airport and cheap. It was cheap because it was cheap. We have stayed at other sex motels and none were as bad as this.  

It is worth mentioning that Chinese sex motels are nothing like the dirty cardboard smoking rooms you rent in Hollywood while cruising for hookers or those tiny pay-by-the-minute closet-rooms the $5 Thai hookers take you to. Or so I am told. Chinese sex motels are where businessmen take their “little wives” since so many business meetings are met at the usual corporate hotels. They are also some of the few places in the country you will ever find your own private parking space. Not that that mattered to us on this trip.

What I hate the most about traveling pretty much anywhere is all the hurry up and wait. You wake up early to wait around for whatever vehicle takes you to the airport. If it is a train, you hurry to the station and buy the tickets to wait around for the train. At the airport you hurry to the check in line where you wait. After you check in you wait in the security line so they can take away your 12 ounces of liquid. And it is a good thing they do. There is no telling what damage I can do with a can of Pepsi and a tube of toothpaste. Appropriately, the airlines have us put our tiny bottles of lotions in plastic bags, thus thwarting our MacGyver abilities to turn soap into an atomic bomb. Without those little plastic bags we would all be doomed. I hope the evildoers never realize that items placed in plastic bags can be removed.

If you and your lethal shampoo make it through security, you have to wait at immigration. This is one of my favorite lines for reasons you would know if you were paying attention. After immigration, you get to wait some more, even if your flight actually leaves on time. When they call your row (or “zone” lately), you hurry up and wait in the line to get on the plane. After you hurry on to the plane, you wait for the plane to hurry up and wait in line to take off. Once airborne, you have no control over the hurrying, but you do get to wait. And when it lands you get to repeat the entire process in reverse.

I decided long ago not to let all of that bother me. The journey is half of the trip and sometimes the most adventurous part. I keep telling myself that while I wait in line between the screaming toddler who thinks everything within a 10 meter radius is his own personal playground and the sweaty fat guy behind me who thinks sneezing is a distance competition. I assume someday that I will believe it.

On my first trip to Japan I took a taxi from the airport to the hotel. If there is one rule about visiting Japan it is that you never take a taxi anywhere as long as there is some other mode of transportation. Japanese taxis are clean, efficient, and have those cool passenger doors that the driver can open automatically. But they are apparently the most expensive taxis in the world. A taxi ride in Thailand will cost you less than a bottle of any liquid that can be taken on a plane. A taxi ride in Japan will cost about as much as the flight to Japan.

On our first trip to Tokyo, Pi Chi and I took the hotel’s shuttle bus from the airport. It was free and easy, but time consuming. I think it took a good 15 years to get from the airport to our hotel. We might still be on that bus and everything I have experienced since is a dream.

For this trip we took the train to the hotel. It costs slightly more than a bus, but takes far less time. The Japanese were kind enough to build their international airport nowhere near their capital. No matter how you get into the city, it will take at least an hour. The express train is a good option, but buying tickets from the machines is an exercise in futility. We found out the hard way that you need two tickets per person to get on the train. One ticket reserves your seat and the other allows you to ride the train. You cannot get on the train with only a reserved seat ticket, which makes me wonder what the point is in selling it individually. How does it benefit anyone to have a seat if they cannot get on the train? But since the Japanese are generally helpful people and the people at the station probably see this sort of thing all the time, a small woman in a shiny uniform took us to a nearby ticket machine and quickly pushed all the appropriate buttons to get us the appropriate tickets.

The express train into the city was quick and clean, but I still like Hong Kong’s airport express better. And you only need one ticket.