April 14, 2016 – Tokyo, Japan

Crystal Serenity arrived in the Port of Harumi in Tokyo yesterday, April 13, at 1:00 pm. According to Captain Vorland, the late arrival time was scheduled that way, to ensure that tidal conditions would allow our ship to fit under the low clearance of Rainbow Bridge on the way in to the port. Cruise ships that can’t fit under the bridge must dock at Yokohama. Harumi is much closer to center city of Tokyo, including the Ginza.

It was so cloudy for our arrival this morning, that our pictures look like they were taken in black and white:

We have been looking forward to visiting Tokyo for a long time, as Jim was interested in how much change has taken place since he last lived here in 1972. He recalls that there were no tall skyscrapers back then, because Tokyo experiences earthquakes fairly often. New technologies in building construction must have progressed a lot, because Tokyo is now jam-packed with modern, tall buildings. This seems to be a pattern throughout much of Asia.
Tokyo is located on the southeast coast of Honshu, Japan’s main island, at the northwest corner of Tokyo Bay.

Several cities claim to being the biggest in the world by population, including Shanghai (24 million) and Beijing (21 million). If you rate the cities by population in the metropolitan area, Tokyo is far and away the largest at 37 million. The small administrative center of Tokyo has a population of 13 million, and there are another 5 million that come into the city every day for work or school. Because the metro area is so large, locations in Tokyo are always identified by one of 23 districts (-ku), such as Chiyoda-ku, Taito-ku, Shinjuku-ku, Shibuya-ku, etc.), and are thought of as something like small towns. In many ways, they each have different characteristics.

Tokyo became important in the early 1600’s when the warlord Tokugawa seized power and declared himself shogun (with consent of the emperor, who had no military might). While the emperor remained in Kyoto, Tokugawa and his descendent shoguns made Edo (current-day Tokyo) as the military and political center of power in Japan. The Tokugawa dynasty lasted for 260 years. When the dynasty was overthrown in 1867, the emperor moved his capital from Kyoto to Edo and renamed the city as Tokyo. Following that were series of buildups and disasters – an earthquake and resulting fires in 1923 left half the city in ashes, and then World War II air raids once again destroyed most of the city.

Through all this, Tokyo has always rebounded. Despite recessions in the last 10 - 15 years, Japan is definitely one of the world’s main economic centers. They have a very large, clean, and efficient public transportation system, with rail as the primary mode of transport. We read that Tokyo has the most extensive urban railway network and the most used in the world with 40 million passengers in the metro area daily. Of that number, the Tokyo subway system carries 8.7 million passengers daily – 22% of Tokyo's 40 million daily rail passengers. Above-ground systems carry the remainder.

Day 1 – Tokyo, April 13, 2016

We left the ship at about 1:45 for a shore excursion titled, “The Shops & Shrines of Tokyo.” This was an excellent compilation of some of the highlights of a city with such a dramatic dichotomy of history and rapid modernization.

Leaving the port area, we were surprised at the number of tall new buildings in the immediate area by the port. We were told that this area was totally built on landfills (reclaimed land) in the 1990s and later.

We couldn’t spell (or pronounce) our tour guide’s name. She told us to just call her Cherry, as in cherry blossoms, which she said were almost all finished for this year in Tokyo already.
Very soon after crossing a river into the city, we rode by Tsukiji – the world’s largest wholesale fish and seafood market, with $16 million in sales every day. This is a morning attraction, with sales starting at 5:00 am.

We also drove through the Marunouchi business district. There has been a lot of recent construction here, with many new tall office buildings (owned by banks and insurance companies, according to Cherry), along with upscale hotels and gourmet dining being built.

Our first stop was in the heart of the city at the spacious plaza in front of the Imperial Palace (at a large bus parking lot). The palace was built originally as Edo Castle for the shogun Tokugawa. Now it is the residence of the Emperor of Japan. The palace has great meaning to the Japanese people as a reminder of their enduring traditions. The setting is striking, with stretches of green lawn and pine groves, but the palace is mostly out of sight behind a moat, high walls, and trees.

We walked on sidewalks through the beautiful landscape, which is kept trimmed every evening, according to our guide Cherry. Despite advancing urban development, the site continues to survive. The wall of buildings fronting the palace grounds reminded us of Central Park in New York City.

Standing in front of the castle is the impressive double-arch Nijubashi Bridge. The public is not allowed to enter the main gates and set foot on that bridge, except for two days every year – on the emperor’s birthday and on January 2nd.

The moat around the palace is about 3 miles long and has a path beside it that is a popular route for joggers.

It’s a visual and linguist adventure just riding through the streets here. Our next stop was in Asakusa, the “old town” part of Tokyo, where we went to Tokyo's oldest Buddhist temple, and one of its most significant – Sensoji Temple. This temple is sometimes referred to as Asakusa Temple. According to our guide Cherry, when written in Kanji characters, Sensoji and Asakusa look exactly the same. A Chinese person would read the characters and say Sensoji; a Japanese person would say Asakusa. Since the temple itself is Buddhist, most people now use the Chinese name for it when writing it in Roman characters, and the Asakusa name for the temple’s location in Tokyo. Is that confusing enough?

Whichever name you use, this is a very colorful and popular site in Tokyo. When approaching the temple, you first enter through the massive Kaminarimon (Thunder Gate). Beyond the gate stands the temple's main hall and a five storied pagoda. We read that there are about 30 million visitors to this site every year. Many of them were here today.

If you can fight through the crowds, it’s a photographer’s paradise. Even more so than the interior of the temple, the festive atmosphere of the crowds of people, the smoke from the incense cauldron, the fortune tellers, and the kimono-clad local people, are of most interest. We plunked our 100 Yen into an ancient old, wooden cabinet and received our fortune, which was written in many languages on two sides of a small sheet of paper.

Just as exciting as the temple itself is the Nakamise-dōri, a pedestrian-only approach to the temple. We understand that it came about in the early 18th century, when neighbors of Sensoji were granted permission to set up shops for the temple visitors. The avenue is now lined with small (mom & pop) shops selling mostly souvenirs ranging from serious artwork – fans, wood block prints, kimonos, and Buddhist scrolls – to much less expensive toys, t-shirts, mass-market trinkets, and traditional local snacks. These shops are part of the centuries-old tradition of selling things to pilgrims who walked to Sensoji. To this day, many pilgrims and tourists, both Japanese and from abroad (including us), still pick souvenirs from shops on one of the oldest shopping streets in Japan. Catering to these visiting crowds, the surrounding area also has many eating places that feature traditional dishes (hand-made noodles, sushi, tempura, etc.). There was far more to see here than what we could cover in our allocated 60 minutes.

Within about 100 feet off the Sensoji Temple's main building is the Asakusa Shrine, built in the year 1649 by the shogun Tokugawa to honor the three men who established Sensoji Temple. Being a Shinto shrine, the entry is marked with a Torii Gate, the construction is more modest, less flashy, and the atmosphere is more meditative. By the time we discovered this shrine we had run out of time, so we weren’t able to explore it at all. Buddhist and Shinto seem to co-exist in Japan and are similar in some ways. This is another indication of what we were told several times – although many people in Japan are not overly active in religion, they still follow many of the customs of Buddhism and Shintoism in their daily lives without thinking about it.

Our excursion then brought us to the Meiji Shrine after the gates were closed at sunset, so we had what seemed like a private tour, without any crowds. There was light rain falling, and it was also almost completely dark by the time we left.

This is Tokyo’s largest and most famous Shinto shrine. It was built in 1920 and dedicated to the souls of Emperor Meiji and his wife Empress Shōken. Emperor Meiji ruled Japan after the overthrow of the shogunate – the late 19th and early 20th centuries – and was instrumental in opening Japan to the outside world.

Meiji shrine is surrounded by beautiful forest land, covering over 172 acres. The busy sights and sounds of Tokyo are quickly replaced by tranquil forest upon entering the shrine grounds. The walk from our bus to the shrine was like a walk in the woods – very peaceful – and it isn’t hard to understand why many Japanese people come here as a spiritual retreat. Our guide told us that there are 120,000 trees in this forest, representing 365 species, donated by people from all regions of Japan. This definitely is the largest green space in the inner city of Tokyo.

At the entrance to the shrine is a very large display of Sake (rice wine) barrels. This is not unusual in Japan. Cherry told us that, for Japanese people, sake has been a connection between the gods and people. The sake barrels here are donated to the shrine every year by sake brewers from around Japan. We understand that the sake is used for shrine ceremonies and festivals, and then the empty barrels are put on display.

Entry to the shrine grounds is marked by a huge Torii Gate. The gate is one of the largest in Japan and is constructed from cypress wood.

We had a memorable dinner, toward the end of our excursion, at Mansei, a restaurant on the tenth floor of a building in Akihabara. Incidentally, the Akihabara district is known as the electronics sales center in town, especially for electronic games.

This was a modern interpretation of a traditional Japanese Teppanyaki Meal. Part of the fun for us was to watch the chef’s knife and cooking skills while our meal was being prepared. There wasn’t any of the knife juggling or banter that you associate with this type of meal back home. The meal started with an appetizer of various raw fish attractively arranged with salad greens (both of us skipped the raw fish). After the salad course, the chef started to grill vegetables (asparagus, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots) which, when done, were placed artfully on handmade ceramic plates.

Next came the steaks; they were seasoned to perfection, grilled, and then flamed – delicious. At the same time as the steaks, the chef grilled tiny slices of garlic and made garlic “chips.” We didn’t realize that the Japanese eat so much garlic. He served half of the garlic chips with the steaks and then added the rest to a version of fried rice. The meal ended with a small slice of a many-layered cake and sherbet. It was a fun – and delicious – experience.

On the way back to the ship, we rode through the Ginza District, Tokyo’s “high end” shopping area which was all lit up tonight. More on Ginza tomorrow.

Day 2 – Tokyo, April 14, 2016

On our second day in Tokyo, Jim rode a city shuttle bus from the port to the Kajibashi bus stop in Marunouchi, while Ginny stayed on the ship. Luckily, the bus people had several small maps of where the bus dropped us off. From them, Jim was able to navigate his way onto Chuo Dori, the primary shopping street for “high end” stores. Think of it as something like New York City’s Fifth Avenue. Naturally, there were stand-alone stores for brands like Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Apple, etc. (too many to mention).

Jim headed for two large and famous Japanese department stores – Matsuya and Mitsukoshi. Of the two, Matsuya seemed “higher end.” Jim covered most of the nine floors and was very impressed with the high quality displays, the excellent signage in both Japanese and English, and the politeness and neatness of the people working there. About every 20 paces there were well-dressed employees bowing to customers and welcoming them to their department of the store. Just a note: bargaining on prices is not standard practice in Japan, especially so for these department stores. They seemed to be very well informed about their products but weren’t pushy, although Jim didn’t ask about anything for sale. He did look at a few price tags and decided everything was out of our price range. For example, a casual man’s sports coat he noticed was 235,000 Yen, which equals $2,148 USD. Maybe it was a suit, and not a sports coat, but it didn’t really matter at that price.

The Mitsukoshi department store was enormous, and much more crowded than Matsuya. There were two buildings – one of them 13 stories, and the other 9 stories, linked together at one floor. That’s not even counting floors B1 through B4 (underground floors of the store). There were three floors which were only restaurants in the taller building. It was maybe 12-15 eateries in all, but they were each relatively small. He also noticed a few snack and drink shops at other locations in the store.

In addition to the many tall buildings in Ginza, there’s more shopping opportunities underground as well.

This was all overwhelming, so Jim walked back to the Kajibashi bus stop and took the shuttle back to the ship. He was glad Ginny had stayed on the ship, as she might have wanted to check out even more stores.

One additional thought: As we mentioned in our Shimizu posting, there are many outdoor vending machines in Japan. There are millions of them in the country, and we saw them everywhere in Tokyo. They vend soft drinks, canned coffee, green teas, and some vend snack foods. The interesting thing we noticed is that the offerings are labeled, under the offering, either in red or blue. The red items are dispensed heated, and the blue ones are dispensed cold – both from the same machine. What a great idea!

In summary, this was a great visit. Tokyo is truly a unique city -- a complex blend of East and West. They’ve successfully built a modern, leading-edge metropolis alongside traditional roots from yesteryear – the juxtaposition of Meiji Shrine to the glittering Ginza and modern business centers is truly remarkable. There’s no apparent slow down. Even more construction is underway in preparation for the 2020 Olympic summer games, which will be held again in Tokyo (the last time was 1964). We also saw work being done for a new international cruise ship terminal, just south of the Rainbow Bridge, which is supposed to be ready for the 2020 Olympic games.

On Serenity’s departure from the Harumi port at 8:30 pm tonight there was a big crowd of people standing outside, on several levels of the terminal, waving goodbye to us. This included a very loud, raucous, enthusiastic drum corps playing for us. They seemed joyful and proud and were very talented. We really enjoyed that display of appreciation for our visit. The night-time lights of the city were colorful as well and just topped off our visit. Most impressive in the skyline was the Tokyo Sky Tree – a 2,080-foot broadcasting tower which is now Japan’s tallest structure. Built in 2012, it has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the tallest broadcasting tower in the world. Tonight it was bright orange in the sky above Tokyo.

Tokyo was the end of Segment 5 of the World Cruise. There was a big turnover of passengers today – almost 500 new people coming on board for the final segment (from Tokyo to San Francisco) and about the same number leaving us in Tokyo.

We continue our trip through Japan tonight, with two more stops in the next three days – Aomori in Northern Honshu and Otaru, a port city on Hokkaido (Japan’s northernmost island).

Jim & Ginny