« February 2004 | Main | April 2004 »
[continuing my entries for my Tokyo trip]
3/8 was a free day for Chris. A group of the HK gang went to Tokyo Disneyland for the day, but Chris and 2 others decided they would just venture out to take the Tokyo subway to go to Yokohama, a seaport close to Tokyo and a newly developed disctrict called MM21 (Minato Mirai 21).
After having some beef and rice for breakfast, Chris and company headed to the Ikebukuro Train Station. Taking the subway to Yokohama itself was a challenge. Chris never took it before, and neither did the accompanying 2 companion. So, 3 bravehearts, with Chris' broken Japanese, found their way to the station and spent some time staring at the complex subway map and eventually found their way to Yokohama station!
Around the Yokohama station, Chris and company bought some custard snacks along the way. Then, they went into a few electronics and video game shops and spent a bit of time looking at various gadgets. Going to MM21 from Yokohama train station, they actually needed to get onto a bus. However, by walking around Yokohama station, they saw some landmarks of MM21 and decided they would just walk there. It took them about 45 minutes but it was a pleasant walk albeit a bit windy.
We were all excited to be at MM21. It is a very wide-open space with wide streets and fresh-air. The district features many very new and tall buildings. One of them is the Tokyo Landmark Tower. Inside this tower there are multi-storey high-end shopping center. And most impressive of all is its 59th-floor observatory. Chris and company decided they would shell out 1000yen each to go up to the tower to see what's going on. The escalator to the top floor is the fastest escalator in the world, taking only 40secs to go from 1st to 59th floor. At the observatory, there are 4 corners where you can see the entire city of Yokohama plus landmarks like Mount Fuji, Tokyo Tower, Chinatown, Tokyo city center etc. Chris and company were amazed by these breath-taking scenaries and spent half an hour taking pictures.
Afterwards, Chris and company went to have some curry rice at the Tower's cafeteria. It was lunch-hours and there're many OLs doing lunch. One of Chris' companions was brave enough to take spy-shots of pretty girls to satisfy his ego ^^ After lunch, they went to the nearby Queen's Square Yokohama and Chris bought some souvenirs at the place. Next to Queen's Square Yokohama was the Yokohama Convention Hall where ZARD will be performing in April. Then, they walked to a nearby mall where the entire mall sell foreign goods. Interestingly, Chris got himself a "ZARD & Every Little Thing" unofficial piano scores at the place, which is not exactly a foreign good. After this mall, they also went to a mall called the "Red Brick" and then stopped by at an exhibition showing Japanese in foreign countries. Then, they decided to walk back to the Yokohama Station.
Next stop was Shinjuku, where all the Tokyo's hippiest and coolest stuff can be found. And again, the place was full of malls overflowing with young people. A T-shirt, plain with a piece of colored cloth attached to it, sell for 13000yen. It was definitely the most expensive T-shirts Chris has ever seen. And believe it or not, there are plenty people to buy these kinds of expensive clothing! They went to the nearby Tower Records, where an artist TAKUI was spotted doing a radio interview promoting his latest CD album. A bunch of young fans were there cheering for their idol. Then, Chris and company stopped by the TSUTAYA records store where Chris bought a bunch of second-hand CDs. The second-hand CDs in Japan look so new they look like never being used before. For dinner, they went to a hamburger place called Lotteria where they ordered some fast food to fill the stomach.
Time flies, and Chris was tired. So, the gang decided to head back to the hotel and call it a day to prepare for the onslaught of tomorrow!
Still in a sick mode after coming back from New York. NY was cold. Unbelievably cold. I got sore throat and runny nose and lost my voice. Trying to recover from the sickness. I am glad I don't need to say a word to compose this blog :)
Time Square in NY is cool. I went there once during daytime and once at night. Same place; totally different feel. Very busy all the time. Seems that everybody is excited to be walking around Times Square just to get the crowded feel of the place.
New York Times Square Day and NightPeople in New York give me an impression that they are interesting. See, a lot of New Yorkers read books at public places, on trains. They are sometimes rude (like you can always hear honks on the street), but they have the kind of culture that is unique to people from New York. New York people tend to dress nicer than people in the bay-area. Probably because they have cold weather all the time and need to have thick coats and those coats usually look quite nice.
Minus the sickness, I like this trip. Although it is mainly for business, it was worthwhile to be able to see many places in New York. I mostly walked around the city so my rental car - a Nissan Altima - was actually a waste. Parking New York Manhattan is nuts, usually around US$7 an hour. I spent a day over the weekend and visited places like World Trade Center site, Chinatown, Times Square, Radio City Hall, Central Park, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center etc. It was quite fun to just walk around and feel the city's life and the people living in it.
On the surface, it seems that 9/11 did not have too much of a lasting impression on the New Yorker. Talking and working with them, I don't feel there is any worries or fears. People who visited New York probably made a bigger deal; lots of tourists went to the WTC site while I was there, took pictures and videos and hung around to look at the temporary display boards about WTC and 9/11. It was a Sunday morning by the way. At the site, there are also temporary memorials to remember the sacrificed Firefighters and police-officers.
the site which is being re-constructed to be a memorial museum
People paid tribute to those who lost their lives
After a long but not so long flight, Chris finally arrived at the Tokyo Narita International Airport. The corridor leading to the customs is very long. Fortunately there are automatic walkways. The customs' queue for foreigners was very long. Chris waited for about 30 minutes before it was his turn. The customs officer did not ask Chris anything and let him enter the country. It was a very smooth process.
Getting the luggage was another story. I waited and waited for my luggage but it did not come out from the transportation belt. So I wandered around and saw my luggage was already out and was being placed at the JAL luggage counter. Time was wasted so Chris hurried out to the airport's main lobby to get the limousine bus ticket. It was 3000yen and unfortunately they only accepted cash. So Chris bought the ticket and went outside to wait for the bus to arrive.
Before boarding the bus, the lady was asking Chris about "CHIKIN". Chris said "what?". And then she said it again. Chris was puzzled. Then she used English and say "ticket please". Now Chris finally got it and decided it was time to get the pocket-dictionary out!
The bus ride was quite smooth. It was supposed to be a 90 minute ride but it took 2 hours to arrive at the hotel. Chris was almost the only person on the bus to get out of the bus for this hotel (there were about 30 other people going to another hotel).
When Chris arrived at the lobby, he was greeted by my rommmate Andy. Chris checked in and went up to their room and put his stuff down before heading to meet the big group. Their room was on the 28th floor and it was beautiful scenary seeing the buildings in Ikebukuro. After settling down, Andy & Chris decided to head to find others.
The hotel Chris and group stayed in for the next 3-4 days is called Sunshine City Prince Hotel. Located in the heart of Ikebukuro area, the hotel has a multi-storey underground mall with numerous restaurants and shops geared towards young people. Andy & Chris wandered around the mall and met up with Arnold, the person who speaks the best Japanese in the big group. They wandered around a bit but did not find the other people. So, Arnold took Andy & Chris to the ground and headed to Ikebukuro HMV CD store because they were supposed to meet up there.
Inside Sunshine City (the underground mall), Chris saw the Totoro store and immediately went into it to investigate. They sold everything related to Totoro. Chris was too happy and took many pictures of the store.
At around 8pm, the big group finally arrived. They are Arnold, Cary, Vincent, Gary, Ada and her boyfriend, Hinz, Cedric, Diego(?). I couldn't remember all the names but we were glad to see each other. After spending a little bit of time at HMV, we headed for dinner. It was a bit tough to find a restaurant with 11 seats available, as Japanese restaurants are usually small and did not have that much of space. After some restaurant-searching and trying to meet the requirement of "Cheap, Good, enough seats", we went to a restaurant called "Sakana-Ya" (Fish House). We took our shoes off at the entrance and they gave us a room. It was traditional Japanese-style room and was enough to seat 11. Arnold helped us all order food and drinks. While we waited for the food, everyone shared their love for ZARD and why they came. There were some interesting stories like someone quitted their job to come to this concert. Now that is sacrificial act! Rerex had a DV and captured the whole meeting EXCEPT his own sharing. We decided it was not fair but Rerex insisted he did not need to make himself available to the camera because he is the director and editor :)
The food was okay and Chris did not think he ate enough because he was busy talking. It was a very exciting time for Chris because it was great to see so many ZARD fans at once. We had good conversations talking about ZARD, about music, about our love to Izumi. Anyways, the restaurant's menu was printed extremely nice but when the food came they were small portion. Chris later found out most restaurants are like that: nice menu, good service, ok food, small portion, and very expensive!
After the dinner, it was still early and they decided to wander Ikebukuro a bit. They went into a few of the game centers. The ground floor for all the game centers are always full of dream-catchers (the machines where you try to grab prizes). Lots of schoolgirls and schoolboys filled the floor. The next few floors have many latest arcade games. The top floor always consists of gambling machines like slot machines and horse gambling. The game centers are full of second-hand smoke so it wasn't a very pleasant place to stay for too long.
Hinz & Chris stopped by a drum machine and decided to try their hands on it. Everyone else just watched them as they were playing. It was a fun game. Then, Hinz tried out a game where you grabbed a sword and slash enemies. He did pretty well. It was very bloody though.
After the game centers, we wandered a bit more. Chris forgot where the group wandered to. Before going back to the hotel, Andy & Chris bought some breakfast at a convenience store FamilyMart. Since the package Andy & Chris got did not provide breakfast, it was essential for them to grab something so their stomach would not be too empty to start the day. Before Andy & Chris headed back to their room, they stopped by Arnold's room and Arnold recommended us to go to Yokohama MM21 (since some of us decided not to join the big group for Disneyland). They would need to take the Tokyo subway and it would be a challenge for them because:
1. it was their first time ever to take the Tokyo subway
2. Tokyo subway is the world's most complicated subway system. Even the Japanese locals constantly get lost.
But Chris decided - what the heck! He would be the adventurous guy. And with his broken Japanese he would be ok!
In conclusion, it was a fun but tiring night. Although there was a bit of jet-lag, Chris was excited to be in Tokyo and got the chance to meet up with a bunch of friends whom he only knew on the web before (end of part III).
The plane ride was approximately 11 hours. It was definitely a long ride for Chris as he had not been having a long flight since going to HK 4 years ago. Fortunately, it was a more than pleasant plane ride for Chris. JAL definitely has the best of services and facilities. Chris was being served JAL-only Kiwi juice, J-style nuts for snack, personal TV monitor with 15 different movie channels, 10 different video games, j-pop, blues, jazz, international music channels. The only thing Chris complained was when he first got to his seat, the floor was sticky and needed to be cleaned up. But it was only a small glitch.
Chris played several rounds of reversi. Even at the "expert mode", Chris beat the computer easily. They need to tweak their AI a bit... Also, Chris watched a Japanese movie called "The Essential of Breathing". It is not released in Japan yet. And best of all, Do As Infinity sang the theme song with the same name!
All in all, 11 hours were really nothing for Chris. It felt like 1 hour. Of course, it was also because he is going to Japan (end of part II).
3/7 Saturday morning, Chris took the bay-area BART (the north California subway) and it took him all the way to San Francisco International Airport. his flight was with JAL - Japan Airlines. When Chris arrived at the check-in line, it was so long. He had to wait for 35 minutes to wait for his turn.
getting onto the BART at 8am - since it was Saturday not many people were waiting at the station
Chris took a no-man train from the BART station to the SF International Airport International Wing. The International Wing is very new, bright and clean. Everywhere in the wing is sparkling clean and it gives a very peaceful feel, perfect for international travellers who will have long hours spending on the plane later.
Transit taking passengers from BART to airport
Chris' luggages were light - he wanted to bring many empty bags to Tokyo so he could bring them back full of goodies. He wasn't really planing to buy a lot of things except the concert goods. Of course, Chris exchanged some Japanese yen beforehand to prepare for his Tokyo trip. He checked out a picture depicting Japanese currencies, so that he knows which is which to avoid potential embarrassments ;)
The International Wing - the interior design looks like those for Tokyo International Forum!
After the long wait in line to check-in, Chris was able to check his one piece of luggage without any complications. He ate something simple at the airport cafe and queued up to get into the passenger-only international terminals. Another long queue existed and it was unfortunately another 30-minute wait because of the slow X-ray screenings of passengers.
After passing through the security screenings, Chris walked to the terminal. While he was walking, suddenly he felt so touched by this trip - he couldn't believe he is actually going to Japan for a ZARD concert! Never in his life would he imagine having this opportunity to actually see Izumi Sakai (ZARD main vocal) in person. And then, he realized that it has been 15 years since he last visited Japan. It has been so long already. Tears were ready to roll down but Chris halted them. It was a touching moment.
The flight was already waiting for them. It was a Jumbo B747-400 passenger plane. It took a long time to broad all the passengers because this jet is simply huge. Chris believe about 90% of this plane's passengers are Japanese people. Probably they were going back to Japan to visit relatives. The broading process was very smooth. The passengers were all very coorporative and polite to one another, even the line was very long. While waiting in line, Chris took the opportunity to take out the pocket English-Japanese dictionary and began to study it. It proved to be extremely useful during this trip (end of part 1).
