September 11 - 14

Jim, Lynn, Jay and Barbara decided to visit Japan before the start of our China trip in order to see more of Asia and to give ourselves a few days to adjust to the local time.  The four of us flew to San Francisco on September 10th and spent the night at a hotel near the airport.  Our flight to Tokyo took about 10 1/2 hours, and as Tokyo is 16 hours later than San Francisco, we arrived on the next day, the 12th.  We went to the Park Hotel, which is located in the Shiodome Media Center in the business section of Tokyo.  As we hadn’t slept on the plane and were suffering from jet-lag, we had a quick dinner at a nearby restaurant and turned in early.  We found that although most of the hotel staff speak some English, communicating is still a bit of a problem.  The staff at the restaurant had difficulty understanding us and the menu only had a little bit of English, so it was an interesting experience.  We will appreciate the guided tour in China because of the language issue, although the four of us also like the challenge of getting around by ourselves.  Jim loaded some words and phrases in his iPhone, and has been able to show the characters for “toilet”, “fork” and “thank you” to restaurant staff.  It gets an immediate smile and response.  We had a good night’s sleep and started our day on Saturday with a walk to the large fish market.  By the time we got there about 9:30 am, most of the auctioning was complete.  We saw many beautiful vegetables and countless varieties of fish.  The fish market is located on Tokyo Bay, and when we left the market we walked to the nearby Hama-rikyu Gardens that also border the bay.  The weather was quite warm, mid 80’s, and very humid.  After our walk around the gardens we walked back to our hotel and had lunch at a nearby French cafe.  After a refreshing rest, we went to dinner at a Japanese restaurant in the nearby Shiodome City Center.  There were great views from the 41st floor restaurant as it faced the brightly lit shopping area called the Ginza.  The restaurant staff made us feel like VIPs, as at least a half dozen of them bowed to us and greeted us as we were being shown to our table.  We are very impressed with the Japanese people as they are very gracious and kind.  Our meal included sushi and other appetizers, fish, meat, rice and some things that we couldn’t really identify, but it was all very memorable.  We left the restaurant and walked about a half mile to the Ginza.  There were a lot of people there even though many of the stores were closed.  The Ginza is mainly expensive clothing and accessories stores but there are also some restaurants and a big Apple store.  By the time we got back to our hotel about 10 pm we had walked over ten miles total for the day.  We enjoyed Tokyo, as the roads are wonderful, the city is very clean and the elevators are the fastest and quietest we’ve ever ridden.  On Sunday, September 14th, we decided to leave Tokyo and visit the city of Kamakura.  The train station near our hotel was well-marked and easy to navigate.  The trip took just under an hour and was pleasant, although there wasn’t any great scenery.  We checked out the shopping area first, and then went to visit the temple of the Great Buddha.  There were many Japanese visitors, but we didn’t see many Western tourists.  We then stopped at the Hasadera Temple.  The grounds were beautiful and the temple was very interesting.  We were very warm again after our sightseeing, and picked a restaurant that was air-conditioned and served beer.  The Japanese food there turned out to be quite good.  We returned to our hotel by train and planned to spend the remainder of the day relaxing and doing this blog.  Tomorrow morning we leave our hotel early to make the hour long trip to the airport.  We will fly to Beijing for the start of our China tour.  We are looking forward to seeing our six friends who will be our travel companions for the next couple of weeks.