In search of sauerkraut

Shopping in Tokyo, and probably in most large cities, isn't just a matter of hopping in one's car and going to the store. I was planning to roast a pork loin the other night and had some rutabaga on hand (for some unknown reason a favorite of the Watts) and I started to crave sauerkraut to go with dinner.

So I took about 600 Yen in small change (the change that Bill keeps emptying from his pocket and dropping in a dish each night) and went out in pursuit of sauerkraut. There's a nice Japanese market a couple of blocks away, but no sauerkraut there. So I started my hike to the international supermarket - about a mile each way - up a hill and along the perimeter of the heavily policed Russian Embassy, (an interesting aside here is that the Tokyo American Club is directly behind the Russian Embassy) and back down the other side of the hill to the market, wondering all the way if my 600 Yen would buy a jar of sauerkraut, and if I didn't have enough would they let me take the sauerkraut and pay them the difference next time? If not, well then, at least I had a 2-mile briskly-paced walk.

No need to worry. Even though the cost of living here is super high, the sauerkraut only cost 263 Yen, about $2.50 (I'm sure still very expensive compared to US stores). So, there I was counting out all my 1 Yens, less than a penny, and 10 Yens to get rid of the pocketful of change I had.

I returned home via my other favorite route, through an inviting metal archway named Azuba, similar to the gateway to Chinatown in SF, and on to a small lane of tiny Japanese shops and restaurants that leads right to the foot of Tokyo Tower.

Dinner was good that night - especially the sauerkraut!

Ginza

Neither Bill nor I are big on shopping, but we decided to take advantage of the pedestrians-only streets to soak in Ginza on Sunday. We strolled around and didn't venture into any buildings except the large department store Matsuya, where we chose a Chinese restaurant among the couple floors of restaurants for lunch. The ceilings in department stores are very low, so travel up and down the escalators is real quick. Here are a couple of shots we took - the Matsuya is on the right - the large white building, and the other a beautiful display in a store window.


All the big stores names are at Ginza, so it's easy to part with some Yen if one is so disposed. The Mikimoto shop of fine pearls is one I'd like to see another time - supposedly very glittery and worth a look around.

When we came up to the street from the subway at Ginza, directly in front of us was a very dramatic and colorful Japanese theatre where traditional Japanese Kabuki is performed - plays performed in elaborate makeup, flamboyant settings with trapdoors and overhead cables for flying around, clanging, etc. From what we understand, these plays go on for hours, but a ticket with an English headset can be purchased for an hour or so - probably enough for us to experience and enjoy the culture.

Gung Hay Fat Choy

David and Gina are heralding the Chinese New Year so that their baby will now be born in the year of the Dog. Even though Japan doesn't celebrate the lunar new year, yesterday's paper was entitled, "Kung hei fat choy."

Here's a little Japanese - Bill's new business card. We know it's his because the last three symbols on the first line are the same as on the crosstrainer we use upstairs when it displays how many energy units are used - in watts! Another good indication that we know it's really Bill's card is that the reverse side is in English!

Stupid Fall Yesterday

After all the healing of a wrist injury from playing tennis in Hawaii early last year, and with the good rest my wrist is getting in not playing here, I stupidly walked off a short step yesterday and went flying - of course turning to my right (stronger) side to brace the impact. I saw a metal pole looming and ducked my head out of the way, and my right upper arm took the blow - my wrist saw some action too. So now I have an enlarged bicep, sore elbow and very sore wrist, and real cute black and blues on every appendage on my right side - hip and knees too. Not to worry though. Nothing is injured, just bruised.

All this after we had spotted some nearby tennis courts and decided I would bring back our racquets when and if I get a trip home late February. I'm sure all will be healed long before then, just a bummer now.

Jizobosatsu Statues

On this beautiful Saturday morning, Bill and I decided to walk for a few hours in various directions from our apartment. In the Shiba Park, very near home, we came across these little statues, images of Jizobosatsu, the Buddhist equivalent of an angel and protector of the souls of stillborn children. These Jizo, mostly dressed in red baby bonnets, have been dedicated by mothers who have experienced a stillbirth or who have had an abortion, and may decorate them with baby clothes and toys. All hold little windmills. This was so colorful and sad at the same time, and so moving.

Kimono Museum

I took a day excursion with the ladies of the Tokyo American Club to the Kubota Art Museum, a pyramid-shaped structure supported by 1000 year-old cypress beams, nestled in the woods very near Mt. Fuji. It was a beautiful day - sunny and crisp. The art museum displays the kimonos of Itchiku Kubota, an artist whose passion in life was to re-create the ancient textile art of kimono design "tsujigahana". After many years of research, trial and error, he finally accomplished the art and produced 44 kimonos worth in the millions, and displayed at the Smithsonian in 1989.

It unfathonable how the intricate tie-dying of each kimono is accomplished, which takes over a year to produce, and when hung side by side form a panoramic tapestry. The colors and scenes are breathtaking - many of which are of Mt. Fuji. He spent years creating scenes of autumn and winter, and his son and son-in-law are now producing his spring and summer themes since Kubota's passing in 2002.

All in all, a lovely day at a beautiful site with women of many accents, many of whom have been in Tokyo a few years raising their children and loving life here.

Happy Birthday, Mom

My beautiful mother would have been 91 today (January 25 here in Tokyo). How she would have enjoyed this journey with me!

Two of Mom's grandsons and their wives, David & Gina Watt and Dan & Melanie Secor, are about to become first-time parents. Gina and Melanie are both busy dilating. Not probable, but wouldn't it be lovely for both of them to have their babies on great-grandmother's birthday!

A night at the symphony

Last week we noticed that the Mahler Symphony #2 (Resurrection) was being performed this weekend, so I walked over to the symphony hall (that is, attempted to walk, got a little lost and hailed a cab to get me there) but was told the symphony was sold out. The agent gave me a telephone number to call to check further if any tickets might be available. So I walked home (without any miss-direction this time) and called the number I was given. At this number, Mr. Egami confirmed that the performance was sold out. In my attempt to ask him (several different ways) if tickets are turned in for resale the day of the performance, he finally said that he had a couple of "guest" tickets available - assumption here is theaters/venues all over hold back good tickets in case VIPs need tickets at the last minute. He also said he was looking forward to meeting Watt-san. The end result is that Mr. Egami was at the door with our tickets - no higher priced than listed - and we sat in the 8th row, dead center. When the orchestra started playing we were enveloped in absolutely beautiful music.

I recall several years ago our neighbors Sue and Gary had given us tickets they couldn't use to the SF Symphony, and we heard the Mahler Resurrection symphony then for the first time. I was so moved by the incredibly beautiful soft singing of the chorus after the crashing, intense music previous to their entry that I felt tears rolling down my cheeks. The symphony we heard last night was just as beautiful. Interestingly, even though there was applause after the performance for well over 10 minutes, not one person stood in ovation. It's not the custom here to stand unless the performance is unusually outstanding. Heard a few bravos, though. It will be interesting to see on Tuesday how the Mariinsky Symphony is received.

I now have a new friend, Egami-san, at the symphony. I hope to contact him often!!

A look at our Tokyo life

Now that I know I can upload photos, here's a look at our life here.


This is our apartment building - 42 stories - we're on the 11th floor.

The living room with entry door to balcony; couch is on the near wall.

Bedroom with entry to same balcony.

The galley kitchen.

The bathroom

And the toilet with all the bells and whistles!

We love our little home away from home!

Woke up to snow this morning

This is terrific. I didn't know that I could upload photos to my blog. Here's a winter scene we woke up to this morning - the temple roofs are usually dark gray. What a beautiful snowy day, and getting whiter by the moment.

We're off in the snow this morning (Saturday) to do some more supermarket shopping.

Moved into our apartment

It's only been a week since we left home, but having been so busy it feels much longer. On Wednesday, after all the paper work was completed, we packed up our four suitcases and headed to our new apartment. It's 725 square feet - a living room, bedroom, bath and butler kitchen - really plenty large enough for us.

We're in a 42 story building - our apartment is on the 11th floor. The first 14 floors are "serviced" apartments that include all furniture and items to live with - pots, pans, dishes, linens, etc. We have cleaning service twice a week - not bad! The living room and bedroom are off a common balcony with wrap-around windows, so the apartment is very light. We're facing west, southwest, and yesterday when the sun came out there was Mt. Fiji in the distance just between a break in the skyscrapers surrounding us. Anyone familiar with Tokyo will know where we are since we're within spittin' distance of Tokyo Tower. Our apartment is overlooking a shrine area with trees, so for a city it's quite quiet.

My first venture was to shop for food. I was told to walk there, but chickened out and took a taxi not quite knowing the route. After I finished shopping, I strolled home through a lot of little side streets always keeping a few familiar skyscrapers AND the omnipresent Tokyo Tower in view. I can't imagine getting around this city successfully without a good sense of direction. Thank goodness I'm blessed with one!

Even though the supermarket is billed as the place to shop for Westerners, shopping was very time-consuming with many foreign products, not to mention printed languages. I wound around the store and got a lot of staples and enough "familiar" food to last us a few days. Bill and I are going to go back on Saturday - we'll each take a cart and meet at checkout. Three people checked me out. One to sort the items for delivery - all cold together, etc. - one to scan and the other to bag and box up for delivery. Everyone was very nice. About a half-hour after I got back home, the delivery person was at our door with all the food - no tipping allowed!!

My first visit to the 42nd floor that has a spa, three-lane lap pool, a gym and a lounge was a bit of an issue. I was told that my tennis sneakers were not indoor shoes, so they tried to give me all kinds of "indoor" shoes to try on but with my 10-1/2 narrow feet nothing worked. My own shoes were actually very clean, so I told them they would now become my indoor shoes. Whew - now I can work out! The view on the 42nd floor is magnificent, so I'll take advantage of the lounge and have coffee often. They also serve meals, and a free breakfast for residents. I might even treat myself to a massage soon!

So, Bill and I have had two home-cooked dinners at home - both Italian - yeah! And, now we're officially at home!

All I want for Christmas ...

... is a Japanese toilet!

It's been one wild and crazy day moving into our apartment, but we love it. More to come.

Harrods - almost!

This morning I left the hotel and wandered over to the building where Bill works, about 2 blocks from the hotel. I knew that there was a nice underground mall of shops and food, but this little underground mall is about 5 stories high with hundreds of shops, food stalls and restaurants. I was there close to lunchtime so needless to say it was busy. It felt like a Harrods department store, a great place to shop and eat specialty foods, although most of the food was Japanese. I did find some wonderful brown bread, much to my delight in my love of carbs. We can find very good bread at many places, so we'll be able to continue to enjoy some just as good as we can get in California.

I was chewing some gum (discreetly) and never saw a trash receptacle in which to get rid of it. Bill and I were looking for a public trash bin yesterday and never saw one then either. Since this city is about the cleanest place I've ever been to and there isn't one public garbage can around means to me that people walk around with a lot of trash in their pockets to take care of at night when they get home. I don't know how else or where people get rid of trash.

Couldn't be more timely

I was surprised upon arrival to see that the driving side of the road is the same as that in the UK - on the left. I said to Bill that I didn't recall that Japan was ever in the Commonwealth and wondered how driving on the same side came about. In a timely manner, there was an article in yesterday's Japan Times about just that - why Japan was never a part of the Commonwealth. The short of it is that the British recognized that the Japanese were more literate than they - 50% versus 40% - and that attempting to take over the country would probably be a futile effort. Interesting, I thought.

Personal hygiene is incredibly important. It's very common to see people wear a mask over their nose and mouth. It's not for protection from the environment, but to protect other people from their own germs, having a cold or other illness. So, in essence, the outer effluences from the body are taboo - passing on germs, sneezing, coughing, other noises (you know what I mean). But inwardly bodily functions such as sniffling, slurping, are acceptable. At restaurants, we're offered a warm wet cloth to clean our hands with, but no napkins are offered. That's hard for me. I think it's proper to keep the wet cloth to use at the end of the meal again since they don't pick them up from the table. But nothing for my lap!! Paper towels in a restroom are missing too. I understand that most Japanese use a personal hanky they carry to dry their hands. There are immaculate toilets in all subway stations that also include a tush wash in addition to a bidet - just like in our hotel (and Bill's office) bathroom. I'm going to get used to this stuff pretty quickly and want to install it on our toilets when we return home - including the warm toilet seat!

Philip warned us never to stand chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice because that would be related to certain rituals for the dead such as an altar offering of a bowl of uncooked rice with upright positioned chopsticks. There are many graveyards throughout Tokyo; from a highrise it's easy to spot them. Each grave seems to have many tall, flat sticks standing in front, maybe as a way of identification or another ritual. I'll have to look into that a bit to understand why they're there.

When Bill and Philip and I were on the subway the first day, I asked Philip if it was a requirement that everyone sleep! Almost to a person, even standing, people had their eyes shut. Some were obviously sleeping. We just quietly chuckled to ourselves, but I read later that because personal space is smaller than in the West, on crowded trains people create a psychological bubble around themselves by closing their eyes and/or taking a nap. We may not be the same people when we return to the States having to be so polite and reserved for so long!
Everyone, whether a service person, someone on the street, no matter the situation, is incredibly polite. It's almost impossible not to bow slightly in almost every personal interaction. It's just a reflexive reaction to one that is received.

It was disheartening to find that women are treated, for lack of a better term, as second-class citizens. It's not overt, but as an example a waiter directed his ordering preference first to Bill and then to me. I'll have to be careful not to be impolite about things such as this, but I do need to remember that I'm in their country - not mine! I understand that in business within a totally Japanese culture, that even if a woman has a higher ranking position, at meetings she sits in a chair behind the men at a meeting table. Visiting women executives from other countries are treated as "male" guests and offered seats at the table.

I find it really difficult not to tip, but at the same time pretty cool. No one has their hand out for something extra, so it's especially nice to see how polite people are NOT expecting something for their services. I was chastised by a cab driver because I opened my own door. This particular driver, as do many, had a release at his controls to spring the door open, so he didn't want me to touch the door handle. Other drivers, as we also had, wear white gloves and come around and open the door from the outside to let us out. And, NO tip is expected. In fact, I guess it's an affront to attempt to tip. I don't think we'll have a problem not tipping!!

Bill went off to work this morning looking rather dapper in his suit and tie. How I miss the days when he went off every day at home looking so nice. Do I think our society has become slovenly-behaved because we "dress down" now as well? Yes, I think that's part of the problem, for sure.

I hope I don't wake up tonight with things I want to "record" on my blog. It's fun, though, so I'll keep it up.

Only here 48 hours???

Whow, what a day. Tried to get back to sleep at 4a last night but to no avail. Bill then got on the computer, so we both stayed up. I made it through the entire day without even a nod-off. Had another test on the Metro and met Philip before the appointed time. We walked through Embassy Row and real, very tiny, Japanese houses nestled along alleys and lanes below the towering skyscrapers of some of the most expensive real estate in Tokyo. Did a little food shopping with Philip - should be manageable for us. Light bags can be taken on the return trip home on the Metro; purchases over $100 rate a home delivery. When we went back to Philip's apartment on the 24th floor, there was Mt. Fuji majestically poised before our eyes in the distance - it was quite a sight. I should be apartment hunting tomorrow after I hear from Bill's office where to look.

The three of us decided to go to Suntory Hall for a Japan Philharmonic Orchestra concert. It's a beautiful symphony hall very much like Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. We heard Dvorak's New World Symphony and Saint-Saens Organ Symphony. The conductor Kobayashi Ken-ichiro is much in the mold Seiji Ozawa, tossing his long hair around with every motion. We very much enjoyed the concert - a much-needed serene afternoon. While we were standing in line to get today's tickets we saw that Valery Gergiev will be here next week with the Mariinsky Orchestra from St. Petersburg, so we bought some tickets for that. Can't wait to see him conduct and hear that wonderful orchestra. It's easy getting to the symphony hall - a check in the plus column for city living!

From our observation we were the only Westerners in the audience today, with the exception of a couple in the row behind us. Upon returning from intermission they asked us if we were from California - not America, but California. We were surprised that they should ask such a question. They, too, were from Southern California, but we never got an answer from them as to why they thought we were from California - we had a laugh over that, weird too!

Tomorrow I'll make some observations about a woman's position in Japanese culture, the "group" mentality of the Japanese and a little bit about the toilets! Tipping? Non-existent here!

Tokyo Metro

What a day! Philip said this was a record number of times he's been on subways, and we walked and walked all day - our little doggies were darn tired at the end of the day. I was even put to the test to get us from one train line to the other. No small task, but a necessary life line in Tokyo. The subway system is similar to London and Paris, with colored lines and end-zone identification, but there are so many of them that there are two or three greens and blues, etc. The exits from the subway are listed on bright gold signs, sometimes from 1A and B on up through 15 exit options, making it necessary to know where you want to come up to the street; otherwise, it's another long walk back to the point of destination. We should get used to the Metro, but not before making some mistakes for sure!

Philip took us to his serviced apartment. It's about 1000 sq ft, quite new and modern, and very light - something that's a must for me. I was quite pleased as we expected something much smaller. Unfortunately, his complex is full but the agents will let Philip know Monday if getting in soon is possible. We went to another lovely complex but it was too late to see a unit. So, my job on Monday will be to follow through with getting us a place to live. This hotel is very nice, but we definitely want to get into an apartment soon.

We had tonkatsu for lunch - a heavier version of tempura - and very good. Even heavier with coating it was lighter than tempura we've had at home, and interestingly served on a small metal grate to let any oil drip to the plate, although there wasn't any.

The underground world of Tokyo is amazing. Beyond expansive, spotless, filled with thousands of shops and small restaurants. I think all Japanese eat their way through life! Every restaurant underground has plastic displays of the meals available, so it's an easy point and select option for us ex-pats, or fairly easy, that is. It's hard to tell exactly what's in a lot of the dishes.

It poured rain all after noon, so underground was a good place to be. Philip took us to an end stop to show us the crowds of Tokyo. All end stops on the Metro are huge complexes of department stores, both underground and above. I took a 30-second movie on our digital camera from above a multi-street crossing, and when the light changed for people to walk, it's a huge sea of umbrellas crossing in many directions, although very orderly. I'll try to figure out how to make a copy to post on an Ofoto site or something similar when I start to make photo albums.

Well, it's 3am so I think I'll try to go back to sleep!!!

Saturday In Tokyo

How cool - my first blog. Sure beats inundating you all with emails. Now you can decide if you wish to follow us in our journey.

We had a very uneventful flight over - except for Bill and the flight attendants scrounging through after-dinner trays looking for his glasses! Since Bill can't see a thing without his glasses - no small problem. All ended well when I crawled in front of the guy seated behind us and found them tucked under Bill's seat.

Upon landing we made good connections at the airport and arrived at our hotel by 7:00p. At check-in, we were told a twin-bedded room was reserved for us, so we changed to a king bed. Well, I've never seen a bed like this - it's got to be two attached queens. We laughed when we waved at each other at the far ends. It reminded me about our parents' generation and how so many of them ended up sadly changing to twins from their regular double bed - before the advent of queens and kings. The few times we have slept in a double bed, it was impossible not to disturb the other when turning over or trying to spread out a bit. After our wave good-night we crashed and had about eight hours' good sleep. Breakfast never tasted so good - Bill was more adventurous selecting food from the buffet, and I plan to try a lot of different things, but not for breakfast!

Bill's boss, Philip Yen, is meeting us this morning and showing us the ropes to Tokyo - the Metro, what an apartment size looks like, and an over all feel for the city. We're really looking forward to getting out this morning as we arrived last night in the dark. Our hotel room overlooks the Imperial Palace and a moat with swans.

I'll be writing a daily journal, so you can catch up with our experiences.

Beth