Christmas in Tokyo

I don’t know where or when I will post this online, but here it goes.

Today was Christmas. In Japan, Christmas is observed about the same way we do Valentine’s Day in the U.S. Very few people take it seriously as a religious holiday, but a lot of people enjoy it as a fun holiday and gift-giving occasion. I read that it was considered a romantic holiday, but I hadn’t seen a lot of that until tonight (lots of couples kissing near the Christmas lights).

We started at 7:30 with a trip to the Tsukiji fish market. They were not letting tourists in the market itself, but we were free to explore the outer market (which is stalls where merchants sell products including dried fish, fruit and vegetables, tea, cleaning supplies, and even toilet paper and paper towels for some reason). The outer market was fascinating. I took lots of pictures. One thing that particularly caught my eye was the guys driving the fish carts back and forth. It was all men -- I didn’t see a single woman working the fish market (though several had stalls in the outer market). It was fun to watch them careening around the corners on their little carts.

Next we stopped at the Tsukiji Denny’s for breakfast, then went to Ginza for a second trip to Ito-ya, and to look for a chopstick shop that was listed in our Lonely Planet book but seems to have gone out of business. Charlie has gotten really good at interpreting Japanese addresses (no small feat) and can often get us to a place as long as we have an address and can find a neighborhood map (all of the neighborhoods have them -- they would have to, or you could never find anything).

One sweet, weird little encounter: a chubby Japanese man saw us looking at a map, and could clearly tell we were American. Here is our dialogue, in its entirety:

Man: Merry Christmas!
Us: Thank you! Merry Christmas to you too!
Man: I am Christian!
Us: That’s great! (Nodding and smiling)
Man: I love Jesus!
Us: Nodding, smiling.
Man: I love the Holy Spirit!
Us: Nodding, smiling.
Man: God bless you!
Us: God bless you, too!

It might sound like he was proselytizing, but he really wasn’t. He came across to me as just a sweet, enthusiastic guy. I wasn’t about to respond to his “I love Jesus” with “That’s great. I don’t.” See, I do have some manners.

We got on the subway and headed to Ikebukuro, which is a really cool district that has a Tokyu Hands branch (meaning that we have now been to all three on this trip) with something unique: on the top floor, there is a business called Nekobukuro. It is a set of rooms that houses 12 or so cats in an environment designed for them. You can pay 600 yen (about $8) to go in and visit the cats. This sounds more fun than it actually turned out to be. The cats are not particularly friendly. When I went in, an attendant gave me a few pieces of kibble and showed me how to hold them out to the cats in my open palm. The cats were willing to eat the treats I offered, but they had no interest in being petted or held. I tried to pet a few and they only grudgingly accepted it, walking away or leaning their little bodies so that I touched them as little as possible. Not one to force my attention on an unwilling cat, I left pretty quickly.

After that, we headed to a different part of the district, looking for lunch and then for a couple of stores. Lunch was a success: we walked along a street until we found a kaiten-zushi (sushi on a conveyor belt; you take the plates you want, and at the end the waiter totals up your plates and gives you a bill) place. It was excellent sushi -- and kind of ridiculously inexpensive. Each plate was only 135 yen (about $2). The chef and the hostess were really nice, too. It was a great experience.

It’s a good thing, because without that sushi place, our trip to Ikebukuro would have been kind of a bust. We were looking for the Japanese Traditional Craft Center, which our book (which, in fairness, is the 2009 edition, which was the only edition of this pocket-sized Lonely Planet guide we could find) said was in Ikebukuro. Nope. It moved to Aoyama. The local signs said it was in Ikebukuro too, in a particular building. We couldn’t find it at all. Finally we walked into a nice hotel across the street and asked an English-speaking staff member, who told us it had moved. D’oh!

We were also looking for a cool-sounding store called Loft, which we were sure was in a particular building. All we could find in that building was a department store called Seibu. We Googled it later and found out that Loft occupies Seibu’s 9th-11th floors. It would have been nice if Seibu’s signage had indicated that!

We’ll probably go back to Ikebukuro. There was a lot more there that we didn’t get to see.

Next we went to Aki-Hibara (electronics district), wasted $40 on a Pokemon game that won’t run on my US 3DS (we’re going to take it home in the hopes that it might run on Charlie’s regular DS), and then found a really fun little place called Akihabara Gachapon Kaikan. It’s crammed full of the little capsule-vending machines (gachapon) that sell little toys and trinkets in plastic capsules. We spent 20 minutes and probably $20 there. The capsules will make good little presents to bring home to people. Plus, it was just fun getting random goodies out of machines.

After that, it was a long trek by train back to the hotel, where we regrouped for a bit and then went out for some dinner and photography.