how I almost missed my plane in Tokyo

I got on my plane from Tokyo to Shanghai drenched in sweat, dizzy from not eating, and with very sore legs.

Rupa and I stayed at the Tokyo International Youth Hostel. It is a very nice hotel-- clean and quiet, with more Japanese then foreigners. It is also very reasonably priced, at 3500 Yen per day (thats about $35)-- cheaper then London.

The way the hostel stays so quiet and orderly is that the residents have to obey a very strict set of rules. You can only shower during 6:30am-8am and you can only bathe from 6pm until 10pm or so. The front doors are locked from 10:30pm until 6:30am. Etc.

These rules were somewhat problematic for me because my flight to Tokyo was leaving at 9:45am. Instead of moving to another hotel, I decided to risk it and stay in the hostel.

I was out the front doors at 6:30 sharp and jumped on the subway next door. I took the JR to Tokyo station (20 minutes) where I bought a ticket for the Narita Express train (1 hour, standing room only). I arrived at Narita airport at 8am. Normally that would've been fine but I had left some luggage at terminal 1 and I was flying out of terminal 2.

The train dropped me off at terminal 2 where I hopped on a bus to terminal 1, picked up my luggage, and hopped on a bus to terminal 2. I then went inside and got into a very long, snaking line that would split here and there depending on whether you had a cart, where you were going, and someother random criteria. I put my check baggage through the x-ray and arrived at the counter. At this point it was 9am. I was getting nervous. The ANA clerks were getting nervous on my behalf as well. I checked my bags and paid a hefty fine because they were too damn heavy (I sure hope I get to use my climbing equipment here!!!) and then got into a long line for emigration.

When I cleared emigration, I started running for my gate which, of course, was at the very end of the terminal. An ANA clerk with a sign for my flight greeting me and we ran together down the terminal. I was wearing a ridiculously heavy backpack (containing Polchinski's String Theory volumes I and II and a large heavy hardcover novel that weighs more than Polichinki I and II combined). My thirty pound backpack bounced with every step. Did I mention that I had not yet eaten? And I was in a near sprint to keep up with the ANA clerk. (Anyone who has ever run with me will verify that I am a slow, untalented, lazy runner. This was quite difficult for me.)

Finally, we reached the gate and I ran down the ramp and was the last person to board the plane. I was drenched in sweat, some shade of purple, and dizzy and hungry. When the meal service came around, it was the best lunch I've ever had. (grilled salmon in light creamy sauce, lightly grilled green beans-- still crunchy; a piece of salmon sashimi served over ham and sweet egg salad with a few small pieces of vegetable-- carrots and onions, I think; noodle-- yellow and white, in a soy sauce; japanese trail mix that included wasabi peas)

zombies in harajuku

This morning Rupa and I dragged ourselves out of bed and visited Shinjuku. Shinjuku is a big shopping and entertainment center. It has long avenues full of sky scrapers and perpendicular alleys with shops and restaurants.
As we wandered around, I was secretly hoping to find a coffee shop (we seem to bump into a Starbucks every two hours or so when we wander Tokyo) and Rupa was keeping her eyes out for the bookstore that sells English books so she can have something to read on the plane.


We had a field day in a five story art supply store whole first two stories were dedicated to stationary and paper.

We then decided to go to Harujuki. Harujuki is where the fashionable and angst-filled youth go on the weekend. Its streets are full of interesting shops with crowds of young girls in crazy costumes.

Rupa and are were pretty tired from yesterdays Temple Death March; we didn't have a lot of neurons firing. Forgetting that Tokyo is very much *not* a grid, that the street signs are no longer in English when you wander away from the touristy areas, that we have no idea which direction is north because we have no landmarks and it was cloudy... forgetting all of these things, we looked at the (not very good) map in the Lonely Planet Japan Guidebook, decided that Harujuku was not that far away and we decided to walk. A good, frustrated hour later, after consulting many public maps and spinning in circles, we found ourselves at a big park in Yoyugi. Normally that would be enough of a landmark to help us but the park is roughly circular and the highway skirts a big part of it so it was difficult to say exactly where we were. We braved our way into the park, looked at the public map (which was also in English-- thank god because we weren't smart enough today to deal with characters) and walked through the park

and down a long street to Harujuku.


Between the crowds and our zombie-like haze, we didn't take many photos. We did, however, try on a lot of funky glasses.






There is an entire store there dedicated to dog costumes. I think that this one would suit Chief very well.

I tried to get this dog to look at me but she didn't seem to know English. Oh well.


Rupa and I had a faux pas in a girls photo booth shop. She wrote about it in her blog.

temples, more temples and sore feet

Rupa and I headed to the "countryside" today for some temple viewing. We hopped in a train this morning to Katakura, which is about an hour from Tokyo station in Tokyo. Katakura was spared for bombing during WWII because of all of the beautful temples and its historical significance. The temples are sprinkled all through the town which sits on a small bay.

From the Katakura JR station, we then took the local train to Hase station and followed a crowd of uniformed school children to the Daibatsu (great Buddha). The Daibatsu is an enormous, hollow bronze statue of Buddha. It was originally inside a temple but the temple was washed away during a tsunami in the fifteenth century.

Rupa is small but not *that* small.

We went inside the Buddha and gazed up into the hollow of his head.

And wandered around the gardens.

We then visited the Hase-Kannon temple. This large temple complex was build on a hill so we wandered up and down stone stairs and through little gardens visiting temple after temple.


Surrounding the shrine to Jizo (the patron saint of travellers and the souls of departed children) are hundreds of little statues of Jizo.

Women who have had miscarriages and abortions come here and dress the statues to keep them warm.


Further up the hill is the temple to Kannon, the Bodhisattva of infinite compassion.

Click here to see some of the thirty-some-odd reincarnations of Kannon.

Next to the temple is a prayer wheel (movie). If you spin the wheel, the knowledge of the scrolls in it will be given to you. Surrounding the wheel house was a moat of small rocks with characters on them. I wish I had stuck with Chinese so I could've figured out what some of these were.



Also on the grounds was a cave with a very low ceiling. At the end of the cave was this.




Then we hopped on the train and went to Kitakamakura. We noticed that the train was full of women; there were hardly any men. Many of the women were older, some with canes, some with their daughters.

We walked up the main road at Kitakamajura, dodging uniformed school kids getting out of school. We wanted to go to the Ennoji Temple but it was late and it had already closed.

So we headed to the Kenchoji temple.

We made our way through a series of buildings, stopping to look at each one that was open,


until we reached what felt like the end of the complex.

There was a trail that went up into the hill, at this point, at at the top of the hill is a shrine.

The school next door uses the temple grounds for athletic training. As we hiked up to a temple, we were constantly passed and were dodging an army of running boys in baseball uniforms. (Every single kid had slide stains on his pants) They were made to run to the bottom of the stairs that go up the hill to the temple, but not up the stairs. The basketball team, which was a little bit older, had to run up the stairs.


At the top of the stairs was a shrine. As we approached it, we passed winged bird-men (I can't remember what these are called) and could hear drums and chanting.

Click here to download a movie of the monk's chanting. I should warn you: its about 13 MB. But its worth it.


A few more stairs to the very top of the hill where we met a retired japanese gentleman who kindly lead us down the other side and back to the JR train station.

taxis, toilets and physics

The jet lag is getting better-- today's haze didn't kick in until 9pm. And I'm starting to get hungry at appropriate times. I also slept until after dawn. Here is a morning photo of the view from our room.

Rupa and I visited the Tokyo National Gallery today. To get to the gallery, we got off the subway, spun around in circles and stared at a few maps, and then found our way to the park. We walked through a long beautiful park to the gallery on the other side. The park was full of people, some on bikes, and we were stampeded by a small army of four year olds in hot pink hats.

I was only able to stay at the gallery for an hour but enjoyed the historic buddist art, ceramics, and masks.


Here are a couple of my favorites.
This is a water jar for tea ceramony. The big crack is intentional. It gives the piece a "strong sense of individuality."

The ceramic they had made me feel good about my own work. It was all very interesting and appeared imperfect and somewhat chaotic. Of course, it is designed to look that way whereas my own work is accidently (and not so nicely) that way.



Some netsuke-- these are tiny and full of texture and detail.



The noh masks are full of personality.


Then I had to run and catch a taxi to the University of Tokyo. Normally I am anti-cab, preferring to walk. But the campus is about a kilometer from where we were and given Ueno's winding, narrow streets we navagated getting there, its a good thing I didn't walk-- I would've certainly gotten lost.

My taxi driver has a button that he pushed when I hailed him-- the back door opened automatically. I climbed into the lace covered back seat that reeked of menthol cigarettes. My taxi driver was wearing a suit and tie and he spoke zero English. I had a difficult time telling him to take me to the University of Tokyo and had to hand him my map and directions (which were unfortunately in English). Finally he understood and we sped away. He got a little turned around and kept pointing and talking to me in Japanese. He was of the philosophy that if he jesticulated a lot, spoke loudly and slowly, and repeated himself numerous time that I would suddenly understand him. No luck. But we managed to get to the campus.

From there I picked up a good map at the security gate and got directions to the physics building.

I hung around the High Energy Theory group for a few hours and then gave my talk. The talk went much faster than I had planned because I miscalculated a few things.

1. Everyone was very polite and refrained from asking very many questions. I'm accustomed to talks at Harvard where I get bombarded with questions with every slide and my audience gets into arguements with itself.

2. I assumed that they knew too much about the background material. Again, this is a mistake I made because my previous experiences have been at Harvard where everyone has read all the papers and many people are working on related projects.

3. I didn't make enough slides.

So, when I reached my conclusion slide after 20 minutes (instead of 50 or so), they asked me to start over and asked lots of questions with every slide. Their questions were very non-aggressive and broad so it wasn't too painful. I was mostly embarrassed. Oh well. I've learned a bit about giving guest lectures and I'm glad its all over now.

After the talk, I sat around with a few of the physicists over coffee and chatted. I found out some interesting things...

There are no women in the particle physics group at the University of Tokyo. (There were about a dozen people at my talk, all men) There was one woman a few years ago but she graduated. In fact, there are very few women in physics at all there. I guess I shouldn't be surprised but its really too bad. I am spoiled with all the women at Harvard: having them around makes the environment more comfortable.

The fish market that Rupa and I tried to go to had moved! Its in a new location that is close to the old location. Damn you, Lonely Planet.

I was pretty wiped after the talk and Rupa had had a strange Ramen experience so we layed low this evening. We took a walk around the neighborhood, Iedabachi, and ate at a chinese restaurant (yeah buns!).

I did manage to have a classic tourist mini-adventure today in the ladies room at the University of Tokyo. I went in and found this:

I had read about these in the guide book. You're supposed to face the wall and not the door. I was faced with the following question: I am about to give a seminar and I'm wearing nice wool pants. Should I take them off or should I risk some spray? In a fit of stubborness, I decided to risk the spray and kept my pants at my ankles. I got lucky (this is rare when it comes to squatting) and managed to not pee on myself and not fall over. Woohoo! When I stepped out of the stall, I peeked in the other one and saw this:

go figure.

sudafed, more sudafed, but no sushi

I am trying with all my strength to stay awake. Its dinner time. I hit an exhaustion wall around 4pm and have had my eyelids at half mast ever since. My goal is to stay up until 9pm. So this will probably be a longer blog.

Rupa and I woke up before dawn this morning (5am) hoping to go to the Tokyo Fish Market. Here is a photo of the view from our room in the Tokyo Youth Hostel. We're on the 19th floor.

We had a wrench thrown in our wheel when we discovered that the front door of the youth hostel is locked until 6:30am. So we hung out for an hour this morning, studying the guidebook, checking our email.

We then headed out for the Tokyo Fish Market. We hopped on the subway (well, hopped is an exageration. we stared at the map, gingerly bought tickets from the machine and bravely headed down a tunnel to what we guessed was the correct platform).

When we got to the fish market, it was a ghost town. We walked around but weren't able to find any fish or people so we assumed that we had just missed all the fun.

Oh well. Instead of morning sushi I had a latte and a scone at Starbucks.
Walking towards Ginza distict, we stopped in an interesting Buddist temple and admired the shrines. The temple was a large quiet room with beautiful gold carvings set up on a stage and insense burning at its base.


And, as Murphys Law predicted, it started sleeting as soon as we came out. It was cold and wet for most of the morning.

We walked up to the Ginza distict, stopping at the Kibuki theater on the way.

Unfortunately we're leaving on day of the next performance. So we can only admire the advertisements out front.

The phantom fish market threw off our schedule so when we arrived in Ginza (around 8am), we found that most of the stores were not yet open.

To kill time we caffeinated ourselves and wandered around. Around the corner from the giant Yamaha store, we found a Bonsai tree boutique and admired the plants.


The Yamaha store was three stories of beautiful instuments and a floor devoted purely to sheet music. I was tempted to bang on the xylophone and test out the bass claranet but, embarrassed by my overall lack of musical training, I restained myself.

Wet and cold from the morning of sleet, we caved in and bought umbrellas only to have it clear up a half hour later.


We stopped in a cafeteria for lunch only to be informed that most of the food contained fish stock. Thats dandy with me because I'll eat just about anything (except pickles and olives) but Rupa is a vegetarian. She was able to order a blueberry crepe so we sat down for lunch. When we were nearly finished, a kitchen employee came over and informed Rupa that he had found some dishes that were purely vegetarian. They chatted away and then got in line together. Rupa amazes me. She makes friends quickly and frequently. Look at them in line:

Here is a close up. They're friends after five minutes.

We've been here for 24 hours and Rupa has already made four friends. I bet that, by the time we leave, it'll be an even dozen.


After lunch we hit the eight story Sony store.

It was mind boggling. Lots and lots of gadgetry set up in interesting displays. We were constantly being recorded and projected onto giant flat screen plasma televisions. The tv's alone would've made my dad drool. (He's into the plasmas) Here's some tv porn for him:

And some camera porn for Jenn:

We batted our eyelashes at digital camera and laptops. We played with robotic dogs.

We even had a blast in the ladies room.

I was surprised to find my toilet seat toasty warm.

And then I was glad it was just seat heating and not a blast of water and warm air that surprised me.

On our way out of Ginza, we stopped in a Sanrio store. I find Hello Kitty a bit nauseating-- it brings back nastalgic memoried of childhood in Anaheim Hills but its also incredibly pink and cute and, well, kind of creepy.

For example, notice the appendage on this characters face. Perhaps it is my New England puritanical tendancies creeping in, but I thought it was strange and perhaps even inappropriate.


Rupa and I then headed for Akihabara. In search of stationary, we popped into an eight story bookstore. If I could read Japanese, I would've realized that there is no stationary to be found on the eighth floor, contrary to what I expected.

So we took the mirrored escalator up eight flights, checking every floor for stationary.

One thing I did find there was a new and special way to torture Rupa. Rupa is a book nut. She *loves* to read. Putting her in a bookstore where she can't even pronounce the words confuses and frustrates her.

Take this simple puppet book, for example.


What are the puppets saying to eachother?

Rupa would really like to know. (me too!)

We then set off in search of appliance alley. We may have found it. We're not sure. We got lost shortly thereafter and we're not really sure where we were today. We found a series of alleys with baskets of random things, such as capacitors,

some of which we are skeptical about the safety of using. (I would've want to be around when one of these blows up)

We then found an area full of giant stores loaded with new appliances.

Rupa was very happy to see some that were some appliances about her size.

It was about this time (4pm or so) that I hit the jet lag brick wall. We recaffeinated and I struggled to not pass out in the coffee shop. We then tried to find shrine in the area only to discover that we had been walking in the opposite direction for hours and were pretty far away from our destination. The coffee wasn't working for me so we hopped on a train and went back to the hostel.

Its 9pm so I'm signing off and crashing. I'll write more later. Also, check out Rupa's blog.