Japan

Apologies to Den who carefully formatted his word document to have the pictures near the captions, but in the interest of getting this posted while he is still on the trip, I thought I'd throw it up there.

I've been having challenges getting the photos to load in the correct order, such are the limitations of Blogger--easy to use means it can't be overly complicated, I guess.

His text is below. I do know that the last photo on my screen is of the sushi trains, one of the coolest things I remember from Japan. You tell the chef what you want (he is often standing in the middle) and a couple minutes later it floats by on these plates, freshly cut from the fish--at least that's what I saw in the resturants I visited.

He seems to be having a good, if not tiring trip...

Guest Post from Japan


As Elizabeth has written, I’m on a week-long work trip to Japan. Today, I spent the day with a co-worker and the agent (Jim H) working with my company and some Japanese counterparts. He gave us a grand walking/train tour of Tokyo, taking us to the low and high sides of town—and everything in between. Here we are after our day on the town (only 2 beers each). It was hot—around 90 degrees and sunny.

We started at our hotel in the Akasaka district near the US Embassy. From there we went to the “shallow” or low end of town called Asakusa. Tons of little shops and a couple of Buddhist temples.

We waited for one of Jim’s favorite sushi joints to open for lunch at 11:00 (we started at 9:00), Maguro Bito. We grabbed our favorite sushi bites when they went by on the train.

Then back on the Orange line to Aokama for some more shops & stuff. Here I am standing in front of one of the largest solid stone lanterns—one that survived WWII.

Next, off to the “high” end of the city on the other end of the Orange Line—Shibuya. Then we were off to the electronics sales portion of the city—Akiyabara (I think that’s the name. Lots of stuff is less expensive in the States.

Finally, off to Shinjuku for dinner at the top of a department store (Takashimaya) that reminded me of a fancier version of Nordstrom. I was looking for something for E and the kids, but the t-shirts alone were $50-60. Over dinner (beginning at 4:00—we had exercised a lot), Jim kept telling us that we were on the high-speed tour and that in coming visits, we would focus our tourist energy in more focused locations (bringing E along, of course, he said).