Three random things to like about Tokyo

The subway system. Despite the daunting look of the route map, it's easy to navigate. You might get turned upside down in the stations, which can be enormous, but if you stay patient, it generally works out. Fitting that it resembles a circuit board.

Ride the rails all day for about 1,000 yen ($12.50 U.S.).

Mask wearing. Margaret and I deduced (that's right, deduced) that the masks are worn by people who have a cold or flu, not because they're paranoid of catching what you might be carrying. They may be under doctor's orders. I don't know. But I like it.

Subway station worker keeping her colleagues safe.

Bowing. It's addictive. But you need do it right. You can't bow on the fly. It's not like waving. Come to a stop and bow slowly, with feeling. When our friend John Burgess first returned from teaching English in Japan, bowing had become second nature to him. It has since worn off, but how great would it be if Americans greeted each other with such respect? Try it out at work or in you neighborhood and let me know if it catches on. Here's a good example of bowing on the job.

Luggage handler honoring a departing airport bus.

I can't wait to return to the Land of the Rising Sun, where the streets are clean and orderly because they like it that way, not because the rules are strictly enforced.



Sushi for breakfast... a Tsukiji tradition

After an early morning visit to Tokyo's Tsukiji Central Fish Market -- the world's largest fish market -- tradition calls for breaking your fast at one of the many sushi stalls next door. Not really my first, second or third choice for breakfast, but hey, it's tradition. First, however, you must survive a visit inside the wholesale market.

 

Lonely Planet calls Tsukiji "arguably Tokyo's top attraction." Yet no one who works here is happy about having tourists around. It's actually kind of dangerous. Picture the floor of the New York Stock Exchange before it went digital, only the traders here have BIG knives and blood-stained clothes.

I assume this knife has carved larger specimen. It's called oroshi hocho -- "wholesale knife."



















I was nearly clipped a couple of times by the scooters and electric carts storming up and down the narrow aisles. Luckily, the only wounds I suffered were scowls and growls heaped on me by the busy marketers who process more than 2,000 tons of fish a day.
 

Not Pike Place Market.



Concerned about sustainability? Distract yourself by taking in what may be the world's largest styrofoam box market outside.



More like Pike Place Market.

But tradition beckons. Onward to the retail market next door.

You may come for the fresh fish, but you can get just about anything else you might need for your next feast -- meat, sake, vegetables, sweets and dried versions of every sea critter imaginable. Just add water.

And all things seaweed.

I assume my sushi chef bought locally.

I ate it all. Not bad. I definitely recommend using the soy/wasabi sauce. But the tea (I think it was tea) was mighty thick and I couldn't drink it all.

If you love raw fish, you may need to make a pilgrammage here once in your life. The outdoor stalls that I passed up were not selling dainty little fish morsels wrapped in seaweed or carefully placed on clumps of rice. Nooooooooo. They were serving up platters of raw fin fish and shell fish with various dipping sauces. There were plenty gaijin mixed in with locals starting the day this way with glasses of beer.

I went to one of the outside stalls after eating my sushi appetizer, but I bought some food that I consider more suitable for a rise-and-shine meal -- soba noodles in a comforting broth with tempura prawns, squid and some sort of greens.

That's what I call a complete breakfast!

Edo, Tokyo and Sumoland

If you go to the Edo-Tokyo Museum, not only do you get to learn a lot about every day life in 17th century Edo and modern pre-war Tokyo, but you can also play daimyo for a day -- or a minute. The daimyos were direct reports of the shogun, basically territory managers. Their jobs required a lot of travel, which they mostly did on horseback. But before entering a city, especially Edo, they would climb into this rig and have a couple assistants lug them in by hand to show everyone who was boss.

  

Let's go. Or maybe Game On. Whatever.

If you're lucky, you'll visit the museum on a slow day and get a personalized guide. I followed the signs for an English guide thinking it would be a pair of headphones or a pamphlet. Nope. I got Yamashita all to myself. Good guy.

Yamashita.

Yamashita said he worked in Bellevue years ago for Data IO. He loved the summers, hated the winters. Go figure. Now semi-retired, he divides his time volunteering at the museum and working as a part-time translator.

After getting big-brained about Edo and Tokyo, you can clear your head at the nearby Ryogoku Kokugikan sumo stadium and museum.

Unfortunately, there were no tournaments scheduled while I was in town and none of the neighborhood sumo stables were allowing visitors. But the museum was open and so was the gift shop. Hours of fun! Or maybe 15 minutes. In the museum you can:

See pictures of champions, past and present.

See some old posters.

Watch classic match-ups.

But try to see this sign on your way into the museum, not on you way out. Oops. Time to visit the sumo goods shop anyway.

You'll see it.

Behold the treasure...

It's a shame my suitcase was full. They don't ship. Oh, well. It's time to bid sayonara to Ryogoku Kokugikan sumo stadium and museum.

Hey, there were no signs prohibiting stalking...

Unagi, daigaku-imo and age-nasu

Tokyo visitor guides tend to emphasize how the city is more experiential than monumental; that wandering the neighborhoods is the best way to take it in. The neon stoked parts of the city, like Ginza with its overkill of shopping, are definitely worth experiencing.

Go crazy.


 

Or you can try to find your way out of Shinguku Station, purportedly the world's busiest train station, and go to the the New York Bar at the top of the Park Hyatt Hotel and channel your inner Bob Harris from Lost in Translation.

It's Suntory time! They also offer Coppola wine.

The narrow lanes that survived WWII bombs and post-war rebuilding make a nice counterpoint. Yanaka Ginza is a perfect example. It took a little wandering to find it because it's hidden in a nest of other crowded streets that are also pretty interesting. It doesn't help that Tokyo isn't big on street signs. But you know when you finally stumble on it.

East entrance to Yanaka Ginza.

It's a working shopping street for locals and I arrived just in time for the evening rush. What made it fun for me was the street food being served up by every three steps.

Preparing my eel on a stick.

First stop: barbecued unagi, freshwater eel. It's not like chicken, but also not like fish. Maybe more like snake? I don't know. It's good though. 

Sticky sweet. Seriously, super-glue sticky.

Next: daigaku-imo, deep-fried yams smothered in a kind of simple syrup only different and sprinkled with black sesame seeds.






 
 

 

Greasy goodness.

Last and perhaps the best, age-nasu: deep-fried japanese eggplant. This version was stuffed with spicy ground beef and dipped in tempura batter before frying. That is some mighty fine dining.

Merry Christmas from Singapore

Is he sleeping or just wondering if he can get away with not wearing red just once?

Worse than durian?

Margaret admiring the inflorescence.



Singapore's first and only titan arum (a.k.a. corpse flower) is the first thing that currently greets visitors to the country's botanic garden. Native only to the forests of Sumatra, a short hop across the Malacca Strait from here, Singapore had to get the corm for growing this one from the Huntington Botanic Garden in California. (Seems Indonesia just won't cut Singapore any slack.) The inflorescence is popping out but it didn't smell like the rotting flesh of its fame. Maybe it'll turn stinky when to leaves begin the peel back. Hard to believe it can be worse than durian. 

I remember walking over to the University of Washington from the Safeco Tower with Dan Pedersen to look at the botany department's corpse flower in 1999. At the time, it was only the 37th blooming of a cultivated titan arum since the first in 1889. It looks like Singapore's will be number 133 for the botanists. Obviously, they've got this down. Soon there will be entire plantations devoted to the corpse flower and they'll be available from FTD. Perfect for those times when you want to tell someone to %$#@! off -- and durian just isn't enough.

Complete list of titan arum blooms in cultivation.

Complete list of botanists.

The fog of war

Room with a view, but no window screen.















This is the view from our bedroom with the window open. When we were apartment hunting we asked our agents, Sean and Li Leng, about getting screens. They both seemed puzzled by the question. "No one has screens in Singapore," Sean said. "There are no bugs in Singapore." As we looked around and thought about it, we hadn't really seen many bugs and it seemed everyone kept their doors and windows open unscreened.

How does Singapore do it? Door-to-door inspections and weekly "foggings" seem to be the winning formula. Here's last week's gassing at our building.  


A simple headache is all it cost me to take this photo.

  


















We also got a visit last week from the National Environment Agency. The inspectors seemed legit with their clipboards and matching polo shirts bearing the agency's logo, so I let them in. They looked around for signs of mosquitoes, but we were clean.

Turns out there was a spike in dengue cases about a year ago and the country declared war on the blood-suckers with typcial Singaporean thoroughness. According to a news release, during the first six months of this year 1,000 inspectors visited 3,142,332 construction sites, parks, vacant lots, businesses and private residences looking for mosquitoes. At that rate, they've likely seen every puddle, flower pot and pet dish in the country as well as inside our apartment. (If there's ever an outbreak of head lice, I won't be surprised if they inspect every resident's scalp.)

I guess you can't argue with success. The number of dengue cases is dropping and we don't have to invest in window screens. A win-win.