East Capital

Beijing translates as the North Capital (in the past, the capital was often in Nanjing, the south capital). Meanwhile, in Chinese, Tokyo is written as East Capital. Andrea, Hannah and I have now been here since Wednesday. An easy 3-hour flight over gave us some practice flying with Hannah before the long trip home in the Summer, and everything went just fine. We arrived to have dinner with a colleague at a restaurant where Kill Bill was filmed. Nice decor, though neither the food nor service were up to the high Japanese standards we've experienced since then. On Thursday and Friday whilst I was working, Andrea explored various parks and museums as well as a few shops. Both evenings we went out with Fumi (a former colleague at Plan who was about to get married and is the reason why we came over), Francesca (another former colleague) and her fiance Andrew. The first night we had excellent Japanese hot pot and the second night we had more traditional sashimi, sushi and the like (along with 10 or so other international guests who had flown over for the wedding).

The wedding was on Saturday, after an early 3.45am rise in order to watch the tuna auction at the fish market which was somewhat disappointing and a fantastic picnic in beautiful Shinjuku Gyoen park. It began in one of the most famous shrines (Meiji Jingu) in Tokyo. After walking through all the tourists to get to the shrine itself which is closed to the public, we sat down, somewhat praying Hannah would stay asleep throughout the thirty minute ceremony. She did, and we witnessed Fumi and Chris go through several rituals including drinking as they wore their Kimonos. Most of the action was performed by the priest and it was interesting to watch; the building itself was wonderful and it was certainly a Japanese experience. Afterwards we went to a nice French restaurant for the meal and a cigar bar for the party. Hannah did well throughout!

On Sunday we went for a walk through the imperial palace gardens and through Ginza, the shopping and business district. We finally found some reasonably priced noodles and got the monorail over to Odaiba along the Rainbow Bridge (which looks similar to the Golden Gate Bridge). There we happened upon a car festival, and gazed at stunning cars that one normally only sees in movies, like the Fast and Furious. These were classic cars that had been highly customized to bounce, sit very low, go very fast (with nitrox) or just look crazy. I'll provide photos soon. We also happened upon a dog jumping competition. It was very professional, and also made for a few minutes enjoyment. In fact there are clearly a lot of sub-cultures in Japan, and the dog-thing is one of the biggest. More people seem to have dogs than kids and they seem to spend more money on their dogs than their kids! We found entire shopping malls of dog shops with dog-strollers to go with dog clothes. Dinner was Yakatori on the street - nice, but as expensive as everything else in Tokyo!

Today we had another wonderful day, taking a trip out to Kamakura where we had some wonderful soup, visited several temples and shrines in the countryside, hiked several kilometres through woods, and ended up on the beach.

Tokyo is so clean it's crazy. And it shows that cleanliness is not about convenience - there are literally no trash cans anywhere, just a few for recycling cans here and there. Cleanliness is more an attitude. China has a way to go... bins everywhere, but does not help that much (though the streets are not too dirty due to the army of street cleaners). It's expensive, but it's green. The air is clean and the subway efficient (if not very well designed, route-wise). The people are extraordinarily kind, helpful and friendly as well as respectful. And they really respect people (it must be linked to their religion as much as anything else), not just their friends. We've really enjoyed our time here so far; and have two days left, which might give me more time to reflect a bit more. For now, suffice to say, where China tries, Japan masters: from parks and gardens to dining and transport. China is the student and can not do much wrong in learning from Japan!