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| Origami - By Mike and Jo |
It all stemmed from a past conversation Jolene had with a friend of
mine. He argued that her trip to the
Sinai Peninsula did NOT count as her stepping on the continent of Asia. A couple years have passed but I’ve put that
argument to rest by asking her to accompany me to Japan.
While visiting Japan we used Tokyo as our home base and stayed at the
Hyatt Centric in Ginza. Fun area with
shops and easy access to the rest of the city.
Jolene instantly fell in love with the respect, rules, and order that
were apparent in everything we did on our trip.
Even without knowing the language she still became an instant master of
the subway system among other things bringing back memories of her achievements
in Berlin all those winters ago.
Tokyo was hot and humid partially due to a typhoon that had just
passed! That didn’t stop us from trying to
see as much as possible during our limited time. We walked through Shibuya Crossing (debatably
the busiest intersection in the world), visited quite a few temples, and even
made it to a cat café to take a break.
While we had a ton of good food while there we definitely focused our energy
on different types of ramen/soba and sushi.
One morning we work up extremely early and did a sushi breakfast at the Tsukiji
Fish Market. The food was amazing, we
waited for about 45 minutes to get seated at the little place that only had room
for 8 people!
We also did a day trip outside of the city to attempt to see some of
the country side. We went up the 5th
station of Mt. Fuji but even at that altitude during the time we were there we
were surrounded by low lying clouds.
After that we headed over to Lake Ashi for a boat ride to the cable cars
that took us to the top of Mt. Komagatake.
This time we were actually in the clouds. The entire mountain top was engulfed in moist
cloud giving it a “haunted” feel making it difficult to see things more than 20
feet in front of you.
Jolene insists one of her favorite parts of Tokyo was the time I left
her alone in a food court and put her in charge of getting us a table while I
was getting us ramen. She was able to
interact and people watch with the locals and really got to see how people were
acting in a normal day scenario.
I still am not sure if I’ve decided what I enjoyed most but the chance
to sit in for sumo practice at the largest/top sumo stable in Tokyo was pretty
amazing. After practice a local guide
helped us interact with a couple of the wrestlers. One guy who just turned 18 agreed to take a
picture of us pretending to wrestle. I
seriously tried to move him without success while he exerted zero effort.
Regardless of what memories end up sticking… leave no doubt … Jolene
has now been to Asia!
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