It’s Monday morning, we’ve just had breakfast, and we’re about to head out for a day of wandering around in Asakusa. Here are some more random thoughts and observations, in no particular order:

Tracie read my last posting and pointed out that we didn’t actually take the subway–we took the train. Japan has a subway system, a train system, and a rail system. The distinction between the latter two isn’t readily apparent, and all three share stations to some extent. Yes, it can be confusing.

Tracie also says that the name of the station is Hase Station, but that isn’t the name of the area in which the Great Buddha resides.

Beverage vending machines are ubiquitous, both in Tokyo and in the smaller areas we’ve visited. You can find one on just about every block, and several near any attraction. They dispense both hot and cold beverages, including soft drinks, beer, coffee, tea, and water. No, I still haven’t tried Pocari Sweat yet.

You can’t predict how much English any given person will speak. There doesn’t seem to be much correlation to age or gender, although most people seem to speak at least a little. On the other hand, we haven’t yet had a serious communication-based problem; it’s actually rather remarkable how quickly we’ve been able to do what we need to do with only a few words, hand gestures, and fingers pointed into a guidebook.

Japanese kids tend to be so cute that you just want to pick them up and squeeze them. Obviously we refrain from doing so. They also tend to be well-behaved and we have yet to see one pitching a fit in the manner that contemporary American children to do when they don’t get things exactly their way.

Engrish is everywhere, particularly on T-shirts. (See Engrish.com if you’re not familiar with the term.)

We’ve already started bowing, without any conscious decision to do so. People smile at us when we do it. I’m not sure whether it’s because they’re touched that we’re making the effort or amused by our inept attempts.

People smile a lot in general. People also seem remarkably relaxed.

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For the moment I’m not going to try to catch up with the end of yesterday’s activities because there’s too much to cover today.

Today our main goal was to see the Great Buddha (called Daibutsu in Japanese), a 11-meter tall bronze statue of Buddha near Kamakura. This excursion involved our first encounter with Tokyo’s famous subway system. We took a taxi from the hotel to Tokyo Station. Tokyo Station is not Tokyo’s largest subway station but it’s a little hard to imagine a larger one. It seemed quite vast and the steady flow of humanity (even on a Sunday) was almost mind-boggling. At first it was all a bit overwhelming and we quickly decided that we really didn’t know where we were supposed to go to find the rail line described in our guidebook, but it didn’t take long to find a helpful young clerk at the ticket office. He pointed us in the right direction even before Tracie finished phrasing the question. After that it took several escalator rides and only a minor amount of puzzlement to find our way onto the right train. read more

It’s the morning of our third day in Tokyo. Yes, I’ve already fallen behind on blogging. I started writing an account of yesterday’s adventures yesterday evening, but we succumbed to fatigue and jet lag and fell asleep at about 7:40.

We spent the day with a tour guide named Tamae. Tamae-san is an engaging young woman and we enjoyed her company as much as we enjoyed the places that she took us to. What follows is a very brief summary of what we did which I’m squeezing in before we go to breakfast and then to Kamakura. read more

Yes, we have arrived. It’s about 8:00AM local time. We just came back from having breakfast in one of the several hotel restaurants.

Our room is on the 20th floor of the Asakusa View Hotel. It lives up to its name; we have a spectacular view of the city, with Mt. Fuji dimly visible in the distance. I’ll post some photos later; the hotel doesn’t seem to have any internet access services and I’m not sure yet how good the connectivity is with my dial-up account. At this time I mostly want to post a quick note to let people know that we’re here safely. read more

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