Tokyo appears to be a town of some size.
Earlier this week, your intrepid correspondent made the journey to Tokyo, Japan, the Pearl of the Orient or, as it is also known, Chicago…but only by people who have never been to either place and don’t really pay much attention to detail when looking at pictures of big cities.
I accompanied the Navy staff – to whom I am assigned as their civilian communications czar (I like that word) – for their monthly “mandatory fun” day, which means they have to have fun no matter how miserable it makes them or risk courts-martial. A whole day of frolic and excitement in the big city was carefully plotted and planned, which of course means that nothing ended up as intended. It’s sort of a rule.
But at least we managed to get there, which was an adventure in itself. To get to Tokyo from Yokosuka (where our ship was anchored), one must first learn to navigate the Japan Railways system. The ideal is to grab one of the express lines that stop at as few stations as possible in order to reduce travel time. Naturally, that meant we ended up getting on the train that stopped every 30 seconds or so at every possible destination along the way and a few that weren’t. The stop in Los Angeles should have been a tip-off.
It was tough enough trying to figure out how to buy a ticket from one of the automated ticketing machines. The Japanese are considerate enough to have programmed the machines to provide the option of getting instructions in English, but you still have to decide where you are going and how to get there, no easy task when you take in the fact that Tokyo has hundreds of subway stops and none of them are called “Tokyo.” Well, maybe one is, but I didn’t see it.
Finally a little door popped open between the machines, and in a scene reminiscent of Dorothy’s arrival at the Wizard’s Palace in Oz, a helpful Japanese subway employee popped out like a well-groomed jack-in-the-box and guided us through the process. We didn’t even have to bring him the Wicked Witch’s broom or anything.
Aboard the Non-Non-Stop Non-Express to Shinagawa, where we were to switch trains, we saw lots of scenery. None of it was countryside. The towns all blended together, Yokosuka, Nishi-Oi, Shin-Kawasaki, Kakamura, Kurihama, Tobe. Tobe or not Tobe was not the question (I can’t possibly be the first one to have said that).
We managed to change trains at Shinagawa without incident, and shortly thereafter reached our destination of Shimbasu which, according to people who should know these things, was only a hop, skip and jump from the first place on our agenda, the Tokyo Tower. Turns out it was only a hop, skip and jump if you were a 500-foot lizard named Godzilla, as we trekked a good mile or more to get there, passing several more train stops along the way.
The Tokyo Tower is a gigantic eyesore patterned after the Eiffel Tower, which is in France (another stop on the first train). After paying our 800+ yen, we were packed into elevators like laying hens in a battery cage and lifted to an observatory where we looked out over almost all of Tokyo. I doubt it would be possible to see all of it, even if the smog wasn’t so bad or they could find someone brave enough to go outside and wash the windows.
It is of some interest that many of the Japanese have taken to wearing surgical masks as they wander the streets of Tokyo. Whether this is because of a) the air quality or b) advance preparation because you never know when you might be called upon to do an emergency appendectomy. I didn’t ask.
By this time, the pangs of hunger were reaching gong-like proportions, so it was time to start thinking in terms of lunch. My determination not to play the part of Ugly American had been cast aside by the panic of impending starvation, but I was disheartened to find that there were no golden arches to be seen in our particular section of the city. The only eateries about displayed menus written only in Japanese, accompanied by pictures of food that lost even more in translation than the language.
I ended up dining on gyudon, a dish consisting of beef, carrots, noodles and rice, which didn’t taste bad at all, especially when mixed with the copious amounts of of chili powder I added to it. I ate as much as my admittedly still-budding dexterity with chopsticks would allow, then turned to the miso soup accompanying my entrée. It was so salty I can only assume that miso is a Japanese word meaning “Tokyo Bay in a Bowl.”
Fortunately, this repast was accompanied by plenty of water and hot green tea, both of which I gratefully gulped down to the point that when we finally left the restaurant, I didn’t so much walk as slosh. If I’d been wearing an ankle-length down jacket, I would have looked like a walking waterbed.
After many more blocks and further deterioration of shoe leather, we older folks began to realize that we were in no condition to go hunting for the numerous other places we had planned to visit and, cursing our advanced age and the inherent infirmities thereof, creaked and groaned our way back to the train station to make the return trip to Yokosuka. Next time, I will recommend we rent a fleet of rickshaws. The younger Navy personnel can pull them and count it as part of their physical training which, since it’s mandatory, may as well be fun. Everybody wins.
