Our second day in Tokyo was great!
The hotel we are staying in is awesome and has two options for breakfast - American and Japanese. Unfortunately, the Japanese one was sold out (they only make 10 portions), so good ol' American carbs, here we come. After that was over, we headed to our bike/food tour, which was in the western part of Tokyo.
The plan was to bike a bunch, eat a little, and bask in the 90 degree (!) heat, and when all was over, mission accomplished. We had a (very) mini-UN going, with people from Ireland, Austria, and our guide from Australia, and all of us had a great time (especially while Dave and Tsana got incredibly jealous over one of the Irish ladies who was taking 2 years off from work just to travel, fully paid, and will return to a job when she is done - hello? America? Get your act together!).
You may know this, but Japan is world renowned for its vending machines. So. Many. Vending machines. (Fun fact: if you get a vending machine on your property, you get a cut of the profit.) We got to take a taste of these when we stopped for a slight break, Dave getting a gatorade drink while Tsana got some iced green tea. Honorable mention goes to the cold-corn-drink that none of us wanted to try.
Some interesting things we learned on the ride were:
- Bikes aren't allowed to be parked on the street, or they will be picked up and go to bike prison, where they are auctioned off after a month, if you don't pay $40 to get them out. We caught a shot of the bike-wrangling-vehicle (or someone who is just a HUGE thief) out IRL:
- Tokyo homes/apartments are super small, like 100 sq. ft., so its pretty common to go to a special kind of hotel for a few hours with your romantic partner (of any sort) if you want some alone time. They have one way in and one way out and they lock you in there which supposedly is to fight prostitution. To get out, you have to proclaim to the reception desk that you are finished and need to be let out - like cattle.
- Tokyo homes depreciate in value because they are built like temporary dorms (hello BC's Mods), not meaning to stand up for too long. After 20 years, the structure ends up either crumbling away or it looks like it will crumble soon, so the homeowner knocks them down to rebuild. Due to the earthquakes and wars of the past, Tokyoites don't instill value to their homes, thinking that "it will likely happen again" so what's the point?
- In lieu of janitors/cleaners at the schools, kids wash and clean everything, not to build character, but of the cost-savings. Can you imagine in the US, having 7 year-olds clean toilets? All the Karens would unite, for sure.
Our bike route:
While we're on the tour, we realized we messed up some dates and realized that we had booked tickets to the sumo wrestling match that day, instead of Friday, so in a mad rush, we emailed the paper-making people. Luckily, they were cool about it and we rescheduled to today. Off to the sumo match...
We entered this HUGE arena, built only for sumo and the first thing to note was the expensive seats (first level) were all cushions, and you sat on the floor. We had second tier seats, and honestly, the seats themselves were SUPER comfy. For these tournaments (only 3 per year in Tokyo), you bring your own food and drinks (although they have half the stadium selling American fried sports food and the other half selling Japanese sushi and the like), and camp out all day. The tournament starts at 8:30am, with guys skinner than a beanpole, to later in the day (ending at 5pm) with guys who are fatter, and more skilled. We came around 2:45pm and stayed for a good almost 2 hours.
We probably saw about 20 matches. The goal is to shove the other guy out of the circle. The white stuff on the ground is salt (we thought it was chalk) to help keep your feet down. Here is a shot of one of the matches:
Each group had an intro round (think like a theme song when they introduce the wrestlers in WWE) where they stand in a circle and you cheer for your fav (the one facing us in the all-black with the little flower-thing was a fan fav for sure). Here is the senior division (the fancy ones that the arena filled up for):
After sumo, we headed to a fancy dinner near Ginza (think 5th Avenue - all the fancy shopping places were here). We each got the vegan tasting menu and it was delicious, although a little awkward since we were the first ones in the restaurant and had 4 servers coming over to us at once to fill up our water/ask if we wanted something else/wipe our mouths (kidding about this one).
After dinner, we forced ourselves to stay out (need....to beat...jet lag...), so we went to Shinjuku, which is one of the big night life areas in Tokyo. Our bike guide said it was "super fun" and it did make Times Square look like amateur hour, but not our scene. We did see some ladies trying to make an honest night's work, all dressed like anime characters or school girls.
With that, we went back home, and crashed.
On the agenda today:
Market and sushi making class, paper making (hopefully), and seeing some cool neighborhoods.