Walking Ixus

Today was my last day in Tokyo. Blah. The plane leaves for San Francisco at 1945 which means I go BACK in time and arrive at 1100 today.

That date line thingie can be a real pain in da butt…

I had some time today before I had to leave for Narita on the Skyliner. Since it leaves at 1445 and it takes about an hour to get to Narita, I had the morning to putter about. Now what is the Skyliner? Well…

There are several ways to get to Tokyo from Narita. Most people take the JR N’ex, the Narita Express. It takes about an hour to get to Tokyo Station and another 15 minutes or so to go to Shinjuku and another 30 to get to Yokohama (at Tokyo Station, the train splits in two). It’s in the neighborhood of 3000 yen (yes, that’s about US$26 or so) EACH WAY! It’s not worth it unless you have a JR Pass (in which case, all JR lines are free) or if someone else is paying.

There are also private railways here, usually ran by department stores (go figure!) such as the Tokyu Lines or the Hankyu Lines in Kyoto. Keisei Electric Railways runs the Skyliner that runs from Narita to Nippori, terminating at Ueno. The trains are older and look a tad funky, but it’s only 1900 yen each way (and if you hunt around, you can get discounted tix).

I had a chance to visit Roppongi Hills, a very upscale redevelopment in Roppongi. It’s an attempt to bring some grownupness (respectibility) to the area. It’s pretty nice. I visited the Mori Institute for the Future, a urban planning exhibit that compares New York, Shanghai and Tokyo with some neat 1/1000 scale city models and a bunch of multimedia shows. And naturally, no cameras allowed.

Sorry bout that.

Gotta boogie, the train will leave soon…

Besides visiting questionable icons of bubble-era architecture (see below), today was an eating day.

I had lunch with Yumi which was good. She’s off skiing tomorrow. Fun!

Lunchtime is the same over there as it is over here. Short. Only an hour. Bummer.

I had a late supper with Takeshi, a friend I met when he was in San Francisco for a few months rooming with Cesar after graduating college. He works too hard. But he did have the time to hang out after work. We watched the football game between Japan and Oman (Japan won 1-0 with a last minute goal) at the Jazz Cafe London and had some drinks and smokes.

Then dinner with race queens! Well, the food was pretty good actually, but the service was fanstastically beautiful! Couldn’t take pix inside tho, so you’ll just have to be happy with the link.

If you take the Ginza line from end to end, you’ll begin in Shibuya (yum yum!) and end in Asakusa. Not Akasaka, which I’ve had a horrible habit of confusing the two.

You can tell you’re in Asakusa because:

#1: There’s a river. Neat.

#2: The oldest western style tavern (since 1891) is here.

#3: You can see the Phillipe Starck designed “golden turd” when you come up from the subway and look towards the bridge.

Actually it’s called the Asahi Dry Golden Beer Hall or something like that. There’s a couple of restaurants inside but nothing like the Yebisu Beer Museum that I went to on my first visit here.

Well, this trip was for doing things that I didn’t do before.

After all, Tokyo is the second biggest city in the world and HK is HK…that’s all that needs to be said about my destinations. Lots of things to do and see on top of the things I usually do and see.

But old fun habits die hard. Like staying out until the last train. And busting butt to catch it.

Once again, I’m on the last Yamanote to Nippori via Ueno.

A western ward of Tokyo divided by a train station. West is highrises, the Tokyo Metropolitan City Hall and that Park Hyatt where Lost in Translation took place.

East is shopping, Kabukicho and a general mess which means it’s the fun area.

There’s an observation deck at the top of the tower (like most big buildings in Tokyo do) and I was able to see the New City Hotel where I stayed in with some friends on my first visit here.

Not that impressive. It is a business hotel, meaning very basic and very old, from the 1960’s.

You really get an idea about how big it is here and just how expansive the city sprawl is.

That’s only looking west now! Looking east, you can see Tokyo Dome AKA the Big Egg where the Giants play.

I’m what’s considered an internet traveler.

I get a guidebook about a place I’d like to visit and devour it.

Then I research places to stay on the internet and usually make my decisions based on that.

Generally they’ve been hits as opposed to misses. Like the place I’m staying at for this trip. They even have broadband in the rooms for free (bring your CAT5 cable!).

The flight from HK was a bear. Well, actually not. Getting up early to get to the airport, that was a bear. Thankfully, in front of my HK digs, there’s a taxi stand.

This place is another “hit”. It’s smack in the middle of Causeway Bay, a short block from the MTR, exit E and another short block from a Wellcome, because every traveler needs a 24 hour grocery store.

Then I was upgraded gratis to Business Class. For free. Nice.

The flight was about 3.5 hours. Like flying to ORD from home. But then once you land at NRT, you have to endure a 1 hour long train ride into town and then you have to try to find your hotel. Which brings me to the topic of this rant.

The maps on these Japanese hotel sites (I ran into this last time when I stayed at this place) are NOT to scale. They’re great at noting landmarks where you turn left or turn right. But the distance between these landmarks, at least on the map, is the problem. It’s usually longer than it looks like on the map!

Gotta go stretch my legs, this was a long day.

This is Kowloon City, near the site of the old Kai Tak Airport.

It’s not accessible directly from the MTR so you either need a good map or some local friends to take you around. Big difference from Central, eh?

They look like they need the Caped Crusader really bad! I mean, that’s a big lightshow with a LOT of spotlights…

heh.

Here’s some snaps I took this morning from the 42nd floor of that feng-shui challenged masterpiece, I.M. Pei’s Bank of China building.

This is the Bank of China building in case you don’t know how it looks like. Rather iconic, eh?

This is the base of it with one of the historic buildings in HK Park for scale. The BOC is actually across the street. It’s pretty big, eh?

Now, here’s the snaps. This is the International Financial Center 2, the third tallest building in Asia. It’s really tall and it looks like it will shift the skyline further west then it is now. Here’s how it looks from the ground.

And from the Harbour via the Star Ferry:

That’s one big building folks.

You also get to see the other side of the former Governor’s Compound. This time you can see the front.

Until all the big buildings and landfill happened, the Governor’s Compound loomed over all of HK side.

This is the former War Memorial. During British administrations, the Union Jack flew from the harbour side and the standards of the three services, the Royal Navy, British Army and RAF flew from the island facing side. Knowing the power of symbols, the ChiComs immediately fenced it off when they took over in 1997, being unable to simply bulldozer it because people would remember that there was once something there and it’s harder to rewrite history in a (for the moment) free society.

And…since I was up ANYWAY, I decided to putter about.

The Hong Kong Park is on a hill between the Mid-Levels and the ground. It’s pretty nice and it’s compact and right next to the British Embassy. An oasis from the urbanism that is Hong Kong.

There’s a walk-in fountain that looks like you’re under a big umbrella in a very large rainstorm.

There are statues and memorials to various people and causes, as expected.

There’s even this testimony to the fact that there are apparently a lot of Americans here too.

You have to be going UP the stairs to see this. Duh!