Japanese Days, Tokyo Nights

July 28th, 2008 - Tokyo, Japan

Well, I don't really know how to explain Tokyo. Despite the date above, I'm writing this on August 4th, about a week after leaving Tokyo to come to the states. Its probably the week of reflection that I'll be drawing on to write this, because while I was there I was completely overwhelmed and entirely entranced. A difficult combination for articulate writing, I think!

Let me explain by saying first that Tokyo, at first blush, is a crazy place. A week before leaving on my trip, my friend Sabina (who I must thank for being amazing) directed me towards a subway map of Tokyo, so that I could find my away around the city on the cheap. I laughed out loud when I saw it, as I'm sure you will too. How can anyone make sense of this?

While my initial impressions of Tokyo aligned closely with those of the map above (Colorful and confusing), I have to say that all it took was some getting used to. Although the map is incredibly complicated, it represents a subway system that is unbelievably efficient and pleasant to use. Sitting here typing this in Chicago, home of a schizophrenic and frustrating subway, I can only grow in my appreciation of Tokyo's efforts. Anywhere (practically) you need to go in Tokyo, the subway will get you there. Not only that, in my experience with it, it is ALWAYS on time, usually to the minute. In fact, there are times posted on a board above the track telling you exactly what time the train and the one after it will come, and they are usually right. You can set your watch to it.

But the coolest part for me is that the subway system will tell you exactly how long it takes to get from one place to another. You just look at the maps in the station, and look at the stop you want to go to. Under there will be a number in a circle, and that is exactly how long it will take you to get from your current stop to the one you're looking at. Its easy to take a less efficient subway system for granted (thank you Chicago), but for those days in Tokyo I realized how much public transportation improves quality of life. The confusing map itself only obscures how amazing the subway is once you get used to it. Pretty much my Tokyo experience in a nutshell!

Another cool experience that took some getting used to was vending machine ordering. Most of the food I got in Tokyo was pretty expensive, and the city itself is really hard to live in on a budget. However Chris and Steve brought me to a restaurant that gave you good food, in a good quantity, for relatively little money. All you do is walk up to the vending machine below, insert your money, and pres a button. Then you grab a seat and wait for your food to be brought over to you. There obviously isn't any room for customization of your order, or generally much service at all, but if what you're going for is a hot meal with relatively basic ingredients, you're good to go.


I was a bit freaked out the first time I tried this, I think Steve and Chris brought me there for my first meal in Tokyo. I was jet lagged and tired and ordering hot food from a box. But given some sleep, some relaxation and some perspective, it was a cheap way to get good food. Put another one on the board for Tokyo!

Something I've been thinking about now that I'm back is my overall attitude toward my month abroad. I billed it to myself as a chance to wander and explore, generally go where I liked and do what I wanted. This had some negatives and a lot of positives, both of which I experienced in Tokyo.

On Friday night, arriving in Tokyo without hotel reservations, an understanding of the geography or of the city, and without an idea of how much everything costs, not having made plans was quite stressful. However on Sunday morning, with a day to myself and with Tokyo to explore, it was amazing. On the spur of the moment I decided to attend a baseball game, and spent the next 45 minutes trying to make it so. By chance there was a game that Sunday afternoon, and a big game: The Yomiuri Giants, the biggest team, against someone whose name I now forget. Tickets were sold out, but I managed to get to the stadium and buy standing room only tickets for $10.

What an awesome experience. The Japanese take baseball very very seriously, and cheer and yell with the best of them. There is a video at the bottom of the crowd celebration after a run scored, but the key thing to realize is that they cheer all the time. It reminded me of a soccer game. Not only that, the standing room area was like a celebration of an entire culture. Families squatted against the walls eating homemade food out of tuperware, paying scarce attention to the game unless a young kid pressed his nose against the bars to watch for a moment. It seemed more like an afternoon picnic than anything else.

As I was leaving the game (only stayed for a few innings, things to do), I remembered to administer an important test: The Hot Dog. Unfortunately although there is a lot commend the Japanese on in their celebration of The Great Game, there is not much praiseworthy in their frankfurters. Different stadiums or games may tell different stories, and hopefully I'll experience more one day, but the hot dog I got was thin, bland, sprinkled with stale bacon bits and covered with a yellow gruel reminiscent of American mustard. Dangit.

As I walked out of the stadium, I noticed an ornate building entrance along the walkway to my subway. Walking up to it, it turned out to be the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. Cool!

However at the end of the day, I was tired enough that the Hall of Fame didn't appeal to me very much. I went inside, checked ticket prices (expensive), got some written material and turned around and left. For some reason rehashing another history of baseball, separate form that I learned as a kid, didn't grab me the way it might have.

I'm sure its very interesting, and on some other day its possbile I would have gone in. But not today! Below, check out the stone pillars built into the wall that make up some of the decoration of the HoA. Very impressive up close.

And now for something completely different.

As I was walking out of the baseball game, outside the stadium and to the larger complex beyond, I started to notice very colorfully dressed people milling about in groups of 3 or 4. It looked to be mostly girls, and I can't really tell you what I first thought was going on. People were taking pictures of each other, posing and generally putting on a show for their friends. It wasn't just that they were dressed colorfully, it was a coordinated outfit that involved hair, makeup, shoes, the whole nine yards.

This colorful stretch of park-ish area turned out to be only the tip of the iceberg. The large convention center I was walking around was filled (once I paid to get in) with hundreds of these people sitting in groups, standing, eating, looking at costumes and other things for sale, and generally hanging out. I can't begin to tell you how intimidated and confused I was, and it was a bit disconcerting. There I was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and I felt very weird.

After a few false starts, people pulling me aside and scolding me, some difficult English-Japanese translation work and (of course) more money from me, I secured a ticket to take pictures. I didn't really understand I had needed one before, but I guess it makes sense.

What follows is a set of pictures that I took over the next two hours... enjoy!



I have since learned that what was going on was a Japanese Cos-Play (Costume Play) convention that happens once a month in various spots around Tokyo. My luck to get to it on the one day in July, no?

Cosplay is a performing art type behaviour in which people dress up, usually mimicking characters or figures from arenas as diverse as comic books, Japanese manga or Anime (or so sayeth Wikipedia).

The funny thing that happened to me was that during the convention itself, I had a hard time making myself clear to the people I wanted to take pictures of. I know English is spoken decently by much of SE Asia, but in Japan in this convention, they couldn't understand it for the life of them. So I had the will to take the pictures, but not the way... and you know what they say about that.

Enter my new Japanese friend Shun. He spoke a bit of English, it was his first time at one of these too, and most importantly he was scared and shy. Thus began a funny two hours. Shun would walk up and explain to the girls (in Japanese) that this American had come all the way across the world and had never seen something like this, would it be ok if he took a picture. Then after I had, Shun would snap one as well, making editorial comments the whole time on the cuteness or lack thereof of the various girls we saw. High comedy, believe me.

The next picture is when Shun convinced me that it would be perfectly ok if I actually stepped into one of the pictures with the cosplayers. This was certainly one of the funniest and most unsettling moments of the trip, cockroaches and all.

And once I did get that picture, I swung right into comfort mode, running about, asking for pictures, playing the videogames along the side of the center and generally enjoying myself. Everyone was really nice once you understood the customs and protocols of the place, and it was easy to see that the cosplayers themselves were having a great time in general.

By the time the convention ended, I was having a great time and couldn't resist the last picture I took that day. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!


And after finishing my Cosplay adventure, I made my way back to the hotel for a shower and another run out into the city. No story of my time in Japan would be complete without mention of my new friend Mizue and her husband.

I met them through couchsurfing.com, a site that could (and should) get its own long post on my blog. Its basically a way for people traveling through a country and people living in a country to meet, hang out, exchange knowledge, and have a good time. I was lucky enough to meet Mizue on the site, and she and her husband showed me around lots of Tokyo, got me some local food, gave me advice and answered lots of my questions. For a place that scared me as much as Tokyo did, it was great to have it disarmed so completely and in such a friendly manner.

If Mizue and her husband are ever in Chicago or the U.S.A, they know to reach out to me!

As a last memory and summary of my trip in Japan, I wanted to rehash my sleeping patterns over the 3 nights I was there.

My first night I ended up staying in a Love Hotel (a place one normally brings prostitutes) by mistake, without realizing what I was doing. I guess the requirement that I not take the room until 11pm and the availability of 3 hour "Rest Period" rentals of the rooms should have given it away. Or perhaps the condom left thoughtfully in the room on the night table, or the pornographic media that blared at me when I turned on the tv desperate for sleep.

My second night I crashed with Steve and Chris in their extremely close-quartered hotel room. I had been planning on getting my own room, but what with karaoke and beer going on all the time, I couldn't even have started drunkenly looking until around 1am. However Chris and Steve's room was extremely small, and the two single (I hesitate to call them twin) beds they had took up the entire floor space of the room. The bathroom also used a cool rotating sink feature to have enough space for a shower area and a toilet, which meant I wasn't crashing in the bathtub. Thus I spent my second night crashing curled up under the desk in a hotel room, in a space small enough that my 5'6" self had to bend and twist to fit in.

And my third night I was at the fish market, and didn't really get any sleep. I had booked a rather nice hotel room to relax in though. Sigh.

Tokyo, ladies and gentleman. Exhilirating, exciting, enticing... exhausting.

MMSS 4 Eva - Japanese Edition

July 25th, 2008 - Tokyo, Japan

There are only two more posts to write about my trip, and both about Japan. Everything happened in such a whirlwind there that I have to catch up ASAP.
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It seems as though my month abroad was bookended by my Northwestern friends. I hung out with Snow and Tim a lot when I started in Thailand, and met up with Steve and Chris as it ended. So this post is dedicated to Chris and Steve, and the shenanigans that went on for those few days in Tokyo.

For anyone starting this blog at this post, welcome. You're coming in right at the end of the good bit, as we hurtle towards the less interesting bit of me and my life as a consultant in Chicago. I suggest you start from the beginning and read up on past events. If you do, I can also refer to them to make my points, like this: As you all know from reading my earlier blog entries, my initial response to Japan was overwhelmed shock.

If not for Chris and Steve, it would have been a disaster. I met up with them on the Friday I arrived, and had a much needed pint of beer ($9) and some relaxation. They also took me to get food and gave me a subway tutorial.

On the next Saturday morning, we all met up to go to Hakone, a day trip spot with great views of Mt. Fuji. It was a nice relaxed way for me to settle in Japan, as it necessitated 2 hour train rides on either end of the day to go to and from. Once we got there it was a fun day, seeing a wide variety of sites and traveling around an area diverse in its geography. We got some of the better views of the day from one of the canopy cars that takes you out over the river and the forests of Hakone.

Unfortunately the reputed view of Mt. Fuji is also from the cable cars, and it is not a good idea to go there when the weather is foggy. Supposedly the picture below points in Mt. Fuji's general direction, but you can't really know.

While we were all a bit dissapointed by this, it wasn't really the end of the world. We were still 3 young guys touring a part of the world we had never been and that spoke a language none of us knew. So we amused ourselves as best we could. Don't ask what hes saying, I'm not sure. Any Japanese person out there care to translate for us?

And most importantly, at the end of the day, we still made it all the way out to Hakone, a significant feat. We rode over beautiful landscapes, explored a new area, relaxed on train rides and generally gave each other a lot of crap. For a first day in Japan, I would say success.

I also realized that my camera has a function that allows you to take a black and white picture, but that colors only highly contrasting elements of the picture. This led to about 500 attempts to get a cool, artsy picture, but for the day in Hakone this is the best that I could come up with. See the way the yellow, blue, and green stand out? I was trying to take it with just the green showing up, but again, crappy photographer.


And, to really round it all off, A PIRATE SHIP! For some reason the designers of Hakone decided it would be best to set up the ferry portion of the tour on mocked up pirate ships with fake plastic pirates on them. I can't honestly say I have any idea what was going on, except that they also chose to fly the Japanese flag as a proud-looking standard on the ship's bow. Hmmm... While fun to ride, and a treat for my roomate Shyaam (who has aspirations at the buccaneer's life someday), I can't say it was more than a cheap novelty standing a bit back from it. Sad.


We came back from Hakone full of vim and vinegar, ready to tackle the world and all that lies within it. As a dedicated Sushi eater (again, read earlier blog posts), our first stop of the night was not a big challenge. But for my two friends, who either loathe or are actively allergic to sushi, it was quite the event. Below you'll find the 3 of us, giddy with the day's travels and for the sushi we were actually eating in Japan.


However, looking at the plate of fish below, the novelty wore off quite quickly everyone but me, and was replaced with a lot of pushing food about the plate, poking it, asking for ingredients and generally questioning its safety. I have to give my respect to Chris (the guy on the right in the green in the above picture) for eating most of his sushi despite a physical reaction that didn't look pleasent. He later confirmed he is partially allergic to shellfish. What a way to find out. And to Steve, thanks for suggesting McDonalds for desert. I don't know about your french fries, but my ice cream was tasty!

Unfortunately one other thing has to be mentioned here, and that is my singing ability. I suck at it, and I think it only gets worse when I get drunk. As one of the stops of our night, which included drinking tall beers from Family Mart in a park, we went to a karaoke bar. We ordered a couple pitchers of beer, chose the sappiest stuff we could find, and then drank some more. When I woke up next day, this video was somehow on my camera. Thanks Chris... Well, it would be a shame to not put it up here, right?

And to give you a flavor of the atmosphere of the weekend, I've included another video below. If you can't tell who gave the crap, and who enjoyed laughing at it, and who looked really serious, you haven't watched the video. It was great traveling with Chris and Steve and just a lot of fun and laughs.

Paradise: 8 days on Railay

July 15th, 2008 - Railay Island, Krabi, Thailand

Railay was one of the most beautiful, and certainly the most relaxing place I have ever been in my life. No cars are on the island, and so subsequently there aren't any roads. Although the island is still being developed as a tourist location, its pretty bare right now. Its a small island, and you tend to meet the same people day after day, on the beach and at dinner, at the bar and while climbing. To get onto the island you have to wade ashore (if its high tide) or walk along a sandbar (if its low tide). Guess which one I ended up with...


You get to and from the island in these little motorized 'long-tail' boats, which are cute in their size and shape but scary in their tendency to tip and sink when any amount of weight is added onto them.

They are, however, really colorful and actually change depending on the owner's whim, as new colors are painted on or added via the tarps and coverings.

No matter what kind of a ride is necessary to get to the island though, the beachs are worth it. If I had to wade through water, run a couple miles, and crawl through some ant-infested tunnel or something, it would be worth it. Check it out below:


This was just one of 3 beautiful beaches that you can get too easily on the island. On good days, I can't imagine many places nicer in the world. The water is warm and crystal clear, surrounded by cliffs and rock formations, and inhabited by monkeys leaping too and fro.


I spent whole days at the beach, lieing on the sand, juggling, swimming in the water and throwing my frisbee. I talked to people for hours, played soccer with them, or just passed the time chatting with anyone who looked interested. On the down side, all of this beach going resulted in my first burn and peel of my entire life. I didn't put on sunscreen for the first day I was on the beach, and was subsequently nicknamed 'Mr. Red Breast' by a group of Germans.

There was a lot to do on the island beyond beaching though. I went out kayaking with a friend, took the cooking course I've discussed in a previous blog post, and climbed and bouldered. I had a lot of fun climbing, and its a great work out. So i'm going to try to get into it now that I'm back here in Chicago, and the gym I want to join has a great climbing wall. We'll see how that goes, but hopefully I can keep it up.

Another activity popular with people visiting Railay is to try to climb to the "Lagoon". This is basically a small lake set deep inside the mountains, up some hills and down some treacherous terrain, about 300 meters deep. Another American and I decided to try to tackle it one morning, with mixed results. It was a lot of fun and it was great to hang out with someone, but the hike/climb itself was a lot trickier than we thought. You had to use a rope to abseil down slippery rock faces, slide down the mountainside with very little support and generally contemplate your own mortality every couple of minutes. Despite the smiling picture below, I was a bit freaked out.


At the end of our climb, Adam and I faced a 10-15 foot sheer drop with some annoying looking rocks below, with only a slippery rope to support us. After coming about 290 meters in red clay, mud, and bugs we turned back. We did have a great time though, and it was worth it in the end.

Otherwise on the island, I spent my nights with the various people I met and traveling with, rotating between a number of bars and night spots. For a while my favorite spot was the Bamboo Bar, which opened up to the beach and had futons you could relax into while you drank and talked. Then I moved on to the 'Last Bar', a place that had twice weekly pool competitions and lots of friendly staff. It was usually full, and I met some cool people. I've never really liked bar scenes before, but this had an entirely different vibe to it.

Since I went during the low season, prices were a lot lower, the beaches were a lot less crowded and more clean, and the bars and restaurants still had plenty of people. For anyone with some flexibility, on a budget, or looking for a slightly lower-key time, I'd say go during low season. The weather is great in patches, but occasionally we'll get a day or two of heavy rain for most of the sunlight hours. When that happens everyone heads for the nearest cover of restaurant or hotel!



Overall though, Railay was an amazing place for me, and perfect after Bangkok. Very very relaxed, no pressure, not much to do but sit on the beach and decide how active you want to be. I'm so happy I got the chance to go and I suggest it as a stop for anyone in Thailand.

Fishy fishies

July 28th, 12:00am - Tsukiji, Tokyo, Japan

"Be careful, its dangerous," warned the immaculately dressed man in white waving a sharp, sinuous knife casually in my direction. I nodded fervently, glanced down at the slimy wriggling thing on my plate, checked my watch, and realized it was going to be a long night.

My father, several times as I was growing up, took me to the pier fish market in Boston early Saturday morning (6am-7am) to watch various fish, freshly caught, brought from the boats, cut up, boxed, and shipped out to retailers and restaurants. It was not particularly hectic, and although I had never seen fish in that elemental state before, it was more of a casual Saturday than anything life changing.

Flash forward a few years to this past Sunday night/Monday morning. While in Tokyo I had long planned on visiting the largest wholesale fish market in the world, and one of the largest wholesale bazaars of any kind: The Tsukiji Fish Market. The only catch is that the market begins humming around 3am, and is not so much a casual Saturday as a frenetic buzz of motor carts, people, and fish reputed to be the final resting place of many an adventurous tourist. "Just remember," one website advised, "if it comes to saving a box of fish or a person, the vendors will choose the fish every time".

I spent the first 3 of my 4 days here in Tokyo planning on going to the market Monday morning. However for reasons that are beyond this blog, I didn't get much sleep Friday or Saturday night, and on Sunday around 11pm I was already falling asleep while moving around town. I planned on going to the market for the 3am opening, but because of the train start/stop times, if I went back to my hotel for a couple hours nap, I would have to take a cab at 2am or so (the last train from my hotel to Tsukiji was at 12am). Because cabs are obscenely expensive here, I gradually realized I'd be pulling an all-nighter on an already small amount of sleep.

Put all this together, and what do you get? An hour-by-hour blog of the whole experience, delirious from lack of sleep and overexposure to fish, brought to you by half a dozen pieces of paper I hastily grabbed from a restaurant and scribbled on throughout the morning. Here we go...

12am - Just to clarify, I swore off soda several years ago because I was trying to live a bit healthier. Since desperate times call for desperate measures, and as I was nodding off around midnight, I just bought and downed the first of several Tsukiji-based Coca-Colas. I arrived at the market area around 12:15am to overall deadness and lack of activity, but amused myself by wandering the streets and areas to get a feel for the place. A lot of sketchy people about, but what do you expect?

1am - Stroll into a sushi place for a snack and to kill some time. Its open 24 hours, like many of them around the fish market, and there are a good dozen people around in groups and pairs. People seem to be laughing and joking a lot, and eating a good amount of food for so late at night. The two sushi chefs behind the bar are constantly moving, and seem to give the orders around here. The one closest to me, Tony, speaks very good English, and we talk a bit about sushi. I mention how I ate it a lot of it growing up, and challenge him to give me whatever he can. Its probably going to be expensive, but what the hell. When will I get this chance next?

He starts me off easy with some octopus and salmon caviar, but rapidly accelerates into the "weird zone". He throws some lightly toasted horse meat my way, and then reaches into a tank of live sea creatures. He pulls out a live shrimp, chops in half in front of me, and then throws one half of it onto my plate. "Shrimp Odari," Tony explains, which turns out to mean 'Dancing Shrimp'. See why below, as I watched and Tony encourages me to eat it already.

After I consume some other interesting stuff (Abalone, octopus, clam, salmon eggs), Tony waves his sushi knife in the air and gave me his aforementioned warning about the danger of going to the fish market. I guess it isn't really meant for tourists, and hasn't made many accomodations for them. Nonetheless, I'm going to venture outside again and check it out. Pay my somewhat steep tab ($40) and hit the streets.

2am - I'm realizing that, as many people told me, the market doesn't really get busy until later on, and instead of being cool by getting there early, I'm just alone and doing a lot of walking. Crap. I retreat to a Denny's-like diner and buy the cheapest thing possible. I wait out about 30 minutes and make my way back outside. Feeling a bit tired. Realizing the battery power on my camera is inexplicably low. Dang!

Slowly the shops begin to open up, almost one by one. People arrive in cars, on bicycles, motor scooters, in groups and alone. Wearing chef's clothing and street clothing and heavy boots and shoes. Nobody says to much, but everyone begins to move, push and pull doors open, tables out, and gradually things are starting to assemble.

The way I seem to see things happening is that the big trucks arrive, and dole out their packages onto smaller, one man motor carts. These are the carts that will happily run over you and they zip with abandon down the stalls and streets of the market, bringing goods to and fro. The carts deliver the goods from the trucks to the store owners. In the end, lots of activity to get something from one place to the other.

3am - Ok, wow, the number of stores is actually getting quite impressive now. Once they start opening, you see that they stretch and stretch off into the distance.

Just watched 2 older women in the back of a small restaurant stall, through a side door. They are rolling bunches of sticky rice into balls, and then wrapping the balls in seaweed sheet sheets to make rice snacks. Its all very smooth, repeated gracefully for the 10 minutes i'm standing here.

Camera died, arg. This is going to suck. I drop into Tony's sushi place to say hello, but he is taking a nap from 3am-4am. Baby.

Wow, almost run over 3 times just now by those flying carts... a few conclusions...
A) The market is picking up
B) I'm standing in the loading area
C) I'm getting tired

Just ducked into a second sushi place for another slug of coke. Is this what work is going to be like?

4am - As I watch through a window a fish is put through an entire factory process. First its soaked and scaled, then washed. Then another guy chops it up, and passes it along until we end up with bite-sized chunks of fish in plastic bags, being placed in front of the store for sale. Pretty fresh, no?

OH MY GOD. I've found the fish market. Everything else I've said until now was actually just the retail/consumer side of an unbelievably HUGE operation. This is like a gigantic rummage sale of fresh, fishy, football-field proportions. Some of the things I'm seeing as a I walk along:

1) A tuna as big as me, fresh and on a slab a foot away
2) A basket of sea snakes alive and in bags at my feet. They jump and snap at me as I walk by, holy crap
3) Whole fish that remind me of red snappers, a vivid, blood red
4) People running, running! back and forth to get places
5) Cart operators weaving their carts backwards (!), in reverse! through the small aisles in between the stands
6) Craftsman cutting up the tuna with everything from a table-mounted buzz saw to an intricate thin knife a couple feet long. The former is used for chopping up frozen fish and the later is used by up to 3 people at a time to carefully quarter the Tuna into pieces of meat for sale. I don't know what else to say, but these tuna are huge!

I just asked one of the counter guys how expensive this tuna is. He said it was caught off Australia 3 days ago, and is 4000 yen per kilogram. To translate, thats about $90/pound. And of the hundreds of Tuna I can see in my immediate vicinity, this one has to be 150 pounds, at the very least.

5am - Just gotten my first good long look at big-game fish cutting up, and it is spectacular. In this case a swordfish, of which one piece was 8kg, and from which many more are coming one by one. The cutters are like samurai: They measure, plunge in the blade, pull it along, and then rip it out. They examine the cut, wipe the blade, and repeat. These fish are HUGE.

Ah, I've come upon some of the auction mechanism. There are gigantic freezer bays with rows and rows of fish lined up, with buyers walking among them poking and prouding. The public isn't allowed into these rooms, but I can look through the window. Lots and lots of fish. Have I said that enough?

The sun is out, when did that happen? I'm seriously swaying at this point, and realize that I still have a long walk and some subway rides home. As I'm winding my way out I find the parking lot that is jammed full of trucks, serving as the destination for lots of this fish. Where it goes from here, who knows?

Walking out, some conclusions as I sit here on a bench... These are mostly working people here, doing a long, hard job over and over each day. At least while they are here, they are generally pretty serious with moments of brief levity. There are some food stalls set up within the market to provide for food and drink for people, but nobody really seems to go there. Its pretty much continuous hours of work with very little break.

POST SCRIPT: As I tried to get home that morning, I walked to the wrong subway stop, got off at the wrong station once I got on, fell asleep a few times, and generally made a mess of myself. By the time I got back, I was the incarnation of the walking dead. I had about two hours before I had to get up and check out, and I woke up from my nap 3 hours later, stomach aching from sushi intake, feet aching from walking in sandals, wallet aching from the whole process. But was it worth it? YES! The fish market in Japan did not dissapoint, in terms of sights, sounds, smells, and experience. If you're ever in Tokyo, take a morning and go there. But maybe show up at 4am, ok? :)