These are some older photos I took during my first trip to Tokyo in 2003 October. It was a lot of fun. I met with friends of friends whom I have never met before and thanks to them, my first experience in Tokyo could not have been better.
Most of these day time photos are taken around residential areas. I really like the residential areas of Tokyo more than the busy streets and malls. Don’t get me wrong, the malls are great and I love being seeing nice decorations and nicely designed buildings. However there is something about the peaceful feeling of residential streets that draws my attention.
Japanese houses are compact and yet they are designed to utilized the space within very well. If you remember some of the photos that Danny posted on his blog, you will realize that the stair case is very space saving. Compare to what we typically have in Vancouver, their stair case takes up only about half the area and yet be very functional. Continue reading
Just thought I would share some of the night time photos we took during the trip here. I shared some in the previous posts already but I think I like to group the other ones here as a photo post. Enjoy.
One of the many great things about visiting Tokyo is it’s transportation system. The city is very well connected by trains and highways.
Study this train route diagram. On top, there are the two big numbers indicating the direction of travel and the corresponding platform number. In the middle is an alphabet indicate the train line (each train line got a different alphabet). And in the diagram below shows numbered train stations (the circled number below the route) and the number of minutes from the current station to the other stations (number within the route). The name of the current station is highlighted in red (station E03). The two arrows below the current station tells you the direction in relation to all the stations (the font and the font weight is proportional to the direction number at the top of the diagram). And if you look at the lower right hand site, you will see that E17 takes 27 minutes if you use platform 2, and would take longer than 29 minutes if you take platform 1. Also a lot of stations are connected to other train lines as illustrated by the different color circles on top of each station number. With all this information, you can tell your friends exactly where you are, traveling in which direction and the approximate time of arrival without ambiguity. I love graphic communication in Asia. Continue reading
Our friends took us to their family restaurant here in Nippori. It is a Korean BBQ restaurant. We are so excited to finally having to taste authentic Korean food. I really like the BBQ grill they use. It is not seen in Vancouver. Continue reading
Another attraction of Tokyo is Asakusa, known for its famous Sensoji Temple . During one of the warmest days of our visit, we managed to pay a brief visit.
The main entrance is always full of visitors. It was a weekday and we were overwhelmed by how many visitors they have. Continue reading
This time, we are going to show you Nabe we had in Tokyo. Friends of ours took us to ChankoDining. It is a restaurant owned by a former sumo wrestler champion.
Before talking about the food, I think it is important to highlight the excellent service we received. We didn’t have to make the nabe ourselves. There was a very friendly waitress helping us with our cooking. Imagine having to cook nabe 10 times a day!? Also the waitress is totally wired. She has a microphone on the front of her shirt, and she also has an earpiece. Guess that is to enhance communication with the kitchen/co-worker to provide better service for their customers in the restaurant. Continue reading
Lets continue with more food related pictures, shall we? This time, I am going to show you some other food we had in other restaurants.
One problem with going to a restaurant is that the menus are usually in Japanese only. Luckily, we were tagging along with our Japanese friends so we didn’t have to do any ordering ourselves. Continue reading
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