Tokyo Travelogue

I had an opportunity to travel to Tokyo from Fair Isaac to deliver a scorecard we had built for a client in Tokyo. The WEM or the Weights Engineering Meeting, as the name of the meeting which I was to attend to goes, happened on the 8th of February 2008.
To be in the meeting on 8th Feb., we departed from Bangalore on the 6th February. We were initially planning to take the Air India flight from New Delhi to Tokyo. However, due to extreme fog in New Delhi, we were not able to reach there on time as all flights departing from Bangalore to Delhi were late. There was also a fear that the Air India flight to Tokyo might get cancelled due to fog in the night in Delhi.

So we had to change our flight (for the better) to fly in Singapore Airlines. The flight was via Singapore and at Singapore we had to change our plane after about a 2 hour halt.

The plane took off from Bangalore Airport at about 11:15 PM to Singapore. Since I had reached the Bangalore airport pretty early, due to my proximity to the airport, I had a good opportunity to look around at the international terminus of the Bangalore Airport. The international terminus is very small and right as you enter, to the left are the counters where kind looking airline staff gives you the boarding pass and other documents.

Then one has to take the escalator to reach the first floor where the immigration counters are set up. I was later analyzing that the check in counters must be below the runway level for the immigration counters and boarding floor to be at the runway ground level. This was an interesting observation. Else I did not notice a steep incline of the immigration floor to reach the runway level.

At the immigration floor, I was the first person to arrive and it was totally empty with no officials or passengers. One smart looking foreigner with seemingly long pointed shoes was there with me and soon he got really busy in a long conversation on this cell phone. I paced the floor up and down about 30-40 times and then stood under a TV pedestal watching US election roundups and other Indian news.

Soon, more passengers stated coming in. The foreign currency counter opened up and some people walked up to get some currency converted. There was a cafe coffee day shop where some foreigners were savoring some coffee. I could not help but notice a very smart Indian girl in jeans and smart black shoes walk up to the currency conversion counter to get some currency converted.

When the immigration counters opened I was surprised at how fast a long queue formed, almost in a span on seconds. I had to almost rush to avoid being at the very end of the queue. That would have been a funny situation as I was the first person to arrive for immigration check.

Soon more counters were opened and the queues seemed to shorten a bit. When my turn came for immigration check, Anindya had arrived and as a matter of coincidence, we both got our checks done at the same time on different counters.

I am somehow not comfortable at immigration checks. I want to know what these officers see on their computer screens to decide if they should let me go or not. This person swiped my passport in the machine as if he were swiping a credit card and then scanned my passport for something. He asked me the obvious question as to why I had two passports when the old one was ok. I had to explain how the government had given me a new passport when I asked for an ECNR stamp. He smiled and seemed to understand our paradoxical systems, perhaps in greater depth.

We moved from the immigration to the boarding lounge. There were two TV's in that lounge. The one in front of me was playing some South Indian channel and was intolerable. The one behind me was playing some English news channel and there was some news on The Beatles which I thought I missed. I so wanted to be near that TV, but the lounge was pretty full to encourage such a movement. After an hour of waiting we departed to Singapore

My first observation when I entered the Singapore Airlines plane was that this was a huge plane- A nine-seat row with two aisles after three seats each. I was really impressed and happy. I then called home to tell them that I was departing in a few minutes. Dadaji was very happy.

The flight to Singapore was very comfortable. The seats were good with nice leg space. The plane was not full to capacity. So we actually had a chance to sleep on the three seats full length. This was good rest as the next two days were to be busy. The plane had both male and female stewards and hostesses. The air hostess were wearing a very beautiful and elegant dress with no hint what so ever of a skin show as compared to many of the Indian domestic flights. The male stewards were smart and well turned up in a grayish coat and black trousers. The ladies were wearing a single piece gown sort of a dress with traditional patterns of flowers and other bright designs indicating leaves etc. The base color of the dresses was very prominent in red, dark green and dark blue.

I in fact noticed that there was a color code for the air crew. The deep red dresses of the ladies meant a head stewardess. Next in hierarchy were the green dress ones and then the blue dress ones. For the male stewards, the color shade of the coat indicated hierarchy. Darker shades of grey were the juniors and light color greys were the seniors.

The food on the flight was tasty continental food which everyone seemed to relish. There was in fact a choice between an Indian, International or an East Asian cuisine. Drinks were on the house. There was everything - wine, whisky, rum, vodka, aperitif- all the food groups. I had a German white wine which left a very new taste like electric smoky in the throat. I had some red wine and an orange juice too. The food and drinks were a delight.

There was a TV in front of every seat and I immediately noticed that there were many good movies and songs in their collection. I am thoroughly impressed with the collection of movies and songs aboard Singapore Airlines. Their head phones which you have to return back have a two pin output for the left and right ear. This makes them useless for all everyday gadgets since the two pins are bound together in rubber. So you can’t plug them in your computers or music systems. Hence there is no incentive in stealing them. I was also not aware that we have to return these back and had put one of these head phone in my hand bag hoping to figure out a way to plug them in my laptop. When the announcement was made to return them to the crew on duty I made a hasty dash to my bag to retrieve the one I had stored there lest I am seen as a thief by the crew. Such is the temperament of an honest Libran mind. It thinks a lot.

The airbus landed at Singapore airport after about 3.5 hours of flight and I could imagine a 200 ton machine landing on the tarmac. Air crafts inspire certain awe, it is a feat how man has managed to make pure heavy steel fly in the air across continents.

The actual time in Singapore was around 5 AM, 7th of February 2008. So while it was about to be day in Singapore, we had just had about 3 hours of sleep. I adjusted my watch to the new time. The Singapore airport at night was glowing and lighted up very beautifully. It was one big giant mall with shops everywhere selling almost everything. I loved the way the whole place was done up, all carpeted and colorful. The temperature inside was controlled around 22 degrees centigrade. I bought some picture postcards from a shop. I felt proud using my ICICI visa platinum card. I have erased my three digit CCV number from my card to prevent fraud. The lady at the counter wanted to know that number for passing the purchase. I retrieved the number hesitantly and gave it to her, really hoping that this dull looking lady wont sell my credit card information to any scrounge, which might lead to my potential bankruptcy. My fears have been baseless as of date. I guess she was herself ensuring that there is no fraud by asking me that number.

The picture postcards were expensive. But I was happy at the purchase and a little apprehensive of the credit card transaction.

We found a comfortable place with sofas and rested there. Anindya slept on the sofas. I lingered around in the nearby shops marveling at all the gadgetry in the stored like laptops, cameras etc, trying to convert all Singapore dollar prices to INR and whistling to my self in that expensive setup.

I attempted to visit the loo but the sheer absence of any water or tap near the pot made me change my mind. It was soon day break and the toilets were somehow illuminated with sunlight coming from the glass wall of the toilet. The wall was covered with plant creeper on the outside which blocked all human view from outside but allowed sun rays to enter through the small gaps. It looked beautiful.

On the airport, there were free internet booths, where I easily checked emails, checked my ICICI bank account for any possible credit card fraud, sent a email home and another one to my Delhi friends. I was happy.

I could see that the building had panels on the high ceiling which reflected sunlight into the massive airport terminal building thereby allowing sunlight to create an ambient lighting. A smart scientific way to light the place. The panels moved with the sun’s movement in the sky.

There were lots of Indians on the Singapore Airport. Some honeymoon couples too. Young people like me, jewelers, IT consultants etc.

The check in for Tokyo began at around 7 and the flight to Tokyo left at around 8 AM. The plane to Tokyo was again Singapore Airlines with the same features as described above. This time the plane was full to capacity. There was a Japanese gentleman sitting besides me. He almost drank 5-6 cans of beer in the entire flight. He also bought two Jonnie Walker whiskeys on the Aircraft sale shop. And before that I was just amusing that who buys from here. I also noticed that there were a lot of Japanese looking very young couples on board.

We landed at Tokyo at about 5:30 PM Tokyo time. Tokyo is one hour ahead of Singapore time. We had to walk a long distance to reach the exit immigration at Narita airport. Narita is the name of the Tokyo Airport. There was a substantial queue at immigration. We were lucky to be ahead in that queue. This was because we had done some brisk walking from our plane to the terminal immigration overtaking many people.

The immigration did not take much time. But I could already see a lot of Japanese faces and a lot of high fashion with long boots coats. The immigration counter recorded my fingerprints for security on an electronic gadget and also scanned my retina from the camera. Meanwhile the officer again swiped my passport and asked me how long would I stay there. He turned over my passport many times again curious as to why I had a cancelled previous passport. I gave him the same explanation as before. He was convinced and gave me 15 days of entry stamp.

Anindya and I then walked out of the immigration having officially entered Japan. I was feeling as if I had won some bet or competition. By the time we reached our baggage claim, both our bags were already off the belt and neatly arranged with a person to supervise them. I was surprised as how they knew these two bags were traveling together.

We took out our jackets anticipating cold outside the airport. I wore my jacket casually and walked out of the airport. As soon as the sliding glass door to the outside opened a gust of ice cold wind slapped me hard on the face. I was taken by surprise. I was not prepared mentally to relish this vagary of nature moving out from the controlled environments of the many airports we were at lately.

The whole place was sparsely populated. There were not many people outside and there was a fantastic absence of any chaos or traffic outside the Narita airport. I was finally on the Japanese soil.

It was so cold that I immediately zipped my jacket to the neck. We contemplated taking a bus but then saw a shining back taxi and hailed it. The drive swiftly got out, opened the dickey and put our luggage there. He was wearing formal suite and tie with white gloves. He appeared to be an elderly person. He pressed a button and the taxi door firmly swung open. We sat in and he pressed a button and the doors closed automatically. I was truly in a developed country. The taxi was internally heated and warm.

In ten seconds we were racing the almost empty road at 100 km ph almost. The acceleration was very smooth and the car was running noiselessly. It was just going zip and zip. The traffic on the highway was very fast. Even big trucks were moving very fast just like in Hollywood movies. The highway appeared very organized in terms of sign boards and traffic movements.

The drive from Narita to Tokyo is about 65 kilometers. The taxi took about half an hour to forty minutes to reach Palace Hotel in Chinyoda-sa. This is an important business centre in Tokyo in the vicinity of the Imperial Palace. The taxi meter was about 19,000 YEN. This was obnoxiously expensive as I furiously converted YEN to INR after alighting at the Palace Hotel. Fortunately we were on corporate credit card.

A very interesting observation was that the taxi did not stop on any of the toll gates on the highway. For that matter, no vehicle stops at any of the Japan toll gates on the highways to pay the toll. They have a electronic meter and driving at high speeds, when they pass under the toll gate, a electronic beam records the toll and deducts it from the meter ( adds it for the passenger) and the drop gate immediately opens in a flash and the cars zip pass through it. It all happens in a matter of a few mili seconds and at first I cringed as if we were about to crash in the lowered beam gate a few meters beyond. But the driver coolly sped, there was a beep in the meter indicating the toll registry and the gate beyond flung open in a second and the car sped fast as if nothing had happened. I immediately turned back to see how fast the gate closed behind us and it did close super fast. Split second precision. I was so impressed.

Upon reaching the Palace Hotel, we were hospitably led to our rooms by warm boys on duty. The rooms were very comfortably furnished with modern furniture, bed, tables, sofa, desk, mini bar etc. It had a free internet connection too. The toilet was high tech with the pot seat having many buttons for the various functions of the human toilet from washing to flush. This was extremely hygienic. The water in the taps is safely drinkable though I frankly could not muster up the courage to drink from the tap. The hot and cold feature of the taps was so swift. I just had to rotate the tap from the hot to the cold and the temperature of the water would change as fast as you rotate the taps, with the perfect exact temperature at every coordinate of the arc movement of the tap and shower from hot to cold.

The room was very comfortable with room temperature maintained at 22 degrees Celsius. The bell boy was trying to explain me in half English and half Japanese how to adjust the room temperature which I half understood and waved him off, me being a hardy Indian soul not being affected by a few degrees here or there in the epsilon neighborhood of 22 degrees.

Changing in to fresh clothes and bath etc., Anindya and me went out of the hotel to a nearby mall to explore dinner options at about 8 PM.

It was very cold on the street outside. Icy breeze was flowing and I also noticed that the night was crystal clear. No fog, no smog, no pollution, no dust. Everything was very bright and clearly visible on Japanese roads. One has to see this phenomenon to understand what I mean by crystal clear air. And it was also very quiet and peaceful. No noise pollution. Very few pedestrians and little traffic. As I have said earlier, the cars drive with very little noise only a zip sort of a feeling as a car drives by. There were motorbikes though which created a vroom sort of loud noise. I noticed that the motorbike riders were all dressed up from head to toe in some form of shiny clothing like jackets and trousers with bright helmets. The bikes themselves were very heavy with broad tires. They were the only traffic to make a noise loud enough to make a person look up and notice.

We walked in that chilly night towards the mall which was a few blocks behind Palace Hotel. This building was more of an office building with restaurants on some floors. I later also had come to notice that there was a metro station under this building. We used the lift to go up to the 5th floor where we learnt all the restaurants were located. As we entered the lifts some more people entered with us. We pushed the button to the 5th floor. But the other Japs did not bother. They simply said something in Japanese and the lift seemed to register their request to stop at desired floors. After a few minutes of alighting from that lift did it dawn upon me that the you could order the lift to stop at any floor by simply speaking the floor name like 2nd floor, 3rd floor etc in Japanese. If you are a Japanese speaking guy, you need not press the lift buttons. You just have to say it loud. Man, I was mesmerized. What a privilege to be a Japanese speaking person, you don’t need to push your hand inside a crowded lift for the button. You can coolly say it out loud.

We moved round and round the 5th floor peeping in to the strangely setup restaurants. All of them had a menu card displayed outside. These menu cards were in Japanese. Thus we could not understand what the restaurants served. So we kept looking at those menu cards for a place which could inform us of our culinary choices and where we could order in English. There seemed to be none. We had to finally enter a restaurant in frustration and ask for an English menu card and after some confusion whether we wanted an English meal or an English printed menu card, we got a menu card in English. Having thus realized that each restaurant will have a menu card in English for sure, we proceeded with confidence on our third round of the floor and sat in one which was less crowded.

The people in all of those restaurants were very formally dressed. Girls and boys with coat, ties, suits and overcoats. The girls usually wore skirts with coats and stockings with belles or knee high boots usually. All of them looked very smart. All the people in Tokyo were dressed so formally that it was a sight to behold. They did not talk loudly in the restaurants except some groups of youngsters in the situations where the boys were trying to impress the girls of the group by some smart talking.

The restaurants were done up in a very oriental style with hanging oval paper lamps, wood work in east world patterns and strips and some banners indicating some form of advertisement for the restaurant. The Japanese script itself was enigmatic adding to the mystery of the place. Some were standing places with no chairs, some were places where you had to open your shoes at the gate and sit on some kind of a sheet on the floor. Others were normal sit down type of restaurants.


We ordered three things from our menu card – Kiri, Sashimi and Sake. Kiri consisted of “Tempura” which is type of fried sea fish pakoras. Tempura consisted of 2 prawns, 2 white flesh fish, 1 squid, 3 vegetables and some shrimps. All these were first dipped in some paste (like besan) and then deep fried in soy oil. It was delicious and crispy.

“Sashimi” refers to a combination of sliced raw fish, meso soup rice and pickles. The raw fish has to be eaten in some very thin liquid sauce. This raw fish was red in color and really tasty. It did not have any fish bones. Meso soup was soup made of sea shells. The sea shell worm was inside the soup and I could not eat more than 2-3 of those round white worms. The soup was also very strong in flavor. Rice was sticky and round. Not the polished rice we are used to having in India. There was “mooli ki churri” in one dish which was to be dipped in a sauce and eaten. This is what the restaurant meant by pickles. It was delicious though the taste was familiar and reminded me of home and those special occasions when “mooli ki churri” is made.

“Sake” is the Japanese rice beer. This is pronounced as “Saa-k”. We had the sake called “Mugen”. This drink comes no where close to beer however. Japanese rice vodka would be a better description. This is because Sake does not have any fizz like beer, is white in color like vodka and it is very strong in alcohol. It is served hot and steaming. I have had many liquors but this one really hit my throat hard. I could only manage to finish half the glass. Every sip used to shake me up with the intensity of alcohol.

Overall the meal was good and filling. We then walked back to the hotel. I was desperate for something sweet so I rushed to the hotel restaurant in the basement and was just in time to order an apple pie. It was the first time I had an apple pie and I did not like it. I wondered what was the hard non sweet cake bit doing with nice sweet topping on it.

Coming back to my room I plugged on the laptop and checked emails. Some office emails, some personal ones. Then I changed and slept. It was such a quiet night. Not a sound or a drone for miles around. Absolute quiet is something I found very pleasing and strange. I had forgotten what pin drop silence felt like. It again reminded me of my child hood days when the world was less busy. There used to be little traffic and in the dead silence of the night when even the cockroaches were asleep, the colony guard would come blowing his whistle and beating his stick. I used to feel afraid of the whistle as a kid. Nevertheless, I was taken back to my childhood tranquility in the Tokyo night.

However, while I was just about to doze off in deep sleep, I was woken up to the sound of a couple having some crazy sex in the other room. My childhood world came crashing to the reality of the moment. I rushed to check if my windows were sealed and they were. To my disbelief the night was so silent and the air cold that the walls were acting as super conductors of noise. I guess there was an orgy going on as while someone was pulling the flush, the woman was still screaming. The noise had increased from a dull playful shriek (which had set an alarm when I said to myself – “Oh No”) to a moan and then the volume had kept going up and up. I played some songs on my laptop to ease my self a bit. In retrospect I should have called the reception but at that moment I was simply perplexed as to the appropriateness of my actions. Thankfully, human beings have only so much stamina and the commotion in the next room subsided and I slept off.

Next morning, 8th of February 2008, I got ready and went down to the lobby for breakfast. Anindya and I had fixed to meet at 7:30 – 8 AM. Anindya came. Both of us were dressed in business formals for the meeting.

We had a good breakfast which contained items from many cuisines. It was a delightful breakfast. There was coffee, milk, cakes, all sorts of cornflakes and cereal, fruits some of which I had never seen. There were many cooked meat dishes like chicken nuggets and salami and ham. I like the breakfast. The milk needs a special mention here as it was really tasty and very different from what I have ever drank in India. I did not try any traditional Japanese sea food in the breakfast to be on the safe side. People from all parts of the world seemed to be having breakfast there. There were also some English families but mainly business professionals.

I imagined Thomas L. Friedman, the famous author of “The World is Flat”, sitting on one of those breakfast tables in one of his journeys looking out into Tokyo to the very scenery I was just watching. I also imagined him ordering an “Orange” and getting an Orange juice and then peeled oranges till he actually managed to get a whole citrus. I felt so truly a global citizen having breakfast at the Palace Hotel. Incidentally, the Palace Hotel name features in one of the Beatles famous songs promo video “Ticket To Ride”. You can see that video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etjpcF2X_mY.

After breakfast we took a taxi to take us to the Fair Isaac office. It was not very far. It took us about 10 minutes to reach the building. People were rushing in to their respective offices. The Fair Isaac office was on the 3rd floor of that building. The building was very beautiful. We entered through a wrong door and were escorted by helpful guards to the correct direction. The guards knew little English but took some pain to explain which door we had to take and which elevator to take up. It was so evident from our face that we were foreigners that the people in the restaurants, malls, taxi drivers, guards all tried to make a special effort to understand our requests and indications and then help us.

We were greeted at the office by Yoshio who had been the resource person from Tokyo for the project. He is a kind person, very intelligent, eloquent and smart. Soon our discussion was work centric and the meeting began at 10 AM. Four people had come from the client side. They were all Japanese people and we all bowed to each other in greeting and acknowledgement. Then we shared our business cards with each other. It was nice to see how much regard and humility they showed in their actions. They gave their business cards by holding the card by both their hands and bent a little while giving us the card. We were so used to hand the card the American way by one hand. I had to immediately modify my action to reciprocate their sentiments.
Some green tea was served soon.

During the course of the meeting Yoshio did a great job in translating and presenting our models to the clients. A strong hierarchy was pretty evident in their group. An elderly looking gentleman was the head and the other three were very respectful when talking to him. The youngest person showed regards for the other three members of the group. They would all talk in a low voice when discussing in between them and were polite in asking questions. I was really impressed by their etiquettes.

The Fair Isaac office had a cool vending machine which dispensed about 50 odd drinks, from cold to hot water, from all types of tea to coffee to milk to juices to soft drinks. Except alcoholic drinks it perhaps served all conceivable drinks. The machine was as big as a double door fridge, in fact even slightly bigger more of the broader side. BY pressing a button you could order a drink and it would be served in a window sort of a outlet in the lower part of the machine. The light would indicate that now One can open the door. It was so cool.

The meeting continued all day. We all had lunch in a restaurant in the same building and I saw that the clients were very formal at the table. They were also surprised it seems at us foreigners having all that Japanese food without batting an eyelid. They did not knew that we had the exact same food last night at dinner and thus when Sashimi was served we knew which sauce went with what item and what to expect inside Meso Soup ( Sea Shells). Another feature of all Tokyo restaurants big or small is that before serving any meal they serve hot steamed white rolled up hand towels with which you are expected to wipe your hands clean. I really liked that culture of cleanliness. We used fork and spoons to eat and did not experiment much at the lunch table with chop sticks.

Post lunch the meeting resumed and continued till late evening about 5:30 PM. While seeing off the clients we had to undergo a long bowing session where everyone bowed to everyone else. I felt a little funny there. The Japanese people were very fast in bowing and by the time I had bent once and straightened they were done with three bows. I had to be faster in my other bows to catch up with the pace.

We than came back to the Hotel in a taxi and freshened to take a tour of the city. Anindya changed into his leather jacket and casuals while I remained in my formal coat except for the tie. I like wearing formal clothes and Tokyo gave me the terrific opportunity to keep wearing formal clothes without feeling out of place unlike India because the entire city was formally suited and booted. I loved the formal culture.

We came back to Fair Isaac office where Yoshio was waiting for us. He then took us for sightseeing around.

We were on foot. We walked about a kilometer till we reached a elevated metro railway track built above the road. Below that track in the space, they had built a line of shops for a long distance. These shops were food shops and served a lot of variety of Japanese food. This was true Japanese street food. These shops were not big. Just about enough space to fit in a long counter about feet wide and two people standing and about 3 meters long to accommodate 5-6 people to stand in front of the counter and have the food. They had heavy sliding glass doors in wooden frame to prevent the inside from the freezing outside.

These sliding doors were electronic powered. You had to just give the handle a small push and the motor would pull the door aside. Then the door would automatically close. The shops had some form of air ventilation system as was evident from the pipes and small ducts on the ceiling.

Yoshio took us to a shop which apparently served the best Sushi there. In about 20 dollars per head the shop owner served us a glass of Sake and about 15 different types of Sushi. I was not expecting had such delicious food. It was finger licking. It was a genuine treat. There were tastes which I had never experienced before. The Sushi just dissolved in the mouth. It was nothing short of being stupendous. Sushi is made of rice balls wrapped in flat sea weed. Then some strong flavored sauce is dropped on that rice ball. Not much, just about a few drops of that sauce. Then some raw meat is placed on top of that ball and Sushi is ready. You have to pop the whole thing in the mouth at one go. The meat topping could be anything - salmon eggs, squid, shark, sea horse, octopus legs, other fish, eggs poach etc. I guess the meat is treated in some way before serving. I guess it was somewhat steamed or marinated though no sauce or other substance was present on the meat. Sushi was a treat in no small measure and I managed to finish my glass of Sake too.

Then we walked toward Ginza which is a commercial area in Tokyo. This was really lighted up brightly and the streets were full of high formal fashion. Long pointed shoes and tall boots were seen everywhere. The shops had the usual stuff present in any cosmopolitan city of the world today like jewelry, clothes, food etc. Then we reached a famous crossing at Ginza which looked so much like Times Square in NY that for a moment I thought it was a dream. There was a big cock tower and huge digital billboards. Traffic was fast and flashy. The streets were so nicely lit up. Ginza is perhaps the epitome of capitalism in Tokyo.

We bought some souvenirs from a store. Since Valentine’s Day was not far away so the stores were all preparing for the occasion. There were lots of chocolates all around in that store.

One remarkable feature was the sheer absence of trees from the Tokyo Metropolis landscape. I did not see a single tree in Ginza or nearby places. There were trees in the Palace Hotel area but that was due to its proximity to the Imperial Palace compound. However the business district and the commercial parts had no trees at all. I guess Tokyo would look much better with more trees planed on road sides. Maybe the concrete sub terrain or the underground metros don’t allow such vegetation. To replace trees, they have put lighting pillars in many streets which give the impression of tree / bush shaped lights here and there. But that accentuated the tree less nature of the landscape instead of diluting it. At least I felt so.

From Ginza, we took a metro to go to a famous Buddhist temple at Asakusa. With the coming of the Delhi metro, we Indian are used to traveling in metro trains. Tokyo metro was no different. There was the station announcement inside the train though it as in Japanese usually and was not of much help to us. Since Yoshio was with us so we did not had to bother. The crowd in the train was mixed cosmopolitan crowd. Some people were wearing white hospital masks to avoid air borne infections like SARS or bird flu which have been ravaging East Asian countries for a few years now. I bought some Japanese magazines, newspapers and comics for a friend who is learning that language and had requested me to get that stuff.

An Interesting thing happened that when I was buying a newspaper at the metro station, I picked up a Tabloid containing some political news with color pictures. The lady at the stall then indicated to Yoshio that it is foolish of me to buy this. She went on to explain that the particular tabloid was way too expensive for an obvious non Japanese guy to buy. I learnt that it was worth 500 Yen. So I bought a cheaper news papers for my friend. I bought 3 news papers in 430 Yen which means a normal black and white news paper cost me about 140 Yen which is about 50 Rupees. This was sure expensive.

We reached Asakusa at around 8:30 PM and by that time the market around had closed. We walked to the Buddhist temple and that had closed too. Yoshio was slightly disappointed as he wanted to show us the temple. But even from the outside the temple looked beautiful. Asakusa is a very old part of Tokyo and has been historically very significant. The temple was very ancient and was destroyed in the world war and rebuilt again. You can read about Asakusa at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asakusa .

There was a series of closed shops near the temple and I wondered what a lovely place this would be when the market was open. We bought some traditional Japanese fans from the only shop that was open that time. And as we left that shop also closed. We walked a lot around Asakusa and saw some very old buildings and food places. These food stalls were built on the roadside and used big polythene sheets to make an enclosure with small tables and chairs to cut out the cold. It appeared very cozy inside those plastic enclosures but we did not stop to eat anything. The old buildings and shops were beautifully painted especially the shutters of the closed shops had nice oriental patterns on them.

We walked around and then took the metro back to Palace Hotel. Yoshio got off somewhere midway and we proceeded to our station having received clear instructions from Yoshio as to which stop number we should get out at and which direction we should take the train to.

We alighted from the train without any adventure and then attempted to locate our coordinates but we could not find a direction to walk back to our hotel even though the hotel was not far away. So we kept walking and came across the same elevated train’s track where we had sushi. Forgetting our hotel, we set upon to have some more of the delicacies served in those series of shops. Thus we had another meal in a shop this time slightly bigger than the sushi place. We had Teriyaki in this shop. Teriyaki just melted in our mouths. We loved it. Teriyaki was a kind of meat seekh kebab flavored with honey and tasty sauces. Then we had another form of Teriyaki which had a quail egg inside the chicken kebab. We went crazy happy. I had a glass of strawberry milk which was heavenly. I could not help recalling that at the Wimbledon, Strawberry and cream was a staple.

Thus after a good meal we too a taxi and reached our hotel back. In that evening we had walked a lot and seen a lot of places. Had Yoshio not taken us to Asakusa we would have definitely missed some part of Japanese history.

At the hotel we just crashed to sleep and I had already ensured in the morning with the hotel reception that the last night’s theatrics were not to be repeated in the room next to mine. We woke up early morning as we had a flight to catch at 11:30 AM.

We had the breakfast with almost the same platter as the day before. I tried the things I had missed out the previous day. Then we checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the Tokyo station where we were to take the Narita express to take us to the airport.

While checking out of the hotel I presented my corporate credit card to pay for my stay. I was surprised at how fast the person swiped the card and presented me the bill. In Tokyo credit card swipes take a few mili-seconds and the receipt also comes out in the same sweep of the hand. This is super fast as compared to a credit card swipe in India which first connects showing three four blinking dots and then take a full one minute to complete the transaction and then take an eon to print out the bill accompanies with a lot of noise.

Inside the Narita express we kept out luggage on a steel rack near the door and took our seats in the cabin. I was not confidant that the luggage was left unguarded near the door but nothing happened to the luggage. The train sped to the airport through the Tokyo city and country side and I could see the concrete jungle that a developed city becomes. I felt the city was very impersonal, even though it was high tech, hygienic and organized. The ticket checker in the train had a electronic ticket checking machine which went beep-beep and registered our tickets digitally in our pockets without even bothering us to display our tickets. The checker just had to talk a walk in the aisle and check the number of beeps vis a vis number of people.

Rest I just looked out of the window and realized that in the last 2 days I had thousands of questions in my mind and my level of curiosity had been so intense. I had forgotten what it is to be curious at this age of 23 years and I had forgotten what it was to have a huge load of questions to shoot at anybody within range. I used to be so full of questions as a kid and I visited some part of me which they call the child within in Tokyo. I wanted to know what the walls in Tokyo are made of … what do the trains run on… where does the train guard sit… how does the ticketing machine work… how do they cook their food… wont the shells in the Meso soup harm us… I had all the questions I used to ask around as a kid. I was basking in my own thoughts.

Narita came and we disembarked from the train. Then we proceeded to the Japanese exit counters and got our exit stamps done on the passports, checked in our baggage at the airport and then waited till it was time to sit in the plane. I had meanwhile bought a paper doll as a wall hanging for myself. We sat in the Singapore Airlines plane and flew off to Singapore en-route to Bangalore.

In the plane, I had a Japanese young man sitting besides me. He had real foul breadth and played Mario computer game on the interactive TV in the plane for the entire Journey from Tokyo to Singapore. I tried Campari for the first time on the plane. Campari is a dark red colored aperitif which is extremely bitter in taste. You can read about aperitifs at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apéritif . The air hostess asked if I wanted some orange juice mixed with Campari but I denied because I wanted to taste Campari undiluted to see what it tasted like. It was horrible. I somehow managed to finish my cup and fortunately it was small. I then immediately asked for orange juice which I gulped to help my aching taste buds.

I listened to John Lennon, Eagles and some more classic English rock songs on the plane, had a continental meal and reached Singapore airport sans any fanfare. There I bought “Bowmore” whiskey from the duty free shop for a friend who had highly recommend it and another bottle of the same for myself. The whiskey is indeed very exquisite. We had a Subway as an evening meal and then waited and got on the plane to Bangalore. On that plane I saw Michal Clayton which I really did not appreciate much and reached Bangalore at about 11 PM in the night, took a prepaid taxi from the airport and reached home to a humid Indian evening.

When we were landing at Singapore airport, I saw that the entire airport was lush green like a meadow. The grass besides the runway was bright green and it gave a very literary feeling as I imagined the plane landing and taking off from the middle of an English field in spring time. Singapore from the sky looks very posh.

To register my thoughts upon landing in India- I felt that India has miles to go and decades to catch up with the developed world. We are still stuck in our communal mud slinging and don’t feel an integral part of a country. Instead our mindsets are still fragmented upon lousy issues of caste and communities. The luggage from the plane to the conveyer belt at the Bangalore airport took about 45 minutes and all the international passengers were left standing waiting in that hot and humid room without fans or AC. I felt ashamed of our systems. The luggage was brutally being thrown from the trolley to the conveyer belt behind the room and we could hear the loud thuds of bags being mishandled. It was a pity.

The trip to Tokyo though short, was an excellent experience in giving an international perspective and witnessing a culture and lifestyle which I had only seen in movies. If one is to discount the impersonal nature of living in these developed countries, they offer a standard of living which I believe is the best and unparalleled anywhere. I truly had a memorable time in Japan.

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