Tokyo....the City

We are nearing the end of our trip and are now sightseeing in the great metropolis of Tokyo, the most densely populated country in the world. Thirty Five million folks live in the greater Tokyo area.  The transportation system here is one of the best anywhere, with wide use of subways, trains, and buses, (the primary choice of personal transport is the bicycle, a few electric but most are "manual").  It is also one of the most confusing systems to use and getting lost is pretty darn easy.  Our hotel is near the Shinjuku Train Station, the busiest train or subway hub in the world, amazingly, serving 3,000,000 people per day.  Rising to the street level or entering the station offers a whopping 200 differrent options of exits or entrants depending on whether you're coming or going. It's sometimes overwhelming to see so much humanity in one place so you might forget whether you're coming or going.  I personally passed 500,000 people on the subway platform and tunnel trying to get back to the street level.......half those were men in black suits and ties.....the other half were women, many of them younger, wearing Hello Kitty socks, a Mickey Mouse something and looking a lot like an anime character.  In general, it's very busy here.

Everybody bows.  They bow for any reason.  It's automatic.  I guess they're being respectful.  Being a respectful guy myself, I always bowed back, which causes them to bow again.  Ornery as I can sometimes be, a couple times, I bowed a second and third time to see what would happen.....and my bow would always be followed by their bow. So....trying to be the last one to bow or attempting to out-bow your Japanese counterpart would take a serious commitment and some cervical stretches beforehand.

This is important.  I would like to nominate the bidet as a UNESCO World Heritage product....or the Eight Wonder of the World, which ever one is most appropriate. There is a huge need for the bidet in the United States. The Japanese bidet is the best.  It has 3 settings. One directs a warm slow stream of water at your bottom, (Oh my)...the other setting directs a more stern stream of liquid for those hard to reach issues....(giggle).  There is another setting to regulate the pressure of each stream of water.  Hygenic.  No fuss.  No muss.  A little tissue at the end of the whole procedure and boom....you're done. I'm thinking about getting one of these little numbers for my own enjoyment....I mean my own use at home.  The worst bidet was in Thailand, although a bad bidet is better than no bidet at all.  The Thai bidet looked exactly like a hand held kitchen sink sprayer operated with the thumb.  Unfortunately, the pressure was so high the first squirt made my eyes water. Ooops.

Lastly, a visit to the Tokyo Sky Tree was on tap yesterday.  The Sky Tree was the tallest broadcasting tower in the world until someone from Dubai wanted to make sure their turban was bigger than anybody else's turban.  At 2080 feet tall, it's nearly a half mile tall.  To get perspective.....the Space Needle is 605 feet tall.....so if you were careful enough to stack three Space Needles on top of each other ....it'll still be shorter than the Sky Tree. The observation deck is at 1480 feet....I jumped out of an airplane when I was younger (lots of courage and no brains) at 1000 feet.  So it's waaay up there. 

Tokyo is the cleanest place in the world, at least by my estimation.  It's pretty amazing how clean they can keep a place this big.  There's little or no trash and the whole place seems like it's wiped down on a daily basis.  It contrast, Bangkok was the filthiest place I've ever been and wondered why everybody wasn't horribly sick....with malaise, infection, and some ungodly life threatening disease being the norm with trash, litter, and pollution run rampant.  But everybody looks as healthy as a water buffalo.  I don't get it.

Tidbits:  Like the Vietnamese males, Japanese men smoke.  I didn't see one woman smoke, but the men smoke like chimneys all over the place.  If you ever thought that, generally speaking, women are smarter than guys....there's the proof.  Unfortunately, homelessness is alive in Tokyo.  Hard to believe for some reason.....you'd think maybe they could get a job cleaning something......Also....we didn't see  any homeless women, just men.  Food.....the food here is so good it's unbelievable, (but it's been good everywhere, really.)  A funny thing.....they have barkers outside on the sidewalk yelling to potential patrons about the benefits of the goods sold inside, e.g. makeup, suits, household good etc.  This seems a little inconsistent with the prim and proper behavior they generally portray.  Consider an  attractive woman at the mall entrance to Nordstroms at southcenter yelling at the top of her lungs about the lace undergarment or the petite size clothing on the second floor, trying her best to coax you in the door, (over the commotion and loud voices you hear the guy at the piano playing Blue Danube in the background.  It just doesn't make sense.  

More later.  But not much more.  We're nearing the end of the trip.