Early morning in Tokyo

First trip out of the hotel was a resounding success. I was hoping to find a convenience store for an obligatory onigiri and… I did! I should also mention that it is 4am. I have been up for about an hour and had to adjust to an early change of plans. The original plan was to make it to the Tsukiji fish market for the tuna auction and then find a place to watch the semifinal world cup game between Brazil and Portugal. However, at about 3:15 am as I was writing down walking directions I found out that the fish market is close today. So I had to adapt and decided to try to go to sleep. And try I did, but sleep I did not. Around 4am I realized that since I am not going to try walking 4 miles to Footnik (English Pub) to watch the game, I should load up on provisions for the game.

Tokyo at 4am is a treat. There are very few people out. Mainly taxi drivers sleeping (crap, Germany just scored!) in their cars. I think I came across a little homeless camp, which was very clean and orderly as one would expect from the Japanese homeless. It was raining earlier so the city felt very fresh and clean. I started exploring by taking the first right turn and found nothing open on the first lap. But I did get a can from the 8th vending machine, of what turned out to be a cold sweet coffee. So after the first loop I extended my search area and after passing the homeless camp found the motherload – Lawson! It is a convenience store where you can buy anything you might need to watch a 5am soccer game in Japan. It is like a gas station store, but more Japanesy. So I got just the staples: Onigiri (125 yen), a bottle of green tea (120 yen) and a mystery snack which was as fishy and crunchy as I could only hope for. Onigiri is a rice triangle, usually wrapped in seaweed, and sometimes has a filling. Since I cannot read Japanese it is always a surprise. What I love most about it is that they put a layer of plastic between the rice and the seaweed to keep seaweed crunchy. As I learned later I got the best kind with salmon filling. But on the way back to the hotel I was given the biggest gift of all – an all day and night open noodle shop. I even thought about sitting down right there and then for a breakfast of some ramen, but it was getting close to the start of the game so I decided to postpone.

In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that it was not really the first trip out since I did go out last night for dinner, but I really did not pay attention where we were going. I got into Tokyo the night before. Landed in Narita at 4:30. Convinced the customs agent that there was nothing weird about bringing two huge and mostly empty suitcases for a ten day trip (I told him that there were items waiting for me in Nagoya, which made him suspicious even more, but when he saw my bonsai tools he knew I was legit), exchanged a bunch of greenbacks for a bigger bunch of (crap, Germany just scored again – I might be eating noodles earlier than I thought), took a bus to Tokyo station (stand in line 2 ten minutes before the bus arrives, but move to line 1 after 5 minutes), took a taxi to the hotel, check in to the hotel and was ready to meet Wil at 7PM (This is messed up – the Germans just scored for the third time and it has only been 25 minutes).

Wil has been living in Japan for 15 years. (you cannot be serious – 4th goal for Germany! They just showed a 5 year old kid in the stands crying into a cup followed by a very pretty lady crying into her hand). A friend put me in touch with him and he very graciously agreed to arrange for me to have daiza made for some of my stones. He knows one of the most renowned daiza carvers, Mr. Suzuki. So I shipped him the stones and he brought them to my hotel. (ok, this is disgusting – goal 5 for Germany. I don’t know what the Brazilians were doing last night, but this is disgusting). Not only he agreed to take my stones to Mr. Suzuki and pick them up later when the daiza were made, he also was willing to schlep all the way across town after work to deliver them, and even to sit down for dinner with me. We found a “cheap and cheerful” salary-men restaurant which was heavy on nutritional information and light on flavor. It turned out to be an Athlete Restaurant. But what the food was missing in flavor the company made up for. Wil told me about how he ended up in Japan and got into Suiseki. I did not know that he is a director of the Nippon Suiseki society. We had a great talk about this and that and I am extremely thankful to him for his time and help.