Tokyo

We have noticed that Chinese (and so far Japanese) society is not geared towards the self. In the states we describe ourselves as a "me society." I am beginning to see that not all cultures are as self concerned as us Americans. Almost every sales person / customer service representative /waiter that we have come in contact with is so concerned with how we receive their product. They have this crazy sense of pride in what they do. We have also noticed this sense of order to things. People do as they should. They do not break rules. They just follow social norms without resistance.

We arrived at Narita International Airport yesterday at 1:20pm. The flight was very nice. The crew was the inter-Asia based Singapore crew. They are unaffiliated with United's mainland crew. The service they provide is phenomenal.

We took the hour long train ride into Tokyo then connected to the JR train (Tokyo subway system) then to the Tokyo Monorail. Our hotel is very nice, but it is a bit off the beaten path. I wish we ere staying closer to one of the more major JR train lines. Once we got to our hotel room we relaxed and freshened up. We decided to go to the nearby Shinagawa neighborhood to find something to eat. We walked around for quite some time trying to figure out where to eat. We must have passed 100 little tiny 6-10 seat restaurants. We finally decided on this little tiny, very busy barbecue place that had seats outside. No one there spoke English. We managed to get ourselves beer and pork skewers (at least we think it was pork.) The food was really good. The chef also prepared something special for us. He brought it out and then pointed to his tongue. We think we ate tongue. It was chewy. We then headed out to the Shinjuku neighborhood for some night life. It was a 30 minute subway trip from Shinagawa. Shinjuku, at night, is like a big huge red light district. It was chaos. It is a far cry from the area in which we are staying. Everyone in central Tokyo is wearing a suit. I am not exaggerating here. I have never seen so many suits in my life. Shinjuku is a much younger crowd with much fewer suits. As we were attempting to get our bearings using the travel books map of Shinjuku we were approached by a friendly South African offering to help us find our way. He helped us right back to his tiny strip joint in the heart of the mayhem. We told him that was not what we were looking for. He didn’t get the hint. Afterwards, we tried as best as we could to navigate the neighborhood using the useless travel books map of the neighborhood. We finally settled on the books suggested Advocates cafe. It was lame. After all of that we decided to head back to the hotel.

Tokyo is a strange city. I don't quite have the feel of it yet. Hopefully after today, I will feel different.