Sleek, polished, black Toyota cabs crowd the neon-saturated streets of the Ginza.
And yet the taxis never honk.
Even sleeker, function-crammed cellphones occupy the hands of every Japanese commuter on the packed subway cars.
And yet the cellphones never ring.
Wave upon wave of blue-suited businessmen, short-skirted cashiers and white-shirted middle-schoolers flood through each precious square foot of Japanese park space.
And yet not a blade of grass seems to be trampled. When a single, off-color leaf falls in the Shinjuku, there is a uniformed city worker poised to sweep it into a dustpan, and another waits 20 feet away for the next leaf to attempt its doomed flight.
These are the contradictions and accommodations that seem to cushion what would otherwise be an overpopulated and hyper-paced life in modern Tokyo.
How else could 35 million people squeeze into the hazy humidity around Tokyo Bay? You mute the cellphone, smile even when you don’t mean it, keep the floors spotless and hope that a thousand acts of random politeness will allow East Asian civilization to flourish for at least another day, as it has for the past 600 years.
Precisely these juxtapositions, among so many others, make Japan a wonderfully easy place for American families to travel. From the friendly airport customs line to the artificially intelligent hotel toilets, Japan is endlessly foreign to the Western visitor, and yet seamlessly easy.
We journeyed with kids in tow — ages 16, 14 and 5 — and grandparents leading the charge, for a week in Kyoto and another in Tokyo. The grandparents had been to Asia many times for business and pleasure, while my family had never been past the international date line; yet our experts’ visits to Japan had been long enough ago that it seemed new for all of us.
To begin to grasp the feel of Tokyo, take a trip to New York City and multiply by at least five. We descended from one cluster of towering skyscrapers into the efficient, yet complicated, Tokyo subway system and grabbed a hanging strap, and eight, 10, 12 stops away emerged back to the surface, at a distance where in New York you’d be in a sleepy Queens neighborhood or across the Harlem River — but in Tokyo, this mid-point subway stop brings you to just another booming crop of sleek, 50-story towers, densely packed and teeming with urban bustle.
As in New York or Chicago, these soaring office cylinders are never dull sentinels. Tokyo pulls the eye skyward with a dazzling array of architectural styles and innovation, from the Gotham heights of Tokyo Metropolitan, the city hall, to the futuristic ship’s- prow themes of the International Forum.
The slimmest of apartment buildings, squeezed between multinational headquarters, pop with bubbled windows or cantilevered concrete living rooms. When a 5-year-old gets bored with Tokyo’s indoors, you can simply employ the stroller for a 10-block walk to a spotless playground, along the way passing by some of the most stunning engineering and design achievements in the world.
Or just take the 5-year-old toy shopping. Tokyo’s density makes it easy to combine the culture of a museum or temple visit in the morning with the appeal of commerce in the afternoon. The Japanese are even more obsessed with shopping than Americans, so when you want to be overwhelmed by nine floors of electronics at Yodobashi Akihabara, you’ll be doing what the locals do.
Our favorite toy excursion was a short walk from our Shiodome hotel along the southern edge of Ginza, to Toy Park. Toy Park is five stories jammed with every licensed character you’ve ever heard of and dozens you haven’t (Puffy AmiYumi — ridiculous in any language), with a slot-car-testing track at the top. And, like every building in Japan, multiple restaurants. Our favorite gag toy was an alarm clock you can turn off with an accurate shot from a dart gun.
To get the flavor — and a pungent whiff — of an older Japan, we walked just east of our hotel to the Tokyo Bay waterfront. There, for hundreds of years, nearly every restaurateur in Tokyo has daily braved the slime-slickened floors and samurai cart drivers of the Tsukiji Fish Market to fill out his dinner menu.
Boosters call it the largest wholesale fish market in the world. Buyers with clipboards and knee-high, splash-proof boots order thumbnail-sized shrimp and 700-pound bluefin tuna. Delivery boys on natural-gas chariots make kamikaze runs between the aisles, holding a cigarette in one hand, a cup of tea in the other, and a cellphone in yet another.
I know, that’s three hands — there’s no other way to explain this Nipponese NASCAR.
Busy vendors scowl at tourists, but nobody kicked us out. You’ll never see anything like it, and it will either turn the kids into seafood lovers or fish-phobics. Don’t miss the two-story pile of recycled plastic foam boxes out back.
Free fascinations like Tsukiji soften the legend of Tokyo as the most expensive city on Earth. Certainly it’s pricey, but more so for the corporation trying to rent two floors in Roppongi than a tourist willing to walk for a good meal or a night out. Stroll between museums, take trains whenever possible, share the best sushi dishes and avoid hotel breakfasts — you’ll get far in Tokyo.
Baseball, Japanese-style
We took the cheap way to one of our prime goals, a Japan League baseball game. A half-hour subway ride took me and my teenage daughters close enough to the Tokyo Dome, home of league dominators the Yomiuri Giants. Attentive white-gloved policemen will direct you underneath the dome’s roller coaster and straight to the standing-room ticket booth, where about $15 gets you floor space even on the frequent sellout nights.
The Giants are the equivalent of the Yankees, but here it’s the fans who are on ster- oids. Entire sections wave black-and-orange Yomiuri towels and sing fight songs for entire innings. The visiting Hanshin Tigers were allowed one section, which they populated in blue/gray while singing valiantly in opposition.
Beer girls in miniskirted uniforms the color of their brand — Kirin, Sapporo, Asahi — prance up and down the aisles, sporting 5-gallon kegs on their backs and an $8 cup price. We know this because we escaped the edamame-littered standing-room heights for the lower deck, when a departing businessman took pity on us and handed over his sweet first-base tickets. Yomiuri won 2 to 1. Our victory? Priceless.
I was so giddy from baseball that I forgot my first rule of parenting: Amusement parks are the least amusing places on the planet. The family desired Tokyo Disneyland, so off we went.
Yes, it was almost like Disney at home, but my genetically coded grumpiness retreated, and the day was magical. One key is that the character-crazy Japanese abandon the rides in order to line Disneyland’s streets for parade time — and that means short lines at SplashTown and Thunder Mountain late in the afternoon.
As everywhere in Japan, you’ll see few Westerners, except among the highest- profile Disney mascots. Snow White was a caucasian, surrounded by a sea of beaming, black-haired Japanese schoolkids. In the absence of an anti-immigrant riot, we simply had the kids take note and draw their own conclusions.
Outrage just isn’t the daily attitude.
We met exactly three dyspeptic locals the entire two weeks: a taxi driver peeved that my son’s muddy shoes had soiled the lily-white doilies common on all cab seats; a subway conductor who believed, righteously, that we’d paid too cheap a fare; and a Disney worker who didn’t want us to take up seats unless we bought more food.
Everyone else was delightful. I like to remember the Mitsukoshi Department Store elevators, where a young Japanese woman in uniform skirt and cap claps her hands and bows — right after shoving the last hapless patron into an overcrowded lift.
Leave a jacket at a Tokyo restaurant, and they’ll run down the block to return it. Japanese grandmothers hand toys to visiting children on the street, just for being cute. An hour after walking through our hotel lobby one exhausted afternoon, I heard a knock on the door. It was the desk clerk, unfolding her hands as if revealing the king’s gold: Inside was a plastic American hotel pen, estimated value 1.5 cents, that I’d dropped near the desk.
Just another random act of Japanese kindness. Put your own cellphone on mute, and pass it on.
Michael Booth: 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com
Tokyo Insider’s Guide
GET THERE: It’s an island on the other side of the Pacific, and we’re here in landlocked Denver — so a Japan flight is rarely cheap. Once you get to San Francisco or Los Angeles, any number of airlines from United to All Nippon to Korean Air will get you to Osaka or Tokyo in about 11 or 12 hours. A recent check of fares from Denver put the cheapest round trips in October at $715. Other searches on Expedia and Priceline came in at $850 or $1,000. If you’re planning a family trip but have wide windows for the travel, try the “flexible dates” option at Travelocity, and your fares may come down.
For travel between major Japanese cities, the Shinkansen bullet trains are the fastest, most comfortable and most culturally enlightening way to go (japan ). When a spotless, faultless train whisks you 300 miles from Tokyo to Kyoto in two hours and 15 minutes, you’ll gain a new appreciation for Japanese technology and be begging Japan Railways to re-privatize Amtrak. The fastest Shinkansen costs about $125 each way between Kyoto and Tokyo; most major train stations have a JR office with an English-speaking employee to help with timetables and various echelons of seating. Slightly slower trains, and unreserved seats, are cheaper.
STAY: The good-bad news is that while Tokyo hotels are indeed expensive, anyone who has traveled to New York, San Francisco, London or other major capitals in recent years won’t be shocked. Tokyo no longer stands out quite so much. With the decline of business travel, searching for weekend deals at sleek corporate hotels can uncover relative bargains. One such possibility is the Hotel Villa Fontaine at Shiodome, with wondrous waterfront views at $160 for two this fall (hvf.jp/eng/ shiodome.php). Breakfast is included, and in Tokyo, that’s a $50 bonus right there.
A well-loved bargain in another part of town is the Shinjuku installment from the worldwide chain of Citadines apartment hotels. (www.citadines.com/ japan/tokyo/shinjuku.html). You can get a queen-bed studio with an extra sofa bed for about $120 at Citadines, reviewed by fans as a clean, centrally located, no-frills hotel with good storage for luggage — no small advantage for Americans traveling with kids and big bags. A fridge and microwave in the room make for inexpensive breakfasts and on-the-go sandwiches.
Visitors seeking a more cultural experience in their lodging might consider a ryokan, a Japanese bed and breakfast usually housed in smaller, older buildings. Ryokans emphasize ritual baths, spartan tatami rooms and elaborate, multi-course dinners. They are not cheap, and because our 5-year-old’s idea of heaven is jumping on hotel beds, the ryokans’ quietude was not for us. But reviewers seem to love Ryokan Sawanoya (www.tctv.ne.jp/sawanoya) near Ueno Park, from $50 to $150 per room depending on number of guests. If you’re booking any ryokan, be sure to study up on their websites and review-collectors like , because they vary in quality and amenities.
DINE: There seems to be one restaurant for every potential patron in Tokyo. A three-site sample here borders on the ridiculous amid Tokyo’s culinary variety, but we have to start somewhere.
Ten-ichi Tempura (6-6-5 Ginza, ) brings you the freshest batter-covered fish and vegetables you could imagine, while serving you like a king. In the heart of neon-lit Ginza, Ten-ichi offers either a pricey set course, or a la carte fun: You literally order one scallop, and a chef behind the long counter in front of you immediately plops the gem into searing-hot oil. It’s on your plate in seconds. Set dinners can run $125, but your ticket can be closer to $50 if you avoid heavy drinking.
Eating Chinese in Tokyo? Why not; it’s an international city, and the stunning views from the top of the hotel Conrad in Shiodome would make any cuisine seem perfect (1-9-1 Higashi-Shinbashi; conradhotels1 ). China Blue in the Conrad is one of the most beautiful restaurants I’ve seen, and I care nothing for cafe decor. Out the windows, 28 stories below, twinkle the lights of Tsukiji and Tokyo Bay. China Blue’s food is — no apology — perhaps the best black-bean fish we’ve ever tried.
Don’t miss the food halls. Japan’s massive department stores are worlds unto themselves, with most boasting a fresh-food hall in the basement that showcases everything from fresh yakitori to raw squid, and every imaginable form of colorful dessert displayed like artwork. At Isetan (14-1 Shinjuku 3-chome, Shinjuku-ku; www ), in the heart of Shinjuku’s crowds, you can mix and match your delicacies, then take an elevator to the seventh-floor rooftop park for a picnic.
PLAY: Tokyo ranks with New York, London and Paris as true world capitals that never sleep and never lack for attractions. Families don’t need a tour guide, just a decent guidebook and a healthy feel for how far the kids can walk between bowls of udon noodles.
Teenagers will tolerate a key shrine-and-garden district of Tokyo if you promise them some of the world’s hippest and classiest shopping afterward. The Meiji Shrine is a noble and elegant collection of classic Japanese buildings, deep in an urban forest honoring the late-1800s Emperor Meiji. He opened Japan to Western influences while preserving Asian culture, and grateful citizens built a refuge in his name. Enormous torii gates of 1,700-year-old cypress mark the pathways; the emperor’s beloved iris garden blooms in early June in a purple glory that rivals the cherry blossoms for impact.
Just outside Meiji begins the Takeshita street shopping mecca, a hovel crawling with Japanese teens showing off and buying the latest fashions in tennis shoes, body piercings and anime T-shirts. People-watching is fantastic, for all ages. Takeshita spills into the Omotesando district, the Tokyo version of Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue. Every designer from Bulgari to Vitton has sleek space along the avenue.
The most appealing cultural spot for families is in the Ueno neighborhood, anchored by sprawling Ueno Park. The marvelous Tokyo National Museum provides a 2000-year history of Japanese art in a well-organized collection spanning only two floors (www.tnm.go.jp). The English displays mix in crucial historic points to better appreciate the priceless screen paintings and calligraphy. On the east side of the park is the underrated National Museum of Western Art (www.nmwa.go.jp/ en), which holds some of the most stunning Monets, Picassos, Miros and Van Goghs on display anywhere on the planet. When you tire of the culture, retreat with the youngsters to Ueno Zoo, another well-stocked showcase without the crushing crowds of Denver’s popular zoo (tokyo-zoo.net).
Seek a ticket to either the Yomiuri Giants at Tokyo Dome, or the rival Yakult Swallows at Jingu Stadium near Meiji (japan is a good place to start). The baseball is top-notch and the crowd antics are unforgettable. If you can’t score a Dome pass on a big game day, don’t despair — the kids will be happy to settle for the roller coaster screaming overhead just above the main gate. It’s as if Coors Field had been built underneath the Elitch’s Twister.
An architecture tour of Tokyo wouldn’t be complete without a monorail ride to the artificial island of Odaiba in Tokyo Bay. This future-world setting is meant to be a mix of office, shopping and convention space, complete with a man-made beach and one of the largest Ferris wheels in the world for sightseeing. The Fuji Television headquarters is straight from a “Star Wars” set. The Museum of Maritime Science on Odaiba is another little-highlighted gem, with both indoor displays and on- board tours of an icebreaker and other major ships. Its “ship’s- mast” design also affords one of the best views of waterfront Tokyo. Be sure to take an audio guide for the indoor museum, as most displays are in Japanese.
Last but never least is Tokyo Disney (www.tokyodisneyresort.co.jp/ index_e.html), a mid-length bus, cab or train ride away. We had six travelers, so we splurged on a cab, reasonable at $65 for all of us. Of course, that’s just the start of your spending: Day passes are about $58 for adults, $50 for teens. We highly recommend staying through the nighttime Electric Parade, because the drive back over the bay to Tokyo’s neon is fantastic at night.
