Last night we wandered over to another part of the Tokyo Shiodome and enjoyed a reasonably priced dinner of sushi and tempura in a small restaurant.
This morning we were picked up at the hotel for our half-day bus tour. We're glad we took the tour and also pleased that we settled on the half-day rather than full-day option. Mr. Sato was a friendly and informative guide, but it was also nice to strike out on our own.
Before we forget, one custom struck us as soon as we landed at Narita, the surgical masks worn by many Japanese. They wear them to avoid passing germs to others, to protect themselves from pollen, pollution, and incoming germs, and apparently to make a statement that they are socially responsible. It appeared that a majority of officials at Narita wear them, and it was hard to understand, for example, the customs inspector who had to repeat himself twice to make us understand his question was whether our little roll-aboards were all the luggage we had.
The weather here has been spectacularly good, sunny and almost balmy at mid-day, although Mr. Sato told us it was the norm for Tokyo in this season. We took advantage of our two-day subway pass to ride a couple of stops to one section of the Tsukiji Fish Market, but the action was over late this afternoon. It was still pleasant to get out and enjoy the day, and we're always happy when we avoid crowds.
3 comments:
Are most of the cars in Japan still white? When we were there a couple of times in the early 90's we were surprised to see very few cars that weren't white. Another thing that surprised me was the amount of English on signs over there. I remember the surgical masks from those days and I guess the tradition continues.
Dennis
After correcting a typo or two...
We just looked out our hotel room window to a street far below and notice some white cars, but we haven't noticed it when we've been out in traffic so we'll look more carefully. What we do notice is that the vast majority of people, particularly male, wear black. No light tan slacks here!
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