Tokyo–March 22, 2016

Money Matters

A couple of days ago I went to the nearby 7-11 to use their ATM (it works with foreign credit/debit cards), and instead of getting ten ¥1,000 bills, I pressed the ¥10,000 button, figuring I would get some combination of bills that added up to that amount. Wrong. I got one ¥10,000 note (the equivalent of US$100). Now I had a problem. I wasn’t intending to make any large purchases, and I know that if you try to break a hundred dollar bill to buy less than twenty dollars worth of merchandise, well, there isn’t a store anywhere in the US that will let you do that. This meant I had to go the bank to break the bill. I went to several banks, but they were all closed. It turns out that March 21 was the vernal equinox, which is a holiday. So I went to a bank today to try to break the bill, and found out that they would do it—for ¥324. Forget that, I thought. Anyway, I bought about ¥1500 worth of souvenirs at a shop and decided to see if they would make change. They did, without batting an eye. Go figure.

Walking down Showa-dori

Showa-dori is the main road near the hotel, so I decided to walk to Akihabara, and from there to Tokyo Station. The street is under a freeway, so it’s not prime real estate for fancy stores. Here are some pictures from the walk to Akihabara.

Akihabara

This is the electronics/video game center of Tokyo. Huge posters on the side of buildings, packed with all sorts of electronic devices. It was fun to see, but the pace and frenzy is like Fry’s or Best Buy on meth, with the interior decor of an old-style Radio Shack.

I stopped for lunch and bought some takoyaki, and went to a spot off the main street to eat them. Lo and behold, a cat came out of the bushes and started yowling. I shared a couple of bits of the squid with the cat, and was able to pet it, although it wasn’t keen on the idea.

On the walk to Tokyo Station, I passed an old train station (converted now to a set of small shops) and other things:

Nihonbashi

This is a bridge (literally "Japan Bridge") and is romanized as Nihombashi, probably because "mb" is easier to pronounce than "nb", but I’ll stick with the romanization that I learned ages ago. The original zero-kilometer marker was moved from the middle of the bridge to an area at one of the ends of the bridge. This prevents people from running out into traffic to get pictures.

One end of Nihonbashi is near the Mitsukoshi department store. This store is so famous that the subway stop near it is called Mitsukoshimae Station (literally, “In front of Mitsukoshi”). I went inside, and it’s a fairly high-end department store; think Nordstrom’s with maybe a bit higher cachet.

Tokyo Station

Plus photos on the walk over there. There’s a very large shopping arcade underground near the station. I stopped at a display that had a robot with a monitor in it. The woman at the display said she’d take a picture of me with the robot; I said OK.

Imperial Palace

From the station, it’s about a 15 minute walk to the Imperial Palace grounds. I was able to look around the outside, but not go into the main grounds; I am not sure what the reason was. I think part of it was that I was not a member of a scheduled tour.

Miscellanea

These models of western food show you why I am sort of hesitant to order such items in Japan; yet another manhole cover, and some cherry blossoms that were wilting (with a bee foraging them).

The parallel lines on the traffic signal are a countdown timer telling you how long it will be before the light changes.

Today’s Signage

A clever advertisement with a pun on the word “homes” and a poster from Akihabara, whose link I am afraid to follow.

Moar kittehz!

A clever sign for a bicycle rental company:

Today’s misspelled English. I think they meant “drug.”

These signs were on tour buses near the Imperial Palace. It’s weird, but it does make the buses easily identifiable.

Finally, this sign. “Honcho” in this context means “main neighborhood.”