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June 3, 2001 - The Day the Panda Slept
Through Our Visit
Awoke again very early and went for another walk on the
streets. At 5:00AM things are very quiet and the temperature is quite nice. In
the afternoons it isn't really hot, perhaps the low 80's, but it is quite
humid, which makes things a bit uncomfortable.
With the "repaired" camera, we headed off by subway to Ueno.
Our destination: Ueno Park Zoo on our quest to see Ling Ling the Giant Panda.
 Along the way I stopped at an AM/PM and purchased a ham and cheese
sandwich for breakfast, which surprisingly had nothing obviously objectionable
on it except rather chunky mayonnaise - which worried me a little bit.
Surprisingly, the mayonnaise was the best tasting part of the sandwich. It was
still a little too early to get into the zoo, so we sat near an enormous lotus
pond in the park, relaxed and enjoyed our breakfast.
We had several maps at our disposal showing where the zoo
was inside the park, and had no trouble locating it, but we had a lot of
trouble locating the entrance. With a comic statistical certainty, the
direction we chose led us entirely around the zoo before finding the entrance.
We decided to head directly towards Ling Ling first, and,
equal statistical certainty, Ling Ling was placed at the opposite end of the
zoo from our entrance, so walked almost all the way back to where we started.
The Ueno Zoo is one of the few that actually own their own
Giant Pandas. Most zoos only have them on loan from China. At one time, they
had a pair, Ling Ling and Tong Tong. Ling Ling and Tong Tong failed to produce
any baby pandas, and a few years ago Tong Tong died of cancer, leaving Ling
Ling all alone. This is why Ling Ling was sent to Mexico City, in hopes that he
would father some baby pandas, one of which would be returned to the Ueno Zoo.
 I was very pleased to "check off" Giant Panda from my
list of "must see" animals, but Ling Ling must still have been jet lagged from
Mexico City because he was sound asleep. If he hadn't rolled over once, I'd
have sworn he was dead with his legs sticking up in the air. He was quite
popular with the crowds though and they had to have a traffic cop control the
foot traffic to keep it moving along. I never got close enough for a really
good photograph.
Ling Ling is certainly a big moneymaker for the zoo. There
wasn't a child there, who didn't leave the zoo with a stuffed panda, my wife
included.
Ueno Zoo is small, but nice. They had several other "rare"
animals, such as a Komodo Dragon, and some others, so it was an enjoyable
visit.
 The funniest moment at the zoo wasn't watching the animals though;
it was watching the people. It's no exaggeration that every time you see a
Japanese person (young or old) taking a picture they put the fingers out in the
"V" victory sign. (OK, the Taiwanese do this too, but I think they're copying
the Japanese.) At one point a father was taking a picture of his son, who was
about 4 years old. He posed the boy, but he didn't like the way the boy was
standing, so he told him to make the "V" sign. The boy was not yet coordinated
enough to accomplish this and only managed a sort of crooked two bent-finger
gesture. Then dad told him to smile. He had problems with this too and only
managed to make a smile by lifting up the left side of his mouth.
It was funny and cute at the same time. Clearly Japanese
camera posing behavior is learned, not instinctive.
With no particular plan of action in mind, we headed to
Akasaka to see the big "Electronics Town" area, hoping to see all the latest
new gadgets. I'd already been warned that I'd get a better deal in Singapore,
Hong Kong or Taiwan, but undeniably, this is where to go to see the latest, the
newest and the weirdest - products that will take years to get to America and
others that will never get there.
Unfortunately, after an hour of walking around we never
found it. Chu-Wan was fading fast so we gave up and headed back to the hotel.
For dinner we decided to forage in the food basement of
Tobu. While Chu-Wan went off to get bread, I negotiated the purchase of some
friend chicken. The woman at the counter spoke no English, but I feel I did a
pretty good job of asking for the food. Certainly she understood what I was
asking, but she did ask me a question back that I simply could not fathom.
Interesting thing, the fried chicken packages were sitting under what appeared
to be a heat lamp, but the chicken was almost ice cold. Perhaps the woman was
asking if I wanted my chicken zapped by the freeze ray or not.
 Finally the
bits of Japanese I learned were beginning to come back to me. I was at least
able to ask prices, understand the answer and most importantly, I could say,
"My wife is Chinese. She doesn't understand Japanese." because they invariably
rattled off a lot of Japanese at her and her dumb-founded look somehow just
didn't covey to them that she didn't understand.
While we were in the store, I bought one of the toys I was
hoping to get and have never been able to locate in Taiwan. Meanwhile, Chu-Wan
went to buy a present. Unfortunately, she took the display model and the
cashier tried explaining to her that there should be a boxed one back at the
display.
I stood back and let this one unfold; positive this was
beyond my linguistic ability. To make matters worse, they couldn't find the one
she wanted to buy and they got three people looking through the stock trying to
find one. I think they wanted to avoid at all costs having to try to explain to
her that they couldn't find it. Finally perseverance paid off and they found
one, but it took 15 minutes while our food was getting cold. (Or, in the case
of my chicken, getting warm.)
Once it got dark, we headed over to Shinjuku, another of
Tokyo's shopping and nightlife areas, to check out the area and look for Tower
Records and Kinokuniya Book Store. The original package tour we were taking had
us staying in the Hilton (or equivalent hotel). With the Hilton being located
in Shinjuku we had expected this to be our base of operations, so we'd had no
real plans to visit the area, but we decided to make a special trip to the area
since we had nothing else particular in mind for the evening.
Japan is alive with people all the time, but Shinjuku was
swarming with them. Thousands upon thousands of people were walking around the
streets. Fighting against the tide was nearly impossible in places.
Once again despite a really good idea where things were
supposed to be we couldn't find Tower Records. We continued walking a straight
line and stumbled across the Kinokuniya just as it was closing for the evening.
We only had a few minutes to look around and then got kicked out. Heading back
I discovered why we missed the Tower Records. Looking for the store on the
street I had missed the glowing Tower records sign 7 floors up. Tower was also
a bust, although they had several fascinating DVDs not available in the US,
they were also region-coded so that they can't be used on an ordinary US DVD
player, and they were also astronomically expensive - the cheapest was US$30
for a single DVD. Far more than I want to pay for a DVD I cannot easily watch.
Walking the streets, watching the lights and the swarms of
people, I started getting hungry again. Standing next to a McDonald's I
realized I hadn't tried a McDonald's burger in Japan yet. (My experience has
been that McDonald's is consistently awful the world over and there's something
oddly comforting in that consistency.) Once again curiosity overcame common
sense and we ventured in.
Like Taipei, Tokyo McDonald's mostly are multi-story
buildings. The McDonald's employees spoke good English and we got our food on
the ground floor then headed upstairs where the seating was. Halfway up the
stairs we encountered a hanging cloud of thick smoke. It had been obvious since
we arrived that the Japanese are heavy smokers, but this was obscene. It
actually looked like the building was on fire, and the noise of voices coming
from upstairs was deafening.
When we got upstairs, it looked like a scene from a 1940's
movie when the tobacco giants still paid the studios to make sure everyone on
screen was a heavy smoker. What I hadn't expected was that this was a room full
of mostly young women, all engaged in animated conversation, each person with
their own ash tray overflowing onto the tabletops.
There was no ventilation in the room and it was so crowded
we had to share a table with some other people. It was so loud we couldn't hear
each other talk without shouting and so we ate as quickly as possible and got
out.
Before we returned to the room, we stopped at 7-11 again and
I picked up a ramen bowl for breakfast. For some reason, I chose the food based
on the picture rather than reading the kana, so I had no idea what I bought.
Odd really since I could easily read the kana on the label. My brain just
somehow didn't bother to process that information.
Tomorrow we need to be up early to catch the subway to
Asakusa before the morning rush hour hits. Tokyo rush hours are legendary, with
people who actually help shove people on the train they're so packed. We want
to avoid this at all costs. |
