Tokyo

View from Tokyo Tower with Mt. Fuji in background

Over the years, I have come to the realization that I am slightly OCD. I crave things that are neat and orderly and find tranquility when surrounded by them. On the other hand, clutter and disorder make me uncomfortable. Immediately upon arriving in Tokyo, I found an obsessive-compulsive's paradise.
My very first impression of the city was that it is so clean. The sidewalks are devoid of litter. The taxis are gleaming inside and out. The cabbies wear white gloves and cover the headrests with white lace. People walk in an orderly manner, only crossing when and where indicated, and queue when waiting in line. For a major metropolitan city, vehicular traffic runs smoothly where cars never run a yellow light let alone a red light. I never heard a horn honked, and this is a city of 13 million people!
  

Mrs. Yamauchi and her sister-in-law

My first day in Tokyo we were met by Rika and Nami who are the mother and aunt of the Japanese student, So*, who lived with us for a few months. With my new good friends and tour guides, we left the hotel early that morning for our visit to the Sumo stable. (See my earlier blog.) From there, we stopped at the enormous Tokyo fish market which, at noon, was already closing down for the day. Nearby, we stopped for lunch at a sushi restaurant known for its tuna which couldn't be any fresher since it was purchased from the fish market across the street only a few hours earlier.

 
Our next stop was the Ginza shopping district. Since it was a beautiful sunny day, we walked to the Ginza…stopping for photos in front of the Kabuki Theatre. The Ginza is mainly for window shopping since it is Tokyo's version of Fifth Avenue with its designer fashion stores. More in line with our budget, we spent some time and money in a traditional Japanese paper store that sold homemade cards, calendars, notepads, calligraphy, etc. We also walked through the large department store on the corner. Our hosts knew that I am a fan of SK-II cosmetics so they found the cosmetics counter where I was treated to a makeover by an SK-II consultant.

With my make-up already done, we quickly changed clothes at our hotel and headed to a dinner banquet held in honor of PONY's upcoming fortieth anniversary of Japan PONY and in honor of my husband beining in town. The event was held at Hatoyama Hall, a beautiful Western-style residence built by Ichiro Hatoyama, a former Prime Minister of Japan. His grandson gave me a tour his family's home and allowed me to sit in his grandfather's chair. All of the Japan-PONY representatives were such wonderful hosts…you would have thought that I was the First Lady of the United States, being welcomed so warmly and treated so royally by those at the event.

We took a quick sight-seeing tour of Toyko to see three of its tourist attractions. First, was the Tokyo Tower which is an Eiffel-tower inspired structure originally constructed for TV broadcasting. It now serves as both a communication and observation tower. Once the tallest building in Japan, it is now second to the Tokyo Skytree which opened in 2012.

 
Next, we visited the Imperial Palace which is the residence of Japan's Imperial Family. This didn't take long, since the inner grounds and palace are closed to the public except for one or two days each year. What we could see was a large park surrounded by moats and the picturesque guard houses at the outer rim.

 

Finally, we went to the touristy Senso-ji Shrine. As soon as I spotted it, this spot reminded me of what I had always imagined Tokyo would look like. The enormous shrine was directly ahead of me, past the ornately decorated gates where hundreds of people were moving about. To the left sits a five story pagoda. All around the shrine is the Asakusa shopping streets filled with tourist trinkets and food stalls.

 
*There is a side-story to our good friend, So Yamauchi. He came to Pennsylvania in September 2013 to intern at Pony Baseball Inc.'s headquarters. So lived with us for about a month and had met our good friends and neighbors, the Nicolellas, on several occasions. So was at a Pirates game with my husband and Anthony when during the game Anthony mentioned that his son, Vincent, had been to Japan as part of the PONY Friendship Tour.  Vincent, coincidentally, stayed with a family who had a son named So. (Anthony had talked to his son about this, but they assumed that So was a very popular name in Japan and never dreamed that it could be the same So.) Upon hearing this, So pulled out his cellphone and showed Anthony that he had contact information for Vincent Nicolella, which turned out to be Anthony's son who actually stayed with the Yamauchi family in Japan eight years ago!

The Yamauchi Family