Tsukuji Fish Market . Ginza (shoes) . Ueno (Zoo closed, temple, electronics shop, X=dame!) . Yakitori-ya . Roppongi (Starbucks wave to girls)

"Get up, get up!" I kick Quoc's bed. It's early, about 6:00 AM. He turns over, groaning. Neither of us are really early morning people. I can get pretty viscious when awoken from a peaceful nap, as I discover he can during this trip; he hates it when I jiggle the mattress. "Get up! We've gotta go to the fishmarket." I head over to Ants' room across the hall while Quoc mumbles that he'll get out of bed soon. Knock, knock... "Ants, wake up!"

I've heard and read about the Tsukuji Fish Market, and it's supposed to be a top tourist attraction in Tokyo. All of the action occurs early in the morning, when the many of the fishermen from around Japan sail into Tokyo Bay and deposit the catch to be auctioned off and distributed to restaurants all over Japan. The tuna fish are supposed to be very large, although their average size has been dropping steadily from overfishing. This morning we're supposed to eat sushi after sightseeing at the Fish Market. My mouth waters at that prospect; we haven't had any sushi in Japan yet, only noodles and beef bowls.

After fixing ourselves up without showering, we leave the hotel and walk towards the subway station. We stop by the convenience stores again (7-11, [Lawson]) to grab some early morning snacks. I get some rice balls with seaweed and a couple of karee-pan, or curry rolls. They're my favorite. Quoc has been getting these hot chicken nuggets at [Lawson], which are good, but taste like American fast food. There are a variety of other exotic snacks, like dried squid and taco (octopus) balls. Ants sticks to "safer" fare.

We get to the subway, but the entrace is locked. It's too early for the subway to be running! I look at my watch, and it's past 6:30. I'm a little surprised that the subway isn't running yet; maybe it was just the door to this local stop that hadn't opened up yet. We're never gonna catch the early morning activity at this rate. We decide to take surface streets, so we hail a cab, which seems like a cool idea so we can see Tokyo above ground while travelling. Tsukuji is at about 4 or 5 o'clock on the Yamanote Line, and it seems a fair distance on the map. But we get to the market rapidly, so fast it left me thinking that Tokyo was smaller than I had originally thought. The taxicab driver waves toward his right, and says something to the effect of, "I think it's over there." He indicates a line of dirty-looking stalls.

We walk over towards the stalls, which sell various noodles. People who look like dockworkers are walking about or sitting at the stalls. The food looks good, but I hold my appetite for the time being. We wander into an alleyway and discover a network of shop-lined streets, with some type of seafood or cooking equipment for sale on display. It's interesting to look at the wares, but we don't see any big fish. We're wandering for quite a while until we figure that we're never going to see the big fish unless we ask for directions. I stop a dockworker on his way somewhere, and ask him, "Ookina sakana wa doko desu ka?" ("Where are the big fish?") He grunts and gestures, indicating that we should follow him.

We walk a couple of blocks and see a large warehouse, near the waterfront. There are people running about, and forklifts pushing a huge mountain of styrofoam boxes. We wander into the warehouse and there are stalls where the fish butchers are cutting large fishes apart. They are enormous, the size of domesticated animals like cows or hogs. We pause to take some pictures with the fish. As we are doing that, we run into an American tourist. She sees us with our cameras and overhears us speaking in English, so she does us a favor and tells us that all of the action is going on in another part of the warehouse, and it's ending soon. We thank her and head over to where she indicated; in a big clearing at the end of the warehouse, some dockworkers are standing on crates admist rows of the huge tuna. They're smoking and chattering away as fast as they can to a crowd of fish butchers crowded around him. Apparently it's an auction where the butchers bid for the individual fish. Once a person wins, the frozen fish is painted with some Chinese character, probably indicating ownership. Quoc, Ants, and I take more pictures in front of the frozen fish. We walk around at that point, avoiding mini-forklifts full of crates, styrofoam boxes, or fish. Back at the butcher stalls, we notice all sorts of oceanic fauna for sale, including shellfish, shrimp, octopus, squid, and more. It would have made a great aquarium collection.

We walk back to the original area of shop-lined streets and hunt for a sushi restaurant. We stumble onto one soon enough, and get bar seats. It's cool to sit in front of the chefs and watch them fillet the fish and roll sushi. They're pretty skilled with their knives. They also don't just sit around waiting for orders; during their downtime, they constantly clean and repack their workspace with fresh fish. If some of the fish start smelling funny, they throw it away. Quoc ordered one piece of sushi, a fatty tuna, where they guy cut the fish up and took out a blowtorch to sear just the top of it. The blowtorch was kind of surprising, I never would have thought that it was a tool of the sushi-rolling trade. Then he sprinkled lemon and spices on it. Quoc said it was really good, so I ordered one too, so Quoc could make an MPEG video of the guy blowtorching the piece of fish.

One time while I was sitting at a sushi bar in Philly, I struck up a conversation with a Vietnamese sushi chef. He was working with a Japanese chef, learning the art of sushi rolling. He was a friendly looking guy with a big smile on his face, while the Japanese guy was dead serious. He told me that in Japan, you have to go to school to be a sushi chef. During a different conversation with an authentic sushi chef from Japan, I learned that after schooling for sushi rolling, they apprentice themselves to a chef for additional years of training. The latter guy was in L.A. and he served the best sushi I've ever had in my life. His retaurant is located in a nondescript strip mall, and it's called Sushi Nozawa. A friend from high school named Bao treated me to a very expensive meal there. If you're in L.A. and are looking for hands down excellent sushi, look for Sushi Nozawa online... but watch out, if you ask for the California roll, he'll throw you out.

After our meal we took the subway back home and slept until the afternoon. (Hey, it's a vacation, we can be slobs if we want to!) In the afternoon, we headed to the Ginza. The Ginza is a rich, chic district of Tokyo much like Manhattan's 5th Avenue, replete with high class department stores. Ants was excited to go here. We took the subway to Ginza station; inside the station was the entrance to the [Mitsukoshi] department store, one of the best in Japan. We were in the basement floor where various confectionaries were being sold. I sampled a piece of dark chocolate while down there; the outside of it was coated with a fine cocoa powder and the inside melted in my mouth. It was probably one of the best chocolates I've ever had in my life. We took the escalator to the first floor and I made a mental note to myself to buy some when we headed back through the station.

We left the front of the department store onto the street. The area was full of expensive stores. Scurrying about the streets outside were many women who were out shopping. They were all dressed extravagantly, whether it was in a kimono or western-style outfit. I imagined that they must have had rich husbands. We began to look for a bank to exchange my travellers' checks, and soon stumbled upon a Citibank. We entered the building and found the bank; a beautiful receptionist sat us down while we took a ticket and waited for our turn. (It seems to me as if Japanese companies, department stores, and restaurants are all about displaying beautiful women on their front end.) Quoc also wanted to exchange some US dollars for yen, but unfortunately he forgot his passport, so instead he handed the money to me to perform the exchange. After making the transactions we headed back to the street.

All this time, Quoc's feet had been hurting from the continuous walking and dancing at the clubs. I guess he spends all day on the job sitting in front of a computer so he never really got to test whether a pair of shoes was comfortable after many hours of walking. Since I was on my feet during much of the past two years as an intern in medicine and then neurology, I've learned to make sure to pick out shoes that are comfortable (as opposed to my earlier days when the appearance of the shoe had top priority). Quoc blamed me for his discomfort; I had told him not to wear tennis shoes in Tokyo because I thought they'd be too informal. However, after we got here we noticed a number of people wearing them. I guess when I was younger, I had the impression that Tokyo was just one of those cities, like Manhattan, where you would look sort of conspicuous if you dress down. Now that I'm older, I pay much less attention to that stuff. Anyway, we stop at a shoe store, called [ABC-Mart] (a chain we had been seeing all over the city), and Quoc picks out a pair of grey [Merrell] moccasin-type walking shoes. They set him back $100. They work better than his clubbing shoes and he's satisfied for the time being. For some reason, I remember hearing a female French singer's interpretation of Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" playing overhead. After the shoe store, we spend a small amount of time in a toy store and then head back through the Mitsukoshi department store to head home. On the way, I bought the chocolates.

At this time, we head towards Ueno Park, to see if we can still make it before closing time to the Zoo. In the Spring, Ueno Park is a popular destination spot for Japanese locals to gather and watch the cherry blossoms fall from the trees. Apparently the festivities can get rowdy, as most of the businessmen who camp out and picnic under the trees after work are intoxicated. After we get off at the station, we notice a bum lying down near the park; I wonder if he's OK. But the last thing I want to do is to go and shake him and ask. I saw "12 Monkeys" for the 3rd time recently, and there's a scene where Madeline Stowe, playing the role of a psychiatrist, discovers Bruce Willis' bullet injury he received while time travelling in WWI (The Great War, as it was known at the time). Although he kidnapped her and treated her poorly, and although they are in the midst of an argument, she says, "I have to look at your leg, James. I'm a doctor!" First off, she's a psychiatrist (an especially hands-off type of doctor), and secondly that is such a corny Hollywood portrayal of a doctor's inflated sense of responsibility. It's too grandiose and self-righteous.

When we reach the zoo, we discover that it is closed Mondays. So instead, we take a few pictures in the park and sit down on a bench to rest. A stray cat wanders by. Soon we get up and start to walk through the park. We notice a lot of homeless people in the park, living in blue vinyl makeshift tents. I'm kind of amazed, as they appear to be quite functional members of a homeless community. There are homeless couples and homeless women doing chores like washing the few articles of clothing they have, hanging clothes on clotheslines, etc. I wonder if the homeless men are the ones who go out and beg for money. I wonder how they got to where they are. After passing them by, we stumble upon yet another a temple. There are more wooden placards with wishes written on them, and omikuji hung on wires here. It is a relatively quiet area and I am a little surprised about its existence, as I had been to Ueno Park in 1995 and never really ran into this place at all. We take some more pictures.

We leave Ueno Park and head back into the city. It is dusk and the town is starting to light up again. There's a multi-level electronics shop right across the street from the park exit, and we can't help but go in. This time I buy a small tripod. Quoc is checking his email on a laptop computer downstairs. I notice what he's doing and try to follow suit, but then this girl who's standing at the entrance walks by and admonishes me. "E-meeru wa dame!" she says, giving me a stern and serious look while making a giant Power Ranger X out of her forearms. The body language is interesting, but damn, that was embarrassing. Quoc notices and makes fun of me afterwards.

We walk around a little outside, getting hungry. We pass by several places, and look at the menus. Usually a person from inside shouts "Irasshaimase!" at us while we're looking at the menu. One lady even comes out to try to get our business, but gets confused when she figures out that we can't speak Japanese. We find a subway station and decide to head back to Akasaka for yakitori, or grilled skewered meat that serve as beer snacks. The place we went to was next to Akasaka station on the Chiyoda line, just a small distance from our hotel. It was a pretty quaint-looking basement floor watering hole. The yakitori ranged from OK to horrible-tasting. There was some pretty nasty skewers, including liver, some strange fish, etc. We all got the same set course of skewers, and towards the end I was hoping that there wouldn't be too many more coming. Quoc and I couldn't finish the liver skewer and I had to make a supreme effort to eat the fish. The owner was really nice, though, and started asking us where we came from. I told him we were from Los Angeles, and he seemed pleased to entertain guests from so far away. At the end of the meal he gave us a bunch of matchbooks and his business card. I was hoping he wouldn't be insulted that we left some skewers uneaten on the table.

After dinner we returned to the hotel. Quoc and Ants were exhausted, but I wanted to make the most of my experience here, even if it meant sacrificing some relaxation time. I said I was headed to Roppongi, and managed to convince Quoc to come with me. On the other hand, Ants had had enough for the day. Roppongi was pretty dead; we check several places out, but there was hardly a soul inside any of them. At the [GasPanic], the bouncer out front was honest with us and told us that Thursday would be when things start to pick up again. We stopped off at the Roppongi Starbucks and had some coffee. I got a mocha. We went upstairs to the second floor and sat at a table by the giant glass window, relaxing with our drinks and enjoying the street scene unfold down below. Cars were at a standstill coming up to Roppongi crossing. One small green car below contained group of girls. For some reason, the driver was watching us while we were sitting at the window sipping our coffee. Out of ennui I grinned broadly and waved to them. I pointed them out to Quoc, who began waving as well. They began to wave back, and more curious faces appeared at the car window. The girl sitting shotgun stuck out her hand over the driver with a peace sign, which the driver promptly swatted back. That was funny, and we began laughing out loud. Eventually, we finished our coffee and started walking back to our hotel. By that time, the car was long gone.