One Day in Tokyo: Asakusa, and a River Cruise to Odaiba
This post includes pictures from each of my 3 visits to Japan, in 1999, 2004, and 2007.
Spring time in Odaiba
If you have the misfortune of visiting Tokyo for only a few days, you’ll find it hard to decide where to spend your time in a city that has so many amazing things to see and do. A good way to get a sense of the traditional, slower-paced Tokyo, as well as the modern, fast-paced Tokyo in a single day is to venture to the northeastern district of Asakusa in the morning, with its temples and buildings dating back to the 1950s (Tokyo was essentially leveled in the WWII fire-bombings, so the 50s is considered old for Tokyo architecture). Then take a cruise south on the Sumida river, which will take you under about a dozen architecturally distinct bridges. The cruise ends on the man-made island of Odaiba in Tokyo Bay, which offers endless attractions for modern shopping and hi-tech fun, and even a sandy beach. At the end of the day (or night), head back to the mainland on the Yurikamone line, which does an entirely gratuitous 360° loop as it crosses the river, giving you a panoramic view of eastern Tokyo.
Asakusa
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Asakusa is a well known part of Tokyo, and many others have written about it, so I’ll just give you a summary from Wikipedia:
Asakusa is… most famous for the Sensō-ji, a Buddhist temple dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon. There are several more temples in Asakusa, as well as various festivals… For most of the twentieth century, Asakusa was the major entertainment district in Tokyo… In its role as a pleasure district, it has now been surpassed by Shinjuku and other colorful areas of the city… It is central to the area colloquially referred to as Shitamachi (not an official designation), which literally means “low city,” referring to the low elevation of this old part of Tokyo, on the banks of the Sumida River. As the name suggests, the area has a less frenetic and more traditionally Japanese atmosphere than some other neighborhoods of Tokyo… In keeping with a peculiarly Tokyo tradition, Asakusa hosts a major cluster of domestic kitchenware stores on Kappabashi-dori, which is visited by many Tokyoites for essential supplies. Next to the Sensō-ji temple grounds is a small carnival complex with rides, booths, and games, called Hanayashiki. The neighborhood theaters specialize in showing classic Japanese films, as many of the tourists are elderly Japanese.
Asakusa is a part of Tokyo whose glory days are behind it, but still has a lot of old city charm, and continues to draw tourists as well as Tokyoites looking to spend some time away from the fast-paced modernity that defines most of Tokyo. If you visit during cherry blossom season, the park along the river will be packed with people having picnics to celebrate the start of Spring.
Sumida River Cruise
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The river cruise boats depart from the Asakusa wharf. Don’t be shy about asking someone where it is. Plenty of people speak English, and if you’re not too far from it, someone may even walk you right to it. There are multiple destinations so make sure you’re getting on a boat headed to Odaiba! The cruise lasts about an hour, and takes you along the eastern side of Tokyo, so you’ll see a lot of interesting buildings and bridges. About.com has a helpful guide.
Odaiba
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Odaiba is a cross between Disney World and Las Vegas: it has all the lights and dazzle of both, but is more family-friendly than Vegas, and has a lot more fun activities for adults than Disney World. Japan-guide.com has a good overview of Odaiba’s multitude of attractions. It was a frequent destination for the boys and I. From where we lived in Shinagawa, Odaiba was only one stop away on the Rinkai Line. The boys especially loved the Toyota MegaWeb complex, the Palette Town video arcade, and the parks and beaches.
The Yurikamone Line is an attraction itself, and is definitely the way you should depart Odaiba. It’s fully automated – there is no one driving the train – and the tracks run in a loop on the eastern edge of the river, giving you a spectacular view of the city.
I’ve visited Odaiba about 20 times, and I still haven’t seen all of it (although that’s partly because the boys always wanted to do the same things every time we went). I’m recommending it for just a half day visit though, because it really will give you sensory overload. It’s worth a second half-day visit if you have time.
Crummy Cell Phone Pictures III: Driving a Mini-Jeep
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Yesterday was our second or third really nice day so far this Spring, and the boys were thrilled to be outdoors in short sleeves. Our neighbor’s son has a battery powered mini Jeep, and he was kind enough to let them drive it for a while. I was perfectly comfortable with Kai driving it, and I was terrified when Eidan drove it. I realized afterwards my different reactions were not due to their age. I think I’ll be just as calm when Kai gets his driver’s license when he’s 16, and even more terrified when Eidan does.
Return to LaLaport
The Toyosu Theater ticket counter, providing the swankiest movie ticket purchasing experience anywhere
As part of my current effort to finally finish blogging about our time living in Japan two years ago, I just added several cool pictures to my post about the dazzling LaLaport mall in Tokyo - take a look. (I’m not re-publishing it with a new date like I did with my last post, because I wrote it right after we visited there, so I shouldn’t change the date on it.)
The Park at World City Towers
This is a re-publication of an old post. I added a bunch of pictures and some more information. Original publication date: 8/14/2007.
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The pictures above are from the park adjacent to the gargantuan World City Towers residential complex in Minato. It’s Tokyo’s largest, with 2,090 residential units. Click the bottom right picture for a video of Eidan – from Kai he learned the trick of pretending to bump into a pole and exclaiming “unh!,” as if he’d hurt himself. And here he’s doing it repeatedly. This park was a short walk from our apartment, and during the spring it was a daily destination for Eidan and I in the mornings. We’d play in the park after Maria left for work and Kai left for school, then I’d do our daily shopping at the wonderful Maruetsu grocery store. We’d go home for lunch, Eidan would nap for two hours while I worked, Kai would finish school, the three of us would go somewhere for a few hours, and then be home in time for dinner with Maria.
I enjoy doing write-ups of the parks we visited in Tokyo, but this one isn’t worth much commentary – it’s main attraction was that it was nearby. It’s a new park, and is quite large, but with only a few play structures, and an enormous, smooth gravel area in the middle. The Tokyo Monorail line runs along the edge of it. Eidan always enjoyed when the Pokemon train occasionally came by. Every morning a workman came by to empty the trashcans, and to sweep the entire gravel area with nothing more than an old fashioned Japanese broom. The one astonishing thing is that the grassy area of the park is strewn with rubble. It’s peppered with small pieces of broken concrete and tile, from the recently completed World City Towers. It’s just another idiosyncrasy of the otherwise fastidious Japanese: in so many ways they have the most exacting standards, but when it comes to parks, they’ll just throw grass seed down on top of the rubble and call it a day.
The two pictures below are from a smaller park that was across the street from our apartment in Minato. We didn’t go there much because it only had one small play structure and it tended to get very dusty (the ground around the play structure was just packed dirt, which would blow around when the weather was dry). But it was fun to see the kids from the local daycare literally get carted out for playtime.
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Koumpounophobia 0.4 Now Available
Koumpounophobia is a WordPress plugin that enhances the HTML Editor in several ways, giving you new buttons, modal dialogs, and the ability to add your own buttons.
The new version 0.4 is compatible with Internet Explorer 7 and 8. It also fixes the “scroll position” bug in Firefox 3 (the editor no longer scrolls to the top after you use a Koumpounophobia modal dialog). It’s available for download at wordpress.org.
Getting it to work with Internet Explorer took a lot of research, but in the end it required only a few additional lines of code. The problem was that IE would forget the cursor position in the editor when you used a modal dialog, causing your tag to always be inserted at the beginning of your post. If you do a search for “textarea cursor position” you’ll see a lot of electrons being spilled by others trying to solve this problem for their own projects. I’ll write a separate post on this, as the solution in many cases doesn’t require the dozens and dozens of lines of code that a lot of people are using.
Calling All Toppas – Toppa Family Reunion 2009
Update 7/25: Today is the day! See The Many Meanings of Toppa post. I also made a “Many Meanings of Toppa” display which you can download as a PDF.
Update 5/28: the registration deadline for the reunion is June 20th, so we can make sure there’s enough food for everyone. Please contact me and I’ll put you in touch with the person handling the registration. Please bring any old family photos or videos you’d like to share. And if you’re a musician, let me know, and I’ll put you in touch with the person who’s planning a big family jam session at the reunion.
The family tree on geni.com is growing, with about 150 people added so far – let me know if you’d like to join!
The first Toppa family reunion in over 30 years will take place on Saturday, July 25, 2009 at Kempenaar’s Clambake Club in Newport, RI.
My great-grandfather and his brother came to Newport from Lettomanoppello, Italy. According to my aunt, from those two Toppas, there are now at least 740 relatives. My great-grandfather had 8 kids, and I believe his brother had 12, so they got the generational powers of multiplication off to a good start.
There’s a Toppa Family Reunion page on Facebook for all the relatives to get in touch with each other and spread the word. If you’re not on Facebook, adding a comment to this post is another way to reach everyone.
I’ve started a Toppa family tree on geni.com. Geni is a great genealogy site, because you can take just a few minutes to add yourself and your immediate family, and then attach it to the rest of the tree, so it’s not too much work for any one person. It’ll be great if we can get the whole tree built before the reunion. If you want to participate, contact me, and I’ll invite you through geni.com to join the tree.
I copied the pictures below from a web page my cousin posted a few years ago. The two pictures on the left are of my great-grandfather and his family (although my grandfather Steven is missing from the picture). Click them to see larger versions with captions.
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If you’d like a good laugh, check out what prendere una toppa means in Italian.
Web Consulting Projects Wrap-Up
Last year I had several web consulting projects. I just finished the last of them, and I’m not planning on doing any more, so I figure now’s a good time to post a wrap-up. All 5 of these sites are running on WordPress.
 Boxing Dragons – Original Asian Art
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 Body of Knowledge – Personal Training
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 The Hope Funds for Cancer Research
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 Kai’s Candy Company
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 Newport Homes for Sale
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- Body of Knowledge Personal Training: the most interesting part of the site is accessible only by their clients. I created a custom WordPress plugin that enables their clients to schedule appointments online. The plugin synchronizes the appointments with Body of Knowledge’s Google Calendar, and on the administrative side, provides invoicing and other bookkeeping capabilities.
- Newport Homes for Sale – Terry Toppa, Broker Associate: you may recognize the last name
. This is a site for my Dad’s real estate listings. It uses my Shashin plugin for the property photos and Deko Boko for the contact form. His friend Jim is a photographer, and he provided some fantastic pictures of Newport that really bring the site to life. - Boxing Dragons – Original Asian Art: I didn’t come up with the graphic designs on the other sites listed here, but I did for this one. I am by no means a graphic designer, but I can fake it sometimes. This site is over a year old now, and drove a lot of the improvements that went into Shashin 2.0 last year.
- Kai’s Candy Company: this was my own business (why can’t I count myself as a client? ), which is now closed. I worked with a wonderful graphic designer, Paula Weindel, who created the site design for us. Our business volume never justified implementing a full-fledged shopping cart; Google Checkout served our needs just fine. After the business closed, I moved the site to free hosting with Google Page Creator.
- The Hope Funds for Cancer Research: this project involved converting a static site to a dynamic one, and training their staff to use WordPress so they can manage most of the site without needing programming skills.
Japanese Police Boxes (Koban – 交番)
A police box in Ueno Park, Tokyo
Police boxes (Koban – 交番) – are ubiquitous in Tokyo – every neighborhood has one:
In direct contact with the people… are the kobans (police boxes in urbanized areas) and chuzaishos (police boxes in rural areas)… There are approximately 6,600 kobans and 9,000 chuzaishos in Japan… A chuzaisho’s jurisdiction may encompass up to 18 square miles and service 3,000 people. A koban typically services 0.22 square miles with a population of 8,500… Unlike the U.S. which centers police activity around the patrol car, Japanese police activity centers around the koban. In Tokyo, the official minimum complement for each koban is 12 officers… Much like their patrol car driving American counterparts, these officers patrol the neighborhood (however they do so on foot or bicycle), respond to calls of distress, and assist detectives or national agents in whatever project they may have.
There are a couple things that make the kobans so distinctive. One is their architecture. Most are small, ordinary-looking buildings, but some have a great deal of flair, as you can see in my pictures. The Japan Visitor blog has some more pictures, as well as a history of kobans.
 A police box in Kawagoe
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 A police box in rural Aomori
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The other distinctive quality is the community policing aspect of kobans:
Japanese neighborhoods look upon their koban officers as a just and kind “big brother”. Often, koban officers are asked to arbitrate disputes that would end up as court cases here in the U.S. Throughout the day, citizens will stop into the koban to relate their experiences or seek advice about this or that. While on patrol, koban officers engage in casual conversation with anyone who happens to be around. By establishing this friendly atmosphere, the koban officers ease concerns that the populace may have and establish an environment where citizens are more willing to assist in criminal investigations. This attitude is distinctly different from the U.S. where it is considered disgraceful to “snitch” on another person and the police appear as an authoritative force which only presents itself when there is trouble.
When I was in Ueno Park one day with the boys, and they were arguing over who’s turn it was to play with a toy, a police officer intervened. As an American, my first thought at seeing a police officer coming right towards us was that we were in trouble for, well…, something. But instead he came to resolve the dispute by giving them each a piece of candy and a pat on the head.
Since crime rates in Japan are so low, and violent crime is rare, the police do not carry guns. Aside from their neighborhood foot patrols, the primary daily activity of the police in kobans is to give directions. This is actually a non-trivial function, as it’s sometimes impossible to find addresses in major Japanese cities. Most streets don’t have names, and building numbers are assigned based partly on location, and partly on when the building was constructed, resulting in an addressing system that is often just as mystifying to the Japanese as it is to foreigners.
Kobans were in the news last week in Japan, as they now allow female officers to work the night shift. When we lived in Tokyo, we occasionally saw female officers during the day, but never at night.
Update: the page I linked above for my quotes just disappeared from the web. At least for now, it’s still accessible in the Google cache.
The Elevated Park at the Shibuara Water Reclamation Center
I’ve been going through my pictures from our time living in Japan two years ago, and I realized there’s a lot of good stuff I never had a chance to blog about. Time permitting, I’ll have some more posts coming up about our time in Japan.
 A rose garden in the park at the Shibuara Water Reclamation Center
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 The Shibuara Water Reclamation Center
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When we lived in Shinagawa, we were just a few blocks away from the Shibaura Water Reclamation Center (click to see a great aerial shot, featuring their cartoon mascot; yes, even public works facilities in Japan get cartoon mascots). Less euphemistically, it’s a sewage treatment plant. Luckily, because of the prevailing winds, we rarely smelled it (the neighborhood just north of us – near the Tamachi station – typically got the worst of its fragrances). We walked by it almost every day, and something we never noticed during our first few months living there is that it’s home to a good-sized park. The reason we didn’t notice is because the park is entirely above ground. From the street level, we saw a ramp that we just assumed went to an elevated parking area. But it’s actually a park with plenty of green grass and trees, supported by a a whole lot of concrete pillars.
It’s a truly remarkable use of an urban space that otherwise certainly would not be visited by anyone other than the plant’s employees. It has large green spaces for picnics and throwing frisbees, tennis courts, a rose garden, and several play structures and swing sets for the kids. Once we finally discovered it, Eidan and I went there several times. After you enter the park, there is no indication you’re on top of an enormous sewage treatment facility, at least as long as the winds are favorable. All along the edge of the park are tall, densely packed shrubs, hiding the vast swath of blue treatment tanks that lie beyond (to take the picture of them you see above, I had to push myself behind the shrubs and position my camera carefully through the chain link fence).
One time I went around to the main business entrance for the plant, with Eidan on the stroller. There was a small, attractive picnic area with a small koi pond right inside the open gate, so we strolled in. From there I could see an entrance to the facility itself, with several informative signs visible just beyond it, so I figured I could go in for a self-guided tour. I did, and learned a lot about sewage treatment as I stopped by each big piece of equipment doing its thing, and read its sign (all the signs were written in Japanese and English). But halfway through I ended up at the rear entrance, which was locked and had guards posted. It dawned on me at that point that I probably shouldn’t be there, so I quietly made my way back out to the main entrance with Eidan.
Directions: unless you have a real thing for neighborhood parks or sewage treatment plants it’s not really worth a special trip, but if you’re already near the Shinagawa station and you want to check it out, see the directions at the very bottom of Shibaura Water Reclamation Center web page. Or just look for Shinagawa’s most recognizable building – the NTT DoCoMo building. Coming from the Shinagawa station, the park is just past the building.
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Post-to-Post Links II Now at WordPress.org
Post-to-Post Links II is a plugin for creating links to other posts, pages, tags, or categories on your WordPress site, and it’s now available for download at wordpress.org. I also created a documentation page.
There are a couple improvements with this version:
- Now you can use it with tag slugs and tag IDs too
- Fixed a bug with using category slugs
As explained in the readme file, it unfortunately can’t interpret the tags from Scott Reilly’s old “Easy Post-to-Post Links” plugin. I used his plugin heavily, and if you want to convert your old tags for use with my new plugin, you can. Doing so requires 1. you to be comfortable running a SQL query and 2. that you consistently used only post slugs or only IDs with Scott’s plugin. If you used IDs in some tags and slugs in others, then you can’t make the conversion (as there’s nothing in the syntax of Scott’s tag itself that indicates whether you’re linking by ID or slug).
These are the steps:
- Make a backup of your WordPress database, or at least the wp_posts table. This is very important, in case you make a mistake in the SQL.
- Run this SQL statement if you always used slugs for your links:
update wp_posts set post_content = replace(post_content,'[post=','[p2p type="slug" value=');
Or run this SQL statement if you always used IDs for your links:
update wp_posts set post_content = replace(post_content,'[post=','[p2p type="id" value=');
I use the “text” attribute the same way Scott did, so that portion of the tag will carry over seamlessly in the conversion.
You are currently browsing the Nothing But Words blog archives for April, 2009.
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Mike's Tweets
- I've never heard of this band, but they have an original and good interpretation of a certain favorite song of mine: http://bit.ly/cjNmfP 2010-07-16
- The real reason we went to Tokyo: Ultraman, Gundam, and Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers) http://twitpic.com/242jvh 2010-07-10
- Read "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea" on the flight home. Amazing and terrifying. Here's a good review: http://bit.ly/cBjujO 2010-07-10
- Back on the east coast after a long but not too horrible flight. Just uploaded more Tokyo pictures http://bit.ly/9EkFMA 2010-07-10
- Last meal in Tokyo :-( some delicious ramen http://twitpic.com/23hhq9 2010-07-08
- More updates...
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Random Pictures
Zushi beach
Dealing with a slow water leak on a subway platform ceiling, Japanese style: the plastic tubing is taped to a bottle at the bottom -
Flotsam
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