Finding Dennis in a crowd is easy because he stands one head taller than everyone else.
Driving in taxis in Japan – it’s a mixture of driving through little narrow streets hoping that the driver doesn’t hit, someone like in Europe, and driving on a normal streets with multiple lanes in the US. I haven’t experienced driving on a highway to know if it’s crazy fast like Europe or not.
Customer service is Japan is excellent. Waiters check on you frequently to see if your meal is okay. And you don’t tip in Japan and customer service is still good – a far cry from the US. Clerks in stores present you the receipt and say thank you. The lady in the train who pushes a food cart bows as she exits the car.
I’m sitting my Tokyo hotel looking outside the 6th floor window as I type and watching the lights come on and it’s almost 5 pm. It starts getting dark at 4:30. I’m not sure if we’re at a higher latitude (or is it longitude) than San Francisco. Does anyone know?
Costs – a nice hotel in Hiroshima was 17000 yen or $170 dollars. A java chip frappicino is 460 yen or $4. Bottled water from a vending machine ranges from 110 to 150 yen ($.90 to $1.25). Interestingly, they have Crystal Geyser and it’s the cheapest. A bag of groceries with 2 rice cakes, 2 mochi balls, 1 bottle of tea, 2 bottles of water and 1 cup of coffee was 944 yen (about $9.00). Subway rides vary depending on the distance of course but the average would be $1.90 for a one way ride for several stops. Dinners out have been $25 to $40 for the two of us. So it’s not incredibly expensive but not cheaper than at home for the basics. But clothes and shoes appear to be very expensive -- $100 for a pair of regular black shoes. I haven’t gone shopping to really know except for glancing at prices as we walk through a store. I hope to get to a department store on Thursday so I can look at kimonos.
In Kyoto I would occasionally see a group of woman in kimonos walking around town or through a temple. We did have a geisha sighting at the Kyoto Train Station. Chie said that it’s rare to see them and figured they were on their way to meet someone at the train station. She said it’s a good career and women who become a geisha today are very well educated.
3 comments:
Kathleen, it's lattitude that describes the "northness" and "southness" that we associate with the sun setting earlier or latter. Tokyo is at 35.40 N and San Franscisco (or perhaps more precisely Stanford) 37.42 N, slightly more north than Tokyo. So I'm not sure how to account for the fact that it seemed to get darker earlier there because after the summer equinox I would assume that more northerly areas would seem to get darker sooner and thus you would feel as thought it stayed lighter longer than home when in Tokyo. Were they observing daylight savings there?
Japan doesn't observe daylight savings time. So I wonder why it gets dark at 5 pm in early November?
How much was it stay at the Sanno Hotel??
Mmmm..white person..male or female stand out in Japan. But thanks to Hollywood invasion, you only stand out but not considered exceptional.
Frankly,,,finding Dennis is rather easy anywhere on the planet!! He is one of the kind.
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