There are days when you pack in too much stuff to do and this was that day. We left Kevin and his family to head back to Tokyo eventually, but we decided to check out the Odawara Castle. On our way to the Odawara Castle we met George Ono who was telling us to stay on the left side when crossing the cross walk. We talked with him for a little while and then another Japanese man came up to us and starting talking. He had worked for 45 years prior to retiring and had spent the last 6 years of retirement learning English from scratch. He was very talkative and provided us with some facts about the US that we did not even know or had forgotten. Prior to leaving us he sang the National Anthem and got almost all of the words right. We were very impressed.
We kept walking with George since he was interested in our company. George was from Odawara, but has worked in Canada and Germany. We exchanged e-mails, took pictures, and he left prior to us going inside the castle. The castle grounds had an old elephant that was given to the city from India. There was also a monkey which was very strange to me. The Odawara castle was very similar to the Nagoya castle, but there was some additional interesting items in the museum portion of the castle. The views from the top were pretty amazing. You could see all of Odawara and even the Miura Peninsula where Yokosuka is.
After checking out Odawara Castle we started taking the trains to Tokyo. We got to Tokyo around 4 pm and decided to check in at the New Sanno Hotel first, so we could drop off our bags. After checking in we checked out the Japanese gift shop inside the hotel and bought some good souvenirs. We had grander plans on what to check out in Tokyo, but with it getting late, we decided to check out the Toyota show room in Asakusa part of Tokyo.
We got on the subway and headed to Asakusa. Asakusa was a lot more busy than I thought it would be and the station was jam packed with people. We made it to the show room with 20 minutes left to check out floors 2-4 prior to them closing. The show room had a lot of Japanese models of Toyota cars that you could sit in and check out. It also had a hybrid section that showed the different hybrid engines and how they work. They even had a little simulator game that allowed you to control the car between the gasoline side and the electric side. The show room was interesting, but it was not worth missing dinner over.
After leaving the show room we went to check out a crazy everything type store called Tokyu Hands which had games, kitchen stuff, toys, cat rooms to hang out with cats, etc. Finally, after leaving there around 8:30 pm we went to grab a bite to eat. We made it back to the New Sanno to shower up and go to sleep. We had an early morning rise planned.
(Monday, March 16)
We got up at 4:10 am this morning, so that we could check out the Tsukiji Fish Market. 80% of the worlds fish goes through Tokyo and most of it goes through Tsukiji. They have tuna auctions in the morning that tourists are allowed to see from 5:30 am until 6:15 am. We caught the 5:05 am subway from nearby the New Sanno Hotel and got to the market around 5:30 am after finding some fellow Americans to follow. We followed them to the live tuna auction which was interesting to watch for about 1 minute prior to workers shoeing us away. We were only allowed to watch the frozen tuna auction which was one building over.
We headed to the frozen tuna auction and checked it out for 30 minutes or so. The people buying the tuna check out the tuna by shining their flashlight at tail area of the fish where a small piece of meat is shown. They use a crow bar to pry at the meat to see how it flakes off. We did not see them lick the fish, but maybe they do that with the fresh tuna auction. There were some huge frozen tunas and just a lot of tunas in that warehouse that were being auctioned.On the way to and from the market there is a ton of other workers in the area moving around on little carts with their fish in the back. It is crazy how fast they are moving around that area. You really had to watch yourself because I don’t think they would have cared if they hit you. It was more industrialized than the shipyard. We left there to take the trains back to Yokosuka, so that I could get to work in the morning. I was only a couple hours late.
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