First impressions of Tokyo

limited to but a single neighborhood: Ginza – It is less crowded here than I would have expected and people seem to be in less of a hurry. I would have thought it would have been at least as intense as NYC or SF on those counts, but to the first limited exposure, its more relaxed here. In fairness, these impressions vanished as soon as we explored the Tokyo train station, which is a maze of frantic kinetic energy.

These walls reminded me so much of the stonework at Machu Pichu and in Cuzco:

And here, I really like the juxtaposition of old and new:

Overall, we’re still recovering a bit from jet lag. Waking up at 5 am and taking naps in the afternoon. So we’ve barely scratched the surface of Tokyo and will be moving on shortly.

On being vegetarian here so far

There are enough restaraunts here that cater to vegetarians, that its been pretty easy to eat here. One thing that I didn’t expect is that these places are filled with locals and not just hippy tourists ( I think something meta just happened, but i can’t be sure). However, if we aren’t at place that is explicity for vegetarians, then all bets are off. After a somewhat lengthy conversation with a server who spoke quite good english, we felt confident that we’d have a meat free meal. This confidence was misplaced though. So its been a mixed but mostly positive experience in this regard. I’m curious how this might be different as we leave Tokyo and venture to other regions and smaller places.