Before the earthquake hit, one of our friends here in Tokyo took us to see Douglas MacArthur's Occupation Headquarters Office. The office is located in the Daichi Building but when the company renovated the building, they maintained MacArthur's office just as it was when he was there. So, we got to see MacArthur's desk and chair. Because the office is maintained by the company, it is NOT open to the public and few people get to go in. Because of this, no one is really on duty and you can actually touch the furniture and other items!
After the earthquake, Tokyo had more traffic than we have ever seen. We live in Chiyoda-ku, the government district and most everyone rides the subway in and out. But, the day of the earthquake, all of the trains were stopped and people had to either hoof it or take a taxi. Usually we see a few cars on the highway, but here is the view of the Shuto Expressway the night of the earthquake. (Some of you will recall that Sam and I had to walk the four miles or so from his school to our apartment because we could not get a taxi).
Taking this photo, I was facing Akasaka Mitsuke (Aksaka-Mitskay) as we were headed toward A-M for dinner at the Turkish restaurant. As you can imagine, many people stranded in this part of town had checked into the hotels in the area and many others were hanging out at restaurants hoping to get a cab or to waste time until they had to hit the street again. At the Turkish Restaurant, there was a couple clearly with nowhere to go (maybe in their mid 40s) and so they just kept ordering wine and food. Lots of wine.
After a couple of days of pretty bad aftershocks, we decided to go to Kyoto (the old capital of Japan). We planned to stay a couple of days until some of the tremors settled down. Sam was very nervous and chewing all of the skin off his fingers. We were lucky. At the train station in Kyoto there was a weird little travel operation that set us up at the Brighton Hotel (Bariton Hoteru). It was a beautiful hotel to stay at for a couple of days. But, while we were there the reactors at Fukushima began to fall apart and we were worried about returning to Tokyo. We ended up staying in Kyoto for about a week in clothes meant for a couple of days. The Brighton staff were so pleasant. They pretended not to notice that we wore the same clothing day after day (maybe they could smell our stinky socks and underwear even--we could smell ourselves!!!) and they were so nice. Sam caught a little cold and they helped us find a pharmacy and called them to tell them what we needed (nose spray and masks--the masks were on Sam's insistence. He has become very Japanese). At any rate, we made the most of our visit to Kyoto (in between watching the potential meltdown on CNN).
We took the train up to Nara (really old capital with a Daibutsu--anyone remember what a Daibutsu is?). This is "Deer Park." The city has a huge park and all these deer just live there. They are quite greedy and aggressive. Little old ladies sell deer biscuits to feed them and the deer basically attack you to get at the food. One stuck its snout into Sid's pocket and crumbled all the crackers. This is Graham trying to flee the deer. A funny note--our travel guide said that tourists often eat the deer crackers because they mistakenly think that they are local delicacies. :)
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