A year ago in Tokyo - Incredible experience

This weekend the weather in Aalborg was very unusual (atleast for me). The sky was completely cloudy and dark. We saw some light around 8:30 AM and sun set was around 4 PM. My Danish colleagues told me that winter days are going to be even worse. This saturday, Europe switched to winter time - so we gained one more hour during weekend for our misery. Due to bad weather, we didn't plan to go anywhere. I was tired because of last week's Hamburg trip, so didn't step out of the house for two days.

During whole weekend I was either sleeping, watching downloaded movies, browsing and uploading previous trip photoes to web. While uploading pictures, I found few photoes which I clicked in Japan a year ago. I became nostalgic for a while. Last year October I was in Tokyo -Japan for one month duration on my office work. Though Japan is one of the very costliest place for living, its a must see place. The people, concrete jungles, beautiful Japanese gardens, shrines and most efficient sub-way system impressed me a lot. I am sure anyone will get impressed with Japanese people's hard work and quick recovery from world war mishaps. Since my stay in Tokyo was short, I was decided to get best out of my stay in Tokyo. I stayed in one of the best hotel - Westin Tokyo. The price per one night stay was around Rs 15,000/-. My room was in 16th floor and the windows of my room showed me the best possible view of Tokyo city.





View from my hotel room window in Tokyo

I was in Tokyo office to co-ordinate the work between local engineering teams and teams spread rest of the world. Apart from co-ordinating, I am suppose to analyse critical problems and dispatch it to corresponding teams which are distributed across the globe. I was doing same task back in Bengaluru for previous 4 months. So it became routine job to me and I was quite comfortable with the task. Everyday I was reaching office around 9AM and leave the office around 5 PM. After office hours I use to catch subway trains and reach the most happening places in Tokyo !! There were few other colleagues from Bengaluru, Hyderbad, Malaysia and Chicago were also stationed in Tokyo. Though most of us from same company, we didn't know each other because either we were in different team or different location. Most of them already spent their one month time in Tokyo and they are all quite familiar with the city. It didn't took much time for me to get comfortable with them. I knew only one guy out of them, Simon Matthew - a Malaysian national and working in malaysian office. He is born in malaysia to Indian immigrats and his roots are from Kerala. Simon was in Bengaluru few months ago for training. I had showed him places in Bengaluru while he was in town. He reached 3 weeks before I reach Tokyo and he guided me to book hotel etc.. Simon is gizmo freek. He had owned all the latest electronic gizmos at that time. Most of the evenings myself and simon were visiting happening places in Tokyo like Akihabara, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Giza and Roppangi. Akihabara is name of place in Tokyo where you will find latest electronic items like laptops, cameras, media players, memory, gaming consoles...and the list goes on... Akihabara is believed to be mother of all electronic markets in the world !!! It's a very crowded place with lots of high rise buildings occupied with electronic super markets. On the streets, sales boys will be selling Hard disks, cameras etc for cheaper prices. Again as I mentioned earlier nothing is cheap in Tokyo. I was under the assumption that electronics stuff would be cheaper here, but it was more costlier when compared to USA eventhough it is designed in Japan. But you will get very good quality products. Infact I noticed that many shop keepers placed big "Made in Japan" boards in their shops to attract the tourist crowd. I fell in love with Cowon PMP (Portable Media Player) and didn't think twice to buy it in Akihabara. I paid around Rs 15,000/- for PMP. It was so attractive that, Simon also bought the same with in few minutes of my purchase !! Later when I was in Chicago I showed my PMP device to my friends and six of them purchased the same brand in USA !!






A small radio shop in Akihabara.

Roppangi is famous for it's night life. It attracts most of the tourists, especially tourists from westren world. It has high rise buildings with bars, pubs and good restaurants. Myself and Simon visited few pubs followed by famous "Hardrock" restaurant. Simon didn't forget to get "Hardrock - Tokyo" T-shirt.

I was regular user of hotel's top class gymnasium. Believe me, it was one of the best gym I have seen before. It had highly sophisticated equipments. I remember that, trademills had TV embedded in it !! Hotel guests were working out while watching BBC news on their trademills. Since Westin hotel had most english speaking staff, most of the hotel guests are from Europe and USA. Many beautiful girls (probably air hostess) were regular visitors of gym and they were working out in gym to enhance their curves ;)

Since I had 4 or 5 weekends in Tokyo, I had make sure that every weekend is properly utilized. I visited all major tourist attractions in and around Tokyo. I visited world heritage centres, shrines, tokyo old town streets, educational museums etc. Poornima (from Hyderbad office) was also staying in the same hotel as mine. She suggested me the best places to visit.

"Yokoso! Japan. Traditional Japanese Market near Asakusa shrine - Tokyo"



Centuries old Buddha's Statue on nearby coastal town near to Tokyo.

Apart from seeing places, I secured three good friends in Tokyo. Simon, Poornima and Venkat (Indian settled in Chicago). We four of us regularly meet during our dinner's and having debates on various issues related to India. Venkat is IISc alumini, worked in India for few years both in public and private sector companies. Later he moved to USA. He has extreme views on latest political developments and was capable of suggesting his own solution to problems !! During our dinner in restaurants, Venkat was one side of the debate and we three of us on the other side :) Before Venkat return to Chicago, he also purchased Cowon media player after seeing mine. Later when I visited Venkat's house in Chicago sub-urban area for christmas dinner, he told me that Cowon media player is the one of the best item purchased for himself in recent years. He was using media player during his work out hours in Chicago office.

After spending one month in Tokyo, I returned to Bengaluru on the eve of Diwali festival. One month stay in Tokyo was Incredible and I had best time. Someday I just want to go Japan and see the places like Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Osaka. I will be waiting for that day !!