Navigating Tokyo's Subway and "sushi go round"

Our second day in Tokyo we woke to cold, rainy weather. We thought it'd be a good day to figure out the subway train system. But first, breakfast. We stopped at the grocery store a couple blocks away and discovered Japan has amazing bakery items. Seriously, I think we ate their bakery items at least once a day.

They also have a very interesting variety of seafood.

Whole crabs, squid, whole fish,...

....and sometimes just the fish's head.

Check out the cool phone booth on the corner.

We'd been warned that with a population as large as Tokyo's, sickness moves quickly, especially when packed into a confined space such as a train. A friend who is from Tokyo suggested that we get masks to wear, which felt weird, but I was more concerned about keeping my kids healthy than how we looked. It helped when we noticed masks were a daily routine for most people in Japan. Probably more than a third of the people that we saw on the streets wore one.

Here's the fare table for the Tokyo Metro line. Each circle or square is a stop. This was a bit confusing considering transfers and all, so we opted to just buy daily passes, which were usually cheaper for us anyway. One adult day pass cost ¥600  ($5.29). Kids under 6 ride free.

You purchase your pass at a kiosk which is like an ATM and fortunately there is a button for English! 

Then you find a sign like this, figure out where you are (which sounds easy, right?) and where you want to get off. Each stop has a name and a corresponding number, so say we're at Roppongi (04) and we want to get off at Tsukiji (10), we'd look above the train tracks for a sign showing that it's going toward the higher numbers and get off at the 6th stop. The train marked with the lower numbers will be going in the opposite direction. 

This also became a fun game and learning experience for the kids as they would ask how many stops we had and then they would count them down until our stop.

While preparing the kids for their first ride on the subway, Asher interrupted me and said, "oh I know about the subway, Curious George did that!" Well thanks, George.

After a couple times, the kids started putting our passes thru the turnstiles themselves. 

Riding the subway was actually very easy and convenient. It was remarkably clean and very quiet even when it was full. No speaking on cell phones allowed, pretty much no speaking period. Everyone is quiet. Most riders are looking at their cell phones, reading comic books or sitting with their eyes closed, especially at the end of the day. 

We tried to avoid rush hour, or as Asher called it, "squish time", but there were definitely times when the trains were more full than others and required us to stand for the entire ride. 

We went to the electronic center, which is a mind-blowing six floors of cell/computer/camera gadgets and electronics of all kinds, if you can plug it in, they sell it. Just one section of the first floor holds about 20 15ft rows of just cell phone cases! Sheesh! We bought a data SIM card for my phone so I could access the internet. 1GB for 7 days cost $16, and get this, it included unlimited data use for the Facebook App, interesting.

We don't see rain too often, so they were pretty excited to use an umbrella.

If you don't already know, we LOVE sushi. We had heard about "sushi go arounds" and were excited to try one. Upon arrival, we were instructed to remove our shoes and place them in a locking cabinet and hang our coats on the wall behind us.

We sat on the floor which has a portion that drops down below the table for our legs.

The sushi goes around on a conveyor belt that runs right in front of us. When you see a plate that you want, you just grab it as it goes by. Asher LOVED this idea and grabbed about 4 different plates and thought they were all delicious.

You can order from the menu as well, they even had an English menu for us. Asher wanted to try Salmon Roe (eggs) so we ordered this one special for him. He loved it.

Sushi restaurants in the US serve a mochi dessert, which is a small ball of raw dough with ice cream inside. Mochi in Japan is this gelatinous dessert, which we didn't really care for.

The color of the plate signifies the price. At the end of our dinner, the waiter holds a scanner next to our stack of plates and it calculates our price. As soon as Asher's belly was full, he closed his eyes and fell right to sleep at the table! Time to catch the train home.