The sun has yet to rise here in Tokyo. We arrived at Narita around 4 PM, took the bus to the Imperial Hotel, and I collapsed into bed around 10 PM. Virginia and Cassady invaded the Ginza after dinner, but I begged off in favor of a good night’s sleep.

The Imperial Hotel is as gracious as ever. At this moment they have a display of artifacts from Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1923 masterpiece. Wright’s hotel replaced the original, built in 1890, so this is the third of the Imperial Hotels here. There are columns on display that are carved from Oya, the tuff endemic to Tochigi prefecture (where we will be visiting family at the end of the trip).

Last night we ate at our favorite tempura restaurant in Japan, located here in the Imperial. Among the specialties served were tempura fried fish backbones which look like pieces of cord tied in a knot, and crispy shrimp heads (nothing goes to waste).

The cooks here are masters at this one form of Japanese cuisine, and the light, delicate tempura here bears little resemblance to what we are served in the U.S.

We fly to Okinawa later this morning, and begin our trip to areas of Japan we have never visited before. For the next week we will be immersed in an overdose of WW II (Okinawa, Nagasaki, Hiroshima). We then spend time in Osaka and take in the spring basho.

Ted

12 March 2010