Thread: Boss sent me to Japan on the company dime!

I received a call from my boss on a Thursday afternoon saying that the person who was supposed to be speaking at our Japanese seminars had taken ill, and could I be on a plane for Tokyo on Saturday morning?

Now I'm not big on flying so the thought of ~12hr flight freaked me out a bit, but before I knew it I was jetting over a barren ice land on my way to Tokyo.





I was starting to get worried that I might have boarded the wrong plane, but eventually we made landfall on the Japanese coast.



Narita is a very modern airport, but it does still have some old world charms. Luckily I went before I left.



This was only a week long business trip so I didn't get a chance to take as many photos as I would have liked, and there was never any time to stop and compose a shot, but here are some of the highlights. While in Tokyo I stayed at the 'Tokyo Dome' hotel, which is at the center of a small amusement park called 'Tokyo Dome City'.




Not surprisingly, this is also the location of the actual Tokyo Dome (Big Egg), where the Giants call home.



The view from our distributor's office in the Akihabara section of Tokyo. The only other really big cities I've seen are Chicago (and Toronto...), but Tokyo seems to be on another level. Downtown appears to stretch out to the horizon. I bought a sweet pair of noise canceling headphones at Yodobashi Akiba!



In the evenings I had a chance to walk around the immediate vicinity of the hotel. I didn't think I could get lost since my hotel is the tallest building in the area, but after ducking through a few alleys looking for a palce to grab a pint I realized that my hotel was no longer visible! I was worried that I'd have to suffer the dishounour of hiring a cab to lead me the probably 2 or 3 blocks back to my hotel, but I decided to just keep wandering instead, and managed to find my way home!

View from my hotel window.



Wish I'd had time to actually learn how to use the camera before I left. Blurry photos ftl...



Saw some sweet rides, but unfortunately I didn't always have a camera ready.

RX7


Skyline


I did manage to do a little bit of sight seeing. Made it to the Sinsoji Temple, which is actually only about a block away from one of the Tokyo subway stations.





I didn't have a clue what this was until I got home and googled it. It's the Asahi Beer Hall, and the beer itself is great. SuperDry!

From there we grabbed a ferry back towards the coast...



and hit up Shinjuku. If anyone has played Project Gotham Racing 3 you'll probably recognize this area (Shinjuku Loop)! Shinjuku is supposed to be the busiest train station in the world, but everyone is so orderly it hardly feels crowded.





If you look into the background you can see Brad Pitt reppin Tag Heuer.



We also took the Shinkansen (bullet train) out to Hiroshima for a day. Unfortunately our meetings went long which didn't leave any time to see the sights. All I managed were a few shots of the country side taken from the train... It was nice to see some open spaces after spending a few days in Tokyo.




On the last day before leaving for the airport I decided to check out a few arcades. Now I played a few video games when I was a kid, but this is the shit!




Can't wait to go back!

Nice writeup! Japan is one of those places that has eluded me so far (except for a brief connection in their airport)... probably about time to take a trip over there

Amazing photos! I would love to see Japan in person one of these days!

The one place I really want to go soon.

Great pictures! thanks for sharing your trip.

cool photos... deff somewhere i want to go in near future...

thanks for sharing...would really like to take a trip there soon. To eat sushi and some tasty kobe beef in the home country 4TW

I've been there in 2003. Shinjuku is crazy. Hachioji was my first stop of stay for a day. Visited Ebisu for the Tokyo Auto Salon and the best day to go to take pics is Friday. But only press and vendor passes are there. i can't even remember the other places we went to. Stayed there for a week and had a lot of 2-3 hr drives in our van we rented for $200.00/ day

My first meal had a pork in the soup...takes a lil to get used to.

Thanks for sharing. I'll post up some pics later as well.

Absolutely awesome man, would love to go there!