Japan Trip-Part One: Tokyo

I (Tom) am posting to the blog to give everybody a brief report on my trip to Japan over spring break. A group of us from school have been studying Japanese business and their trade relationship with the US for a semester and we capped the class with a trip to see what Japan was like. There were 32 of us in total and we spent 12 days and visited I think 7 cities. I will spread the posts over a few days to keep them short.

We left Indiana on Monday morning and due to crossing the international date line didn't arrive in Tokyo until Tues. afternoon. The flight from Chicago to Tokyo was 13+ hours.
Our first full day there we visited the Japanese Defense Ministry and US Embassy. It was weird, but cool, to see the stars and stripes flying in a different country.

The next morning we got up early and visited the Tsujiki fish market, where all of the fish sold in Tokyo comes through. There is an auction each morning for tuna caught the day beforeand and it is a mad house. This is supposedly the best tuna in the world and the wholesale buyers line up to bid on it. After watching the auction we visited one of the nearby sushi houses which only seat about ten people (I was pretty scrunched). We were told by several people that this is likely the best, most fresh sushi that a person is every likely to get. The guidebooks say that it is the world standard for sushi. I like sushi okay, but they gave us some pretty different stuff, like sea urchin, a shrimps head, salmon roe, etc. Some was fantastic, some was not so great. I kept thinking that Beth would be retching if she were there.

During the remainder of our stay in Tokyo we visited the exterior of the Imperial Palace (we couldn't get in because we got there late), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Group, Panasonic, and Dentsu advertising. Panasonic and Dentsu were especially cool. Panasonic has some amazing technology they are developing with televisions. They have a wall sized multimedia screen called a Life Wall that is amazing. I have linked to info on and a video of it here and here. Dentsu is more like a full service marketing consulting firm than an advertising agency. They went through a couple of cases and gave us some interesting insights into Japanese consumer behavior. After a few days we caught a train to Kyoto. I will detail both Kyoto and Osaka in the next post.

Japanese Self Defense Force (under treaty they are not permitted to have an army);



















Tomo and Tommy, our two native students who acted as guides and put the trip together















The moat and outer wall of the Imperial Palace














The always crowded Tokyo subway platform

Panasonic put out the red carpet for us.


















Near the robotics lab at Tokyo U














Traditional Japanese Bento Box lunch














A demonstration of the robots at Tokyo U


















Lunch at the Tokyo U cafeteria; pork cutlet, miso soup, tofu, rice
(note the extra large sized coke can)


















This is about as empty as we ever saw the subway cars














Sushi in Tsujiki; salmon, salmon roe, and tuna rolls; sea urchin, egg cake, ginger.














Tokyo skyline from Maranouchi; Tokyo tower is in the distance.














Me at the fish auction.


















Tuna caught the previous day














The market was extremely busy.


















US Embassy; you can barely see the flag


















Sardines for sale at the market


















Live crabs, scallops, and other shellfish.