A Tokyo travelogue, and Tuesday at the Tokyo Dome

TOKYO — This is a big city, much bigger than Chicago. In fact, by most estimates the Tokyo megalopolis is the largest in the world, around 37 million people. The city of Tokyo itself is about 14 million, the rest is six neighboring “prefectures,” as they call them here.

One way to get an idea of how large this city is, is to go to Tokyo Skytree. This consists of a large tower whose purpose is as a broadcasting tower. But there’s also a huge shopping mall attached to it, as well as observation decks at two different levels. Here’s where you go into the observation deck area:

Al Yellon

Here’s a photo from the lower observation deck where you can see the Tokyo Dome:

Al Yellon

The Dome is a large edifice and there’s a lot to do around it but… it’s just lost in a sea of huge buildings. Here are a couple of other photos that show you just how large the megalopolis is.

Al Yellon

After going up to the higher level, I came back down, walked through the mall area and then met some friends for a teppanyaki dinner at a restaurant on the 31st floor of a building attached to the Skytree complex. If you haven’t done this before, the chefs prepare the food right in front of you and serve it in several “courses.” Here’s one of them:

Al Yellon

Given the current exchange rate with the yen, this was really quite reasonable. All the courses, plus dessert and drinks, came to about $75 per person.

Skytree at night:

Al Yellon

Tuesday morning before the game, I went in search of Tokyo Series merchandise. In addition to a huge store adjacent to the Dome — which always had a 45-minute long line — there are several other stores located around Tokyo. This one is near the famous Shibuya Crossing:

Al Yellon

Unfortunately, MLB made a mistake with merch. The selection here wasn’t great, as you can see here, mostly picked over:

Al Yellon

I heard the same thing from many fans — they simply couldn’t get anything they wanted. I did find a Tokyo Series T-shirt, but there were no pins, something I really wanted, and the official series baseball, which they did have at the Dome, sold out quickly. Hoping there will be more merch tonight, and there’s one more place I am going to check out on Thursday. Of the merch that was there, 90 percent of it seemed to be Ohtani or Dodgers gear. I get that, but I’d have also liked to see more Tokyo Series stuff.

This is where I had lunch Tuesday:

Al Yellon

They serve all kinds of grilled and fried foods. The server there tried to help us with translations — some of the food had translations in the menu, some didn’t. The reason it was so empty was that this was about 11:30. Apparently the Japanese daytime office workers don’t take their lunch breaks until about an hour after that.

The server saw all the baseball stuff my friends and I were wearing and told us he was a big fan of Seiya Suzuki. That brought smiles and laughter. Baseball, as you surely know, is a universal language.

After lunch we went across the famed Shibuya Crossing:

Al Yellon

Six or seven main roads intersect here and there’s a cycle of the traffic lights that’s only for pedestrians. It’s amazing to see everyone know exactly where they are walking, no collisions, everyone completely polite and respectful.

Then there was the food at the Tokyo Dome. Let me tell you that there’s so much stuff that it’s overwhelming to try to choose. They have traditional ballpark stuff like hot dogs, burgers and pizza, but also more traditional Japanese food. I wound up getting what was essentially equivalent to chicken fingers and fries. It was very good, and something like that at a MLB park would cost you somewhere around $13. What I had cost $7.75. That’s the case for most food and drink at the Tokyo Dome. I don’t usually drink alcohol at games — who wants to spend most of the game in the men’s room? — but I did notice that most beer, brought over by vendors who are exclusively young women, was about 900 yen, or about $6 at the current exchange rate.

Here are a few photos of the concession area. I’ll try to have something a bit more adventurous tonight, if I can figure out what I’m ordering.

Al Yellon

I mentioned Ohtani before. Here’s a line where people get bottled drinks out of the machine shown. Pretty much everyone in line here had an Ohtani jersey on.

Al Yellon

Incidentally, a 20-ounce bottle out of this machine is 350 yen. That’s about $2.35. For something like this at a MLB park you’d pay around $7.50.

Here are some photos from the pregame festivities and from my seat at the Dome.

Al Yellon

Hope you enjoyed this little travelogue, and got a bit of the flavor of Tokyo that I’ve had over the last couple of days. As ever, the Japanese people I’ve run into, both at the Dome and elsewhere, are unfailingly polite and helpful, and most of them do speak at least some English. I’ve tried to learn a few Japanese words and the folks here do seem to appreciate the effort.

It’s just after 7 a.m. Wednesday as I’m completing this post and it’s rainy and chilly (about 40 degrees) with some rumbles of thunder outside so I’m not likely doing much this morning, just getting ready to head to the Dome this afternoon for what we all hope is a Cubs win and a series split. I’m staying in Japan for several days after tonight’s game to do other non-baseball things and I’ll write those up here as I go along.

For any of you who are in Tokyo and will be at tonight’s game, my partner Miriam and I will be in aisle 42, lower deck, the ADA row (which is directly behind all the lower deck seating, note, the tickets say 42, but it’s actually between 40 and 41). Hope to see you there! Go Cubs!