Bringing Home the Beacon: Day One in Wonder City

Home 3.5 weeks since Tokyo, jetlag looms but experiences resonate from eight days and nights in the flowery city. 

With thanks to the team at HITO-Communications Inc. for their generous hospitality, my first full date in Japan (17 Sept.) included a half-day trio of tourism experiences designed for international media registered with World Athletics. 

After boarding our bus at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium--site of 1964 Olympic gymnastics, 2020 Olympic table tennis and our World Championships accreditation pickup--the tour entourage with about 20 journalists from Australia, U.K., Slovakia and USA set out for Takarayu, which we learned is one of six remaining sento public bathhouses in the capital and 430 nationwide (down from 2,600 in 1968). 

Nestled in a low-rise residential area near barber shops and small markets, the family-owned business' name means "treasure hot spring" according to handout materials, from which the following details were also noted.  

Currently operated by the founder's grandsons, great-granddaughter and other employees with tenures over 70 years, the sento's current shrine-inspired building opened in 1938, now with features including:

• 
  A wrap-around veranda overlooking an Oniwa Japanese garden featuring dozens of koi and seasonal hydrangeas, a lovely place for tea and meditation before or after the bathing experience

• Numerous carvings, sculptures and paintings--including panoramic murals over the bathing areas--featuring guardian deities or award-winning likenesses of Mt. Fuji and its neighboring lakes

• 
  Nods to nostalgia, like yellow buckets known as "icons of the sento" popularized by a Japanese pharmaceutical company, or imported touches like a spa from Finland installed in 1986

While walking together barefoot was the closest our group got to nudity, sento tradition calls for all patrons to don their birthday suits in gender-specific sections of the venue (our blended tour was on the men's side). 

With some post-visit research inspired by the owner's presentation, I learned this comfortable group nudity is a form of camaraderie or "skinship" as "everyone is equal" in the sento scene, aka hadaka no tsukiai. For a thrill, a few of us dipped our arms to the elbows, immersing them in a low voltage "electric bath" in which pulses of electricity visibly vibrated the skin with current strong enough to buzz one's bones along the edge of discomfort. Coincidentally, the electrified tub resided near the floor-to-ceiling "Hell Painting" in vivid red hues. 

With our group photo and brief return-to-bus hike complete, tour stop two brought us to the 27 level Asakusa View Hotel and its top floor "Musashi" Sky Grill Buffet restaurant, a sumptuous experience blending Asian and Western cuisine (my cousin tells me the name refers to a famous warrior and subject of a fresh National Geographic article). 

I made a point of trying the exotic-to-me jellyfish salad (gooey with some zing) and a grilled kebab of octopi (chewy) but avoided a few mystery dishes (even the English descriptions spelled too much risk for my palate). Also, fell in love with the fresh juice bar with acai smoothies, a sweet and tasty Brazilian treat last enjoyed during the Rio 2016 Games. 

But even the best chef-crafted dishes at Mushashi are upstaged by the dining room's panoramic views facing Tokyo's oldest temple, Senso-ji, and its neighbor Asakusa Shrine (both of which top the to do list for my next Japan visit), with Asahi's beer glass-shaped world headquarters and its distinctive "flame object" (aka "golden turd") also visible from the hotel. My cousin shared that the designer of this Flamme d'or, Phillippe Starck, drew inspiration from an Olympic flame. 

The lunchtime vista also foreshadowed our third tour stop to, and my eyes' first views of, the globe's third-tallest freestanding structure, Tokyo Skytree. 

While my hunch before arrival was that the world's loftiest broadcast tower would be visible from anywhere across Tokyo, that assumption proved untrue. 

Rather, my first sightings of the 2,080-foot/634m building were from the penthouse lunch and from street level a few blocks from arrival, where our driver plunged his vehicle into a subterranean parking lot expansive enough to fit fifty -- that's 50! -- tour buses. Since our party including official Tokyo tourism officials, we parked in space No. 1, naturally). 

Inside the tower's base, I found the cavernous lobby akin to Lower Manhattan's National Sept. 11 Memorial atrium in terms of comfortably accommodating thousands of daily visitors and keeping them engaged whilst waiting in long lines for four custom express Toshiba elevators -- each designed to highlight traditional and elegant Japanese handicrafts celebrating each season -- built to whisk 40 passengers at a time. By the way, advance ticket purchases are very strongly suggested for families, couples and/or solo travelers. 

Our group was treated to views from an "off limits" peek up the tower's frame, an "architectural upskirt view" a U.K. reporter quipped to the groans of some and bewilderment of our hosts. 

Strangely, my ears did not pop when we unloaded on what is named Floor 350 (the levels correspond with meters above terra firma). Our first stop: The W1SH Ribbon monument at which visitors may purchase a gashapon vended bubble enclosing a swatch of colored fabric on which guests write their hopes or dreams for others or themselves. 

It was fun to tether my green-n-Sharpie edition on a branch near Olympic and World Champion Sergei Bubka tied his message the previous day, according to our guide. 

I spent our remaining time at Tembo Deck snapping photos and spotting landmarks across the cityscape. 

One unexpected sight was the outdoor window washers smiling back at dazed tourists. 

Though not as knee-quake terrifying as Chicago's Skydeck, there's also an expanse of glass flooring for those who wish to look at SkyTree's design from up top to bottom (cue the overheard Brit wit comment "downblouse!" views).  

The entourage then ascended to the Tembo Galleria at 450m, which features a wrap-around ramp to reach on foot the tour's apex at 451.2m, Sorakara Point, for more views. 

Sadly, the afternoon sky and horizon was only clear enough to make out the mountain range to our west, but not the all-star attraction, Fujisan. 

But our SkyTree experience did include a view of Mt. Fuji in that to promote the tower's home district and its hundreds of years of cultural history, as well as less-celebrated green initiatives, developers and Tokyo University's faculty of international tourism management collaborated to create "a traditional hands-on craft learning program for our sustainable planet" or #SusPla, from the first three letters of the last two words. 

Our handicraft du jour: Make your own mini screen, offered by Kataoka Byoubu, which enabled each member of our tour to create and take home a Edo keepsake. To recall the day, my screen selection was a semi-glossy version of Red Fuji, the famous woodblock print, and the mini screen now adorns a bedroom bookshelf. 

The hands-on program also offers Kimekomi fabric ball crafting and other cultural experiences. We all had a great time with our glue-coated paint brushes, but none of us were having a ball. 

Each of our tour hosts, from the bus team and guides to the owners of Takarayu and instructors at Kataoka Byoubu, earned sustained ovations and expressions of domo arigato for creating a fantastic introduction to several aspects of Tokyo. 

I also appreciated the Tokyo Metro Government office for providing a helpful brochure for the city, and interesting read during a family cafe meal en route to Japan National Stadium for my first night at the World Championships (more on that in next post to this site).  

A few nights later at another penthouse viewing point I caught my only nighttime glimpses of the SkyTree, brilliantly illuminated in violet for the World Athletics Championships, bringing to mind the tower's Olympic hues during the Tokyo 2020 Games-turned-2021 (see below). 

Tokyo shows the world how to bring home the beacon. 

Image credits: Top photo by Jordan McChesney; most other photos by Nicholas Wolaver except the screen image of Red Fuji via this retail site. Olympic and Tokyo 2025 images copyright Tokyo-Skytree

Calm Before The Storm -- Peek Inside Our Office

Today in the Olympic city, the morning got off to a good start. My hotel is apparently the home of several Japanese media outlets starting to check in for Olympic reporting duties, and it was cool to visit with some of the new arrivals from Tokyo, Nagoya and other areas of the 1998 and 1964 Olympic host nation.

At work there are new arrivals, too. A colleague from Toronto is my new office neighbor, and we'll soon be roommates at a rented waterfront apartment a few blocks from B.C. Place.

Posting here, for the folks back home, a peek at the office and what will become a "war room" of sorts for our little P.R. enterprise during the Vancouver Olympics.

The photos also include a few tools of the trade (yes, now using two phones), my office (at least until the next wave of colleagues and clients arrives and we start sharing desks), the sofa where we may be crashing a night or two, and the giant spoon attached to the office key (all the newbies get to carry one for a few days).

Feast your eyes on the hot-off-the-press Edelman 2010 Olympic pin!

IAAPA Attractions Expo part 3

Last week, working with Edelman client International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) at IAAPA Attractions Expo 2008 in Orlando, we met some of the most creative people in the world of theme parks, water parks, zoos, aquariums, family entertainment centers, attractions and cool places where people have fun.

There were plenty of head-turning rides and inventions on site -- one that captivated attention was an import from Tokyo: The Management of Dr. Fish! You may have seen this one on the news back in the late summer -- minnow-sized fish (technically, they are carp) with tiny teeth that will devour your dead skin while you soak your feet, hands or whatever needs "treatment" by the Good Doctor.

Since it was obviously an opportunity to "carpe diem," I asked the management team whether they approached the Tokyo 2016 Olympic bid organization about their treatment (apparently Dr. Fish already has a massive following in Japan and their marketing materials at IAAPA state they had more than $2 million in sales as fish "spas" in and around Tokyo.

Unfortunately, my questions were likely "Lost in Translation" so the International Olympic Committee 2016 selection team and/or Tokyo 2016 teams will have to discover Dr. Fish on their own during a site visit to Japan.

In the meantime, you can check out Dr. Fish here on the video posted with this entry. My colleague, Rachel, took time to try out Dr. Fish with me -- the sensation of being gnawed by tiny carp was interesting (at first, much like having one's feet tickled with a feather followed -- all the while bringing up memories of that great fish film, "Pirhana").

If there are any venture capitalists or other investors out there, drop me a line ... I want to tell you about my business plan for a "Dr. Fish" spa and on-site "Circle of Life Sushi Restaurant."