Tokyoh yeah, Japan

09.05.2009

Travel

Well, well, well.. what can I say? Probably nothing profound. Probably nothing that hasn't been said before. Well, Japan is AWESOME. I'm speaking of Tokyo to be more specific—having never seen any other part of Japan—but I'm sure the rest is also cool.

We only spent three days here but it was great and is a place I could certainly spend a lot more time. If I were to summarise our activities in a small list of mostly nouns and some other joining words it would be: subway, plastic food displays, ferris wheel, competitive photo booth game, bathhouse, subway, hotel, subway, coffee supplies store, actual coffee shop, neon, fish market, Sumo, Sushi Train, Yuki, pedantic airport check-in attendant who was only doing her job.

The photos do the talking but one event not captured on CCD was our the events that took palce on our last night there after we spent some time at a bar on a back street and got riotously merry. We got back to our room, passed out and forgot to set the alarm for our early flight the next day. After both (luckily) randomly waking up at about 4am, I began to realise that me, the strange sushi train octopus and all the sake were not getting along. I was also a bit stressed because we had no more cash on us, and so proceeded to walk through the streets of Tokyo at 4am in my thongs looking for an ATM and occasionally bending down to 'take a closer look of the bushes'.

The train ride to the airport was a living hell and, having arrived, we were then told we had to pay 360 euro for 8kg of excess baggage despite telling them we were moving country and pleading with them to be reasonable. (Side note: If you do any multi-leg international travel, make sure your baggage allowance doesn't go down between the first and second flight.) So we had to frantically put on clothes, jackets and hiking boots, re-pack and post a whole box of our stuff from the airport.

The plane was half full.

But apart from that it was awesome.

Walking through the back streets

Near our hotel for the first night

A temple

Get that stupid idiot's head out of the way! What a stereotype tourist photo. Sorry.

Quick shuteye

This is how everyone sits on the trains. More specifically they all sleep in this half dozing state with their feet together and on the floor, their belongings on their lap and their head down. Even when they're asleep they still seem polite.

The ferris wheel in Yokohama

At night this time. Rainbow brite. As seen from the Onsen across the road.

The rooftop of the Onsen

This is a bathhouse that we would never have found if it wasn't for our local friend Sachi, who took us here. When you chekc in they give you a bath robe and off you go.

The rooftop of the Onsen

Takeshita Exit

We took it.

Massive park

There's a huge park in the middle of Tokyo. It's almost a jungle actually.

In the massive park

Rani, you're not tall enough.

In the massive park

Shibuya I think

Neonsville anyway..

Tokyo Fishmarket

Although this was high on our list of things to do, when we got there we just felt totally in the way (because we were totally in the way). Aside from the sushi bars around the outside of the market, the tourists here are just in the way. It's still a pretty amazing thing to witness though.

Japanese Coffee

Wow. This was the pinnacle of a 90 minute search through some part of Tokyo to find a coffee shop we were told about, only to find that they were just a coffee supplies shop. We then found this place. AWESOME.

The bar

This guy roasts his own beans and has different blends too. He makes simple gravity/filter coffee. You choose your cup and saucer from the collection of about 200 he has on the wall behind the bar. They are all amazing pieces of china.

My choice

I think this was actually a danish designer? Can't remember.

My choice

One of the display cases of china cups

SUMO

What a strange, strange sport. Each match: 5 minutes of warming up, superstitious rituals and psyche outs, 5 seconds of wrestling. Over. New contestants. Repeat...

SUMO

The referee (in yellow) runs around the outside like a madman. I'm not sure what he's doing.. apparently there are around 300 'throws' that can win you the match. He's probably looking out for one of those.