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| Jeremy in the biggest city in the world...
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Konichiwa (‘Hello’ in Japanese),
I know there are at least 3 people out there who are dying to hear about my Tokyo trip…so here it is. We worked on Tuesday which was fine, went pretty fast as I was excited to get going to Japan. We (Ally, Candice, Heather, and myself) planned to take a bus at 3am to Seoul to catch our flight at 12:30. I know it sounds like we were being a little cautious as we did arrive at the airport by 6:30am, but as it was the beginning of the Korean holiday, we didn’t want to take our chances and miss our flight.
The flight and everything went well and we got to Tokyo at around 2:30. This was followed by an extended period of time on the subway and looking for our hostel. When we arrived at our hostel it was around 6pm. We got settled and decided to go on an adventure and find some dinner. We found this nice little place and I bought us all sake, you know, since we were in Japan. Sake is quite good, similar to soju, but without the not-so-good aftertaste and the feeling of a warm hug that sake provides. The dinner was good and we just looked around Asakusa, the area of town our hostel was in, and made our way back to the hostel.
We met a few people and started drinking $2.00 tall-boys from the vending machine. We also hooked up with this guy named Seb (Sebastian) from Australia who arrived at the hostel at the same time we did. We drank and played cards for a few hours and ended up finally going to sleep after a long day.
The next day, Thursday, we got up and had breakfast, then headed out for the day. There was a lot of interesting stuff around our hostel, including a park with coy fish and statues, a temple, and a strip of shops that was about 4 blocks long called Asakusa Nakamise Shopping St. We got our fortunes in the temple which was interesting, Candice got a bad fortune (which would shine through later) and I got a good fortune which was excellent news.
After we browsed around there for a few hours, we got on the subway and headed downtown, well, haha, one of the downtowns I guess (Tokyo is kind of…what’s the word? oh yeah, gigantic); this one was called Shibuya. We walked around and saw a lot of huge/interesting architecture including the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office building which has 48 floors and is 243 meters tall. This is also the area of Tokyo that the big electronics market is. Stores and stores of every kind of electronics, we walked through a lot of them – I bought some speakers for my iPod that I haven’t been able to make work yet which sucks as I can’t exactly take them back. We walked around a bit more, ate dinner at this Indian restaurant, and headed back to the hostel (it takes a while to get around in Tokyo as it is the biggest city in the world) as we had to be up at 7:30am for our tour in the morning.
The next morning we got up and had to figure out how to find this hotel where the morning tour started, which was about 25 minutes away by subway. We got to the station and got on board at about 8:00am. I should mention, for those that don’t know, that there are over 30 million people in Tokyo…which is around how many people live in Canada. So yeah, the subway in the morning, when everyone was on their way to work, was kind of crowded, jeeze, it was like standing in a phone booth with 4 or 5 other people.
We got to our subway stop – finally – and we made our way to this hotel and found our bus tour. Our bus tour was really good. Our tour guide was funny and informative. We made a few stops including the Tokyo Tower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Tower), which is the tallest tower in Japan. It’s 333m tall and gives you a great view of all of Tokyo in each direction. Check out the pictures. We also visited the Imperial Palace (where the Crowned Prince lives); we didn’t get to go in, but we got to see the surroundings which were pretty scenic. We also saw a few parks and a temple.
The tour ended and they we were dropped off in Ginza, which is a giant shopping area (giant may be an understatement). There were so many stores, mostly pretty expensive brand-name stores that we didn’t even go into, but were pretty neat to see…you know, being from Regina and all. We had lunch and walked around there for a few hours just observing Japanese life. After that we made our way to another downtown area called Roppongi – more buildings, more lights and more people. We headed to the Hard Rock Café where we had some beers and I had ‘Joe Perry’s Quesadilla’ which was excellent. I am actually going to be writing him a letter after I finish this novel to tell him how much I enjoyed it. Anyway, we all bought some stuff at the gift shop and we headed on our way.
Post dinner we went into this bar called Geronimo. It had an American Indian theme and a deal that if you drank 15 shots in one night you got a plaque put on the wall. It was a cool idea and seeing some of the things people wrote on their plaques were even more entertaining. No, I didn’t do it, didn’t have enough cash as shots were about $10 a piece, and I just didn’t have the time. I bought us all a shot during happy hour and we hit the road.
After that, we got on the subway and headed back to the hostel and met up with Seb and did some drinking followed by an excursion to a nearby bar with some other people at our hostel. We drank for a while and talked then headed back to the hostel. This was just one those nights that you just had to be around to enjoy. If you really need to know the details, ask me when I get back as it is better told in person. If you do ask me to tell the story, the password is “Seb’s yellow nut-huggers.”
Saturday we all slept in. We got and ate breakfast and wandered out with the plan of attending a beer factory tour which would give us 20 minutes of free drinking. There was some confusion (note to self: don’t go on a vacation/trip with 3 girls without any other guys) and we didn’t make the tour, but it was alright, we just did some more exploring and ate lunch at this little restaurant we found. I’m not a huge sushi fan, but I figured, since I was in Japan, I may as well give it a go. It was alright, nothing spectacular – I just didn’t want anyone commenting that I didn’t eat sushi while I was there.
After that we split up and did our souvenir shopping down that shopping street near our hostel.
We met up and got ready for what would be my most memorable experience in Japan – dinner at a Japanese person’s house. His name was Hiro and he picked us up at 7pm from the hostel. He drove us to his place which was a cool experience because people in Japan drive on the opposite side of the road – a fact that I did not know until I arrived. I rode shotgun to his place and got a front-seat view to driving the opposite way which wasn’t that big of a deal until I stopped thinking about and panicked for a brief second wondering why we were going the wrong way.
We arrived at Hiro’s house and met his wife. He led us upstairs to a room with a sort of shrine to commemorate an upcoming Japanese special day of some sort. I forget what it was called, but for that reason, he made us a special meal to celebrate. That was the first of the two meals we ended up having. After that, Hiro showed us a few other rooms including one with all of his and his wife’s kimonos and an assortment of other Japanese relics.
Following that we went downstairs and Hiro told us to crowd around his kitchen table and pick up the 4 fans that were lying on top. Shorty after that, he walked back in with a giant bowl of rice and we had to cool the rice fast with the fans. I think we did this because we were going to be working the rice with our hands as we would soon be making our own sushi.
We went and sat around his coffee table that had all different types of fillings for the sushi. There was seaweed to wrap it with, and crab, tuna, chicken, raw fish of some sorts, cucumber, radish, pickles, and a few other things to accompany the rice. The meal was almost as good as the experience. Following dinner we had coffee and Hiro drove us back to the hostel. It started snowing at this time – thick ugly snow, it was basically raining slush. Anyway, as a result, we said goodbye to Hiro and decided just to hang out and drink at the hostel.
The hostel had, amongst other things, a great atmosphere, television, video games, vending machines, a kitchen, washer & dryer, spacious rooms with bunk-beds (ours was an 8 person room, we shared it with random people coming and going each day), internet/computer access, and an assortment of board games including Monopoly. We weren’t really doing anything other than drinking so we decided to get a game going. Candice, Heather, Ben (an English guy we met and hung out with), and myself wanted to participate. This is about the time when mine and Candice’s fortunes came through. After all the properties were bought, Candice had Water Works and a railroad…haha, needless to say, she was the first one out. I ended up winning, probably as a result of my good fortune, and then we made a 2:00am walk to a 24 hour McDonalds.
When we woke up Sunday we had a 4 or 5 hours to kill before we had to make our ways to the airport so we decided to go see a few more things. We headed to Shinjuku which contains the World’s busiest crosswalk. Standing there was mesmerizing; there would be hundreds of people lined up waiting to cross the street on every change of red to green. We hung out there for a bit, then headed a few blocks over to this Lego exhibit Ben had heard about the day before. It was a bunch of different displays of architecture from around the world built out of Lego. It was done to raise money for peace and was cleverly called ‘Peace by Piece.’
We did some more exploring and looking around then had to get started on what would be a long journey home. It was about an hour and a half on the subway to get to the airport. We were on our plane that left at around 6. The flight lasted for the better half of three hours. We were back in Korea, through customs, waiting for our bus that came at 10:30 at about 9pm. We waited around and jumped on our bus to Iksan (a city about 35-40 minutes outside of Gunsan) which was about a 3 hour journey. Then, finally, we got a $45 cab ride at 2:00am and I gladly said goodnight to the girls.
Blah, jeeze, it was a much easier story to tell in person. Anyway, that was my trip, at least the majority of it anyway. I would recommend travelling to Japan to anyone. It’s clean, the people are kind and organized, and there is a lot to do and see. The only bad things I could say is that it can be expensive (but I was coming from Korea where everything is quite cheap) and the subway system can be a bit confusing, other than that though, the experience is worthwhile.
Alright, back to work this week, and this Saturday we are having our school’s grand opening party that all the parents have been invited to…Nate and I are hoping there is alcohol. Anyway, anything new with you? Let me know.
Jer
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Posted by Jer on 2008-02-13 22:43:39 | Rating: | Views: 124
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