Tokyo, the Weekend That Had a Two Week Recovery
I wasn't supposed to go to Japan, but due to some major changes in my original plan I decided to fork over the cash and go with the homies. I am incredibly happy about my awesome last minute decision, although I paid for it for a few weeks after. Japan was totally rad, but extremely tiring. We did pretty much everything a human can do in the amount of time we had, by covering most major areas and sights. Arriving back to Korea was pretty rough, we were all exhausted for two weeks after. Tokyo kicked our asses and left us wrecked to say the least. This blog will be short and sweet because we packed so much in I now find it hard to recap it all on paper (or computer screen I guess). To be honest a lot of it was a blur and not necessary to describe in a blog.
Whitney, Kristin and I all slept over at our friend Simon’s house the night before because he lives really close to the bus terminal. Our flight was out of Busan so we had to take an airport shuttle bus in the AM. Whitney and I got a bit drunk like idiots. We still blame it on the extremely cheap rum we decided to consume after drinking beer and soju at dinner. Giant idiots is all I have to say about that. The morning was a hungover / still drunk haze. We met Sophia at the airport in Busan after taking a bus from Daegu. A nice couple Kristen and I met on our flights to and from Thailand were on our flight as well as Kosta, Kellie, and a few other friends. The Busan Airport was crawling with English teachers happily fleeing Korea during its national holiday, Chuseok. This is the Korean equivalent of an American Thanksgiving.
Arriving in Tokyo was great, met some funny twins from Las Angeles who entertained Sophia and I whilst we were in the immigration line. I forgot to mention Kristen booked her flight before everyone else and the cheapest option was out of Seoul so she had to get up at the crack of dawn to board a bus up to Seoul. In the end her airfare was more expensive and she had a 3-4 hour bus ride up to Seoul. Ouch. The girl is always happy so it didn’t bother her one bit. Sophia and I ate while waiting for her and felt a small earthquake! I thought it was just my head from the hangover, but then the old couple sitting next to us made it clear the ground beneath us was moving. I looked up and the windows were shaking. Welcome to Japan! That was the only one we felt...thank goodness! Once we found Kristin we hopped on the train and headed into the giant metropolis of Tokyo to check into the hostel.
The hostel, Asakusa Smile, was very cute and conveniently located near Asakusa subway station. The area is a bit on the outskirts of Tokyo’s main metropolitan area, but still easy to get around the city. We checked in, relaxed a bit in the hostel and planned out what we wanted to do that night. There are a few major parts of the city that have a great nightlife. There was a bar in our hostel that offered us a free drink, so we started there. It was a surprise to see that most of the people in the bar were local Japanese people. All of them wanted to chat with us which was a nice change from Korea. Japanese are a lot more relaxed, open minded, and overall have better English. After having a complimentary drink at the hostel we were guided by two extremely nice Japanese people downtown to an area called Roppongi. We had planned on a different area, but our new friends told us Friday night is best in Roppongi. Japan has got it right, they know whats up. Korea is twenty to thirty years behind Japan in many ways. The whole time we were making comparisons and wishing we lived in Japan. This came as no surprise to us though. Poor Korea has had to overcome a lot of national issues, but is now doing well and is an amazing country.
The partying in Tokyo is on a different level. We were out all night after missing the last subway. The taxi back to our hostel would have broken the wallet and bank accounts so we decided to stay out until the subway started running again. We ran into some of our friends who were couch surfing with the legend known as Takeshi. He showed us an amazing time on the town with his friends. He’s a surgeon during the day, but at night he’s an animal. We had sooooooo much fun bar hopping and dancing. At 9am in the morning the streets were still packed with people.
Day two in Tokyo was spent half in bed. Our room was shared with three French people and we all slept in together. Eventually we woke up and went to get food and did some wondering around the area. The weather was still really hot in September. The forecast showed rain, but we had perfect weather the entire trip! Our friends Kyle, Courtney and Ackisha came in that afternoon and the giant group was complete!
That night we attempted to head down to the area of Shibuya where Harajuku is located. We went with the Frenchies, two other guys from France staying in the hostel and our big group. It didn't take much time at all for everyone to become split up. There are so many people in Tokyo, all it takes is crossing one street and half the group is lost. It was fine though, traveling in packs is a recipe for disaster anyway. We went shopping, checked out Harajuku, and ate some sushi. Harajuku is awesome, definitely an area for fashionistas! Japanese people have some serious style, especially compared to Korean people who all dress the same and purposely try to blend in rather than stand out.
The area of Shibuya is a rich part of town with lots of high end stores, but if you walk a few blocks away you will find Harajuku. It’s one long street that is almost like an alleyway, with smaller alleys branching off with small stores, coffee place, and some restaurants. Japan is not like Korea in that there are not buildings with floors and floors of restaurants. It took us a bit to find a sushi restaurant in this part of town. The place was a sushi boat restaurant where small plates displaying various options go around on a pulley system and you take what you want. The plates are color coated for price, so at the end you add up the plates for the bill. It was great, we had a pretty big stack when finished!
Day three was filled with seeing the sights. Many of them. We got up early and went to sumo wrestling. We arrived super early and it was just the wrestlers trying to make it into the competition and no one else was really there. At least we went though and saw some sumo men. Beasts I tell you! Next we headed to the Sensoji temple located in Asakusa, near our hostel. It was really nice, very similar to Korean temples. That afternoon we checked out a giant park with a fortress and palace we attempted to tour. Aparently you need to book at least a week in advance to see the fortress so we kept walking towards Tokyo Tower. Eventually we made it there after eating some lunch. At this place you buy a ticket at a vending machine and give it to the cooks, pretty neat! Tokyo tower looks like a smaller, red Eiffel Tower. It was an amazing view on a clear day! You could see the base of Mount Fuji, but that was about it for the mountain. It is usually covered in fog and or clouds, rare to see it in full view. Maybe someday. I would love to get back to Japan for a month or so to tour around the whole country, hike mount Fuji and snowboard. Snowboarding in Japan is on my bucket list, hoping to get there next winter vacation. It is expensive, but hey you only live once.
Day four. Sophia had to leave early, so after sending her off on the train Whitney, Kristin, Kyle and myself went to have sushi and sake for lunch. Kristin had never tried sake before, I think she liked it. We got a bit of a buzz and headed for a river boat cruise. It was gorgeous and a great way to see some of the city. We got off at another really nice park, although it was very hot by the time we got there and walked pretty fast through it. We stopped off at Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest one in the world. Early morning is when to catch the action, but we came when everything was closing down. It just didn't fit into our schedule to make it there at 5am. It’s okay though because I have seen pictures and we found a small place to eat the best and freshest sushi EVER! It was amazing.
That night we went to an awesome restaurant near our hostel we had walked by a few times everyday going to and from the subway. Its basically a kabob place, you order different kinds of meat and veggies that come on skewers. We also drank some fairly strong sake which started our last night in Tokyo off well! We went down to the area of Shinjuku which is also the home to Golden Gai. This place is a must see for sure, I would love to go back sometime! The streets are small like alleyways with no cars. The bars are tiny hole in the wall joints that hold maybe 10 people each. They are great for bar hopping! Each one is equipped with karaoke and really good snacks. Asia truly has an obsession with karaoke.
The area is know for gay bars, and brothel type places. So in other words truly Asia haha. We were lured into a place by a couple from Africa. He gave us free karoke and really strong drinks at half price. The second some other guys came in the girl went straight over to them (hostess style) and the karoke was no longer free. The man told me he wanted to invite his friends for us to talk with.I told him frankly we were just having fun and didn't want to deal with any of the shady stuff. The drink was very strong so I think I told him in more detail, but he was nice and we enjoyed ourselves while we were there! We went to many different bars, met a lot of awesome Japanese people, danced and eventually made it back to the hostel for a few hours of sleep before heading back to Korea. This is just some of the highlights of the trip, we did much much more and writing about it makes me exhausted!
Oh, I forgot to mention that I was lucky enough to see my old roommate Junko from Hawaii. She stopped by the hostel one morning and surprised me! We didn’t meet up after that as planned, she was really busy with work and her own life, but I got to give her a big hung and talk with her for a bit. Never imagined I would see Junko in Tokyo. Dreams do come true! Thanks for reading. XO
Photo Album:
https://picasaweb.google.com/103972019290631417090/TokyoJapan?authkey=Gv1sRgCK3GyprViNHG0gE#
