After four awesome days in Kyoto, Blair and I take the bullet train back to Tokyo. The ride is just under three hours and goes through beautiful, mountainous regions covered in lush green forests. Off in the distance we catch an unobstructed view of Mt. Fuji which is pretty rare due to clouds and smog/fog. Not the most impressive mountain I've ever seen, but still pretty cool. Even more amusing is the guy in front of us unabashedly "reading" a Japanese porno magazine in plain view--two o'clock in the afternoon on a public train. Whatever gets him through the day, I guess.
We are pretty nervous about finding our way around Tokyo, a massive city of around 12 million people (NYC is 9 million). We are dropped at Tokyo Station in the heart of Tokyo at the peak of rush hour. It. Is. Packed. The trains are busting at the seams, the station is a solid sea of people moving in waves from one platform to another. Every transport system empties into this station--bullet trains, metro trains, subway trains, Japan Rail trains, the monorail--are you getting a visual?? Now here is the strange part...silence. Complete silence. No one is talking on the train or as they walk through the station, no one talks on cellphones, no music is piped into the station...all you hear are footsteps and faint announcements over the speaker system from distant platforms. It is impressive and creepy all at the same time.
So here we are in this mass of people trying to find our way to our next train with big bags on our backs and an awkward collection of maps for every different train type and line we could ever need. Amazingly, it takes us about 2.2 seconds to figure out what to do and where we need to go. That is how meticulously organized and well thought out the Japanese systems are. These people know what they are doing. Everything makes sense, everything is crystal clear, everything is spotlessly clean--we are pros at getting around Tokyo by the very first day. Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration...but not much.
Beyond the organization, quietness and cleanliness of Tokyo, we find it to be ridiculously safe as well. We never once feel in danger or like we are in a sketch area of town, and we hit a LOT of areas! As we head home from our last day of touring, we are navigating the chaotically organized mess of trains to get home and we see a trio of girls that couldn't be older than four and five years old. They are riding the train home from school, completely unsupervised and no one even blinks an eye about it. The youngest, who I swear is barely four years old, hops off the train at the same stop as us as her two little Magellan friends continue on. Without hesitation, she wanders up and out of the station, expertly scanning her train card as she exits and wanders home all by her lonesome.
We spend the next few days hitting all the tourist hot spots--Sky Tree Tower, Asakusa, Akihabara Electric Town, Imperial Palace, Shibuya (Scramble Crossing) and Yoyogi Park. We spent our last morning at Tsukiji Fish Market where Blair ate a delicious cow stomach stew from one of the market vendors. By the end of our stay, we are ready to move on to a new and cheaper country. It's just too, ridiculously expensive! We have stayed in five different places between Kyoto and Tokyo--we stayed at hostels, hotels and airbnb places where we were guests staying in locals' homes. We really like the experience of staying with people, but we both agree that it was too much moving around. Packing, unpacking and lugging these 35lbs bags that often is just too much. We will plan to stay places for three or more nights more frequently moving forward.
Now off to South Korea!
