T-O-K-Y-O
Trip Start
Dec 21, 2008
1
2
Trip End
Jan 10, 2009
Tokyo, Kanto, Japan
Sunday, January 4, 2009
So Olivia and I have been in Tokyo for the past 8 days and we have literally done SO much every day and every night it's impossible to go over everything. But we did the typical touristy things and also got off the beaten track and took advice of some locals Olivia's friends with about great places to eat and drink that tourists dont get too.
In point form and no particular order we did;
* Shinjuku - claim to fame being the busiest subway station in the WORLD. I can vouch for that. it was unreal. Shinjuku has a load of bars, neon, shops, department stores. It has quiet bars that squeeze in about 15 people to major clubs. Always busy, and a lot of fun. We visited here quite a few times!
* Shibuya - Remember that scene from Lost in Translation? I know Brett will. Well that's Shibuya. Kind of like Times Sqaure in New York Maybe? Giant Cross walk, thousands of people, neon everywhere, high rise posters and screens and advertising. Starbucks looks over the whole cross walk. Very cool. Good shopping and drinking and eating.
* Ginza - High fashion capital, Burberry / Gucci / Mercedes / Tiffany and Co and every other rich label you can imagine. All huge. The streets are clean and the people walking around clearly have money to burn. And the cars driving around - Ferrari's and Maserati's and more. We only visited here briefly before getting a little depressed about money! Felt a little scruffy to say the least!
* Ukihabara - Electronic city. everything electronic you can imagine, 8 storey department stores just with electronics all situated in this cool suburb.
* Tokyo Metropolis - This building is free to enter and you go up to the 45th floor and look down on all of Tokyo! And it was huge. You can see all the way to Mt Fuji. Did I mention it was free?! Pretty good.
* Tsukishima - off the beaten track and famous for Monja - which is a dish that is very hard to explain but ill try and put a picture on. Think pancake mixture, not sweet though, add seafood, noodles and cook it yourself? Looks like vomit but tastes great.
* Because it was New Years whilst in Tokyo all the shrines and temples were really crowded. So everywhere we went we kind of just stood back and watched the thousand of people go by.
I won't bore you with the loads of others places and people we met but I'll quickly fill you in on a couple highlights...
First one being our trip to the Annual Manga Comic Convention. Took the Monorail which was worth it alone, arrived at "Tokyo Big Sight" which is a massive space age building and made our way inside. There wouldve been atleast 15 - 20, 000 people here. In a few massive halls about 200m by 500m. Hundreds and hundreds of stalls, posters, people dressed up as their favourite Manga character. Now I must've been having a 'Brett' moment because it took me about half an hour to realise we were actually at a Manga Porn Festival. I'm not joking when i say it was ALL porn. Comic porn. Of every variety you can imagine! And no wonder when i looked around again there were more males dressed as their favourite female characters than there were females in the complex. It all clicked. It was an absolute crack up and what was impressive was the sheer amount of people that turned out for the event! It was huge. I got busted for taking pictures so theres not much to show but I got a couple of goodies.
Second highlight would be New Years Eve. Now it's not often I celebrate New Years in Tokyo with my best mate so we were up for a big one. We heard through the grapevine of a cool club that was pretty pricey to get into but hey, it was New Years and the music was going to be good. So we went along with a few other friends to this club which was called "The Warehouse". It was a pretty cool club, music was good, loads of people, it served redbull which was a major plus, and everything was going well at first glance. However, with my first drink in hand walking around checking the place out, within 2 minutes i turned around to Olivia and said, "Liv, I think we're in a gay bar..." And we were!! Maybe it was all the men with their shirts off, or the couple of guys dancing a little too close, or maybe it was just the posters on the walls which were a little suggestive. There goes our chances of a New Year's kiss! But what a fantastic night. Those guys know how to P-A-R-T-Y! There were dancers, entertainers, and costumes of all sorts and just a lot of love going around in that club! It was such a fun night, home at 4.30am still giggling.
We really did so much more in Tokyo I could write forever. But I'm too tired, brain dead from too many Moscow Mules over the lat 8 days and now in Kyoto and off to see some temples! And Ive just realised I cant get any pictures attached to this blog as the internet cafe were at wont let me upload! And the photos say it all! What a shame. I'll see if I can figure something out in the next day or so...
xx Case
