Traveling to Tokyo... night in Roppongi
Trip Start
Jan 19, 2009
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80
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Trip End
May 06, 2009
Today was our second day in Japan and I met up with Silvi around 10am and went to the train station to catch a train to Tokyo. Our train didn't come for an hour so we hung out in the train station lobby and then hopped on the bullet train. The train ride was 2 hours and 40 minutes and made a few stops along the way. We slept the majority of the ride and then planned what we wanted to do towards the end of the ride. We arrived at Tokyo station around 2pm and went to find internet and lunch. We ended up walking around outside for a little while and then ended up back at the train station to grab lunch in a Japanese restaurant underneath the train station. The train station is huge and there is a shopping mall underneath it with lots of shops and restaurants. From what we have heard the Japanese love to go shopping and for all the stores around I can believe it! It seemed like it took forever to figure out where we wanted to spend the night but eventually we decided to go to Roppongi. Tokyo is the largest city in the world and is divided into nine main major subsections of the city. Roppongi is the district that is known for having great nightlife and since the trains stop running around midnight we wanted to stay in the area we wanted to hang out in for the night. The other eight subsections are known as Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Otemachi, Ueno, Shimbashi, Asakusa, and Tokyo. There are also two different railways that run through Tokyo called the JR and the Subway. I feel like now that I have navigated the Tokyo trains I can travel anywhere because I have never seen such confusing transportation routes. Roppongi is in the southwest section of Tokyo so we had to walk to the Kyobashi subway station and catch the Ginza line down to the Ginza station then switch to the Hibiya line and travel to the Roppongi station. It was stressful to say the least. However once we arrived in Roppongi we went to the visitor information station to find a cheap hotel or hostel to stay in for the night. We ended up at a hotel called "the B" and it was surprisingly very nice. We took a break in the room for a little while before heading to the Tsukiji Sushi Restaurant. I got ebi sashimi which is shrimp on top of rice without the seaweed roll and a maki roll that had salmon eggs on top and who knows what was inside of it. They both ending up being very good but a few months ago I don't know if I would have touched them. I have definitely become more open to trying food since the voyage has began and have been pleasantly surprised on many occasions about food "risks" I have taken. Afterwards we went by a four story grocery, clothing, and toy store where we looked around for a while. It was kind of like a mini Wal-Mart. We went back to the hotel to change before going out and ended up watching some Japanese baseball on the TV, talking, and using the internet before heading back out. Since it was a Tuesday night there wasn't much going on but we had fun in two different clubs before heading back to the hotel. We walked to our hotel down the street around 2am and were happy that despite the stress of getting to Roppongi earlier that day we had ended up in a great hotel and location.
