Day 5-9: Tokyo

A little bit behind with the blog now so I'll try to summarise a couple of the days rather than going into detail!

We spent a few days visiting a few various areas of the city; Shinjuku, Asakasa and Ginza to name a few. We mostly just browsed the shops and observed the people. The Japanese are so orderly, extremely patient, polite and punctual!

The nights were mostly spent in the lounge of the hostel chatting, watching a movie or two and having a few beers.

The nights also gave me a chance to start reading my book which I had been meaning to do since the start of the trip. Bill Bryson: Down Under. Normally it takes me a while to get into a book but all it took to get me interested in this one was to flip it over and read the blurb. "It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhibited continents and still Australia teems with life - a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else". FANTASTIC! Especially since we're going to end up there in a couple of months!

It was strangely entertaining, reciting certain parts of the first 100 pages to Gav, explaining how of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. How five of its creatures - the funnel-web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. How even the cutest and fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out in a nip. Luckily we will only have to deal with things like the box jellyfish and Bluebottle jellyfish (I hope!!).

We also decided one night that, if possible, we wouldn’t mind paying Mount Fuji a visit, especially with it only being a 2 hour coach journey away (even less on the Shinkansen (Bullet Train)). We came across a tour operator who offered a ride up Mount Fuji, a cruise on Lake Ashi and sweeping views of celebrated Hakone National Park from Mt Komagatake which we would access by a cable car ride. We decided this would be the best option in order to make a good day of it and booked it.

The coach for the trip was set to leave at 9am sharp and given the punctuality of these people, we knew we had to be there with plenty of time to spare. The fact that we had three trains transfers to get to the bus station didn’t help! We got up at 7.15, got ourselves ready and left to conquer the metro underground trains during one of the busiest times of the day! Now I don't know if you know what the world record for people fitting into a Mini is. It's 21 (See below). Now imagine that on a larger scale, say a train carriage! You get the picture.

The only way to get onto a train, if you make it this far, is shear brute force. They have ten carriages compared to our measly six and trains come on an average of about two minutes apart, yet every train is packed to the brim. What seems to be the most favorable approach for people to get on these already full trains is to turn backwards, place one hand inside the carriage door and use that as a leaver to push yourself and everybody behind you backwards so you can get in far enough so the door won't close on anything valuable. When inside, the concentration of people is so high the body heat acts as a sauna and you sweat out most of your body weight. Despite this, the Japanese seem to have mastered the ability to sleep while standing up. They simply just lean on the person next to them and away they go until their stop!

We made it to the last train transfer, bought the final ticket for it and attempted to go through the gate to get to the line. Now it wasn’t till later that I learned Tokyo Metro is run by a number of different operators, most of which don't really like each other and involve purchasing a completely new ticket for their line. This was totally unknown to us at the time and after failing to get the gate barrier to let us through numerous times, we went to the gate helpdesk, told them the ticket wasn’t working, only to be issued a refund for that ticket and be sent on our way. That unfortunately didn’t help answer our question, so we went back to the ticket issuing machine and bought the same ticket again, hoping that if we tried a different gate we would be let through!

No.

Time was getting on so we ran outside and hailed a taxi. Jumping in we explained where we needed to go but unfortunately the taxi driver didn’t understand. We handed him the booking confirmation sheet for our tour which had the address of the bus station on and the driver SLOWLY reached into his pocket to pull out a pair of glasses. "Oh God" I muttered to Gav. "AHHH BUS STATIONS!??" he said.

The next half hour must have been the most indirect driving route to this bus station. I think we must have gone down almost every side road in that part of Tokyo and by five to nine I knew we were doomed.

At 9.15 we pulled up in front of the Bus Station, literally threw the money at the driver and jumped out to make a dash for the bus terminal. We got inside, reached the tour check in desk and were told we had JUST missed the bus. It had gone! Our faces dropped, we turned and started to walk away. "Hey Mister, wait!" someone shouted. We turned to see one of the women calling us over. She told us to wait and just a few seconds later a guy appeared. He offered us a refund or the chance to go on the following days tour! "We'll go tomorrow please!" I said.

Since we didn’t have anything to do for the rest of the day we decided to book ourselves in for an afternoon tour of Tokyo which would visit some temples, the Imperial Palaces gardens (which strangely had orange grass), a popular tourist shopping street and finally a "cruise" downriver back to the bus station.

During this tour I received my fortune which consisted of things like "Do not take a trip", "Do not travel", "The sick person will not get better", "The person will not wait" and other fantastic things like this...

After the tour we actually managed to navigate our way back to the hostel with the trains, a relief since we would be making the journey again the following day. Upon returning to the hostel I think I went to sleep straight away. There was no way I was going to miss that bus again the next day!

Day 3-4: Tokyo

This morning we chilled for a while before deciding to go for a walk down the street to check out a super market a Canadian guy called Kevin told us about yesterday as we were settling into the hostel room. Having not had a drink since around 6pm the previous night we were both pretty thirsty and decided to get a drink from one of the can machines that line the streets of Tokyo. Gav went for a can of pop but as I was still feeling a little drowsy I went for a can of coffee to wake me up. I expected a cold coffee as you often get back home from a vending machine, but a boiling hot can popped out, not something I expected from an outdoor machine in the middle of a street.

When we got to the supermarket we couldn’t believe all the stuff they had and although I was determined to get something authentically Japanese to cook back at the hostel, I was deterred by all the descriptions and cooking instructions in Japanese without pictures! We settled for something a little less sophisticated (bread and cheese!) and took it back to the hostel.

We were quite jet lagged so Gav went for a nap while I stayed chatting to a couple of guys from Canada, Joe and Ben. They had just arrived too and were taking it easy for the first day. We watched some random documentary about how an old Japanese tribe used to hang their peoples coffins on an 800ft cliff face, hundreds of years ago. It seems a pretty impossible feat.

That night we sat in chatting with some of the other guys from the hostel. Joe and Ben are from Vancouver, as is Kevin it turns out. Apparently there are tonnes of Canadians and Australians travelling these parts. The Aussies come to get out of the heat and the Canadians come here on their way to Australia, in an attempt to get out of the cold!! Another guy called Ant is from London. He’s aiming to end up in Australia too and do some work as well!

Next day we went to Akihabara, one of the fourteen mini cities of Tokyo. Akihabara is known as the “Electric City”, with its neon lit streets that are packed full of electronic goods. Apparently if you can't find what you are looking for here, you probably won’t be able to find it in Tokyo.

We set about exploring, having a look at the horde of shops. There were tonnes of ridiculously cheap shops, one with a tub of cameras that were all priced at 2000 yen (about 15 quid). Some of the cameras themselves were really good. One of them was a Fuji, which I’m pretty sure is the same as my Aunt and Uncle has. Only downside was the big sign saying “NO REFUND NO RETURN”, that and the fact they came without any battery or box!

After having a good look around we headed back to the hostel and picked up some noodles and a few beers on the way. The latter of the night was spent drinking them and chatting with the other guys and watching films.

Day 1-2: Tokyo

Here we go!!

We left the UK at 7.15 on January 13th from Manchester to Frankfurt Germany! As flights go this one wasn’t bad, only an hour and a half with cabin crew that chain fed you as much coffee, tea or soft drinks they could for free. Only downside to this flight was the turbulence on the landing which made even the cabin crew uneasy. Despite this Gav slept through it until we were told to get off.

Next we were faced with baggage collection. After waiting half an hour for our bags, we realised they weren’t turning up. Little did we know that because we were on a connecting flight, our bags had been automatically transferred to our next plane. Good job we had another 3 hours to wait for the next flight.

Finally we boarded the plane for Tokyo! 11 hours of flying with next to no leg room followed. This combined with very little sleep made it not such a fantastic flight (Gav and I also decided not to go to sleep the previous night since we were getting up at 3am to travel to the airport. This seems very silly now!).The amount of Japanese people wearing surgical masks was daunting as well. This coupled with the amount of people who were falling sick throughout the flight made it worse and every time this happened to someone, a few more people pulled out their masks. Was there something we didn’t know that we should?! I guess the free beer (that was surprisingly good for German lager) and the free wine were a good consolation.

Upon arrival to Tokyo, the efficiency of the Japanese became apparent. In the time we had walked from the plane to luggage collection peoples bags were already circling on the carousels. Our bags must have gone on first as they were the last to come out! Once we had them we went through customs which despite having to have finger prints scanned and photo taken, took no time at all. The train station wasn’t a problem to find either. It is built below the ground floor of the airport and has two different lines running out of it with trains leaving from it regularly. The ticket ordering machine was operated by a member of staff and despite us having a set of directions that would take us directly to the hostel we ended up with a direct ticket to the main Tokyo station.

The train journey was around an hour long. As soon as we entered some of the urban areas on the outskirts of Tokyo we could immediately see how different the country was to anything we had seen prior. Japanese buildings have no symmetry whatsoever. They are completely random shapes and sizes.

As we rolled into the Tokyo main station we realised how far away from our hostel we really were and how the lady that helped us operate the train ticket machine at the airport may not have been as much help as we originally thought. We would have to get another three trains to get to our hostel. Fun! Figuring out the train network was a little tricky too but help was at hand. A little old guy saw us gawping at the map of the metro and came over to ask if we needed any help. With his help we got on the train and found out where we needed to get off. Just before it was time for us to get off the metro train the old guy came over to us again and the next thing we knew this old guy was explaining to us about his packet of traditional Japanese sweets that originated in the south of the country and before we knew it he was giving us a pair of the sweets each. Normally that would seem kind of dodgy but we took the sweets, thanked him and got off the train.

A ten minute walk later and we reached the hostel. We showered and had a sleep for a couple of hours as we were shattered from the flight and our little adventure from the city centre. After a couple of hours we got up and decided to take a trip back into the city to have a look around and get a bite to eat.

After stopping at a small noodle bar on the way out of Tokyo station we ventured into the city in search of some of the main shopping streets to have a good look around. All I can say is the place is crazy. I thought it was the Americans that built everything as big as they could but these little guys do as well! We both needed a watch so decided to have a quick look in the Swatch shop. The foyer of the shop was a series of glass enclosures/rooms. Most of them had the doors closed. I assumed this was for security and that if you wanted to see inside the rooms you had to ask a member of staff. However one of the room’s doors was open so we went inside and had a look. A few seconds later a head pops round the door and asks if we wanted to go down. Confused, we asked him what he meant and he explained the room was actually a lift. There was no indication of it being a lift until he pushed the face of one of the watches near the door and we were shot down into the basement. After a look up and down the street we decided we would catch the train back to the hostel and have an early night to recover from the flight.

If only things were that simple. We caught the train back without any problems but when we got off it we took the wrong exit from the station. Unfortunately once you’ve gone through the stations barriers, you can’t get back in. Once we got outside we realised how far away from the exit we should have taken we were. It was also dark now which complicated the matter as we couldn’t see anything that looked familiar. Everything looks different when it’s dark!! We headed off down one of the main roads, hoping it would lead us in the right direction but of course it didn’t. Next we were heading down small side roads, weaving in and out of them with the remote chance that we could cut through to the next main road. Eventually we managed to find the next road and navigate our way back to the hostel. We managed to turn a 10 minute walk into a 45 minute one!

Once back at the hostel we decided to take a power nap with the intentions of getting up a bit later and checking out the night life for a while. We weren’t by any means planning a big night, just to have a scout out and about to see what was available to us near the hostel. This didn’t happen and neither of us woke up till 8am this morning. Just shows how tired we really were! I think it’s only the fact that we were both so excited that managed to keep us going the time we did!

Gav enjoying the flight!

Japanese Lemony Goodness - 70 Lemons in one bottle!

Some random giraffe in the middle of one of the main streets!

The Apple shop in Tokyo.

Super huge televisions line the streets with advertisements.

Blurry Gav on our way back to the Metro Station.