Yesterday passed in a blur of transport – up early, at the platform by 7.15, on the train at 7.30 and travel, travel, travel until we finally reached Shinjuku station at 6.30pm. Luckily I slept a lot of the way, which made the time travel quite quickly, however two of the four trains we caught were very limited with regard to luggage space, and I spent quite a few hours curled up with my feet sitting on James’ port which was slid into the area where your feet are supposed to go, because that was the only space left where it could fit!! James’ legs are just too long to even consider this, but luckily I could manage to squash myself into a small enough position for the bag to fit in the gap between our seat and the seat in front – while we had other bags in the overhead shelves and still more hanging from the coat hooks above the windows. Never try to travel with large suitcases by train – it just wouldn’t work!!
When we finally got to Shinjuku, we knew we had to head for the West exit – the only problem being there were only two exits from where we got off, being the South exit and the New South Exit. Being the practical couple that we are, we decided to take the South exit, and so we walked out onto the street with absolutely no idea of where we had to head – Shinjuku station is one of the largest in Tokyo, and taking a different exit will practically take you a kilometre in the wrong direction. We asked a friendly security guard ‘Keio Plaza doko deska?’ – Where is Keio Plaza? and thankfully he pointed out the right direction, which proved to be about four blocks to the North and several blocks West. Fighting more crowds than we had seen our whole time in Sapporo, we tiredly made our way to the Keio Plaza, and were never so glad to hand over our bags to the friendly doorman, who directed us to the lobby of what is the swankiest hotel we have stayed at so far – I mean really, really swanky – we were well impressed. Unfortunately we were less impressed when we were told there was no ‘no smoking’ rooms available, however they assured us that after this one night they would be able to move us to a no smoking room for the remainder of our stay. It was really no hassle at all, and our room did not smell, as they came and sprayed it with a ’smell remover’ type spray that really did quite a good job. The view from the room, which was on the 17th floor was amazing – we could see the Govt building which is really cool, and there is an observation deck in this building which is free to access, and so we will definitely check it out sometime while we are here.
We had a meal of 2 minute noodles (me) and bento box (James) for dinner, which we bought from the convenience store type shop on the 2nd floor of the hotel, showered and crashed out, happy to be in Tokyo with our big day of travelling behind us.
James woke me up at about 8am, and after reading the newspaper, we headed out looking for some breakfast. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a Mr Donuts near the hotel, so we had to settle for Starbucks today, but James is sure we will locate one soon enough. Over breakfast we planned our time in Tokyo – today Akihabara and Shibuya this evening, tomorrow Harajuku in the morning then in the afternoon we split up with James going to Jimbocho for his sword fighting lesson and me going to Bead town at Akasakusabashi. Monday will be our day trip to Hakone, and then the nextday, instead of going to Kamakura, we will go to Ginza to see Tokyo sword and the Godzilla statue and Odaiba, which is a reclaimed part of Tokyo with all of the television studios and a heap of cool buildings and places to see. Then on Wednesday we will spend the day in Yokohama, before heading to Koya-san on Thursday. Busy busy busy!!
Today in Akihabara was so much fun. It is the ‘electric town’ of Tokyo – where there is store after massive store selling technology, electronics and manga. The stores just go on and on forever – each one is up to 10 floors high, and each one sells innumerable computers, gadgets, electronics, manga, anime…. awesome!!
Early on in the morning we went to a Maid Cafe, which was really cool. In Akihabara there are many maid cafes. I think that they started off as kind of pervy business men places, where men got waited on by girls dressed in old fashioned/sexy maid costumes, but now they are a well known part of Akihabara, and I was so excited to go to one. There are maids often on the street handing out fliers advertising individual cafes. Some of them don’t welcome foreigners, and so when a friendly maid handed us a flier, we knew that this was our best chance, because she wouldn’t have given us a flier if they didn’t accept ‘gaijin’ (foreigners) into the cafe. We followed her directions and went up to the 3rd floor of a building that seemed to house a number of maid cafes. Sure enough, on the third floor there was a door and a maid who answered, and we entered a tiny cafe with about six tables. We were surprised to see a western girl working as a maid in the cafe, and after we had eaten our coffee and cake ( I had strawberry cake, it seemed kind of appropriate in this ‘girly’ store) and while we were waiting for my photo to develop (you could have a photo taken with a maid for 500 yen) we found out that she was Spanish, and studying Japanese for a year, working at the maid cafe to improve her Japanese language skills. The maid cafe was really cool, and I’m really pleased that we had the chance to go to one.
Lunch was yummy chicken donburi, in a building that I am sure is newly built since we were last in Akihabara two years ago. It was a pretty cool restaurant, and the food was really yummy, and it gave us heaps of energy to continue hitting the shops. We explored Yodabashi Camera, which is huge, as well as many tiny, tiny shops selling models and gashapon figures (little toys and figures that come from the egg dispensing machines you put coins into). Some of these stores were so tiny and crowded full of stuff that there was only space for one person at a time to move through the shelves – they certainly pack as much as they can into tiny spaces in Akihabara!!
Just before we left, we got interviewed by some people with a video camera, who asked us what we liked about Japan, and where we came from etc etc. They were very keen to learn about how we found out about Tokyo and Akihabara, and so I showed them my book where I have put all of my research for the trip – and they were mightily impressed – they asked to see each page, and filmed it in great detail – so who knows, maybe somewhere in Japan we will be on TV sometime in the future!!!
After we left Akihabara, we caught the train back to the hotel room, which had been changed to one in the same south tower, but higher up (25th floor) which was a non smoking floor. We jazzed ourselves up and headed back out, this time up to the sky bar on the 45th floor of the main tower for a few very expensive cocktails in a bar called ‘Little Bear’. The view from Little Bear bar was unbelievable, as were the prices, and so after a short while, we decided to head to Shibuya for some dinner and people watching.
Shibuya is a short train ride from Shinjuku,and is the ‘youth’ suburb where young ‘pretty’ things hang out and are seen. We wandered around for a couple of hours, before having dinner at an Italian restaurant – most of the restaurants here seemed ‘foreign’ with very few specialising in Japanese food – I guess when young Japanese are out for a night on the town they don’t want to eat what to them is everyday food. I had spaghetti amatriciana, which was certainly very edible, but just somehow not quite right, and James had bacon and camembert pasta, which to him was also delicious but just not quite Italian – Mum’s pasta is still the best!!!
After dinner, I had to visit Gas Panic, which is a famous Shibuya bar/nightclub well known to travellers/gaijin and the ’shibuya’ crowd. What surprised us most about Gas Panic was its size – James and I both expected it to be huge, but it was tiny, just a bar and one small room where people were dancing around a few tables. There was an interesting mix of people – some Japanese, a few black Americans, some white guys that introduced themselves and who were British – and they were playing some hip-hop type music, which was quite cool. A couple of drinks later, we knew that we could now say ‘I’ve been to Gas Panic in Shibuya’, and so we headed up the stairs, and made our way to the station, past the statue of Hachiko (who I had to go and hug – his story of devotion to his master just melts my heart).
3 stations later we were at Shinjuku. Our walk home was a sobering experience (in more ways than one…). To get to our hotel we need to walk along an underground arcade, and as it was about 10.30 most of the shops were closed up. In the doorways of many of these shops the homeless of Tokyo were setting up their bedding for the night – many of them had large cardboard boxes, which they rigged up to make individual sleeping areas, and others built little ‘caves’ from the boxes in an attempt to keep out the wind and the stares I guess from the passers-by. It was difficult to see all of these people sleeping rough just metres from our plush hotel, and I admire their courage and the way they still take pride in themselves even at their worst moment – some were reading quietly, others smoothing their collared shirt for tomorrow’s wear – I think that there are lessons there that we can definitely learn abut gratitude and not taking things for granted.
Well, up here on the 25th floor it is definitely nearing bedtime, the lights in the Govt building are out, and my bedlight is about to go out too -
ja mata ne!!
