#12: Goodbye Tokyo!

We awoke on the last day in Tokyo at around 3pm, too tired from our night excursion the day before to get up any earlier, despite all of us setting alarms to go off at 1am. The only thing we ended up doing was meeting up with a bunch of Ikuko’s friends for dinner, first at an Izakaya with all you can drink and very good food, before finishing off the night at a Maid Karaoke, where you guessed it, the waitresses are all dressed in maid outfits! Which also had all you can drink as part of the price. Yay?!

Either way, a great way to finish off Tokyo! The morning after was not a pretty nor fun one for me, and my plan to eat lemon chicken flavoured crisps when I came back from the night before did not do me any favours in the morning either….

Our journey to Narita for our very final night in Japan was uneventful, (apart from the rising waves of nausea), and we spent the evening shopping in a huge mall, before grabbing a final dinner in the food court there in Japan.

And that was it! Next morning we got on the bus to the airport and were on our way to China! Japan was a fantastic place to travel around, and there was still so much we missed, like Mt. Fuji, Hokkaido and Yokohama, and some of the more unusual things in Japan like maid cafes. The more I look back on it the more fond of Japan I become, though at the time I think perhaps I was expecting it to be a little TOO crazy. I think likely the fact I’ve been to China already softened the blow, and Japan ended up being slightly underwhelming in many ways.

But it’s the small and unexpected things about Japan which make it so worthy of travelling to and remembering. First of all, how polite the Japanese are when you ask for help, who’ll go out of their way to help you, either getting friends to take you around, using internet on phones to map it for you, or just take you there yourself. Secondly, the food! The food in Japan is great, even the convenience store food is amazing, including sushi, noodles and various Japanese forms of pasta and spaghetti. The cultural difference is also clear, whether it be in the strange statues, mascots or posters they have lying around, the vending machines for newspapers and vending machines even in small restaurants and bars so that interaction is kept to a minimum.

And of course, who could forget to mention the Barbie Dolls?

Japan, you will be missed!

2k12 bitches!

Teddy bear picnic – where’s the fishing rod coming from!?!

I just don’t even know….

Karaoke love!

‘Nuff said. lol

Small sushi selection from convenience store or supermarket

Don’t be so silly, it’s just a selection of salad dressing!

#9: Day of the Ramen

This whole getting up early to see the sights is pretty much abandoned now. Gunning for a 11 start, we wandered the streets near our hotel to check out the shopping, including Sunshine City, a former prison turned shopping mall with a combined 60 floors of fun, with an added aquarium and planetarium in the basement. Go figure.

Big Ass Arcade

 

Lunch was at one of Tokyo’s best ramen shops, and therefore the world – which included a 30 minute queue which went around the corner for a shop that could only hold about 15 people at any time. 

BEST RAMEN EVERRRR

Looked great, tasted great, and they added in extra ramen for free, leaving me with some pretty serious Ramen-sweats, but it was so worth it! Having said that, we had to take a post-lunch break to recover from the serious amount of food we’d eaten, which involved sitting in a cafe for 2 hours. Never in my life have I felt as physically sick from eating so much as I did on this day….

We wandered over to Akihabara afterwards, which is the electronics hub and centre of Tokyo (and also therefore, the world (again)). Aside from the hideous amounts of electronics for sale, to accompany all the geeks, there were plenty of adverts for anime/hentai. 

Some of the LEAST revealing images they had up around Akihabara

Some of the other adverts were truly shocking, as some of them also included pre-teen girls in pretty similar positions….coincidentally, Akihabara is also the birth place of Maid Cafes, which involves a cafe entirely run and served by young Japanese girls, dressed in maids, who call you Master, speak cutesy, and serve cute food. Unfortunately/fortunately we didn’t make it into one….

Photo taken from Google – so you get the idea…

 

In the evening, after skipping dinner because I was still absolutely stuffed, we headed to Shinjuku, essentially the red light district of Tokyo – which was disappointingly a bit empty, likely because it was a weekday. The creepy black guys made a return show though, trying to make us go to their bar YAY. 

Night time in Shinjuku = shiny

We even took a stroll through the Gay/Lesbian area of Shinjuku, which was also fairly empty. Having said that, if I ever wondered what a gay porn shop would look like or where to find one in Tokyo, I do now…

#8: Tokyo, things just got real

Bullet trains are awesome. Like super awesome: they’re really fast; have huge bento boxes for lunch; are exactly on time; spacious; and even keep you up to date with the latest on Tom Cruise and his divorce.

Lunch on the bullet train: so excited I broke my headphones

Sad to say bye to Kyoto, it was absolutely great mix of modern and old, plus geisha hunting is always fun. But NOTHING can prepare you for the sense assault that is only found in Tokyo.  Stepping off the bullet train already within the first couple of minutes has proved insightful into tokyo life. A man with long purple hair, a woman dressed up like a maid, a ridiculous number of high heels and Dolls, the sheer number of people, and the ridiculous amount of noise. Announcements, talking, shouting, a shop playing 2 pieces of music at once, buskers, traffic lights beeping or playing music to accompany you as you cross, cars honking and bicycles ringing. Oh and it smells like a proper city too.  It. Is. Ridiculous. But SO much fun!

The hotel as well proved an illuminating experience, what we thought was the only channel available, on closer inspection, ended up being a 24 hour porn channel, with VERY graphic descriptions of the programs being shown. Unsettling to say the least. Suffice it to say, I’d been waiting to see full evidence of the legendary tales of Japanese…”culture” – and this was only the beginning of Tokyo…

24/7 porn channel, with graphic descriptions…

Since we arrived in the afternoon, we thought it perfect timing to head out into the city, heading first to harujuku, district famed for its shopping. Aside from the scores of creepy black guys lining the street, stroking you as you walk by in order to entice you to their shop or buy dodgy goods (for some reason it didn’t seem to work) – harujuku was great. Unusual shops by the dozen, including shops for goths and lolitas, helllo kitty and cutesy objects everywhere!

Who knew Minnie Mouse would look so great pimped out?

 

Pauly Pigs?!

The next district we visited after Harujuku was Shibuya, famous for its shopping (sensing the pattern here?), love hotels, and the infamous diagonal crossing. I can normally stand shopping with girls, after all, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting me drunk, I do tend to go on about how I used to sell fashion accessories (sorry to all!). But even the most determined of men are bound to flag after the dozenth store or so, which made Shibuya’s 109 building all the more worse.

Shibuya 109: 9 floors of female only shops. 9 floors of screaming, giggling and shouting shop girls telling the whole floor about their low prices. 9 floors of hell. Thankfully we didn’t stay in there for long, otherwise I may have had to jump off the 9th floor to escape…. And to finish off our night, we found this: Condomania! With condoms even of everyone’s favourite cartoon bear, rillakuma! Please ignore the fact it bears a strong resemblance to paedo-bear….

Obvs the best shop I got dragged into by the girls this day

 

Cute bear condoms….n’awww!

#6: And then 5 became 4…

Ahhh so a little break in blogging, just to give y’all a breather you know…

Also, because not much happened. Well, not THAT much happened. For a start though, after discovering a member of our group was ill, we ended up sleeping in till 2 or so, then ended up taking him to Kyoto Station so he could head to Tokyo early to meet his family friends to look after him. Not of course, without stopping at the Museum of Manga (which is down the road).

It’s a bird yo

Despite your initial concerns, I can assure you that it was actually pretty interesting. Plus, there’s a big ass statue of a bird at the front of it! Also it was raining loads (again) so we rushed inside to get clear of it all…

We pushed on, 5 becoming 4, to meet up with one of Ikuko’s friends who took us to his friend’s restaurant, where we ended up getting pretty boozed up on all you can drink and good food.

All you can drink for £10? Deal.

Tasty, fun, and rather eventful due to the fact there are several Asians in our group. Surprisingly it wasn’t me this time…but for the sake of pride and dignity I will refrain from posting more details.

The next day we headed into town after lunch (we’d been drinking you know, we needed sleep!) – in order to celebrate the Star Festival, which is all about star crossed lovers or something. Unfortunately the celebrations were rather muted as Kyoto doesn’t seem to celebrate it much, and what we could find was limited mostly to school kids dancing and singing songs….yay!?

A shrine decorated for Star Festival

We decided to take advantage of the great weather though, and headed off to the Golden Pavillion, perhaps one of the most iconic images and shrines in Japan. Thankfully the weather held out (mostly) – and we managed to see this:

The Golden Pavillion: check out the reflection!

Today ended up being a day trip to Nara, a train ride away from Kyoto, and well worth it! Again, full of shrines and temples, but some with noticeable differences, the main temple’s difference being that IT’S FRICKIN HUGE!!

It’s absolutely massive, squint and you can see Amy near the left door with her arms raised up

The largest Buddha inside was around 25-30 metres, which I’m sure you can appreciate, that coming from a short person like me, is rather impressive (and intimidating…). We wandered around even more, just absorbing the sights and the surprising peacefulness of the town, considering the tourist draw of it all.

Another awesome lake pagoda reflection

There were obviously quite a lot of other shrines etc involved all this tourist business, but for the sake of your sanity (and mine) – I’ve decided to leave a lot of them out.

If you’re itching to see more photos, check out Amy’s photoblog at http://amy-asia.tumblr.com/ where I’ve sneakily taken some amazing photos from.

And also, I’ve had some people ask me to buy them things/general questions about Japan – feel free to leave a comment or FB me with questions/requests. Got a cracker of a blog post to come (I hope….)

#4: Hiroshima

A slightly more sombre post I’m afraid, and in line with the city of Hiroshima, and the atmosphere of it so far. We arrived in the pouring heavy rain at 6am, and found shelter in a nearby cafe while we waited it out and decided what to do.

Having dropped bags off and waited till it was clearer, we ended up at the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Hiroshima Atomic Museum, both of which have to be some of the most moving experiences of my life.

The A-Bomb Dome is essentially the epicentre of the blast, and the twisted wreck is all that remains of the original large building. All the other buildings in the area were completely flattened and destroyed.

A-Bomb Dome, one of the only surviving structures of the blast

Nearby is the children’s peace memorial, erected in honour of a young girl who died of leukaemia before she could fold 1,000 paper origami cranes, a feat which she believed would help cure her of the fatal disease. Nowadays, children and adults across Japan and the world fold cranes and send them to the park in order to be put up with all the others received.

Thousands of origami cranes

If that wasn’t enough, moving into the museum itself and looking at all its exhibits was nearly enough to reduce me to tears. It was emotional enough that I ended up just skipping out the last several exhibits, which showed images of people jumping into the river to escape the blast, and images of children and adults injured by the blast and radiation. I decided against any photos of this for obvious reasons, but I felt the museum was neatly summarised by an analogue half melted watch, which was frozen at the exact time of the blast on August 6th, 8.15am.

Wanting to move on to something less depressing, we pushed onwards to the city gardens, which thankfully provided a nice atmosphere in order to cheer up and really appreciate Hiroshima as a city. The mosquitoes were a different matter however, who attacked with vengeance following the heavy rain all day long.

Hiroshima gardens

Leaving the gardens, we somehow ended up spending 3 hours in a Japanese department store. Say what you want, but they really do have the weirdest things for sale, including a beer mug which actually CREATES HEAD ON YOUR BEER. I mean, WTF?!?! Every time the intro movie for it come on I winced and died a little inside.

Dinner was Hiroshima’s version of the okonomayaki from Osaka, and where Osaka’s was subtle and fresh with its ingredients, Hiroshima’s version was about frozen seafood, bacon, and noodles in an egg sandwich. And while I’m a big fan of being blunt and in your face, as I’m sure you all know, when it comes to my food I prefer something a little less overt. Looks so pretty though….

Hiroshima’s take on the okonom – BIG ASS OMELETTE

Coming next: One of Japan’s most beautiful sites, and Kyoto!

P.S: I couldn’t end a blog post on a negative note, come on!

#3: I’m in my garden of Zen

So apparently waking up at 8am is an easy thing these days, unlike managing to wake up at 3pm. Oh well! We headed off to Osaka Castle which was pretty impressive,

Looking all castle on the hill

Unfortunately no hidden gems of octopus or curry flavoured soda water, but still a good visit nonetheless. We moved on from Osaka to Koyasan, a temple ridden area near to Osaka, easily accessible by a rather dramatic train and cable car journey.

We were staying at a temple there, which has to be one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been. A nice entry view of a Zen garden was all I needed to cement in my head that I was about to have a rather spiritual day or so in this great area.

Gravel Zen garden

Vegetarian dinners done, accompanied by a speech from the head priest’s 92 year old mother – we had to forego the night time visit to the cemetery due to heavy rain. What we did indulge in however was a bath in the public onset, essentially a spa, but nude and with a bunch of old monks. Embarrassingly the only other monk who was in the bathroom when I entered left pretty much immediately, clearly he just felt VERY threatened. Oh and traditional Japanese yukata (almost like a kimono). Man was pimpin’ it hard.

King of the yukata

Good fun. Oh, I also forgot to mention the 40 minute meditation we all took part in, involving sitting still and trying to clear our minds. Surprisingly I think I succeeded to some vague degree, but unsurprisingly my legs aren’t used to supporting all of my weight for 40 minutes straight, which had to lead to some awkward mid-meditation reshuffling.

Morning involve waking up at 5.30. Yes, 5.30. But in return we got 40 minutes of monks chanting, and a vegetarian breakfast (so worth it!). And then that was that! Goodbye Rengejoin temple!

Cheeky standard scenery

After visiting some local sights (including lunch at the local university, much to the students’ amusement) we headed back to Osaka to grab some food before the night bus to Hiroshima. We ended up, courtesy of Ikuko’s mother, at a kaiseki ryori restaurant, which is essentially the Japanese version of haute cuisine. Looks good, and tastes even better!

Japanese haute cuisine, innit

30 floors up…

I’ve actually already spent a day in Hiroshima, but due to the obvious context of the city and its history, I’ll be dedicating a separate post to it, soon to follow!