Tuesday, 31 May 2011

Day 45 - Departure from Japan

Well, today was my last day in Tokyo. And what a day it was!
Joe left early morning because his flight was at 11am (he has to return to London before flying back out to Dubai, gutted!)
I rushed around all day to get some last minute bibs and bobs, popped back to Asakusa, Akihabara, Shibuya before returning to Iriya to pick up my luggage and heading back to Tokyo station to get the train bound for Narita airport.
I said bye to everyone at the hostel (Toco Tokyo). I was upset to say bye because they were all really really really nice!!!
As I glared out the window as the train darted through cities, I was really upset to leave. 5 days, as I suspected, is certainly not enough.
As I also suspected, the media has completely exaggerated the entire situation regarding Fukushima. Yes, there is still radiation in the affected areas, but Tokyo is not affected at all. There are no warnings, no less people, nothing.
Nevertheless, I will return one day and stay for a lot longer, and maybe venture outside of Tokyo. I've learnt quite a bit of Japanese since I've been here and can now hold simple conversations and make orders for food and drink, yay!

Quite frankly, travelling, if anything else, has made me realise what a shithole London really is... How disorganised and horrible everything is. Australia did a lot better than London at pretty much everything, and Tokyo was no different.
ALL trains I used (subway, overground, etc) were a MINIMUM of 15 cars (as opposed to our petty 8), AND they were bigger too. (Standard trains have 2 sets of doors on each side, these have 4 sets of doors on each side) Some coaches are even double decker.
Don't get me wrong, part of me will always love London. You can't beat London for clothing and a few other things, but on the whole, we're really behind.

I got on my flight smoothly, and slept pretty much through the whole flight. I'm just waiting for my transfer to Dubai airport now, and then it's time for fun!

It's 19 degrees celcius by the way. Cold for UAE, no? I didn't tell you it was 3am at the moment though, did I? 19 degrees celcius at 3am... Tomorrow is going to be fun.

Sunday, 29 May 2011

Day 44 - Minato, The Pokemon Centre, Harajuku, Ikebukuro, Super Potato & Akihabara

Wow, today was an eventful day!

We started off by going to The Pokemon Centre, the official Pokemon shop in Minato, Tokyo. I had an overload of nostalgia and nearly collapsed, but it was all good.







Next stop, Harajuku! It's a shame that it was raining, but there were still super cool Harajuku girls as promised!




After lunch, we returned to Ikebukuro to visit Tokyu Hands, a department store that sells everything you don't need. I purchased a mario type box and star wars chopsticks! Happy days!

Lunch Dessert
Next, we hurried back to Akihabara to visit Super Potato, essentially gamers heaven. They sell every retro console you can think of. SNES, even pre-SNES. Sega Dreamcast, PSOne, Gamecube, GameBoy, GameBoy Pocket, GameBoy Color, EVERYTHING!







They also had these ULTRA CUTE Nintendo plushies which I definitely didn't purchase...
Photos shall be on Facebook!

A really long day, don't want to leave tomorrow!!

Saturday, 28 May 2011

Day 43 - Asakusa, Ueno, Ueno Zoo & Akihabara

Another eventful day, despite it raining the whole time!
We started by heading out to Asakusa, to visit our first temple. It was beautiful. The walk through to the temple was lined with shops selling all sorts, from food to souvenirs. We stopped off and had a beautiful fudge ice cream! Omnomnom!




The temple was beautiful. There was a burning fire at the entrance which you are supposed to waft towards you (so the smoke goes on your body) to bring you good health.
Then, inside you can pray and light candles. There were so many people!










We got a bite to eat for lunch, I had gyoza. It was so nice! The food over here is exquisite, there hasn't been anything that I haven't liked so far.

Afterwards, we headed back to Ueno and went to Ueno Zoo. PANDAS! AHHHHH!
Only 600 yen entrance fee (about 5 pounds) and we got to see pandas, tigers, gorillas, a lot of animals that weren't in Australia!
I have to say though these animals didn't look anywhere near as happy as the ones in Australia. I guess they're treated better there.















Finally we headed back to Akihabara, played in a few arcades, got some dinner (Egg, fried breadcumb pork and rice! Delicious!) and then got a crepe afterwards, which had chocolate, ice cream, and cream in it. SOOOO GOOD!

Last day tomorrow and it'll probably be the best, time to go to Harajuku and hang out with the Harajuku girls!

Friday, 27 May 2011

Day 42 - Nakajima-no-ochaya, Sunshine City & Ikebukuro

We got talking to a girl called Emily who is staying in a dorm with us. She's from New Jersey and she's awesome!
We decided to spend the day out with her as she was going to the same places we were.

We started by going to the gardens in Nakajima-no-ochaya.









It was really nice, and there were cats all over the place!
Afterwards, we jumped on the subway to Ikebukuro, which has a massive shopping centre. It's virtually a city inside a building!
Named 'sunshine city', this building holds not only shops, but an actual entertainment sort of resort called Namja Town.
Namja Town was created and built by Namco, yaaay! There were cats everywhere, too! Except not real ones this time.





It was really cool! They had all sorts in there, from shops selling cat things to a scary cat maze type thing!
They even had an ICE CREAM CITY! That's right, shop after shop of ice cream!






All in this 'amusement park' within a building, I couldn't really get my head around it. Food courts, an arcade, human board games, everything!












Afterwards we got a bite to eat, and I had the most delicious curry soba!


On our way out of Sunshine City, we saw that there was a show on within the shopping mall. I only caught a little bit of what they were talking about as, obviously it was all in Japanese, but it seemed to be a public talent show of some sort that anyone can participate in! Cheerleading, body painting, sword fighting (with umbrellas). It was ace!





Of course, no day is complete without a quick stop at the many arcades to give Tekken 6 a play.



And then it was off to the subway home.
Tokyo is still awesome, tomorrow we're going to the temples and on Sunday we're gonna have an amazing time in Harajuku!