Tokyo is a BIG City.

Oct 17, 2009

I failed to realize that Tokyo is the worlds largest city until we attempted to leave the airport and get to our hostel. Our idea of “winging it” and finding our way once we got a to the airport failed miserably. We first needed to take a subway from the airport then connect to a different subway (we originally thought that we could talk this distance, turns out it was a 45 minute train ride). We did this and ended up in a very rural looking neighborhood, not how we had pictured Tokyo. Luckily two Japanese girls could tell that we were clueless and offered to take us where we needed two go. The girls were super nice and were our age, they had just gotten back from a trip to Singapore. They were our saviors. They showed us which tickets we needed to buy, how to use the Japanese railway system, came on the train with us so we knew were we were going, and even circled on our map all of the places that we were interested in going as well as told us the areas that they recommended. I’m pretty sure if it wasn’t for these two we would still be doing circles around Tokyo on one of the numerous subways. We checked into our hostel and were so relieved to put our very heavy packs down. We were given keys to our “rooms” which were “capsule rooms” meaning its a bed with a curtain and a locker to put your belongings in. I have some great pictures!

 

We then decided that since it was still light out we should walk around and get a lay of the land. We ended up walking to Shinjuku (a place that every Japanese person that we talked too said was “too far” to walk). It took us 15 minutes. We’ve run into a lot of people on our adventure who have said that we couldn’t walk to some particular place, and that we should take the train, but in actually it really didn’t take long to walk. Anyways, Shinjuku is supposed to be the “Times Square” of Tokyo. We saw lots of bright lights, restaurants glamour and the biggest departments stories that I have ever seen. We definitively felt under dressed as people started to show up around us wearing dressy going out clothes and we were still in our yoga pants from the plane. We decided to grab some sushi for dinner.

We split a combo plate that had a little bit of everything. I tried it all believe it or not. I had fish row the size of marbles, tuna, salmon,. Cucumber, prawn, yellow tail, and probably some I didn’t recognize. We decided to walk around a bit more then headed back to the hostel. It was around 9pm at this point and we were exhausted. we showered and fell asleep by 9:45pm. We’re sharing a room with approx 40 other people, so as you can imagine we were woken up several times during the night by people stumbling in. I was exhausted and slept through most of the noise, and when I did wake up, quickly fell right back to sleep. We awoke at 4:45am to make it to the Tsukiji fish market.

It took us a little longer to get out the door and get to the market than we expected, we arrived at 6:20am. I have never been to anything like that in my life. It was huge. I read somewhere that a third of the worlds fish goes through that market and after seeing it I completely believe it.

 

 

There were hundreds of people driving little carts around hauling fish that had to weight hundreds of pounds. There were fish chopped up, fish still living, and even fish that were cut into pieces every size imaginable. We walked around for an hour or so then decided that since everyone else was eating sushi for breakfast we should too. I had the freshest sushi I’ve ever had in my life, literally bought that morning from the fish market 20 feet away. It was way more pricy than I expect, it was $1800 yen ($20USD) for 4 pieces of tuna and 4 pieces of salmon.

I really liked it, but I think I would have rather spent $20 at cove café loading up on blueberry french toast with bacon. Oh well. We walked around the produce section of the market after breakfast and decided to buy a bunch of grapes, the largest grapes that we’ve ever seen- easily the size of golf balls. Again, it was expensive, $4UDS for a small bunch of grapes, but we’ve seen them in the grocery store costing almost double. We then attempted to find a money exchange, which apparently doesn’t exist here in Japan. I ended up opting to use my debit card and withdraw money. After we went to the Imperial Palace and walked around exploring everything. From there we went to the Roppongi Hills which is one of the tallest buildings around. We went to the observation level on the 52nd floor which had a 365 degree view of the city. We thought this was a free activity when we decided to go, but ended up having to pay $10UDS which was a bummer, but it ended up being worth it.

I grabbed a tuna sandwich from a local coffee shop and then we made our way back to the hostel. I must say we’re pretty impressive on the Japanese subways for first-timers. At this point (approx 4PM) we were exhausted and opted for a nap.
Our nap turned out to be a very long slumber. We set an alarm and woke up at 5:30, then 6:30, then 7:30 each time deciding that we were too exhausted and need edto sleep longer. At 7:30PM we decided to turn off our alarms and just sleep. We woke a total of 17 hours later at 7am feeling alive and well. We showered quickly and decided to pack up and check out of the hostel. I popped my daily vitamin and immune system booster that I’m taking and began to snack on the grape like fruit (I think it is a mix between a grape and a plum- very tasty) that we had bought the day before at the fish market. I was pretty hungry at this point especially because it had been 19 hours since I had eaten anything and the sandwich that I had for lunch the day before was much smaller than anything that I am used too). I continued to pack by bag an all of a sudden got very light headed. Luckily our locker was right next too a balcony so I quickly opened the door to get some fresh air. As soon as I did I got very nauseous and started to throw up into the drain on the balcony. Luckily Jess had seen my struggles and grabbed my water and some tissues for me to clean up with. I used some of the water to clean the mess on the balcony, oops, I was glad that we were leaving! We checked out and left our bags downstairs and went off for some last minute Tokyo site seeing, we went to the Yoyogi Park and Meiji Shine. We walked all around and saw a wedding reception, it was beautiful and so peaceful. We then took the subway back to the hostel to grab our bags. We made a quick stop at a little café across from the hostel to grab a quick bit since I still hadn’t eaten anything after my little incident. We both opted for the breakfast ham and cheese. The bread was very fresh, yet again a very small portion, thee was a single slice of ham and some kind of liquid cheese (more like mayo than cheese to me) and a piece of lettuce, it was small but very tasty. We grabbed our backpack and were off to the train station. After several transfers we made it to Tokyo Station and boarded the train for a three hour ride to Osaka, which is where I am currently updating my blog from. In Osaka we will change trains and catch another train which in two hours will take us to Kokura where we will visit my friend Ami and spend the night at her apartment. I met Ami when I was abroad on Semester at Sea we traveled to Rio together and had a lot of fun. I think our other friend from SAS Corey might also be meeting us for dinner. I am very excited for our mini SAS reunion. Well time for me to quit typing, my battery is about to die on my netbook. Hope all is well at home and stay in touch.
Love, Katie.