Japan

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Thursday 12 November 2009

Once Joel and I arrived at Narita, I found the airport pretty empty. I couldn't see anything that looked like the Qantas Lounge so I gave up the attempt to meet up with Mindy, a friend who was coincidentally leaving Tokyo as I was flying in.

Customs and baggage were a breeze.
We grabbed some Yen from an ATM, double checked the train system to get us to our hostel. I made my own Pasmo card (kind of like an Oyster or Mykey card) that even printed my name on it, before trying to find which platform we needed, to catch the train into the city. We weren't 100% sure we were in the right area and once on the train we were still confused as the stations weren't the same as the ones on my map. But eventually we found a map on the train ceiling and realised we were heading in the right direction which was good enough for me. Note: Japan has completely separate Government run and Private run train systems with different maps!

I relaxed, closed my eyes for a bit and opened them every so often. A girl came on who I couldn't stop looking at. She looked like one of those deep sea fish with the really round faces where their skin is like a jelly consistency. She had a very blobby look about her.
I also realised how many different skin tones the Japanese have. I'd previously always thought they had yellow based skin, but I found some had pink based skin which was very odd to see.

After about 40 mins, we got off at a station called Aoto. Here we switched to our next train which headed to our stop in Asakusa (Ah-SahKoo-Sah)

Carried our bags up the million stairs of the station before coming out in a nondescript small laneway. I consulted the directions from the hostels website I had printed off and we headed out into Tokyo.
For my first impression of the City, it wasn't very busy at all, but Asakusa is known to have a very old-town tradtional feel to it, but I was taken aback at how quiet it was.

We walked for about 15 mins, taking a stab in the dark at which way to go.
I saw the giant Senjo-ji shrine lit up by street lamps, so I knew we were in the right area.

After awhile we came to our hostel down another laneway. One of the reception guys opened the door for us and we stepped inside, thoughtfully removing our shoes in the process and found ourselves in a very neat and clean hostel. The reception guy was very friendly and gave us our room key.

Upstairs we went into our room. It was dark and I couldn't quite see if anyone were in there. I tip-toed in and realised there was one person asleep in one of the beds. I tried to be quiet but he soon piped up that we didn't have to be, so we turned on the lights and introduced ourselves. The guy was from northern England and had arrived earlier that day. We had a bit of a chat before I headed downstairs to check the place out. I checked my email before finding a magical toilet that had a heated seat, made an electronic flushing noise, had a spray fountain thing and all sorts of weird stuff. We later found we had one in our room too! It was awesome! The actual place was great. In our 4 bed room we had our own shower with toiletries included, the technologically advanced toilet, a separate sink with mirror and a little area separate to the bedroom.

That night I didn't sleep that well. The bed was pretty hard but everything else was great. Met a new room mate who was from Spain but he left early the next morning.

Friday 13 November 2009

Got up at around 11am. With the limited light in the room I thought it was about 6am. Realised there was a brick wall right outside our window.

Chatted  to English guy for a bit before setting out. Headed for the Asakusa Senso-ji shrine walking the quaint laneways that led there. Joel and I stopped at some vending machines (they are everywhere in Japan!), he got coffee in a can and I got hot chocolate in a can. I was so surprised at how hot the cans came out. It was great! Came across the shrine which had a massive entrance called the Thunder Gate cornered by statues of deities. Behind  the gate was a long, narrow street lined with shops filled with lots of souvenir stuff I wanted to buy. The hot items were fans, kimonos, mobile phone dangly things, one shop even sold a geisha wig for pets! At the end was another gate, beside it a huge 5 storey pagoda and behind the gate a large cauldron where people burnt joss sticks and waved the smoke over themselves which is supposed to give them luck and cure them of any ailments. Finally right at the end was the shrine which was housed in a very normal looking concrete building. Inside there were people tossing money into a pit and praying before a gold covered shrine with all little intricate things inside. The actual walk there was nicer.

On each side of the shrine were fortune tables. After watching how it was done I went over and put in my 100 Yen into a slot, rattled a metal container full of what looked like chop-sticks and pulled one out which had a number written in Kanji up the top. I then had to locate that number on rows and rows of little draws. When I found it, I opened it, took a sheet of paper from inside and fortunately on the back was an English translation. 'Bad Fortune' it read. CRAP! So I did it again, this time I got 'Small Fortune' meh.
I then folded up my Bad Fortune paper and tied it to a bar where lots of others were.

Next to the shrine was a garden so we checked this place out and took pretty photos. I watched little old Japanese women go up to the tiny individual shrines and pray.

Decided we needed food. Headed back to the hostel, bumped into English guy again who had walked up the road to find an authentic Japanese breakfast, he wasn't impressed with the fish and raw egg.

Joel grabbed his translation sheets and we then headed back out for food. Tried finding a place with an English menu but settled on one restaurant that had a picture menu and a cool noodle bowl out the front that had these chopsticks picking up noodles and they looked like they were going up and down in mid-air. I was highly amused.

On the picture menu I recognised gyoza so we got some of them. I then picked out something that looked like Pork Tonkatsu with egg cooked on top, so I got that and Joel chose something that resembled Pork Ramen. We were quite happy with our choices. The gyoza was the best I've ever had and the waitresses were really friendly.

After this we went to a shop that did caricatures, we had seen it earlier and I wanted to get one done.
So I sat there for 10 minutes while the guy drew me. I hoped that he wasn't going to make me look ugly. But overall the caricature looked like me and he only accentuated my cone head and big cheeks haha so it wasn't too bad.

From here we decided to go visit Akahibara (aka Electric City). Caught the Ginza line to Ueno then the Habiya Line to Akahibara. Only later found out there was a direct line going from another nearby station that went straight there!

Walked out the wrong exit so it took us awhile to find the concentration of electrical shops. Quickly found an adapter so I could plug my 3 point power plugs into a Japanese plug yay! For some reason I could only find adapters in Australia that only had 2 pins instead of the 3 that most Aussie appliances had.

From here I tried looking for a camera store called Bic. Instead I found Yodabashi which I'd heard of. So we went into this giant store of 5 floors devoted to electronics.
I talked myself into getting a very expensive camera lens that I'd always wanted with a few filters. $800au later I then picked up some bling earbuds that had turquoise swarovski crystals in the bud.

I was buggered by this point so while Joel went to check out the PC games I found the massage chair section and sat down for about 15mins while the chair did its thing. The remote was all in Japanese but after stabbing randomly at the buttons the chair started vibrating and I zoned out.

Outside it was raining. I watched how people entering the store would put there closed umbrellas into this machine which would instantly put a plastic cover over them. Brilliant!

Caught the train back and dropped all our gear off at the hostel before setting out to find a restaurant with either English menu or picture menu. It was pretty hard. So we settled on a street side stall where the chick helped us order. Food was small so we ended up back at the noodle place and I got some more Gyoza and pointed at something that I thought were crab stick tempura and vegie pancake. I was wrong, but they weren't gross so whatever they were, I ate them. Crab stick tempura turned out to be some sort of dough tempura fried.

Went back to the hostel and found some new room mates. English guy had headed off to Fuji earlier that day and I don't know what happened to the Spanish guy. In their place were 2 French girls who seemed quite nice so we had a chat with them and showed each other some photos we'd taken. They had just been to Nikko which is where we were going in a few days.

Saturday 14th November 2009

Today the two French girls woke up very early to go to the Fish Markets. Joel and I slept in till about 10am.
Went and checked out the shrine again. It started to rain so we went to a restaurant nearby that we knew had an English menu. I ordered sesame ramen and gyoza. Wasn't too bad.

Afterwards we headed to Ueno Park to check it out as it seemed to be high on the tourist list. The Autumn leaves still weren't in full colour yet. Had a walk around. I found cats, I was content.
Visited a random shrine nearby which had no one in it so that was a nice find, so quiet and peaceful. Walking back to the train station we had a look through some markets under a big underpass. Historically they had been black markets just after the war but were now full of food, veg and random items stalls, Joel bought food that looked like a waffle shaped like a fish, filled with red bean paste stuff.

We then headed to Ginza to check out the Sony Building. It was pretty disappointing. I wanted virtual pets dammit! The only cool thing I found was this robotic 'thing' that 'danced' around in time to music, Toto-Africa was playing and it rolled and moved around in time like it was in its own little world.

Went outside into Ginza but couldn't think of anything that I wanted to see. My feet were really hurting by this stage and even though it was only about 4.30pm, it was getting a bit dark.
So we decided to head back and find a particular restaurant that lets you cook your own Okinomayaki (Japanese savoury pancakes). This sounded great.

We had its location on a map and it all seemed very easy but after an hour of scouring the backstreets of Asakusa we gave up and headed back to the hostel. I dropped my stuff off before asking the guy at reception if he knew of any good restaurants with picture menu's or English menu's. He told us of one that seemed great, it was right near the train station we'd been at.
I asked if he knew the Okinomayaki place, Somotore, he did and he showed us another map, and also a photo on their website of what it looked like! With new found faith, we headed out again and finally found the place.

We were ushered in by a friendly girl and led to our floor table with a big grill in the middle.
We watched a couple next to us cook theirs and we all laughed together, as that is all we could do without being able to speak each others language. This seemed to be a theme with the other people in our section and we smiled and laughed at each other cooking stuff.
Ordered two different Okinomayaki's and some Teppanyaki calamari and potato. The girl helped us with one, while I did the other. Turned out alright. I had a beer with mine and it went down well.
Were pretty full after that.

Stopped at a 7/11 on the way back and decided to try random weird snack food, they seem to love mini sweet buns filled with random goo.