Hmm, last weekend was my big adventure to Tokyo! As many of my adventures, it was completely unplanned except for where I was gonna stay. I packed my bags on Wednesday, went to Kyoto Station, bought my ticket, and was on the Shinkansen (bullet train) less than 10 minutes later.
Shinkansen is very fast. It is a distance of 500 km, and takes about 2h 15 minutes… which gives an average speed of 220km/h, and a max speed of nearly 300km/h. Unfortunately, since I bought my ticket 10 minutes before the train departed… I got the middle seat, so I couldn’t see anything outside ><.
Got to Tokyo Station mid afternoon. I was going to stay with Jeff, but he works a bit late, so I decided to explore a bit. Tokyo’s pretty crazy. It’s a lot busier than Kyoto of course, and people don’t seem as polite. And very strict escalator rules, which annoys people that come to Kyoto. Met with Jeff that night, it was very nice of him to let me stay. He has a cool place, with his own shower! Was quite fun too, I even did his Crossfit workout with him one morning.
I went to all the most famous neighbourhoods (multiple times), was very interesting. I went to Harajuku first which is where all the young hip japanese kids go. Unfortunately, not really knowing where I was going, I walked all the way around the neighbourhood before finding out where it was. Very hip place, lots of weird stores selling even weirder clothes. I saw two (separate) elderly ladies (I’m talking 70+ here) with bright purple hair. I went to Yoyogi Park too. On Sundays apparently live bands all get together and play in the park. In other words, I must must go back to Tokyo and stay on a Sunday. On the day I went, it was quite dead, just a few tourists wandering around. But quite a nice park for being in the middle of Tokyo.
Shibuya was very cool, I believe it is the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world. Kinda like Times Square in New York. There’s people everywhere, tons of shops selling more flamboyant clothing, electronics, food, etc. There’s pictures on my web album. Crazy busy, almost as bad as Gion Matsuri. Especially cool at night! 3 huge screens playing music vids/advertising. A famous dog statue. And lights everywhere!
Other areas like Shinjuku were also cool. More busyness and shopping and stuff, but didn’t really explore much. I went to Akihabara with… what? Word has Akihabara in it’s spellchecker database!?! What is this crazy talk?!?!… with Clement, talk about neon lights! Electronics stores everywhere, of all different sizes. Some huge chain stores, with entire floors of cameras, and other stores that are, well… garages, transformed into warehouses of (probably stolen) merchandise, not shady at all...
On Saturday afternoon I ran into Clement and Neil in Akihabara again, but not where we expected to meet. Then where I had expected to meet them we ran into Billy, unexpectedly. Along with Lynn and a friend of one of the Kanto crew. The plan was to go and see the fireworks, I decided to go along, at least for a little while.
The crowd! Oh boy, billions of people came out to watch the fireworks. You may think I’m exaggerating, in which case you may be right, but that’s not the point. It was insane, tarps and blankets lined up all the way along the river, apparently some tarps had been placed there a week earlier to save a spot for the fireworks. It’s an obstacle course just to get through everyone sitting down waiting. The Kanto crew was all meeting there, including Duncan and Leon and friends of friends of the Kanto crew. There was Korean, Chinese, Japanese and English being spoken.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a place to stay that night, since Jeff was on an airplane to Boston at that point, so I decided to Shinkansen it back home rather than spend the night lost and alone. Little did I know that everyone else would miss their train too, and karaoke all night long, which woulda been fun too.
So thoughts on Tokyo… busy mostly. I think it would have been a lot more fun if I wasn’t exploring alone, but unfortunately, I was the only one to have a company holiday, all the Kanto people had to work still. I had fun anyway, very neat to see. I definitely want to go back and spend more time with the Kanto crew, and most importantly, see the hep cats getting funky in unison down in Harajuku. Next time…
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