Tokyo
Six of us went to Tokyo for two nights: David, Chris, Jose, Seul, Frances, and myself. The train ride there was fantastic. It was quite long, but also comfortable, and we got to see an amazing view of the Japanese countryside: mountains, lakes, rivers, villages, cities. Moving from country into city back into country was just amazing. I never really noticed this sort of thing travelling in the U.S., but here it was a whole new world and so I was alert to a lot more.
We got to Tokyo pretty late, since it’s about a 4 hour train ride. I was lugging around an enormous granny suitcase, and I was eager to unload it before going out, so we took a subway into Jimbocho, a district of Tokyo. We checked in at the Sakura Hotel, unloaded our stuff, and then headed out into the city for a little while.
We took the subway back to Shibuya, the most famous district of Tokyo. If you’ve ever seen photos of that huge intersection (sort of the Times Square of Japan), that’s where I was. In person, it was absolutely beautiful. People everywhere, music on the streets, giant TV screens and billboards (at that time showing an ad for the new Harry Potter movie), it was so lively.
We were really hungry, so we went to a many-story McDonalds for a bite to eat, and it really was just a bite: the portions in Japan are *so* tiny compared the the U.S., right down to the 4 oz. “small” juice drink. We wandered around the neighborhood a bit, but it was getting late so we had to catch the last train or stay out all night. Chris chose to stay out, the rest of us wanted sleep.
Sadly, I forgot to take my camera out during the day, but I did get two photos of some of us in the Sakura Hotel in Jimbocho wearing our hotel yukata, after our extremely desired showeres. (One month of non-Western showers left me dying for a good overhead faucet.)
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| Seul, Jose, and I give the Japanese pose in yukata at the Sakura Hotel | The four of us in yukata . Isn’t that a cute couple right there? |
We watched a bit of TV, and considered buying a pizza until we saw that it would cost around $50… yikes! Tokyo has *very* cheap accomodations, but the food is amazingly expensive.