Hello happy people!
Here we are in sunny Tokyo! Its quite exciting as it's very different to anywhere we have been before. It is similar to London in the way there is lots of seperatly run trains that operate underground and pack people into them at peak hour day after day. It is similar to Hong Kong in the way there is lots of advertising and bright flashing lights. But unlike Hong Kong, the people here do not push products in your face, they are very polite, the streets are very wide and the buildings massive...to support so much more advertising! Giant TV screens line the streets above you, and there are hugh arcades filled with pokies - of all things. They love thier pokies. And with pokies, are lots and lots of really eye hurting bright lights and flashing things. This is not the place for the epileptic!
Our flight over here was good, and seemed to pass pretty quickly. However it was some stupid persons idea the night before to have as little sleep as possible, so that we would just pass out on the plane and be in Japan before we knew it. So, all going well, we stay up drinking and listening to music. We wake after about 3 hours sleep, go to the airport at 6am, fly to Zurich, wait...fly to Japan for 13 hours...and....typically...we couldn't sleep. So then here we are, feeling like death warmed up, find ourselves in this place with barely any english, with no good maps...and only a print out of the address for our hostel. As you can imagine we were feeling really comforted!
Anyway, we manage to get to our hostel after two trains and help from a nice train staff member who must have seen us staring stupidly at the map on the wall for 10mins with our mouths open, not moving. We arrive at our hostel at 11am...to be told our rooms won't be ready until 3pm. Yay!! We are at the point of involuntarily passing out from sleep deprivation, and we sit outside the hostel for 4 hours. Happy times. Actually that was very similar to what happened in Rome. Moral of the story - don't depend on sleeping on a long haul flight! Unless you are in 1st class...we walked jealously past thier beds on our way off the plane. Rich bastards!
But it's all part of the fun. We have managed to laugh off most of the cruddy times, mainly because they are so horrible it turns comical!
The room we've stayed in at tokyo is great. Its in a traditional style, complete with futons on the floor and rice stuffed pillows. There is also rice paper windows, and the floor is made by some sort of weaving technique.
Also worthy of honerable mention is the toilets here! Not only are they big, and usually pink, but they all seem to be complete with bum washers that squirt water, things that blow warm air at you, seat warmers, and a button you can press that plays music combined with fake flushing noises and birds chirping so you can take a noisy dump in private! Also a lot of them have no flusher, and they just flush themselves as you step away from them. How cool is that???
Yesterday we spent a decent portion of the day in Electric City. Basically it's a suburb devoted to a million electronic, computer, and anime shops. So many gadgets! And we found pepper spray. They are very much into thier naked figurines here too..kinda wierd. Also naked/bikini trading cards, some of them very young.
We have not come across too much engrish yet, but remain hopeful, we have another week to go!
So we are off to Kyoto very soon for five nights. We will add some piccies when we can, so watch this space.
Farewell until next time!
Here we are in sunny Tokyo! Its quite exciting as it's very different to anywhere we have been before. It is similar to London in the way there is lots of seperatly run trains that operate underground and pack people into them at peak hour day after day. It is similar to Hong Kong in the way there is lots of advertising and bright flashing lights. But unlike Hong Kong, the people here do not push products in your face, they are very polite, the streets are very wide and the buildings massive...to support so much more advertising! Giant TV screens line the streets above you, and there are hugh arcades filled with pokies - of all things. They love thier pokies. And with pokies, are lots and lots of really eye hurting bright lights and flashing things. This is not the place for the epileptic!
Our flight over here was good, and seemed to pass pretty quickly. However it was some stupid persons idea the night before to have as little sleep as possible, so that we would just pass out on the plane and be in Japan before we knew it. So, all going well, we stay up drinking and listening to music. We wake after about 3 hours sleep, go to the airport at 6am, fly to Zurich, wait...fly to Japan for 13 hours...and....typically...we couldn't sleep. So then here we are, feeling like death warmed up, find ourselves in this place with barely any english, with no good maps...and only a print out of the address for our hostel. As you can imagine we were feeling really comforted!
Anyway, we manage to get to our hostel after two trains and help from a nice train staff member who must have seen us staring stupidly at the map on the wall for 10mins with our mouths open, not moving. We arrive at our hostel at 11am...to be told our rooms won't be ready until 3pm. Yay!! We are at the point of involuntarily passing out from sleep deprivation, and we sit outside the hostel for 4 hours. Happy times. Actually that was very similar to what happened in Rome. Moral of the story - don't depend on sleeping on a long haul flight! Unless you are in 1st class...we walked jealously past thier beds on our way off the plane. Rich bastards!
But it's all part of the fun. We have managed to laugh off most of the cruddy times, mainly because they are so horrible it turns comical!
The room we've stayed in at tokyo is great. Its in a traditional style, complete with futons on the floor and rice stuffed pillows. There is also rice paper windows, and the floor is made by some sort of weaving technique.
Also worthy of honerable mention is the toilets here! Not only are they big, and usually pink, but they all seem to be complete with bum washers that squirt water, things that blow warm air at you, seat warmers, and a button you can press that plays music combined with fake flushing noises and birds chirping so you can take a noisy dump in private! Also a lot of them have no flusher, and they just flush themselves as you step away from them. How cool is that???
Yesterday we spent a decent portion of the day in Electric City. Basically it's a suburb devoted to a million electronic, computer, and anime shops. So many gadgets! And we found pepper spray. They are very much into thier naked figurines here too..kinda wierd. Also naked/bikini trading cards, some of them very young.
We have not come across too much engrish yet, but remain hopeful, we have another week to go!
So we are off to Kyoto very soon for five nights. We will add some piccies when we can, so watch this space.
Farewell until next time!