Hello readers! Welcome to my first blog post and probably one of the best. I just got back from my first ever trip outside of North America and I have to say I had a blast! Tokyo has to be one of the best places to visit as your first international trip. The people there were so nice and helpful. The city was safe and beautiful no matter where you went. There were a lot of things in English so it was easy to navigate and they had an incredible transit system. Enough of me, enjoy all the photos and descriptions below!
Day One-Three: Flying - October 23rd-25th, 2015
Our journey began at Los Angeles International Airport, probably the cheapest place to fly out of if your traveling to Japan. We flew China Eastern Airlines which made a layover in Shanghai. We were served two meals on our 13 hour flight from LA to Shanghai. We had a 3 hour layover and then a 3 hour flight to Narita Airport Japan. We also passed over the international date line which means we lost a day. So we left at 6pm on Friday the 23rd and landed in Tokyo at 2pm on Sunday the 25th. At the airport in China we took a bus from the gate to the plane and we walked up stairs into the plane like you see people doing on private jets. That was a first for me lol.
"Tai Chi movements in micro space" After 13 hours they had us loosen up by doing different tai chi exercises in our seats with a video guide and english subtitles.
Day Three: Drunk in Tokyo - October 25th, 2015
From left to right: Me, Laureen and Donald. When we landed in Tokyo we were met by Laureen's friend Donald who lives in Tokyo.
When we landed in Japan I had a pocket wifi router waiting at the airport post office for me. Now this thing was sooooooo much help! I had 4g LTE internet in my pocket for $50 for a whole week and it was worth every penny! And Tokyo had 4g LTE every where. You can find the router here!
Pocket Wifi Router
Here is the view from the train on our way from Narita Airport to Tokyo Station. The train ride was about 1 hour long and ticket was a little pricy, $25 one way.
When we got off our train at Tokyo Station we were met by Laureen's friend Donald. He had drinks ready for us. Apparently it is legal to have open drinks on the streets in Tokyo. He said that Tokyo has perfected the art of getting drunk. The next two images are of the largest ancient tericotta lamp collection in the world. We spontaneously ran into this older gentleman on the street as we were walking to our hotel. We tried to help him find his lost keys. To thank us he invited us to his office two blocks away where he had his collection. The guy spoke english, french (which Laureen loved) Japanese and some other languages. After that we went to the wrong hotel and so we got in a cab to take us to the right one. We got some more drinks at a local convince store where i saw Naruto on the shelves. Our room was pretty small but in a central location and for an affordable rate. The bathroom was even smaller and had a shower head you could pull off and a toilet that was a Bidet. After dropping our stuff off at the hotel we went back to Tokyo Station. A little side note: one of my favorite aspects of the culture in Japan is that they dont believe in stealing or its not a part of their culture. When you lose something someone picks it up and gives it to the closest police station. You could leave your laptop on a train and still be able to come back and find it or pick it up at the police station or train station. Donald told us he has left his camera equipment at a train station and when he came back an hour later it was still there.
The busy streets and subways of Tokyo as told in video...
...and photos.
Shibuya Crossing at night.
These arcades were all over the place and had weird Japanese music playing and lots of bright flashing lights.
We did some bar hopping and at one of the bars we had Stingray Fin with a garlic mayo sauce. The stingray fin was really good and it tasted super sweet almost like it was candy coated. At this particular bar we randomly ran into some people Donald knew from his work. Of the 13 million people that live in Tokyo we just happen to meet some people he knew from a very small network of people. So we all went out to eat.
After meeting up with some friends and friends of friends and new acquaintances, we all went out to eat at this place called Izakaya Restaurant.
Izakaya Restaurant
We had people from LA, NYC, Australia, New Zealand and Tokyo all together at this little restaurant for some good food.
Day 4: Electric Town and Exploring - October 26th, 2015
Akihabara - Electric Town
This place is known for its Anime stores, electronic super stores, and video game relate content. This is a nerds dream. I can tell you I was geeking out a bit over the Naruto and Yu-Gi-Oh stuff. Enjoy the photos below!
Some anime pictures below are NSFW, and these anime images were EVERYWHERE! lol *****Click on the images below to make larger.
The streets were lined with huge billboards and posters. Each store had like 6 floors packed with things. Everyone of these stores was packed with these sexy-jitsu anime posters lol.
After Electric City, we went and got some food and OBVIOUSLY I had to get some ramen and trust me this wasn't my last time.
There were a lot of places, especially ramen spots, that have vending machines that you order your food from. You put in your cash or coins and press a button and it spits out a ticket which you hand to the waitress who prepares your order. As you can see it was all in Japanese so it was kind of a guessing game but thankfully there were plenty of pictures and some places even had english menus.
After this we went back to Shibuya during the day so I could get some pictures. Instead I got a really cool time-lapse video of all the people crossing the road. This is one of the busiest crosswalks in the world and I went when it was SLOW... lol you decide.
From here we walked to the park and saw some cool structures on the way.
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Yoyogi Park
After the park we crossed over the street to Harajuku, a popular place for young people and a very busy pedestrian only street.
Harajuku Street
Funny little sign in a punk inspired clothing and souvenir store. lol
Every corner on this street had a Crepes stand so we had to get some!
In tokyo, fake food displays are EVERYWHERE. They love their fake food and they even have a street that sells just fake food supplies and they carry every type of food. Unfortunately i wasn't able to make it there but enjoy the crepe display!
They look extremely real!
And here is the real thing!
Mmmmmmmmm!!!
After Harajuku we went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, which has the highest FREE observatory in the city. At this time is was late so we went to get some night shots of the city. Enjoy!
This is the view of the building at the base of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. The actual building is behind me in this photo.
The view was amazing!
I also came across this cool installation in the Shinjuku train station nearby.
After leaving the government building we headed back to Akihabara - Electric Town so we could get some night photos.
This is one of my favorite photos!
After taking some night photos we ended the day with some seared meats! Yum!
Day 5: Yokohama - Sunkeien Garden - October 27th, 2015
Today we did a little exploring. We left Tokyo and traveled south to a city called Yokohama which was about an hour away. There we visited our first garden called Sunkeien Garden.
But first lets eat some ramen!
...and dumplings.
And check out the city on our walk to the train station.
We took one train from tokyo station for an hour till we reached our train stop and then took a bus from the train station to the garden. We got a little lost but here are some cool photos of the city around us. Enjoy!
Negishi Station in Yokohama where we transferred to the bus.
The bus ride to the garden.
Found a Charizard tied to a tree... only in Japan... lol
Tried to enter the garden from the wrong side but got to experience the neighborhood, the streets were very tight.
Passed a school and saw the kids outside.
A double decker enclosed highway.
We finally made it to the Sunkeien Garden and it was beautiful!
One of the coolest things about this garden is that fact that you have these huge natural stone walls that almost go around the entire garden blocking the garden from everything outside of it and really making it a quiet and secluded little place.
You can kind of see this in the picture above but there was a little gazebo type shrine just outside the entrance to the garden.
Cool statues every where.
You can see this shrine from the top of the mountain in the first photo of the garden above.
Check out these bonsai looking trees being held up by wood posts!
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Here are a few different pictures of the structures, shrines and general landscape of the gardens.
The scenery here was absolutely beautiful!
I noticed that there were a ton of cats just wandering around the whole garden and I also saw quite a few in the city as well.
I would have liked to have seen less of these but they were all over the park! Not to mention they were a good inch or two in size and their webs were easily 1-2 feet in diameter.
Near the end of the gardens they were setting up booths full of these miniature gardens. Take a look.
After this we left the garden just as it was getting dark and headed back to Tokyo Station.
Again, we got a little lost leaving the station and exited the west exit instead of the east where we got a chance to see the newly renovated exterior of the station. A majority of this station was destroyed during WWII but they were able to partially build and renovate the western exterior to look like it used to back when it was first built.
Here are some other photos of the city around us at night.
We had some dinner which was a variety of different meat skewers which were quite cheap and a few good drinks to complete the day. Now our day didn't end just yet. We went back to the hotel to shower and get ready b/c we had a 9:50pm overnight bus ride to Kyoto Japan the former capital of Japan and a place full of classical Buddhist temples, as well as gardens, imperial palaces, Shinto shrines and traditional wooden houses.
Kyoto here we come!!! We originally looked into taking the train there but it would have cost us $235 a person for round trip tickets there. Although this would have been a unique Japan experience we were not about to dish out that much just to get there. The train would have got us there in 3 hours but we took the bus instead. The bus ride made about 3 stops, was about 7-8 hrs long, but only cost us $50 a person roundtrip! Cant beat that price and the bus stop was right at Tokyo Station which we were staying near.