Tokyo

The trip to Osaka and Tokyo will cover four days of the blog. This will allow me to cover the trip in more detail, considering I was gone for two weeks, and also allow me to waste time in real life playing video games and sleeping in instead of finding exciting things to do so that I can blog about them. Not that I do that normally, but I like to pretend it happens. Here is part three of four. Who am I kidding with the pictures. They'll get up when they get up. Also I made some hash browns today. They were pretty good.


So I'm pretty sure you aren't actually intended to sleep on those buses. The seats are small and uncomfortable, the ventilation is bad, and since there are no toilets on it they stop once every two hours, turn all the lights on, and make an announcement over the loudspeaker. I'm not quite sure how anybody could think any of that is a good idea.

To top off the horrible bus experience, the second we got off the bus Runa's boot split a zipper. That was a great way to start the Tokyo trip. We made our way to Don Quixote (like a sexier version of Wal Mart) to get her a new pair for the trip, then made our way to a McDonald's and then to the hostel.

We stayed at the Sakura Hostel in Asakusa, and to anybody going to Tokyo I highly recommend it. The staff are very friendly and helpful (they googlemapped some restaurants for us and put up with our confusing coming and going schedule) and are open 24 hours. Check in time isn't until 1 though, so we had to go back out into the wild Japanese yonder.

I got a picture with a Kamen Rider (statue)!!


Probably the only picture of myself I will proudly display on here.

After that, we met up with some jerks (aka friends of Runa's that I had never met before) and went to Harajuku. As some of the geekier of the people reading this blog may know, that's the part of Tokyo where hip j-rockers come out adorned in crazy clothes to compliment each other on how much money their daddies spent on them. As you can probably tell, I'm not that into the scene. There were some pretty cool outfits there regardless, even though we missed the usual gathering time for them. There was also a surplus of other white people trying to be kitschy (I'm not even using that word right) and hang out in the general area.

This is a common theme, foreigners. They are goddamn EVERYWHERE that you look in Tokyo. Osaka and Beppu you'll see a couple of them around in a day, but they are abundant in Tokyo. That makes it easier to get around in English if need be, but it also crowds the heck out of all of the tourist locales.

We ended up in Akihabara (Akiba to the hip cats) and bought a whole bunch of anime related crap that we didn't need, then went back to the hostel. There were some Australians in our room and a Korean kid, and they were all pretty cool. I spent a lot of time talking to two of them (Leo and Steve), mostly about the American government/economy and linguistics stuff. I knew much more about one of those than the other (keep in mind that real Americans don't know shit about how their country is run).

The next day was also spent in Akiba, this time trailing Runa and her friends to the girlier anime departments while they tried to talk me into emasculating myself and wearing womens clothing. But I was having none of that no sir.

No, there aren't pictures incoming of that. For once I actually didn't submit to those types of requests.

The next day was Kabuki! We went to a performance. It was crazy and I could only understand like 1/10th of what was said by the performers. I had also forgotten that there were no women in kabuki, so the "ladies" on stage took me momentarily by surprise. After that I ditched everyone's sorry asses and headed off to the imperial palace!

And it was closed. Apparently it closes at like...four. No matter, I could come back tomorrow morning. I had also wanted to go to the Ryogoku Kokugikan (aside from having the best name for anything ever, it's also the Sumo museum) and the Edo-Tokyo history museum, so I figured why not? But those also closed early so I went back to Akihabara and ate at a Japanese Subway restaurant. Which is pretty tasty and has different flavored french fries (I got BBQ. They tasted like tomato soup. I really can't explain it.) I also found this sexy awesome Cyborg 009 70th anniversary watch that I had been looking for, and almost cried to myself when I found out that it was 400 dollars. I got excited when I found it because I read the price wrong and thought that it was only 40. I left with my head sunk low.

Back at the hostel Myself, Runa, Skylar and Kirsten (the two girls we went to the kabuki theatre with) all sat down for girl drinks and made idle convo with a handsome stranger (can I say that without sounding gay?) His name was Tom, and he kept is entertained with interesting conversation and by laughing at my crappy jokes. Apparently he quit his job (at a bank mind you) so that he could do a bit of travelling. In his words, with the direction the economy is headed in, he figured it'd be best to go travelling and see the world now, because there's no telling how much longer that will even be financially possible. A decent argument, and I can't look down on a guy for wanting to live.

Up in the hostel room I spent a lot of time talking to Steve (Leo went back to Australia) about the dangers of his country. Also apparently the guy was born in South Africa and moved to Australia, so that was pretty neat to hear about. He also did a lot of complaining about how worthless Australian money is at the moment, and we came to an interesting thought process. Apparently, there is a chance that it'd be cheaper for me to fly to Australia from Japan, and then fly to America from Australia, because the Australian dollar is worth so little that buying tickets from there with American money or the yen would be a pretty good deal. Haven't looked into it so much yet, but if it's possible I'd very much like to. Chances are that I'll probably die, considering that Australia has the largest concentration of animals that can kill you, but it should be a blast until that happens.

The next day I woke up early to get a jump on going to the two museums (decided to forego the imperial palace as it was most likely closed for legal matters). The history museum was great, and had full scale reconstructions of buildings and old parade floats and the like. There were some cool ancient weapons, and the timeline spanned from the Edo period to modern times. There was an evolution of culture that was eerily similar to early America's, what with the same fashion magazines and cars and everything.

Oh yes, there was also a section devoted to World War II and more specifically the American air raids on Tokyo. There were chunks of shrapnel and twisted wreckage on display, and while I was viewing it there was a very old Japanese man in a wheelchair close by.

If I had been wearing an American flag on my t-shirt and humming our national anthem (ba-da da da daaa I'm lovin' it) then that might have made it slightly more awkward.

The Ryogoku Kokugikan was pretty much three rooms of sumo memorabilia, to contrast to the awesome immensity of the other museum. Interesting fact though: Those ropes that the sumo wear out to the ring are filled with copper wire and weigh over 40 pounds. That was crazy I thought.

Also this awesome statue was on display.



I didn't get to go to the Ghibli Museum (the ticket reservation system is ridiculously stupid) or climb Mt Fuji (I would've had to have gone there specifically for that) but the trip itself was pretty good.

Oh right, I wanted to go to the zoo as well, but the last of the pandas died last year.

Sadness.