Konnichiwa minasan! Welcome to Japan. Day one in Tokyo, and
it’s already pretty mind-blowing. The journey here was long and uneventful,
aside from Chinese customs deciding my spare camera battery was prohibited and
removing it from my suitcase. And then wrapping my suitcase up in that plastic
strapping you get around Ikea boxes. Obviously I had all my sharp cutting
implements with me because customs don’t care about things like that. But a
little bit of work with my nail clippers both got me into my suitcase and
broke the clippers. Hey ho.
Here's my room - tiny but well equiped.
The best bit of the journey was meeting two fellow
travellers while transiting through Beijing, and deciding to meet up for shenanigans
while we’re all in Tokyo. So lots of thanks go to Dora and Radosław for keeping
me company today.
I had a little bit of a lie in this morning (because
jetlag), but once I was up I wandered around my bit of Shinjuku, got my IC card
(basically an Oyster card for the whole country), and headed off to Ueno to
meet Dora and Radosław for lunch.
We settled on a tiny place that did curry udon with various
things on top. Each seat came with what looked like a really
large, cheap napkin, but on closer inspection was a large paper apron to wear
while eating. Super happy it was there – udon noodles are messy.
After lunch we wandered to Ueno Park to see the Museum of
Science and Nature… but it’s closed on a Monday (typical). What we did see, though, was a great big fricken whale greeting people by the entrance.
Great big fricken whale
And also the only tree with full blossom onin Tokyo. It's pretty windy, so while there's lots of blossom, it's all in your face when you're trying to see things.
After a quick gawk at the great big fricken whale, we walked to
Asakusa to see the Senso-ji Temple. More gawking (at least for me - Dora had been there before).
Senso-ji Temple
They had fortune boxes where you shook one box until a stick came out, looked at the number on the stick, then opened the drawer with that number and took a fortune. Mine says something along the lines of 'Nothing you do will work, and everything is going to go wrong', which is cheerful, but I think the point of it is to acknowledge the bad things so they can't happen (or something).
The rest of the temple was stunning. There was incense burning, there were lots of big red buildings, a beautiful garden... everything you'd expect from a Japanese temple. I took a fair few photos, and I might put together a 'best of' album when I'm done, just to show some of them off.
After the temple we went to Akihabara for a quick look and a bite to eat. I had a melon cream puff bun, which was as glourious as it sounds, and bought a curry and cheese doughnut to eat for dinner back at the hotel. Yes, it sounds odd, but it was pretty amazing, and nothing like a doughnut.
Theoretically, I'm in for an early night tonight, as I have to be at the station for 7:45 in the morning for my Mt Fuji trip. However, it looks like housekeeping accidentally made off with my hair towel turban thing which I left in the bathroom this morning, so now I've got to wait up until they get back to me. If they send their laundry off site, I might have seen the last of it.
So, on that thrilling cliffhanger of an ending, I bid you all goodnight. Let's see what tomorrow has in store!
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