Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Tokyo Day 2


December 29th, 2009
Went into downtown Tokyo today. Well, not downtown, but a downtown-like area. We took the Odakyu line from Aiko-Ichida to Shinjuku, and from there took the JR to Tokyo Station. We went outside and looked around the area for a bit before heading to the Imperial Palace. It was pretty cool, although it was completely closed and you could only really view the outer gardens and moats (yes, it had multiple moats). We attempted to get a picture of ourselves with some of the palace guards, but they refused, which Dan found absolutely shocking, given the general friendliness of Japanese people. I’m pretty sure it was something to do with their honor or something. We left that area and went to Akihabara, aka Electronic Town. Tons and tons of electronics shops, but even more so, tons of anime porn shops. Pretty strange place, but absolutely hilarious. After Akihabara, we went to a huge public park near Ueno. This park contained a weird kid’s amusement park thing, a huge, 5-story pagoda, and a shrine which had a pretty amazing walkway leading up to it. The shrine was a bit disappointing, however, given the fact that most of it was covered by a huge, poster-like thing of the shrine (similar to that thing in Venice of the Eiffel Tower that we saw in 2005). We had some ice cream in the park, saw a huge 1:1 scale replica of a blue whale, and went back to the subway. From there we headed back to Akihabara to try and find an internet cafĂ©, and failed miserably, given our inability to speak Japanese. Went back to the condo, hung out for a bit, then explored the town around this area (Aiko-Ishida). We walked around for a good hour and a half and didn’t find much, so we just went back to the noodle bar from last night with the “FUKUDOME” guy. Had some absolutely magnificent bacon with like some ginger sauce and rice. Unbelievably good. Went back to the condo and passed out due to jet lag.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like you're having a very interesting time so far!

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  2. Go to Tokyo Big Site in Downtown Tokyo. There is a HUGE comic fair going on now: japantoday.com/category/picture-of-the-day/view/singalong-2

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