Advertisement
Published: April 20th 2008
Edit Blog Post
View from our hotel
Skyscrapers as far as the eye could see. Hello Everyone,
This will be the first of a few blogs that should arrive in the next few days. Japan is such a fascinating place and we're trying to fit in so much in a short space of time that we wanted to try and keep up to date with progress rather than waiting until China when we might have less chance and the internet speed could be slower.
We've been here for three days and our heads are spinning: it's pretty hard to get used to somewhere totally different having spent the last three and a half months in the comfort of the English speaking world.
We arrived on Wednesday afternoon and got a bus to our hotel without much trouble. The hotel was a treat for my birthday on the 17th and was really good, having picked it based on reviews on tripadvisor.com. The room faced out into the city and gave a stunning view of the Tokyo skyline - literally skyscrapers as far as the eye could see in all directions.
Having had a great night's sleep we set off the next morning to have a look round, which was both fun and daunting.
This is hard
Trying to navigate our way around Tokyo If you've seen the London Underground map, double its complexity and put all the stations in a foreign language and see how you get on. After an hour or so of struggling with maps we decided to walk to the city's Imperial Palace - a 'must do' on the tourist trail. Thankfully we got from A to B pretty well and even managed to stop off and buy our Bullet Train tickets along the way.
We've learnt over the last few days that we can get by by knowing the Japanese for 'hello', 'thank you' and 'this please'. Copious amounts of bowing also seems to help. We've also seen lots of things we really love about the place, many of which fit with the stereotypes of Japanese people. Firstly, they're all incredibly polite and helpful: the amount of respect they show for each other and foreigners alike is very endearing. Other good things are:
All their menus have photos or plastic models of what the food looks like so it's easy to choose!
Their taxi drivers wear uniforms and white gloves!
All of their transport runs exactly to time, even in rush hour!
Well, I digressed a
The Verdict Was In...
He had murdered at least five classic pop songs that night. bit there, sorry. As I was saying we made our way to the Imperial Palace. It's actually closed off to the public but the grounds and gardens were beautiful and we spent a while in there until deciding to head back as it had started to rain heavily and for pretty much the first time since San Francisco, we were feeling properly cold.
On the way back we stopped at one the city's main department stores and had coffee and cakes as my birthday party.
The following day wewere packing again, this time to go to Kyoto for three days. It was bucketing down in Tokyo and the long walk to the train station left both us and our rucksacks totally soaked. Thankfully, the bullet train was an absoloute pleasure. We had first class tickets and along with the heated seat and acres of legroom, the smooth and incredibly fast journey soon made us forget the rain. In a first for the blog I'll post a short video next time that Jaime took from the train window to give you an idea of what we could see.
We arrived in Kyoto mid-afternoon and after finding our accomodation
we went out to explore. We wandered the streets, eventually finding a restaurant where the middle of your table turns intoa barbeque and you cook your own food. After a few beers we went to a Karaoke club where you hire your own private room for a few hours and belt out songs to your hearts content. It was brilliant fun and in hindsight we should have got a few hours more.
The next day spent exploring the big city. The whole city is peppered with beautiful, mainly buddhist temples. We were also fortunate to see the areas famed cherry blossom in full bloom. Occasionally, when the wind blew, we found ourselves in a 'snow storm' of cherry blossom.
Kyoto had already set itself as one of the best cities we've visited and promised more to come. In the next few days I'll complete the Kyoto story and cover our return to Tokyo where highlights promise to be us staying in a capsule hotel and a traditional Ryoken.
Hope you're all well.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.081s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 14; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0472s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb