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So the 2 hour plane ride from Seoul to Tokyo was very nice and was treated with lunch on the plane which consisted of a sandwich and a large squid! I ate the sandwich. Also saw Mt Fuji above the clouds as we were coming in, very amazing. I took the bus into Tokyo to my
HOTEL, which is situated in a nice residential area of Tokyo. I decided that before anything, I had to watch the DVD I brought of
“Lost in Translation”. This is not only a great movie, but is right-on about everything you experience being a Westerner in Tokyo. I have basically lived this movie since I’ve been here. I’m using the movie as my guide of all places to see and do while I’m here, and it has been great so far.
So after watching the movie I headed out to the area of Tokyo called
Roppongi by Subway. Tokyo’s subway is much more extensive than NYC, and much more confusing, but somehow I found my way for less than $1.50. The area of Rappongi was a pretty nice area with a ton of restaurants, shopping etc. I walked around for a couple hours and then went
Help!
I don't belong here! into a small little sushi shop for an authentic Japanese sushi meal. I sat at the sushi bar with 3 old Japanese men there to make up anything I wanted. So for 4,000 Yen (about $33) I got an all you can eat sushi meal. They gave me a picture menu to choose whatever I wanted from about 40 types of sushi. Well, as I’ve said this trip, how many times will I ever be in Asia, so I decided to go crazy. I ordered about 20 different pieces of nigiri: boiled octopus, raw salmon, raw yellowfin, squid, crab, and ended with sea urchin. All were pretty good EXCEPT the sea urchin was hoooorrrrible, and the octopus was kind of chewy, gross I know. So after my interesting meal I headed back to my hotel and called it a night.
---A side note before I write about today. I have noticed that being in Asia for 10 days has caused my English to get bad, I’m not using verbs correctly and conjugating them wrong. It’s actually kind of funny. And I’m also saying “ye ye” all the time, which is common in Korea. If I stay much longer I
believe I might start blending in….yikes!
So today (Sat), was my first full day in Tokyo. Again I decided to follow from the scenes of “Lost in Translation” and headed via subway to an area of Tokyo called Shibuya. It is known as the youthful entertainment district of Tokyo, with a ton of music stores, and cool clothing shops. I was joined by my IBM coworker today named Himanshu Bhatt. He’s a nice guy and interesting as he is not only Indian and doesn’t eat beef, but he’s also vegetarian, so the poor guy has a horrible time finding food here in Asia.
Anyway, we walked around for about 6 hours touring this cool district and saw areas similar to SoHo in NY, and areas that are similar to Times Square. I took a ton of pictures today, as you can see. Being in Shibuya today was the first time felt like I was in a ‘big’ city, as most of Tokyo is only 6-10 story buildings, but has its areas of skyscrapers as well. After touring the city part, we head to the nearby Yoyogi park. It is similar to Central Park, but not near as big.
Where's Waldo
Can you find the guy who doesn't belong? There is a large open space where people were playing Frisbee, badminton, soccer and plenty of trails through the trees and ponds. Also similar to central park were a ton of “interesting” people around with tons of live teenage bands playing live, drum circles, and plenty of your standard freaks doing all sorts of things. The highlight of the park though, was about 10 Japanese guys dressed in 1950’s clothes, with big 50’s hair and leather jackets, all dancing together to “Grease Lightning.” See the pics of this, as it was hilarious and they were singing and dancing all kinds of 1950’s songs, and they had a sweet 50’s Cadillac there too.
After the park we headed to the
Meigi Jingu shrine, which is a gorgeous shrine situated on 175 acres right in the middle of Tokyo. While we were there we witnessed 2 traditional Japanese wedding processionals, which up to now is the highlight of my entire trip to Asia. Everyone was dressed in traditional Japanese robes, and I wondered how awesome it would have been for me and Kelly to dress up like this on our wedding day ;-)
So finally we were completely dead from walking about
Wedding Processional 2
Traditional Japanese Wedding 15 miles through the day, and headed back to the hotel and ended up eating dinner at an Indian restaurant. I think that will be all for the day, and I’ll plan for a day of touring/shopping tomorrow. More to come.
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