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Published: January 11th 2010
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Narita Airport
Daniel making good use of the glasses provided alongside the pens I don't even know where to start with Tokyo, it is amazing! First impressions of it were that for such a populated place it is so clean. Second impression was that I have never seen such impressive yet equally complicated toilets. Heated seats (which I don' know how I am going to live without) and a button for almost anything you could imagine...automatic toilet seat, built in bidets, a button that produces fake flushing sounds to hide any embarrassing noises, the list goes on, as do some of the interesting surprises you encounter when pressing the wrong button. A long way from what we were experiencing from some of the South American efforts.
We had barely set foot on Japanese soil before people were approaching us from all angles to try and help us. This didn't change throughout the whole trip, the people were so helpful and polite, bowing frantically and it's not long before you find yourself doing the same. There are various codes of conduct that we tried to pick up on the way, for example taking your shoes off before entering most places and wearing slippers (you will see pictures of us in these slippers dotted throughout
our Japan blogs, it was the source of much amusement). Inevitably we would find ourselves making mistakes. One hostel owner looked like he might keel over when I forgot to take mine off and stepped on his carpet, but most accept Westerners clumsy attempts to adhere to their culture.
We met up with my family once we had arrived, it was really nice to see them and particularly to have my Dad there to take over the role of organiser! We spent the first day exploring the area we were staying in, Asakusa, managing to get in the first of many temples that were to come. That evening we headed to a traditional Japanese restaurant where we were basically served raw ingredients and we cooked our own food on the hot plate in the middle of the table, it was fun despite not really knowing how we were supposed to be cooking anything.
The following day we headed further afield to the Ginza district, it is lined with shops and is quite an upmarket area of Tokyo. I was also pleased to see that it was all decorated for Christmas! We went up one of the skyscrapers nearby
to get a view of the harbour, from here we could see the enormous fish market that we were visitng the next day, it really is massive! Akihabara, the electric city, was next on the list and it was crazy. It is a maze of electrical goods, gadgets and manga and one wrong turn found us in some pretty dodgy shops. Once it was dark we went to Roppongi Hills Mori Tower for a panoramic view of Tokyo by night. On the way up you can rent a "Love Blanket", a blanket designed for couples that clips around you both. Daniel refuses to display the photo of us in ours but it was useless anyway, nothing could have prepared us for how cold it was up there, but the view made it worth it.
The next morning we had quite an experience in the largest fish market in the world. It was never ending and we spent half our time dodging fork lift trucks that were whizzing about with no regard for anyone. There was pretty much every kind of fishy thing you could imagine, the tuna being the most impressive and they were selling for a hefty £4,000.
The record price for a tuna there is £109,000! Whilst we were wandering around the live fish section, Daniel was closely examining a clam which responded by opening and squirting him.
Shinjuku, the busiest place I have ever been, was where we spent the evening. There are streams of neon lights and people everywhere. It is also home to Shinjuku station, busiest station in the world. At least 2 million people pass through it a day and it has 60 exits! I thought communting round London was stressful. Worse about communting in Tokyo is that they seem to have a groping problem. A surprisingly high percentage of women get groped on the tubes in Tokyo. It is such a problem that they have tried to come up with techniques of dealing with it, they have all women carriages on the trains and they also have "Groping Prevention Week". Word to the wise, if it happens to you you are supposed to grab the perpetrator's hand and stick it in the air (which we tended to do to eachother on crowded trains quite frequently). At Shinjuku we also had dinner down a little back street known as "Piss Alley", an
appealing name I think you'll agree.
Our final trip in Tokyo was to Mount Fuji. Whilst waiting for the train Daniel and Ash decided to get themselves a drink. After about 5 minutes into the train journey Daniel was complaining about it tasting "a bit funny", Ash concurred. Upon closer inspection we discovered that by 11am, they had both in fact downed a vodka tonic each.
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