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We arrived in Tokyo after a 10 hour flight from Los Angeles pretty Jet lagged and not sure what we were getting ourselves into. We bought the JR Rail Pass in LA in hopes of traveling all around Japan. When we got off the plane we made our way through the sea of people to redeem our Pass and were headed into the city. The guy who gave us our pass even had a map and very clear english directions on where we were headed. It felt like a video game mission. Step 1, get on X train head to Y Train walk 5 minutes to destination. Pretty fun so far.
We arrived in Ebisu to meet a friend and had no way of calling him except by getting a phone card and trying to decipher the phone number. After several tries on our own and trying to pantomime that we were confused with no result I looked in the Lonely Planet guide and compared our phone number to one in the book and voila!
We had a friend who was kind enough to let us stay with him and show us a locals tour around town. We walked
around Ebisu and get delicious Jamaican food near his house. Apparently the guy who runs the shop lived in Jamaica for many years and brought the food back to Japan. After our first meal in Japan we walked around Shinjuku where the crowds of people were incredible, everyone looked like they were in such a hurry to get where they needed to go. There was even a protest going on in the street with huge megaphones coming off the vans and cars that passed by. A local man was very unhappy with what was being said and actually stopped traffic to go yell at one of the protesters face to face, causing the man to get out of the van and start a fight that people eventually got out of their cars to stop. This proceeded for many many blocks. Very LOUD and saddest of all I didn't have my recorder 😞
After Shinjuku we made our way to Harajuku to see the Lolitas dressed up in crazy outfits. There were quite a few, one stood out more than the others, they had a fake arm that looked all gashed up. A few steps from that scene there was
a whole new scene entirely at the Yoyogi Park. Many Elvis impersonators. It was quite hilarious to see. We kept walking through that park and came across people trying to fish something out of a pond, a guy who blew up a HUGE balloon and stuffed himself inside of it, blew up a glove on his head with his nose, girls playing volleyball with just a white piece of string with two girls on either side holding it up with an umbrella and people hulahooping, spinning poi and contact juggling it was pretty awesome, kind of the venice beach of Japan 😊
That night we ended up hanging out in Dave's apartment playing Mario Galaxy 2 and eating Pizza Hut of all things. Note to self, Pizza Hut may be cheap in america but it is 3 times as expensive in Japan and 2 times as small, best to stick with pastries to eat cheaply.
Next stop Chiba.
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