Chance of T-Storms

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At the start of the second day in Tokyo I decided to take a picture of the hostel, as I had been too exhausted to do this the day before. As I said in my previous entry, it was a pretty good hostel and definitely something to remember for whenever I will return to Japan.

Whilst walking my friend and I spotted Sky Tree. Sky Tree is the new highest tower of Tokyo, it only opened a couple of months ago. At first we felt a bit underwhelmed because it didn't really seem that big, though we hadn't taken into consideration that it was considerably farther away from us than we thought at first glance, and also that quite a large part of it was being hidden by the clouds. Anyway, before visiting Sky Tree we headed to the center of Asakusa to visit its most famous sights: the Kaminarimon and Sensoji Temple (the day before, in the car, Oranji-Shirt-san had asked us whether we'd already seen Sensoji, and when we said no he reacted like "whaaat why noooottt?!?!" - so we figured we needed to put it on our itinerary).

Something I really love about Japan: the temples and their surroundings always have such a quiet and calm atmosphere. Even when they're located in Tokyo - the world's biggest and most populated city - it is easy to forget the business of the big city when you enter temple grounds.

Asakusa definitely is one of my favourite districts I've visited in Tokyo. Whereas others, like Shibuya or Akihabara, are mainly for shopping, Asakusa has a whole variety of things to offer: culture, shopping, amusement, modern stuff, etc.

My friend and I decided to walk into a hotel called the Asakusa View Hotel and take the elevator to the highest floor to get a free view over the city. I did feel a bit uneasy because it was a very fancy hotel, and we obviously didn't have to be there, ha ha.

It was time for lunch and to keep with my theme of 'visiting-fast-food-restaurants-I-recognise-from-my-game-Metropolismania-2' we went into a MOS Burger (also because Lentle craved hamburgers). I chose a Teriyaki burger 'cause at least that still sounded Japanese, and a melon soda to drink.

After lunch we decided to visit Sky Tree, though by that time it had started to rain quite bad and we didn't bring an umbrella ... I was totally soaked by the time we reached Sky Tree (who, as I discovered then, was indeed located quite a lot farther away than I had thought when looking at him from our hostel). Sky Tree isn't actually located in Asakusa, but in the neighbouring district of Sumida. Underneath it is quite a huge shopping center, as well as restaurants, an aquarium and a planetarium - though we didn't visit the latter.

After having visited Sky Tree, Lentle and I decided that it would be best to return to the hostel and look up what we wanted to do next on the internet (we didn't want to just walk around aimlessly and then discover later that we'd walked right past some great things without knowing it). We first stopped by the conbini to get a 4 O'Clock snack though. I bought melon pan (Japanese people sure do love melon - and they also love giving the name melon to stuff that doesn't even taste anything like melon). I also bought a can of Asahi beer. I'm not a big beer drinker usually, but I figured that I should try at least some Japanese beer while I was there.

Lentle and I decided that we wanted to ride the Daikanransha - or great ferris wheel - in Odaiba to get a nice view over Tokyo. However, we wanted to do this after dark so we first headed to the Tokyo Tower (which was on the way to Odaiba anyway). The internet had told us that we would see Tokyo Tower as soon as we exited the subway station, and we did immediately spot a red-and-white tower so we walked over there - only to discover it was just an antennae on top of another building. Turns out all high antennae have that red-and-white pattern that Tokyo Tower also has. We called them 'troll towers', and we encountered 4 of them close to the station. We were just about to give up and head back when I suddenly spotted a slightly higher red-and-white tower. Though even then, it still took quite a while before we finally found Tokyo Tower (troll towers everywhere!).

There's something sad about Tokyo Tower, ha ha. Of course, it's a copy of the French Eiffel Tower - though Tokyo Tower is bigger than the original. However, it doesn't seem bigger. That's because every building in Tokyo is so goddamn high, that Tokyo Tower gets lost behind other buildings. Parisian buildings are much less tall, so the Eiffel Tower still stands out. And of course, now with Sky Tree being the new highest tower, Tokyo Tower is getting quite passé.

Apparently, on July 7th the people in Japan celebrate Tanabata. It's a holiday which celebrates the meeting of Orihime and Hikoboshi, two lovers who can only meet once a year on 07/07. There were a lot of couples at Tokyo Tower who were dressed in matching kimonos. Even though seeing women in kimono is quite common in Japan, it was interesting to see the men wearing kimonos as well. Lentle and me decided not to go up to the top of Tokyo Tower (as we would already get a view from the Daikanransha) but we did eat crepes.

As we wanted to head back outside and continue our evening schedule, we noticed that it had started to rain really really hard! It was so bad that we needed to buy an umbrella at Tokyo Tower, because we couldn't go through without one. The sidewalks were almost overflowing, so much water was pouring down from the sky. Because the weather forecast had said that there was a chance of T-storms (a.k.a. a typhoon) we decided that it would be better to return to the hostel. We figured that the Daikanransha probably wouldn't be running anyway in such bad weather, and we much preferred the idea of being safe inside.

Since the weather had taken such a bad turn, we decided to have conbini dinner once again. By the time we got to Asakusa the rain had already become less bad, but we still preferred to just stay at the hostel ...

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Photos

Asakusa
Khoasan Tokyo Samurai Hostel

Asakusa
Kaminarimon

Asakusa
Sensoji Temple

Asakusa
Sky Tree

Asakusa
Melon pan

Minato
Tokyo Tower by night, in the rain