Turning Japanese

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March 1st 2007

Published: March 1st 2007

It's now my 2nd day in Cairns, and after a heavy night last night, Dan and I thought it was about time for our first update, so here it is.

Apologies if you've emailed me and I haven't replied yet but we've been sitting on these damn slow computers for the past 3 and a 1/2 hours and I'me ready to smash the thing up.

We arrived at Narita Airport at about 11am, having flown for 11 and a 1/2 hours caught the skyrail train (just a regular train, not a monoorail as I'd expected) to our hostel. Luckily for us, our hostel was only 2 stops on the subway from the skyrail stop and despite being pointed in completely the wrong direction by an overhelpful Japanese man, we found our hostel with relative ease.

Once we'd settled in, we decided to battle through to the evening despite having no sleep on the flight, and go and meet my mate from school, Greg, who was living in Tokyo for a year. We met Greg outside Shibuya station and he showed us around Shibuya, which is one of the busiest cities of the 22 that make up Tokyo, and is absolutely crazy. The whole atmosphere is so different from any other city that I've been to. Neon lights and signs litter the sides of buildings, along with huge TVs screening adverts. Every shop seems to have different music blaring as well as there being speakers on the streets playing Japanese pop music. Another difference between this city and others I've been to is that there are hardly any foreigners, apart from the tourists concentrated at the popular attractions.

Probably the weirdest thing I noticed about Japan is that about 1 in 20 people were wearing cloth masks covering their mouth and nose. Even after asking Greg and a few others we met, we could only narrow the purpose of the masks down to the folowing; either they were to protect against the pollution in the city, or they were to cover your nose when you have a cold as according to this English lad from our hostel, blowing your nose is about as offensive as wiping your bottom!

We decided we really needed to get some kip and made our way back to the hostel, which proved to be a little tricky seeing as we were both pretty much asleep on our feet. This resulted in us not missing our stop, but waiting on the train at the end of the line, and only realising that we had been at our stop for 5 minutes when the train started heading off in the opposite direction, we were that tired!

We then has the fun task of locating our hostel in the dark, which we had both walked right past without noticing.

The next day we had booked tickets for the Studio Ghibli museum, which was a bit of a trek from where we were staying, and this and a visit to the biggest electronics store I have ever seen took up the whole of the day. For those of you that don't know, Studio Ghibli are the animation company behind films such as Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. The Ghibli museum was quality, showing all the aspects of animation from when it all began to the present day, but as the nice Japanese man pointed out to Dan on the way in "You! No Take Photos!" I decided it was best I left my camera in my bag. We got to see a short animation that you can't see anywhere else in the world apparently. It was about a spider that fell in love with a waterboatman and wasn't that great to be honest.

We then headed back to the hostel to get changed and get ready for some sushi followed by some beers. We met up with Greg again and he took us to this little restauran where you had to take off your shoes (reminded me of Donni Brasco) and sit at a really low table. You ordered your food using a computer screen attached to the side of the table, which was playing adverts whilst it wasn't in use. At this point I'd just like to say that I used chopsticks the whole time I was in Japan, whilst Dan started each meal with them, would usually resort to a fork within 10 minutes. As well as eating the sushi, we also tried some Octopus balls. After seeing me yam mine down, he ate his thinking it was an actual testicle! Me and Greg pointed out that octupi probably don't have balls, especially not the size of what we were eating. After the meal Greg showed us a bar where the beer was only 200 Yen (about 85p) and he went home (he had a test the next day). Before he left he showed us where to go on our last day. I'd just like to say a massive thanks to Greg for showing us about as we wouldn't have seen half the amazing things that we did without his help. We decided to stay in Shibuya until the last train and then have a few more beers in Ueno, where a taxi back would be much cheaper. After a surprisingly good Guiness in the Samurai Bar, we headed home to bed, but ended up having a few beers with an English guy from the hostel, a pre-uni lad who had had far to much to drink, and was claiming to be sober, very amusing for Dan and I.

After checking out of the hostel, nursing sore heads, we headed to the Meiji Shrine at Harajyuku which was really beatiful. The grounds around the shrine were really peaceful, and it was nice to get away from the hustle and bussle of the city for a few hours. Before entering the Shine, you have to wash your hands and rinse your mouth with these weird cups on sticks.

We then headed to Shinjyuku, the busiest train station in the world. It was here where we went up the Tokyo Government Metropolitan building where we got an idea of just how big Tokyo was. As far as the eye can see was city scape, and on a clear day you can see Mount Fuji. Tokyo is the bioggest city in the world, and standing on the 45th floor looking out over it was really impressive.

Our last sight for the day was the much busier Asakusa Kaminarimon Shrine which seemed like a different world to the one we visited earlier that day. The street up to the shrine was filled with tourist shops, and this shrine was surounded by high rise buildings, but it was beautiful all the same. People were burning incense sticks and flapping the smoke in their eyes, which seemed pretty strange, but is part of the buddhist culture.

We then headed back to the hostel to grab our bags, and headed to the airport, to catch a flight to Cairns, Australia, which is where I am writing this.

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