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Published: November 17th 2011
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Autumn afternoon in Ueno
They lose light really quickly here, makes it feel much later than it is! Everyone take a deep breath. It's going to be okay. We took the train the 30-40 odd minutes to Sanrio Puroland yesterday (Hello Kitty Land to the likes of you and me). I know a lot of you (caveat: mostly not Aisha's friends) were quite excited about it. But the thing is, guys -
IT WAS CLOSED.
I KNOW!
But see what we said up the top? It's going to be okay.
So our 'last' full day in Tokyo turned out to be probably our most hectic so far; and also, in hindsight, a total misnomer. After discovering that the Kawaiiest Place on Earth (open every day) was freaking closed that day and the next for a repaint job, we were Sad Pandas (in fairness, Tess was actually the sad panda while Aisha was kind of joining in out of empathy). Of course this necessitated some on the spot disaster recovery and a change of plans.
So we turned right back round and headed back to our hotel in Shinjuku and after a little while, managed to book another hotel (this one is in Shibuya - where that massive intersection/pedestrian crossing is) so we could stay
in Tokyo another night and see Hello Kitty's house after all. Phew, crisis averted! Our place in Kyoto even said we didn't have to pay the cancellation fee! In the words of Charlie Sheen, WINNING (technical clarification: on further consultation of the Sheen Guide, this may qualify as EPIC WINNING).
[Side note 1: Sometimes when you're on the train, it gets to a station and just decides to stop. If we knew why we'd tell you - there's always an announcement explaining it, but of course we don't understand a word of it (except the arigato at the end, obvi). Normally what happens is another train pulls up at the platform next door and people just swap trains and continue their journey. This happened on the way back from Sanrio Puroland but most people stayed on the stopped train and only a few swapped. A nice man sitting next to us said (in English) "You are going Shinjuku? You need that train!" We thanked him profusely and swapped over. As we got on the next one we didn't see where he went, but when we arrived at Shinjuku (big, busy station) he was there, waiting for us further down
Aisha invented a word
Kawaiigious = Kawaii + Religious the platform to see if we needed help with finding our next destination! What a nice man.]
That done, we headed out to jump another train, this time bound for Ueno. The trains deserve about the 5 millionth mention for being insanely useful, frequent, on time, easy to navigate and most of all, cheap as all hell. We've spent maybe 25 bucks each on trains so far, and we've been just about everywhere (this is only a slight lie). Ueno's main feature is a giant park full of temples, beautiful grounds, a zoo, many museums and lots of people wandering around and enjoying it all. Winter is a bit too advanced for many of the autumn leaves to be left, but even so the park looked very pretty. Tess attempted to get onto the child sex offender registry by surreptitiously photographing young children (much to Aisha's amusement). Tess would like to clarify that they are just really, really cute! Look at the photo!! She's wearing bunny ears! See? Cute!
After doing a tour through the park and it being too late for us to go to the museums, we jumped another train and headed towards Akihabara, home of
Electric Town (Aisha has to note at this point that the desire to call it 'Electric Avenue' has never been higher), MAID CAFES (intensely dodgy), Tess's favourite 200-400Y dispenser arcade (complete with everything from mini plastic hello kitty to mini plastic underdressed schoolgirl figurines) and a fair few Gaijin Weeaboos as well as insane neon lighting, game arcades, and moderately cheap electronics. We were unable to resist the call of the push button noodle joint, so examined the plastic food models, punched in, got our tickets and were eating within about 3 minutes. These places have definitely got the business model locked in, fuck customer service talk, punch in get your ticket and eat in 2 seconds. The guys are cheerful and turn out dericious udon and soba dishes in about 10 seconds.
[Side note 2: All machines in the dispenser arcade only accept 100 yen coins, so they've conveniently placed a drinks vending machine out the front so you can buy stuff AND get change for more figurines. Clever! But the point is, the vending machine dispenses (vends?) cold AND hot drinks FROM THE SAME MACHINE. You don't have to have a separate hot drink machine and cold
drink machine. Tess says this is the future.]
After that, back to the hotel.
ALSO. BOSS COFFEE : LIKE A BOSS!!!
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Will
non-member comment
at least it would be easy for the nice man on the train to find aisha on the platform. also maid cafe, seems legit.