Blogs from Kichijouji, Tokyo, Japan, Asia

After a 10 hour flight we landed at Narita Airport and once through immigration found our way eventually to our hotel - some 3.5 hours later. The highly praised train network let us down first by being late, would you believe and then by terminating before our stop so we had to find another route round. Good job we weren’t on a schedule! Next morning after a strange mixture for breakfast we walked to the Tsukiji fish market. Originally the main fish market this now hosts mainly retail fish establishments and food stalls and wandering round watching folks eating squid, fish or fruit on a stick was a little strange for us. Sue decided to try the fruit one. It had a strawberry on top of a pink yoghurt casing wrapped with pink rice paper - ... read more

Destination: Kichijoji, Tokyo Map →　http://www.maplandia.com/japan/kanto/tokyo/kichijoji/ Date: December, 2009 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Downtown Kichijoji isn’t so large in size. You can cover it by walking. But they show you a lot of facets you wouldn’t cover in a couple of hours. You would need at least half a day to check out what’s going on. Another featuring spot of Kichijoji is "Harmonica Yokocho" (or harmonica alleys) which consists of more than 100 unique shops, bars, restaurants, etc in the small alleys. (http://www.good24.jp/search/map/area?c=st&area=1). This patch originated in an underground flea market date back to 1940s and is still fun place to stroll down. You’d better drop in at one of the shops to get something unique or rare or at a stan... read more

Sorry everyone! I haven't been updating my blog as much as I'd like to be however I have been extremely busy as you can imagine. Classes started on the 29th and went fairly well. My Japanese class is extremely fast paced but luckily I think that the Rosetta Stone software that my mom got me gave me a good head start and should help my performance in the class. The history class is...well a history class and much of the information I already know from my previous Japanese history class but it's a nice refresher none the less. It has been raining here the past few days. Nothing too serious, but enough to be annoying, so I bought a kasa (umbrella) and will hopefully get some use out of it. I was reading up on the ... read more

Vi verkar ha fastnat i Tokyo, känns inte alls längre som att vara ute och se sig kring i världen - utan snarare som att temporärt ha bosatt sig i Japan. Efter över en månad här har det alltså hunnit bli vardag och vanor igen, inte för att det är något större problem, snarare tvärtom: det känns skönt att gå till samma ställe två gånger, tre gånger, tio gånger... att träffa samma människor om och om igen... Men kanske att orsaken till att det känns så trevligt ändå är vetskapen om att vi när som helst som det känns så bara kan plocka ihop våra saker och bege oss vidare igen... Accually, we aren't really travelling any longer... we came to settle down in Tokyo. At least that is how it feels like after over one ... read more

Why don't they heat the whole house. It is pretty cold here. There were actually some snow flurries really early in the morning in Tokyo today. The rooms here all have seperate heaters and they only turn on the one in the room they are using. So basically if you want to walk from one room to the other, you freeze. If you think to yourself you might like to get up in the middle of the night to take a piss, think again. You better put a sweater on before you go because it will be cold. I believe that there is a good chance it will be snowing in Nagano tomorrow. In a place a bit farther north they are having a blizzard right now. I am pretty happy that I brought some nice ... read more