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Published: March 23rd 2008
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Skyscrapers
Skyscrapers everywhere you look. It was such a beautiful day! After we got off our bus at the station at Shinjuku, we still had to try to find Ryan somewhere in this huge city. He had called Michael from a public phone when he arrived and told us he would be at the McDonald's down the street waiting for us. We found the McDonald's, but Ryan wasn't there! So we kept looking around and came back to the McDonald's 3 times...people started giving us strange looks! So we decided he wasn't there and started walking towards the station again, and guess who's sitting on the steps on the side of the station building? IT'S RYAN!! He looked so lonely sitting on the steps with his huge backpack looking at a huge map of Tokyo.
Since it was still early, we decided to try and catch the open fish market at Tsukiji, since we probably wouldn't want to wake up that early any other day. So we took the Tokyo Metro to get to Tsukiji...and that was quite an experience in itself! The station was HUGE and extremely crowded and confusing. There were people everywhere! And the train routes were so hard to figure out...there were so many different lines to
Shinjuku
View of the Shinjuku area...skyscrapers everywhere! take and stops to get off at. It was insane! But somehow we managed to find our way onto the right train and made it to Tsukiji, where we got to catch the end of the fish market and eat some incredible sushi. But more on that later...
After Tsukiji we needed to figure out where we were going to stay that night. Remember how I mentioned that we had really planned nothing and were going to just "see what happens"? Well we couldn't find any hostels. We were very wrong in thinking that there would be hostels everywhere in Tokyo. Everywhere was booked, and we seriously thought we might have to go spend the night at Base Camp (the homeless camp lol). So we took the train to Roppongi, for what reason I do not know, and walked around looking for some cafe with internet access so that we could look for hostels online. But we couldn't find any! So after about an hour of walking around, we found a manga cafe. Michael had brought his laptop so he paid for an hour of internet access, and me and Ryan had to wait in the manga cafe until
Poor Ryan...
Waiting in the manga cafe...he looks so sad! he was done. We were so bored and were surrounded by manga everywhere! We actually ended up calculating how many manga there were, and came up with about 2,500...yeah we were that bored! Eventually Michael came out and had some numbers for hostels, so we called them and managed to book one for the night. We were all so very relieved...
Feeling energized from the good news, we decided to go back to Shinjuku for the day. It was such a beautiful day! The temperature was in the low 60s with clear skies. Ryan wanted to visit the government twin tower buildings, so we started walking in that direction. We found the building, but we saw that there was a little park area nearby and a nap was sounding very good. So we convinced Ryan to let us take a nap first and walked to the park.
On the way to the park, we found a tree with sakura blooming! I was so excited! This was the very first sakura I've seen in Japan...and I got to see it in Tokyo! How great is that? They were so pretty...I was very happy that I got to see sakura!
Manga
So many manga...about 2,500 according our calculations. Anyway, we found a couple of benches in the park and just laid down and took a nap for about an hour! It was probably a funny sight to see us sleeping there, but there were a couple of other guys in the park who had done the same thing. So we figured it was ok. It was so nice lying there in the sun, listening to the birds and feeling the cool breeze...the only bad part was that someone had decided to practice their tuba in the park. So our peaceful rest kept being interrupted by these horrible sounds coming from the tuba (the person was horrible at playing). But other than that, it was very relaxing!
After our little nap we walked back to the government building. The buildin was so tall and there was an observatory at the top. So we got in the elevator and went up
45 floors! When we came out to the observation deck we got the most amazing view of Tokyo. Everywhere you looked there were buildings...it was unbelievable how big the city is! The buildings seemed to go on forever, and they were all so compact and crowded together.
Sakura!
I saw my very first sakura in Japan! It didn't seem real...it reminded me of some Lego city or something because the buildings looked so small and there wer so many of them. Now I can see how Tokyo is one of the largest cities area-wise, and actually is the most densely populated in the world. I've never been in such a big city before!
After we left the government building we headed back over the park because we saw that there was a flea market going on. So we looked around the flea market, but didn't find anything too great. So we went to get something to eat. Unfortunately the Sizzler wasn't open, so we couldn't eat there. We had seen it earlier and had been really excited to eat there because the name just sounded so good! But we did find this other place that served ramen and udon, so we had lunch there.
After dinner we decided to go find our hostel and check-in since we were all so exhausted. After getting lost a few times we found our hostel, the Tokyo International Hostel. It was a very nice hostel, probably the nicest one I've stayed in so far. The room had an
More Sakura
I was so happy to see them blooming... awesome view of the city. Ryan and Michael were in a different room than me because the hostel was divided into men's and women's sides. So I was with 3 other strangers in a room, but it was ok because I just snuck over to the guys' room to hang out anyway. The only bad thing about our hostel, though, was all the rules it had. There was an 11 PM curfew, and that's when all the lights were out too. So we couldn't stay out late at all. And they only had certain hours when you could take a shower, and it was really early in the morning. And they had an intercom in the rooms and would wake you up at 7 AM with the announcement that it's breakfast time when I wasn't even going to eat their breakfast. So yes the hostel was nice, but it had way too many rules. We were treated like little kids...come on, a curfew? Are you serious?
After we had checked in at the hostel we all took a nap and just relaxed for awhile. Then we decided to go out and explore the area and find somewhere to eat
Beautiful
I love sakura! And I love this picture with the building in the background. dinner. We walked along a street right across from the hostel that had a lot of restaurants and stores looking around for awhile. We got really excited when we found this one little bar that looked like it had really good American food, but when we went down the stairs and opened the door, it looked like some kind of private event was going on so we couldn't go in. We were very disappointed, but then we came to this Italian restaurant a little farther down and decided to eat there. I had a pizza and french fries, and it was so good! Then I had this amazing strawberry sundae for dessert. That meal definitely hit the spot! After that we went back to hostel (wouldn't want to miss curfew!) and got a good night's rest...that is, until we were woken up by the breakfast announcement lol.
So that was my first day in Tokyo! I got to see a lot, despite being tired and lost and not having a place to go. It was definitely stressful at first, but everything ended up working out in the end. And we only got to see one area of Tokyo...there was
Park Area
Central Park area of Shinjuku still so much to see!
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