Advertisement
Published: July 14th 2010
Edit Blog Post
The flight from Singapore to Japan was overnight and so we ended up sleeping for most of it before waking up to an interesting breakfast (Shenton had some wierd fish). When we arrive in Japan it is quite straight forward to get our rail passes and then jump onto the express train to Tokyo. That is when the fun starts. First thing to mention is we don't have a guide book (not a good idea in hindsight), we booked our hotel last night online but didn't get a chance to print off a confirmation so I just have an address and the name of the hotel. As we arrive at the subway we realise this is a very compliacted system of lines and most of it is shown in Japanese! We find someone to help us who tells us we need to get the Hanzamon line, which we have to change lines to get to. Looking at this and the amount of bags that we have we deicde to take a taxi to the hotel which is next to the imperial palace.
As we arrive the hotel does not seem to have our reservation so I try to get online
using the hotels wireless interet to find our reservation but it seems that no one in the hotel actually knows how to use their wireless so after about an hour of messing around the very helpful hotel manager takes us up to a room to use the hard wire for the interent. Then we relaise that Hotels.com did not in fact book our room (even though we saw a confirmation come up) as we didn't write down the reservation number we can't do anything about it and have to rebook the room. The room is tiny, it is called a semi double and is just big enough for a bed TV and small table. It is fine for us as we don't intend to spend much time here and the view over the imperial palace is pretty good. When night falls we also get a great view over the city sjyscrapers which light up with neon after dark.
The first thing we do is some washing, the hotel reception told us where to go for the laundrette and we head off with our map. The only thing is everything is in Japanese so we really don't have a clue
what we are looking for. We walk past some streets and I say to SHenton "does that say laundry?" I haven't got my glasses on and he says no it is just in Japanese, so we walk on a while but realise we have gone too far. I say lets just go back and see the place I mentoned, so we walk back and go down that street to see that it is actually a lundertte. Naturally I think I have somehow absorbed the Japanese lanuguae in the past two hours and can now speak, read and understand Japanese ;-)
We decide that we will explore Tokyo using the undergound as it seems to cover all areas we want to visit. When we manage to find out how to use the automated machines to buy a ticket and armed with about 3 different maps and an information guide book we get on our way. In fact the subway system is quite straight forward once you are in the right place it is just that the big stations are so big and there are so many private lines all over the place that you really have to know where you
are going. The first place we go to is called Suitenga here there are 7 shrines which you can visit representing the good luck gods. We really only intended to go to the biggest one but as we are leaving and checking out one of our maps some Japanese people stop us and ask where we are going, we point to another shirne and beofre we know it they have found us a kind of treasure map guide to walking (finding) these shrines. It is all in Japanese, but that just adds to the fun. So we follow the red line and we manage to find all 7 shrines and are pretty proud of ourselves. When going to a shrine there is a routine to follow. First you must bow to the shrine, before entering, then you wash your hands in the watering place, followed by using your left hand to wash your mouth, now you are ready to approach the shrine. When you approach you give an offering (a coin) then if there is a bell, you ring it to atract the gods attention. You then bow twice, clap your hands in front of your chest twice and make
your prayer, then bow once more to finish.
Next stop is Asakura (the old town), despite me getting us a bit lost we find the gate that leads to the oldest temple in Japan (sensoji) which has been around since 890, the temple was closed by the time we arrived but the area is very beautiful and traditional Japanese buildings are everywhere. We stop to have a hot drink at one of these and the owner speaks some English so we manage to get some pancakes to eat. We head back towards our hotel and eat some Japanese noodles, the waitress continues to speak to us in Japanese the whole time we are there, we have no idea what she is saying but smile anyway.
Every Japanese person we meet is very poliite and wants to help, even when they can't speak a word of English they will just keep talking Japanese at you, bowing and smiling. We find that all we can do is bow and smile back (it is very infectious). Tokyo is an extremely busy city with lots of young people enjoying themselves. It is the first place we have visited that truely feels like
another world in terms of communication we could be on another planet most of the time. This is hard work at the end of our long journey but we would not want to change it as it is so different to anything we have experienced before.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.141s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0481s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb