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Published: November 10th 2015
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Hello world,
Today we discovered that not all noodle dishes are served hot in japan. but more of that a little later.
We woke up early, around 7:00am - i made french toast, with sliced tomatoes and side of sliced banana and orange. Fruit in japan is very expensive, and oranges are not the greatest. Having made our way yesterday to several little groceries stores, we had supplied ourselves with basic food so as to avoid eating out all the time.
Once we had showered and gotten dressed, we where then out the door, Brad had insisted on walking to the museum, which was fine, it was relatively close, so i was happy to stretch out my legs, but first stop we needed to print out our disneyland tickets that i had book the night before. Turns out that all 7/11 convenience stores have printer/photocopier machines, which was excellent for us. We made our way down to the local 7/11 and proceeded to try to print out PDF file from the machine. Turns out the only functions that it would allow you to complete in English were printing photo files or photocopying. Since we did not wish todo
either of those things i decided not to be defeated and accepted the challenge and chose to navigate through the Japanese instructions. I had almost had it, we had inserted out 40 yen when i, thinking i had pushed the enter button had actually cancelled the entire transaction. A lovely clerk must have picked up that we were struggling and immediately came over to assist. In broken english and broken Japanese she saved the day and had also managed to compliment me on my blue eyes and figured we were from Australia. I was so elated i almost hugged the sweet little lady. Oh, on a side note to all my family that insist on continually point out how short i am... in Japan i am very tall, so there. lol
Tickets printed, we ventured back to the apartment to drop them off, i picked up a warmer jacket and an umbrella. While the apartment is very warm the wind down on the street is cold and the weather is both humid, hot and a little chilli depending on your current location.
So we headed out for a second time on our way to the Tokyo Museum of
Contemporary Art (while many of you that know both Brad and I would think that it was me dragging him to this, it was actually Brad that was dying to go) we bought a full ticket to see all the current exhibitions which consisted of a reconceptualisation of what tokyo means today (which was extremely fascinating and impressive) we also saw the permanent exhibition, which was interesting but very abstract and focused manly on the post war period. Finally, we wondered through the Yoko Ono exhibition, which was a little bit... well weird. I seemed to come to the conclusion that she is still banking on her relationship with John, and technically the installations and works were not that impressive. But hey, i'm no modern art scholar so maybe they were masterpieces???
Once we had our fill of modern, abstract weirdness our tummies began their usual song of "feed me" and we decided that rather than just eating somewhere for convenance we would try and find something extremely Japanese like Ramen. Brad had decided that it would be best that we walked from the TMOA to Akikhabara (Side note: i was on the hunt for a hairdryer... having not
packed my portable one, my thinking that, yeah i can be a backpacking scruffy hippy again... did not last but two days. Ladies , if you love your hair and you are coming to Japan where everyone dresses immaculately, do not leave home without the following, Hairdryer, Dry Shampoo and Deodorant... the three things i though would be no problem to find, have proven to be difficult. Hairdryer found, deodorant obtained... dry shampoo, completely given up on) so we began the massive walk across town. We stopped over a beautiful big blue bridge that connected one side of the river to the other and a lovely open rood boat when swimming underneath, a sweet Japanese lady looked up and spotted me, she began waving and had to wave back exchanging silent smiles, i think we both just were happy to be in that exact spot at the exact time that we were and it provided me with the energy to keep following my determined Husband across Tokyo with the desire to both find food, a hair dryer and of course our destination, Akikhabara.
We stopped for lunch at a tiny hole in the wall that Brad had deemed to
be the perfect spot for real japanese food. We were seated a kind of annoyed waitress came to serve us (who spoke English reluctantly) and we managed to order food without any idea what it was that we would soon be consuming, but we were happy it came with a free drink. Our order arrived and to my complete shock the soup had ice-cubes floating in it, with noodles, a clear broth and two of the smallest and coldest pieces of pork. Determined not to appear rude, I grabbed my chopsticks and began to consume the cold soup. I had also chosen Brads meal for him which came out in something similar to a sizzling beef plate from the local Ocean City Chinese restaurant at home, with rice, an iceberg lettuce salad and omelette on the side. It also came with noodles and floating pieces, of what we are still unsure of, but may have been meat. (Mum, i am pretty certain it had those fish chipolates in it that you love) we ate and paid for our meals and then were off again, in search of what was beginning to feel like the lost city of Atlantis, Akikhabara.
Another 4 or 5 kms, we had finally reached the main street of Akikhabara... it was loud, noises and very densely filled with people. The majority of buildings were planted with advertisements. Brad found the shop where trading and selling of iconic animation and cartoon characters seemed to take place, kind of like an auction house, i think which his cousin Jason had told him he must see. We then walked up and down the main street in search of the hairdryer. Finally we found a little store and bought one called "Big Wind" (pause for laughter!) for 1,980 Yen. Please with my purchase and having down the main drag twice, the heavens opened up and our will to continue being tourists faded, we decided it was time to head home.
Having walked so far, we decided it was finally time that we must tackle the Tokyo Metro Subway system. If you google a map, you will understand our hesitation, for we felt if we went down there we may never have come back out. Holding back our reservations, down we went... we stood staring at the map for maybe 10 minutes (which was extremely hot, sticky and ultimately
uncomfortable) before we had agreed on the best route to get back to our apartment in Koto-Ku. Two trains, more walking and then a Bus (and a very lovely bus driver who waited for us to get change so as to pay the fair) we finally heading down our street. Tokyo buses are also ALOT smaller than buses at home, Brad and i had difficulty fitting on one seat together, but it was only a couple of stops, so we didn't mind. The first time i am ever in a new place, i make a point of remembering visual markers of my surrounds so as to minimise getting lost and it was excellent that this morning when going to print the Disneyland tickets i had remembered across the road from our apartment a building with two giraffe cartoons (i imagine it is a preschool) and the yukking 24 hour chain restaurant. We had got of the bus and i had began to open my umbrella when i noticed the bus still standing there... The bus driver caught my eye to check to see if we may have accidentally got off a stop to early, i signalled to him that we were okay)
All in all today was awesome, when people wrote online of how polite the Japanese are, i was sceptical. Now, having experienced 3 lovely encounters in one day from 3 complete strangers... i think they were right. Next two days will be spent at Disneyland and DisneySea for our 4 year wedding anniversary and to get back in touch with our inner children so for now, it's dinner and an early night.
Sayonara for now, Love Bradaline xo
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