Advertisement
Published: August 14th 2008
Edit Blog Post
What a view!
The view from our hotel room in the Grand Prince Akasaka at night Hello everyone!
Sorry that it has taken me over 2 weeks in Japan to get my first entry published. Hopefully I'll be better about it from here on out. So, for starters, while I've been here so far I have: navigated my way from the airport to the 1st and 2nd hotels in Tokyo, gone to the Harajuku, Shibuya, and Akihabara districts of Tokyo, seen a Meiji Shrine, been to two festivals, eaten some amazing food, gotten eaten by some crazy bugs, seen even crazier bugs, beaten a watermelon, played with fireworks, seen fireworks that beat even Disneyland(!), seen a bajillion vending machines, and of course, been working to improve my Japanese! Alright, so let me try and get you all caught up, starting at the very beginning (a very good place to start...).
7/29/08:
Michelle (the other UCSD student) and I arrived at Narita after a very long flight. And BAM the humidity hit us like a wall as we stepped off the plane. After going through customs without any major issues, we picked up our bags (I brought waaaaaaaay to much stuff; it wouldn't even all fit on the free carts that they have!) and went
Definitely Tokyo
The stereotypically Tokyo-esque street next to our 1st hotel where we got Soba for our first Japanese meal out into the main part of the terminal to exchange our money and ship our big bags to Tsuru. After using broken Japanese on our side and the people at the luggage forwarding agency using broken English on their side, we were pretty sure that our bags would get to Tsuru. From Narita, we took the "friendly limousine", which is not actually a limousine, just a bus, to our first hotel in Tokyo--The Grand Prince Akasaka. (Emily actually told me to pick that hotel when I was first looking at them online because she liked to say "Akasaka".)
We must have gotten some kind of a special deal for the hotel because, for how cheap it was, it was AMAZING. Seriously. The staff was very friendly and the room was oddly spacious for a Japanese one. And the view! Spectacular! The hotel was designed by some famous Japanese architect and when he had it built, he wanted to make sure that each room had a great view--he definitely succeeded! We could see a nice chunk of downtown Tokyo and it was mesmerizing to watch all the people and cars going by on the street so far below.
When
Sleepy time!
Amazingly, the bed was not too small for me =) we got there, we were dead tired, but desperately needed food, so we ditched our stuff and headed out into the Akasaka area to look for a quick cheap dinner. There was a very Japanese looking street with lots of little restaurants, "conbinis" (convenience stores), and Pachinko parlors, so we wandered down that street to a little Soba place. After our quick, but delicious dinner, we grabbed some breakfast for the next morning from a Seven-Eleven Conbini and headed back to the hotel. We both fell asleep by about 8 pm and woke up around 3 am. Oh, the wonders of jetlag. I was able to stay in bed until 6 am, and Michelle has sleeping talent second only to Emily, so she didn't get up until 9:30. Which brings us to day 2!
7/30/2008:
After eating some breakfast in the room, we headed down stairs to try and figure out where the nearest JR (Japanese Rail) station was to take us to our next hotel. We had to switch to the hotel that the other students would be meeting us at before orientation. After a quick trip in search of the JR station in the sweltering heat,
The room
This is the main part of our cute room. I loved the couch next to the window! It felt very glamorous. we hadn't found any signs of any stations besides the subways, so we headed back to the hotel to ask the concierge. With her help, after we checked-out, we took the subway outside our hotel to Shinjuku--the biggest train/subway station in Tokyo to switch to our JR line. So many people! We were amazed at how cheap and convenient the subway/train system is here! It cost us less than $5 each to get from our first hotel to the second and it was about an hour and a half total! Yay Japan!
When we arrived at the second hotel, we had a couple hours until we could check-in, so we left our big bags at the desk and went in search of lunch. We found a cute little restaurant tucked away on the second floor of a building. I had some of the most amazing Chicken Katsu I've ever tasted! After we were done there, we killed some time looking around the Musashi-Sakai area and then sat in the cafe next to our hotel until we could check-in.
When we finally did check-in, we discovered that our hotel room here was much smaller than the first. You practically
A plant to keep us company
This was actually really tiny--like most other things here besides the bugs! had to climb over furniture any time you wanted to cross the room. Still, not bad because we had free internet! Score! After calling our families and boyfriends, we got cleaned up and headed out to find dinner. The map of the area that they had given us at the front desk showed a curry place close to the hotel that we decided to try. It was super tiny and cute, but mostly super delicious! We couldn't decide if it was our inexperienced American tastebuds, or just dumb-luck, but we seemed to just keep stumbling into amazing food places. Not bad for a couple of gai-jins (foreigners).
When we got back to the hotel, we sat down to watch some hilarious Japanese TV. That's when we discovered "Sanma Palace"--what I'm pretty sure is the funniest show in Japan. The host is who makes it so great. He laughs histerically--to the point where he looks like he's dying and he has this toy head that looks like him on the end of a stick and when he laughs he bangs it on things. He kind of acts as a mediator in a debate between to groups of people. From what
Daytime View
The view of Akasaka during the day we could decipher, this week's debate was "the pretty people vs. the not pretty people." That is literally what it said in Kanji at the top of the screen. Everyone was so animated and hilarious! Even the commercials are entertaining. Yay Japan again!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.08s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0517s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Harry
non-member comment
U-DA-Woman!
Hi Megan, Konnichiwa! Your "oh-so-witty" humor is great and I can hear your voice in every word I read. Loved the pictures and stories and am looking forward to the next installment. I'm glad this is Konnichiwa Japan and not "Personal Space." Have fun!