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The first thing I noticed as I stepped off the plane after my 6.5 hour flight from Bangkok was it was bloody cold, like 14 degrees. Granted it was 7 in the morning and got to 27 degrees during the day but it felt weird. Out came the hoodie which hasn't seen daylight since Kangaroo Island, bbrrr!!! Hotel is lovely and right in the centre of the action, loads of nice sushi restaurants, strip shows, pink palaces (i'll explain another time) and sights to see. The first day was a bit of a rubbish day, being a night flight from Bangkok and getting no sleep, my bed saw far too much of a person only in town for 3 days. Shame but I did venture out mid-afternoon and evening to see a few things and have my first taste of authentic Japanese sushi. The second day was much better! Out of bed at the crack of dawn, 11am, and off to see the sights of Tokyo, the largest city in the world! First stop was to try and master the Tokyo subway system, no lie you need a degree just to read the map, I heard a British tourist got lost
Neon paradise
Second only to Vegas I think in 2002 and he's still riding the rails looking for his hotel. I managed to find the Tokyo Tower which is a tower similar to the Eiffel Tower but Tokyo like to boast it is 30 meters bigger. View from the top was pretty nice, all the usual stuff in a huge city, massive skyscrapers and the rest. A very funny thing happened though, a little Japanese bloke was in front of me in the queue to get down and I thought I'd squeeze out a cheeky little fart. Well this boy hit hard and I reckon the whole queue could smell it. The second I smelt it, the little Japanese bloke in front turned to me and pointed at the toilet and said Toilet ok? Of course I went bright red, thinking he was saying I should visit the bog and rid myself of this demon. All i could say with my bright red face was, No thanks I’m ok! At this point he walked to the toilet himself, just when I realised he had only wanted me to save his place in the queue while he went. You just had to be there I guess!
Moving on
swiftly, after the tower I went to Madame Tussauds in the same area and the guiness book of records, same shit different country really. Next stop was see some of the districts of Tokyo and I went to see a few decent places, Ginza (tons of neon lights, great shops etc), Shibuya (I have never seen soo many people crossing the road in my life, apparently up to 8,000 people in a single crossing in rush hour), Shinjuku (again neon lights everywhere), Tokyo (where the central station is, I wanted a photo of the bullet train which I saw go past while in Ginza but I couldn't find one, well couldn't be arsed to look that hard) and finally back to Ikebukuro which is where I am staying and a nearby hotel called Sunshine Palace has a viewing gallery on the 60th floor, so I thought I'd seen what Tokyo from above looked like during the night as well as during the day. Sightseeing done for the day, I retired to the comforts of a local restaurant and had myself a Japanese slection, sashimi, miso soup, a few rices, Japanese beer/wine/tea, was very nice. They under charged me by like
2,000 yen (9 pounds on a 15 pound bill) so I got out of there quick sharpish.
The last full day of my whole trip was another typical day, slept in till midday then hit the sightseeing trail pretty hard. Loads more stuff to see, different areas and shops etc, managed to find the Apple shop and got myself a 30Gb Video Ipod for 120 notes, then the Diesel shop which was no good as Jap men are only like 4 foot tall and have shit taste in clothes. In the evening I had booked a night tour of Tokyo which was actually very good indeed. First we had dinner on the 25th floor of a osh hotel in Odaiba and had great views of the sun coming down over the Rainbow bridge and the city skyline. After dinner we had a look round the Odaiba area itself. I wish I had found this place earlier, great views, a smaller Statue of Liberty, amusements parks like no other, a Sega indoor Theme park, a bowling alley, the list goes on! After this we headed for Ginza and had another look around the posh shops, Gucci, Tiffany's etc, I bought
sod all as always. Last stop was the Rappongi Hills, a posh 60 floor hotel/entertainment complex which has another observatory on the 52nd floor, again great views but kinda tired of observatories now, still a great tour and a nice way to spend my last evening of the trip.
So this brings me to the final journey of my trip, Tokyo to London. It's taken just short of 8 months, spanned 4 continents, 19 flights, 34 blog entries, 394 photos for you, a bucket load of borrowed money (cheers mum), well over 60,000km travelled, 3 international date line crossings, 2 equator crossings, 14 countries, 1 arrest, countless bouts of diarrhea and a partridge in a pear tree.
See you in London!
Cheers for reading.........................
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K Schulz
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Great blog!
Well it's been pretty entertaining reading about (and joining you for 2weeks on) your travels - you have certainly seem some great stuff and even made some new friends (that random girl who found you on the Thai blog - very strange). What a great idea to finish with a paragraph of numbers as well - where did you think of such an ending?!