First of all, we took the plane from Norway to Japan with one stop in Vienna.
I think the whole plane-trip took about
1-3 hours to Vienna
4 hours waiting in Vienna
about 10-12 hours to Japan
We flew with an Austrian airplane, which had very crowded seats, with like no place at all for your legs, but the food is much better than on other planes that I have taken. + Every seat got their own TV, with our own remote which could be used to play games or switch into different movies.
To land in another city is always a new experience, at least now, when the place we got to suck in English. The first thing we did was of course to grab our bags and stuff, luckily the airport in Japan was very easy to navigate in. After we got our bags and suitcases we searched for a place to buy train tickets.
The airport is about 1 hour outside of Tokyo by train, so to get to Tokyo we had to first find someone who sold a train-card called NARITA and SUICA-card
This is one of the most handy thing you can buy when you are going to Japan
The Narita-card is only for the train to Tokyo and back, but the SUICA card is a card you fill with money and is used in the Metro stations, which is the easiest way to travel across Tokyo. It can also be used outside of Tokyo, for nearly the same price as in Tokyo.
It is possible to travel to Japan without knowing much Japanese, but it’s rather difficult, since even though the country has been able to give out more English class in school, most people still….suck xD
From the train-station to your hotel you’ll go by taxi. There are always a lot of taxi-drivers waiting outside the station so no worries here, BUT(!) you should get the name of your hotel written down with Japanese letters, so that the taxi-driver easily can understand where you want to go. We had a little trouble with this when we was supposed to explain it to a guy with no-English knowledge at all
I really recommend the hotel we stayed on, it’s in Hanzomon, Chiyoda district and the hotel is called “Grand Arc Hanzomon”. The reason for this is that, Hanzomon is in the middle of Tokyo, it’s a quiet and peaceful place and there are not many tourists here. From the hotel you only need to walk 200-300 meters to come to a little shop where they sell kinda everything you need like:
Breakfast boxes, like pasta, noodles, salads, ricecakes (Onigiri), a lot of different drinks, all of these boxes are ready to eat, only need to heat the food up, which the guys in the cashier can do for you.
You’ll also find candy, magazines, newspapers, soap, and all kinds of things you’ll need
A thing that is special for Hanzomon is the large park which is the Imperial Palace. This is the main residence of the Emperor of Japan. The area is surrounded with water, and it’s possible to walk around the whole place, just following the road. That’s why this is often used as a jogging route for the Japanese people, even though it’s over 30-40*C in the shadow these Japanese still go out and exercise.
It also have a sport and concert hall called Nippon Budokan. This hall is famous for having many well-known musicians from Europe or America playing in this hall.
Fun fact: The Beatles made their Japanese debut in this hall.
But let’s go over to the hotel rooms. The hotel is kind of an expensive hotel but I really liked it there. You can chose between a normal European room, with normal beds and such, or you can experience the traditional Japanese rooms with futons (basically means bed that is directly on the floor, with only a thin madras to sleep on). This is a really special way to get some sleep, but this is not recommended to people that have any problems with their back, because as I mentioned, it’s not much between you and the floor. The rest of the room consists of a television, a low table with chairs, still on ground level, and a bathroom. The funny thing about the bathrooms in Japan is their toilets, without saying much about it, take a look at this picture instead. (INSET PICTURE HERE)
The first place we actually visited other than the Hanzomon area around the hotel, was a place called Ropponghi. This, as I understood it, is a party place, where often young people hang out, go to karaoke’s and lots of clubs, bars and love-hotels. You should probably avoid being here at nighttime. It could get pretty rough when people have had enough to drink and become violent. At day or evening this is a pretty cool place to have seen. All around you, you can see the neon lights that are shining and really shows how nightlife is supposed to be.
To read more about this place visit:
http://www.roadjunky.com/article/587/ropponghi-japan-nightlife
The next day we took the metro to Akihabara! This is supposed to be heaven for any otaku’s around in Tokyo. There are lots of shops that sell manga figures and figurines from all kinds of series. The whole shop is filled with shelves stuffed with different kinds of figures. You can also find a lot of different electronics, from mobiles to computer to other small weird and fancy stuff. But since you’ll be travelling by the metro, you will notice that when you get of the train, you see different kinds of exits often marked from A-F, depending on where in the district you want to go.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember which exit would who led to where. But it’s not much of a big deal really. The streets are big and easy to find your way, even though it’s only a little part of Akihabara that specialize in for example Otaku stuff.
Ginza is another district in Tokyo. The moment you reach the top of the stairs when you go out of the metro, you will notice the huge difference compared to other parts of Tokyo. Suddenly the streets are even bigger, the buildings high and good looking. You have now reached the most expensive area in Tokyo. All the fashion shops lie in this district. Too bad that the Japanese people are so small, if you are an average American or European, it would give you a hard task to find something that fits your size. Everything is between XS and S size, sometimes the clothes is even smaller, XXXS or something >.>. Despite this, it’s a wonderful place to just look around. Even if the clothes are not fitting you, it’s still fun to look at (if you aren’t a boy though xD, that would be different)
Harajuku. This district is associated with young people dressing up in clothes people normally wouldn’t dress up in, in other places in Tokyo. There is one special street called Takeashita street, that are the main subculture street in Harajuku. The place is packed with special clothes like goth or the typical sweet-style + many random stores that sell accessories, socks, shoes or so on. I would add a notice that this street gets easily crowded. We were here on a Sunday. The metro stopped at Harajuku around 11 o’clock, so we had plenty of time here. When we first got there, the street was nice and we had large enough room to move around without hitting too many people, but as the time goes by, more and more people come here. In the end, it was nearly impossible cross over to get to the stores on the other side of where you were, because of the stream of people.
Another special place in Harajuku is the Jingu Bridge, which is simply a bridge connecting Harajuku neighboring Meiji Shrine area. Many cosplayers and people dressing up in all kinds of different clothes are gathering on this bridge to hang out with others who share the same interest. Unfortunately there was no one on the bridge when we got there. It could have been the weather that kept people away this day, since it was dark grey clouds hanging over the city.
But, the weather did get better throughout the day, and we found a large park, only few minutes away from the bridge. We learnt that this was a park for people to get away from the city-life and just enjoy playing games, instruments or just have a nice picnic. But there was something else that caught over attention. There were people dancing right in front of the park. The Rockabilly’s of Harajuku park! I think that there were 3 or 4 groups, each with their own music and their own speakers dancing to old rock music. It was quite fun to watch really.
Other types of dances you could see were some youngsters doing breakdance; others were dancing to some kind of anime music.
One of the most special attractions in Tokyo is of course the Tokyo Tower. The Tokyo Tower is to be found in the Minato district, and the building itself is over 300 meters with an antenna on top, which sends out signals for TV and radio.
The tower is parted up in two floors; one on 150m over ground level and the second is on 250m over ground level. It’s really nice to be able to stand on the top just looking down at Tokyo’s streets and buildings. You’ll get a pretty nice view, if you pick a day without fog…as we didn’t. Of cause we did see a lot and stuff, but it is said to be possible to see the Mount Fuji to the south on a clear day, which we didn’t see.
Picture of Tokyo Tower, http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&xhr=t&q=tokyo+tower+eiffel&cp=16&pq=eifiltower&rlz=1R2ADFA_enJP395&biw=1024&bih=523&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&wrapid=tljp1309234724875324&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi
We went here because my dad was going to meet up with a guy who sold CD’s and LP’s.
The place was not much different from Tokyo; they had the same kinds of shopping centers.
As always, each shopping center had food in the basement and clothes and other stuff in the other floors.
A little more about the basement floor;
In the basement you can find food that are prepared at the moment, like meat and fish and actually most "fast food" and by that I mean Japanese fast food of course, like sushi, meat and fish prepared in a Japanese style. They also have a “normal” food shop, where you can get mostly the same as from a local food shop
In the basement you will usually find a shop where they sell "normal" shop food, food you can get from your local shop and stuff. The best but most annoying things about the basement are the cake shops. You can buy the most fantastic cakes, for not much money. But there are no places to sit and if you take the cake outside, the cream would melt in the because of the hot weather.
My dad asked the guy he bought the records of, if he knew any places who sold manga figures and he told us of a place on the way back to Tokyo. The place is called (INSET NAME HERE). The place had a special street where they sold many souvenir things or ordinary stuff, but the thing I looked for was of course the figurines. The shopping street was combined with small shops and stairs up to an arcade shop. This was the place I had been looking for. By walking down the hall in the arcade, I could find 5-6 big figure shop, which was far more than I had found in Akihabara, at least there was more shops so close to each other than other places.
Shinyuku is known for housing the busiest train station in the world. All the main points go through Shinyuku. There were soo many people here, but again, it wasn’t that hard to find the right station-lines and exits, because of all the signs telling you where to go. Mostly we kept inside some malls because of the hot weather outside. Mostly there were clothing stores on the first 4-5 floors (the buildings are usually very tall), the next floor you could nearly allways find a bookshop. The bookshops had all kinds of books, from literature to extra school books and all kinds’ books and magazines.
~
The next place on the list was Asakusa district. The most famous place to visit when you are in Asakusa is a Buddhist temple called Sensō-ji. The place is easy to find because of a really big red entrance, and the typical temple-roofs. If you visit this place on a hot and sunny day, remember to buy something to drink before entering the Temple-place. The first thing you’ll meet when you go throw the gate is a large shopping gate, with all kinds of souvenirs and such. Might be a little bit more expensive here, because it’s a tourist place, but they sell so much cool stuff here.
The buildings here are really beautiful, you’ll get a feeling of peace when you finally reach the end of the shopping street and are entering the main Temple place. The details of the buildings are extraordinary; even if you are not interested in Temples at all you’ll really miss something if you decide not to go there.
There are some restaurants in this area around the temple too, but(!) they are usually very small, and few can talk much English, even if this is a tourist place, but don’t worry, the Japanese people are very happy to help and they try as best as they can to understand what you want to order.
From the same district it’s also possible to take a bout ride on the Tokyo River. You’ll pay for the bout-ride down at the bay in Asakusa. Here you can chose where you want to go of the bout. We chose the longest ride, to a place called Odaiba. I didn’t know that it exist a place like this in Tokyo. The first think you see when you’re closing in on Odaiba is the beach. There is actually a beach in Tokyo, but people are not allowed to bath and swim in the water. The place is really something in the evening, when the sun is nearly gone. It’s like a paradise, with the white sand and some palm-like plants and a sunset in the background painting the sky in a red-violet and yellow color. Amazing.
But we did visit a little shopping here. They had a whole shop filled with only stuffs from the Studio Ghibli movies. Big Totoro plushies, key rings, chopsticks, towels and a lot more. They even got a Pokémon shop, where they had over 100 different Pokémon sold separately.
Shibuya: A big district, with the biggest street intersection in Tokyo, where all the streets met. It was so cool when the lights for the cars turned red and all the people started to cross the
In the end I’m just going to recommend a restaurant that I have a picture of and I’ll try to find it on a map…
MORE LATER
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