Tokyo – the modern, the historic and the cute

I woke up in Tokyo on my first day in Japan, feeling slightly anxious and out of my comfort zone. Tokyo. It’s pretty big. (The most populous metropolitan area in the world, with a population of 38,6 million in the metropolitan area. That’s nearly eight Finlands.)

I’d arrived at the hostel at around 1am, following a rather hectic way from Narita airport, 60 kilometres out of central Tokyo. My late flight was late, and my biggest nightmare was to have to take a taxi, a _taxi_ in the most expensive city of one of the most expensive countries in the world, for a trip of sixty kilometres… I felt sick at the thought.

After landing, I ran through the airport, and luckily found myself in the cold, long, outdoor queue to the Last Bus to Tokyo which was leaving in five minutes. I got chatting with a friendly Taiwanese girl who I ended up sitting with in the bus, who super lovelily let me use her smartphone to research transport possibilities online.

I got to Tokyo Central railway station without using a taxi. Next my instructions told me to get the monorail, but if I personally were a monorail, I would be shutting down by now, at half past midnight. And that seemed the general consensus.

The taxis I tried to flag down ignored me. How do you flag down a taxi in Tokyo? Do you even flag down taxis? I literally had no rules of etiquette.

At some point I noticed there were still people heading towards what I presume was the railway station, so I decided to let a small glimpse of hope take over, and rushed over to join them crossing them huge, empty, dark roads of Tokyo at night. Vaguely trying to look around and take in the Tokyoness of Tokyo – TOKYO, I’m in TOKYO!! – but failed at it slightly. It was just overwhelming, and pretty stressful.

I got into the station, dumbly staring at my hostel directions, hoping they would magically become a miraculously working version of English-speaking, no-internet-requiring Google Maps, telling me which way to go, which line to take, where to buy the ticket, where to queue, and what Japanese rail rules of etiquette I must follow. No.

Japanese people are notorious for not knowing English, according to some sources. So, when I desperately stopped this little thirty-odd Japanese lady to ask her for help, I didn’t expect the following…

In perfect English, she was enthusiastically sad (can you be enthusiastically sad? Is that a valid way of expressing things?) about my situation, and reassured me the monorail was still running, but only just. She looked at my directions, told me where I should go, where I should change, how to recognise the direction I should change to, wrote all this info quickly down on my directions, and guided me to the ticket machines.

She gestured to the wall behind the metro tickets, ornated with the humongous monorail map of the most populated city in the world, and started to point out to me which station mine was, but then realised that I wouldn’t understand anyways, as it was all in Japanese. This was a moment I was thanking every single god in human history for this angel they had sent down to guide my way through night time Tokyo transportation.

She pressed all the buttons for me on the machine, gave me my ticket, then ushered me through the gates and walked me – or well, jogged me, as we were in a constant race against the clock – to the right platform.

Thank you, angel. “When I was in London, I was very confused, but the locals were lovely and friendly and helped me, so I’m doing the same,” she told me when I profusely thanked her. Bless.

After that it was pretty straightforward. I felt seriously lost – mentally, not physically, thanks to angel – in this crowd of Japanese people, mostly very, very stereotypical businessmen or young people on smart phones that you’d imagine to reside on the rails of Tokyo. Trust me, it’s not an exaggeration.

I attempted to jump a few queues (unintentionally), constantly forgetting that you don’t vaguely wait around on the platform for the train, you form an orderly queue at the assigned places. At the station where I meant to change, Akihabara, I asked a man, in plain sign language English, if I should go to platform one or two for my train. The man beamed at me, showed the o-sign with his fingers (the equivalent of a thumbs up or ‘yes’) and literally, _literally_, immediately escaped by running up the escalator. Ah, this is the Japanese questionable assistance I’d been hearing of.

Well, made it to my hostel, and they hadn’t even locked up! But, very overwhelming yes, and that brings us back to the waking up in the morning.

In bed, I had a good talking to myself: It’s just Tokyo. And friendwise, well, you don’t need a free breakfast and a super sociable common room to make friends (like you had in Taipei), and in any case, you’re travelling alone coz you enjoy travelling alone, right?

I got ready and went downstairs to plan my own, independent, solo exploration of this epic city. The common room was mostly empty but I was sat opposite a small Korean girl reading a book. While planning with all the guide books and leaflets, I was aware of her constantly looking up at me, slightly anxiously, so in the end I started talking to her. It emerged she did have a reason to be nervously looking at me – she wanted advice on boys. So, my first wakeful hour in Tokyo was discussing the quirks of the opposite sex with this lovely sweet Korean girl who introduced herself as Anna.

We’d just decided to go get breakfast together (apparently Anna hadn’t eaten for two days due to boy problems, and I hadn’t eaten properly since that last huge brekkie in Taiwan the previous day, so we were hungry), and got accompanied by chill Gaz from Oz. This friendship started by chance with me randomly complimenting him on his MASSIVE warm-looking jacket which I unfortunately lacked in my carry-on backbag. He was getting breakfast too, and he happened to know of an excellent place near our hostel.

One of the best meals of the trip, a scrumptious breakfast at a vending machine place. I came to learn that in many cheaper food places in Japan, you order and pay at a vending machine, then give the ticket to the waiter or waitress. Brilliant.

After brekkie, the new, unlikely friendship group three of us went off to sightsee Asakusa, the ‘old town’ in Tokyo.

As one of the only districts where the infrastructure is also pre-wartime, Asakusa is one of the more traditional Japanese areas in Tokyo.

We saw…

• Beautiful red temples and shrines, the kinds you see in all cliché-ey Japan travel guides

• Less beautiful architecture – spot the flame, whose architect was not familiar with Japanese earthquake building laws until he’d built his flame. It had to be put on its side, not upright.

Though I feel bad, it’s a… quirky kind of architechture.

• LOADS of tourists (I was very glad when Gaz, who’d been in Japan for a few weeks already, said he’d never seen this many. Glad it’s not gonna be like this elsewhere…)

• Friendly dudes who invited you to go on their Japanese walking cyclo-equivalent (think cyclo without the wheels. So essentially the dude holds you in his wheelbarrow-equivalent and walks/runs around. Would’ve been interesting…), but when you politely refuse they don’t start harassing you (like in Vietnam or Thailand), but hand you a map of the area and explain politely where you should go.

• Dogs in coats (so many dogs in coats. I don’t think I saw a naked dog once in my whole East-Asia period.)

• Dogs in goggles

• Dogs in prams (these people literally had a family of three generations of chihuahuas – the crazy four-month old eagerly bounding about making friends with anything within reach of his leash, the more calm and sensible middle-aged Chihuahua glancing at the young’un disapprovingly, and bless her, the ancient granny in the pram, who was blind and bundled up in blankets.)

• …and ate green tea Asakusa ice cream, which my East Asia-expert friend Kim recommended. It was nice, yes, but it was annoying that we had to stand around the crowded area near the stall to eat it – walking around eating is not allowed.

• …and sampled amazing sumowrestler’s soup. I was super full from breakfast and ice cream, and told the very friendly men there that, but then they decided they wanted to give me a free taster – when I tried to give them money for it they looked offended and refused. It was scrumptious, and so warming in the progressively chillier and chillier weather…

After Asakusa, we went sightseeing to the reverse side of Tokyo – Shinjuku, the commercial centre of Tokyo.

Then we headed to quintessential modern Tokyo, Shibuya. The neon-lit buildings, the imposing, funky-shaped skyscrapers, the bright lights and colours on the ubiquitous ads and commercials. We got out of the metro and my first thought was: Now this is Japan.

Shibuya is most famous for the Shibuya crossing, a huge crossing where all the lights are green for either cars or pedestrians, meaning that when the lights go red for vehicles, the crossing is full of swarms of people crossing over to the right, crossing over to the left, or crossing diagonally. Famous from many films, like Lost in Translation.

It was Saturday night, and though I didn’t know it then, it was probably one of the best times to be there (in other words, when it was most crowded). We crossed the crossing multiple times, wandered the neon-lit, music-filled streets of Shibuya, then crossed a few more times, taking multiple selfies and videos. “The rush of the maddening crowd streaming in from all directions, the blare of commercials on giant plasma screens (…) never fails to bring about a sense of awe,” says some leaflet I picked up.

And the Robot Restaurant I mentioned in the previous entry…

And the famous Shibuya meeting point, the statue of Hachiko the faithful dog, who would always meet his owner at Shibuya station even after the owner’s death in 1925. Nine years, nine months and fifteen days, Hachiko awaited his owner’s return, arriving at the station exactly when the train was due.

Another not-so-advertised sight of Shibuya was ITS PET SHOPS. <3 _____________ <3 In addition to absolutely stunningly adorable little baby animals, you got a cartoon-version drawn on the window of the said baby’s, erm, cabin. WAAAAAAAAAHHHH and this was when my camera memory card ran out of memory…

 

Crepes are also a Japanese thing, which Gaz sampled. Delicious.

Another Japanese thing is plastic example foods in restaurant and cafe windows. You can see what each portion looks like. Excellent innit!?

We shopped at the six-floored Forever 21, ate curious curry at Coco’s Curry, and just chilled at the crossroads. (=crossing every single road at least once)

 

We had great fun walking around, taking selfies and videos and sucking in the atmosphere, fuelled by a beer or two AND the best drink IN THE WORLD (thank you Kim for the recommendation!!): Umeshu, a Japanese plum wine that tastes of Christmas. And it comes in a cute carton so you don’t even feel like an alcoholic. It was beautiful.

Another activity which you feel can only be in Tokyo…

All in all, what started off slightly apprehensively, ended up being an amazing day getting introduced to the sights of Tokyo. Ticked off Asakusa, Shinjuku AND Shibuya in one day.

Toodle-pip,

Emzy

xxxxxx