Holy moly, that was a long day! It all began at the crack of dawn when my brain told me that it was time to get up but was in fact only 4am (NZ time it was 8am). It forced myself back to sleep but had trouble sleeping as my room mate kept getting up. To be fair, she was trying her best to be quiet but the toilet door has a squeak worse than a murder house door and the toilet starts flushing as soon as you sit down on it. So, basically, you have to flush it again once your done. It is a terrible waste of water.
As the sun rose, I dragged myself out of bed for breakfast which was awesom. All you can eat style of basically everything from eggs to cereal to stir fry or curry. I kid you not. There is something for everyones pallette.
At 9.30 I finally got to meet the tour guide. Her name is Mari and she is a crack up. She has an awesome sense of humour and although her English is sometimes hard to understand, she never lets that stop her. The plan on the itinery was to do a half day of walking about and seeing the city but it turned into 12 hours when she didn't stop. It was intense. I saw a lot. And I do mean a lot.
We began at the fish markets that are no longer the fish markets as they have recently moved them to a bigger space. Apparently they are the biggest fish market in the world. If I wanted to, I could go out to the new markets at 2am and watch the auctions for the tuna etc fresh off the boat. No thanks. Howve,and the outer market is still there and there is still plenty of things to see and eat. They offer free samples in a lot of places so I tried dried out beans, dried and shredded cod coated in lemon sugar, squid jerky, sweet egg, roasted almonds still in their shells (they were YUM!). You could basically eat lunch there and not have to spend anything. From there we headed down to a bhuddist shrine and I am happy to see that I have Regular Fortune. I had to pay 100 yen, shake this barrel and get out a stick with a number on it. The number corrosponded to a little draw and inside was my fortune. Basically, translating from Engrish to English it says I have the desire to be superior to others and build my identity. I can look forward to a satisfactory income and a car (coach and horse). Also if I am a warrior I can catch and control whole countries with a single arrow and I will become well known in other countries and all my relative will be prosperous (You are welcome guys hahaaha). It also said that it is good to start a trip - so there you go!
From there, it all got hectic. By the time we did that it was lunch (which ended up being at 2pm) and so Mari took us to a small restuarant that seated about twenty people max - and that was actually large compared to some I had seen. She ordered Tokyo pancakes for us which, and I am not kidding right now, look like what my dog throws up. Nothing about the appearance gave me hope but it wasn't that bad. It is cooked in the middle of the table on a small bbq top and after cooking, it still looks like vomit. We were given these small shovels and you eat it straight off the hot plate. She also ordered another style of pancake which looked more like a frittata (which we had to cook) and then some noodles stirfried on the hot plate.
From there we were off again. Now, can I just point out that this was supposed to be a few hours only. Mari, bless her, is a little rocket. She moved fast and was were speed walking to catch up. Lucky for me I have been training my whole life for this moment - thanks dad! Hahahaa. We visited the Harujuku area (where all the teenagers where the anime clothing). I was a bit disappointed not to see too many dressed up but the ones that were were cool. We visited Shinjuku for dinner (expensive but all you can eat... and we had to cook it ourselves again). We also went to the famous Shibuya crossing - the one from Resident Evil and Fast and Furious. It was craaaaaazy crossing it. Hundreds on hundreds crossing and lights everywhere, TV billboards - it was sensory overload. To end the night, we headed up the Government Tower to the observatory on level 45. From there we could see a lot of Tokyo. It was from there I got a real sense of how big the place was. It was up there that I also purchased a little toy dog that looked a bit like Harvey. I have named it Jarvey (Japanese Harvey) and will aim to take some pictures with him in it every day to show Aaliyah and the others.
By the time we had done all that it was about 9pm and then we had to tackle the return journey. It was then that I had my first taste of what the trains are like at peak hour. I didn't like it. We were crammed on like sardines and people there are so used to shoving past one another that they don't even apologise. If possible, I would like to avoid doing that again. It took half an hour to get back. At one point, an elderly Japanese man started to talk to me and asked about where I was from. I think he was practising his English. He was very sweet and made the time go a bit faster.
Right, I am off. It is almost 9am. The zoo opens at 9.30. I think it takes 20 minutes to walk there. Best get going.
No comments:
Post a Comment