Two and a Half Days in Tokyo

Tokyo is truly a megalopolis (as I may have mentioned before). You don't just "go to Tokyo"; rather, you choose a district (or a ku - as in, Shibuya-ku), and then perhaps a sub-district that you'd like to hang out in. We couldn't do everything that there is to do in Tokyo and so some things had to be left for a future visit. For example, we did not go to Roppongi, which is a fun night-life area. We did not get to see Roppongi Hills (an impressive shopping center), and we didn't go up Tokyo Tower. However, we did spend time in Shinjuku where we ate lamb kebabs at a little Turkish place we know there. And we went to Harajuku where we got to see some young folks dressed in funny fashions, and Shane bought a neat little protector for his i-Touch and I got some great foot lingerie.

At Meiji Jingu (shrine) near Harajuku station:

Shane liked the TV screens that are in so many places around Tokyo:


Also in Harajuku we went to Fonda de la Madrugada, a really nice Mexican restaurant, for dinner. I know it seems strange to eat Turkish and Mexican food in Japan, but Tokyo has these options and Fonda is one of our favourite places - great atmosphere, excellent food and superb service. Shane also enjoyed having different food. He'd never had kebabs or Mexican food before, so it was still a good experience. He also really liked the live Mariachi band!




That night we stayed at a capsule hotel in Ebisu (part of Shibuya-ku, and very near Harajuku). Capsule hotels are, well, capsules rather than rooms. There are rows of capsules flanking the walls and you get a capsule, not a room. They originally started as cheap places for salary-men (office workers, generally male) to stay when they missed the last train home after being out for the obligatory drinking party; as such, many (most?) capsule hotels are not equipped for women. These days, more casule hotels are providing accomodation to women. However, we stayed at the Siesta, which didn't have capsules for women but did offer small rooms with a shower, so I took a tiny room for myself while Brian and Shane went for the full capsule experience.

They slept in one of these capsules:


Inside the capsule:


The next day after checking out of the hotel we stopped for latte at the ubiquitous Starbuck's before making our way to Akihabara, a.k.a. Akiba, a.k.a. Electric Town. This is the electronics capital of Japan and they have anything you need - from motherboards to lightbulbs to cameras to maid costumes. This is the area that is traditionally the home of the otaku (techie fanatic) who are rather nerdy techies that congregate in that area. We spent our whole day going from shop to shop (I finally bought a small digital camera - a used DMC-LZ10, and so far I've been thrilled with the photos it takes). Of course, no visit to Akihabara would be complete without a visit to a Maid Cafe - small cafes which started out catering to the tastes of the otaku but now are fairly frequented by tourists (who in turn drive out the real otaku). In the maid cafe we were served by cute girls wearing short little black-and-white maid costumes. Overall, it was very tame, but still a fun experience. Surely we could have found stranger had we looked harder.

After shopping in Akihabara we took the train to the area's spiritual opposite - Asakusa. Asakusa is home to Senso-ji, a very large temple, and still has an atmosphere of old Japan, including rickshaws. We passed through the Kaminari-mon (Thunder Gate) and did some window shopping along the Nakamise as we wended our way to the temple.

Pagoda at Senso-ji:


Shane gets an O-mikuji (fortune telling):


Entrance to the temple:


We then checked into our hotel - the very lovely Shigetsu hotel located just a minute or two away from the temple.

I had planned for dinner to be fugu, the poisonous blow-fish. However, Shane seems to prefer food that isn't fish, and fugu, while a true delicacy, would probably have left us still hungry later. So, we opted instead to eat whatever. We walked around until our feet hurt, but Brian finally found a street that was a lot like a yataimura (food stall village). We chose up a seat outside, had a couple of drinks and lots of izakaya style food. I'm very pleased to say that while Shane didn't get to eat poisonous fish, he did eat several pieces of raw horse meat!



Basashi (raw horse):




We even met two foreigners who were quite friendly and fun to talk to (maybe I shouldn't try so hard to avoid foreigners...)

Today we took a boat along the Sumidagawa river to O-Daiba, where we had good old fashioned burgers for lunch. After that, we simply came back home for a night of rest before Shane and I head out to Kyoto tomorrow morning.

River boat from Asakusa to O-Daiba:


Now Shane and I are off to Kyoto for a few days.