Tokyo with Julie

Thursday, June 28th

Every time I go back to Tokyo, I seem to love it more and more. I'm going to be honest and say the first few times I went there, I wasn't too keen on being there. I enjoyed the challenges of learning about the city, but never seemed to be too impressed on what I had learned. This last time I went was when Julie came to visit and it was by far my favorite trip to Tokyo. I've come to understand the train lines, where things are, the best way from A to B, it's great.

I met Julie at Narita airport and we ran into each other's arms like long lost lovers do in the movies. After all, who said that platonic love doesn't deserve showing happiness and affection for a close friend you haven't seen in 6 months? We took care of all the airport stuff, money exchange, train rail tickets and my most needed addiction when I come to a city, good coffee which can usually be found at Starbuck's. During WW2, the introduction of instant coffee was brought to Japan thanks to American Soldiers. It caught on like wildfire and that's pretty much the only kind of coffee you are served, even at restaurants. In my humble opinion, I think I could live the rest of my life without another cup of instant coffee when I leave this volcanic island.

I brought Julie back to my favorite hostel, which is located in Asakusa, Tokyo. The staff there knows me and my name and probably should reimburse me for the free marketing I do for them. Julie had never stayed in a hostel before, so she was excited for this experience. We were sharing a 6 person dorm style and got our bed situated before heading out. My friend Dave, who lives up in Ishinomaki was with his friend, named Chris, who happened to be visiting and sightseeing Tokyo at the same time as us. I called him up and we made arrangements to hang out that evening. We met up in Ueno station before going off to dinner and for drinks. We went to Shinjuku, the district of Tokyo that is most popular for visitors to see. It's an awe-inspiring place for the first timer with it's thousands of neon signs lighting up the skyscrapers at night. There are thousands, millions of people walking the streets, eating dinner, drinking beers - truly a magnificent city life.

Dave and I don't really know *the best* place to go, so we started on a search of where to get dinner and drinks. We finally got hungry enough we just chose an izakaya, a Japanese style restaurant/drinking place. It was like entering a hot cave, you took a stairwell down into the underground with no air conditioning. It certainly wasn't a tourist spot as people showed their surprise as we entered their safe haven. Then, we had a quite annoying experience. The server, a woman in her 40's or 50's was very freaked out by us. Atleast that's the explanation we made for ourselves. She refused to understand neither mine nor Dave's Japanese. Now granted, Dave & I are not perfect at the language, but one thing we can definitely do is order food at a restaurant. This woman couldn't even understand when I asked for water. It's common knowledge in my foreign community that some people, despite how good your Japanese is, think they can't understand you simply because you're foreign. I guess this is what was happening. Luckily, there were two women sitting next to us who could understand what we were saying. Pretty much, we said what we wanted to the server, she stared at us like a deer caught in headlights, then one of the women sitting next to us would say exactly what we had just said and she'd understand.

We decided to leave. Mainly because it was just too hot to be in there much longer but also because the atmosphere wasn't great. What did we do? Enjoy a luxury that I've been afforded both in Australia and also while living here in Japan. What's that? Buying beer and walking the streets with it. It's legal to do that here and I love it. It just seems so natural. It was also a great way for Julie to see more of Shinjuku. We had a good time, walking around, chatting, stopping at convenient stores and buying more beers.

It was on this night that I had come to see how I've changed in the past year. I spent time with Julie, someone that I've known for almost 3 years and someone who has known me for less than a year. My interests and things I talk about have changed so much. Certainly, it's all circumstantial when we have new interests, but I found maybe I'm boring to people from home. The things that interest me the most are "Do you know how to read this?" or "Do you know how to say this in Japanese?" It seems the majority of my conversation surrounds the language that surrounds me. The thing is though, I am truly interested in all this. I am sure if I was living at home, these interests wouldn't peak my interest as strongly as they do now. The night was coming to an end as we had to catch the last trains back to Asakusa, we bid our farewells to Dave and Chris and started our drunken journey home.

Friday, June 29th

A really great sleep allowed us to wake up fairly early. I spent quite some time at the hostel in the morning trying to work out a plan for our day. It was our only full day in Tokyo and I wanted to make the most of it for Julie. Of course, the first thing I did was show Julie the star attraction in Asakusa - Senso-ji temple and the surrounding gardens.

After that, I had planned to take her to Ueno, a part of Tokyo that I have never really explored as well. Dave and others had told me there were some things worthy of a visit to see, so I planned on it. I didn't know exactly where to start, but we headed up some stairs and into a beautiful park. It was really humid and hot, but the towering trees provided us some shade to escape the sun. This park was actually the first public park in Tokyo, created over 200 years ago. As I didn't know where we were going, we pretty much just walked through until we came to a temple named Kiyomizu Kannon-Do, founded in 1631. It was a cute red temple that you need to climb some stairs to find tucked away in some trees. We spent about 5 minutes admiring it.

A row of red torii sparked our interest in heading to another shrine. The name here, I do not know but we entered into a small shrine that had a big circle in front of it made of what looked like straw. We watched a woman pray in front of it and then do circle 8's through it. She did it twice. Upon completion of this praying act I have never witnessed, she decided to come talk to us. She explained to us the significance of this shrine. According to her, this shrine is a place you come to when you want to pray for your health or the health of a loved one. She was actually an English teacher back where she came from and said normally she would not have spoken to us but while praying God told her to. We had some small talk about where we came from, Japan, where I'm living now and all that before parting ways.

It wasn't until about 15 minutes later when we got to the attraction that I had come to see in the first place, Tosho-gu Shrine. It dates back to 1651 and it is considered a National Treasure.
The shrine was beautiful, painted of Gold and other beautiful colors. It's designed to be a lot like the shrines I saw in Nikko with Tim. We had to pay something like $2.00 to enter and see the inside. Inside housed old artifacts and a bright red carpet. The day was hot so we rested inside quite a bit.

It was time to leave Ueno and move onto the district of Tokyo called...Tokyo. As we were leaving, we noticed a lake just overflowing with lily pads. It was quite stunning to see lily pads pretty much as far as the eye can see.

We reached Tokyo from Ueno and came out of the ever-famous Tokyo Station. The station is made of all brick and is thus a famous sightseeing spot. By this time were were really hungry, so we walked around until we found a really cute lunch spot. The staff was lovely, sending their English speaking waitress over to help us with the menu and take our order. I wanted curry but ate the only thing I could eat being vegetarian and that being pasta. The story of my life! It was a nice rest in the middle of the day. After lunch our destination was to see the Imperial Palace and finally we saw it in the distance. First, we decided to lay down in this park. It had grass so green it looked fake, it looked like turf in a sense. There were cool trees scattered about and we chose one to sit under for some time.

When our little rest finished, we continued the trek up to the imperial palace or kokyo. It's home to the Japanese emperor and imperial family. The present palace was completed in 1968, replacing the palace that was built in 1888. However, that palace was destroyed in WW2 bombings. In it's prime day, it was actually the biggest castle in the world. Unfortunately, what remains is the rebuilt smaller version, a moat for protection, and the bridge, niju-bashi that is surrounded by people protecting the royal family. It's still a picture perfect spot and I think it was a nice stroll to see it.

Our next destination was to take Julie to yasukuni jinja , the most controversial shrine in Japan...it was my second time visiting there and felt with it being so controversial it was worth another visit. As we were leaving, it began to rain. We took the train to Ginza because supposedly Ginza is to Tokyo as Park Ave is to New York City and Julie wanted to shop. Walking around we ended up in places like the Coach store, the Sony Building, and finally a coffee shop to relax. Following we went to the real place to do any shopping in Harajuku. I love this district of Tokyo and some compare it to Paris. It was only my second time there but there is such good shopping! I went on a shopping spree on the famous takeshita-dori street buying all sorts of cute skirts and we enjoyed a delicious Japanese style dinner overlooking the city!

We weren't able to cram in as much as I had wanted to for that day, but we got enough in that I think Julie got a good, short trip to Tokyo. It was fine though because I would have rather seen less and enjoyed ourselves rather than cramming in thing after thing just so Julie could see it all.

To see all the pictures, click here