So, yeah, it's been a while since I wrote anything. Life and work caught up with me, I guess. I kind of wish I'd finished all my posts about the trip proper right after the trip if only for getting my thoughts at the time and then comparing them to what I thought looking back. Oh well, this post will have to have that part mixed into the events of the last week in Japan. I'll leave the general trip reflections for another post, I think, but hopefully it won't take another month and a half. So I guess onto a recap of what I did, I'm very glad I kept notes or else I'd probably be writing something like, "I went to places and saw many things. It was fun." as the entirety of the post.
We begin this story still at Robert's place in Shirakawa-go. We woke up, it turns out that in my rush to dry one of the socks that had gotten wet the day before I put it a little too close to his space heater and it started to melt (as it was supposedly quick drying made with modern materials... but better that than fire) so I lost one of my socks. Poor sock. We then drove to Takaoka where we said our goodbyes and I started one of the parts of the trip I was most excited for, the part where I had no schedule, no reservations, and would be doing a real trip on my own. Takaoka was just a place to take the train from (unfortunately not a shinkansen), my first destination would be Osaka. I chose it because it seemed relatively central and easy to get to and from a bunch of the places I wanted to see. In retrospect I really think I should have chosen Kyoto as my base of operations but you live, you learn. It's not that I disliked Osaka so much as I really would have liked to see Kyoto more than I did.
From the train I'd looked up places I might be able to stay (that internet-enabled SIM card I'd bought was really worth it) and one was pretty near the station. I got there relatively late, I want to say around 5pm? and wandered over to the youth hostel I'd looked up, the Shin-Osaka Youth Hostel (not to be confused with Osaka Shinksekai which you'll hear about soon). I got there and they seemed slightly surprised I wanted to stay 2 nights and hadn't called ahead, luckily it worked out and they had space. I left my stuff in a locker there and decided to head more into the city proper as the hostel was a bit on the outskirts. Headed to Nanba station and then walked around a bit, decided to stop for some yakitori which is grilled skewered meat (though I think technically only chicken), it was pretty good, I think 100 yen a plate so I had a few and then headed out to get more variety. It was night by then and I walked around pretty much without any goal or destination just following whichever street looked interesting (more often it was not choosing the ones that didn't look interesting). I was still hungry so I bought some kyabetsuyaki from a street vendor, bonus points if you figured out that kyabetsu = cabbage and that yaki = grilled. It was actually quite tasty (though it's another food that didn't photograph well). After wandering some more through a pretty 'standard' city that didn't quite have as much a foreign feel as the other places I'd seen. I don't want to sell the city short, at least what I'd seen so far was just relative to the rest of trip, the most 'normal' atmosphere. It was relatively empty as well but that gave it a strange, almost lonely feeling, though I don't know how much of that was me just walking in the wrong part. I wasn't that hungry anymore but after passing in front of a vendor selling Okonomiyaki (a very traditional food of the region -- okonomi means something like 'to your liking' in this cases as it's a little bit of a catchall food where many toppings are put onto a type of pancake), and I couldn't pass up the chance to try it. Very tasty as well (though, spoiler alert, I found the Hiroshima variety -- a mortal enemy in the eyes of the locals to be better). At this point I gave up my plans to find some Japanese dessert as I was stuffed.
After walking for a while I somehow ended up at one of the weirdest places I saw. Osaka Shinsekai (New World). I can't even describe what it was that was that made it feel so strange. I'd say it was a mix of bright lighting, relative emptiness, many closed stores. I think it's similar to what being in a brightly lit amusement park with some running rides and nobody around. I looked it up in wikipedia afterwards and was happy to see it wasn't my imagination, it seems like it was created in 1912 copying New York and Paris but then after WW2 became one of the poorer areas of the city which somewhat explains the vibe. I planned on going up the neon-lit tower at the center but was discouraged by a price-point which I didn't find palatable, can't remember what it was, probably like 500 yen. I walked around one of the arcade malls that Japan loves. Again, brightly lit but with closed/run-down stores that further added to the ambiance. It's not like I was walking around at 4am either, it was maybe 7 or 8? I walked past a games parlor filled with old guys playing Go or Shogi. I'd like to think if I knew more than the very basics of Go or not even the rules of Shogi I'd have gone in just to try it but I just walked past it. I exited the surreal land of that neighbourhood and ended up near Tennouji which was a more alive section of the city. I wandered around some more but couldn't find much to do that was open late (this is where a smidgen more planning/research could have paid off) so I decided to head back to the hostel to get an early start the next day. I used the metro as I wasn't near a JR Station where I could use my pass but got distracted and got off too early so rather than paying for the metro again decided to walk to one of those stations and I got to see a different side of Osaka that, while still being a little more generic than where I'd been, had some more character. Caught up with some going ons online, wrote some more of what had happened and talked briefly with a German couple. I encountered a surprising number of German tourists during the trip, I have to say.
The hostel room had 4 bunkbeds all of which were occupied and I ended up waking up slightly earlier than expected as I wasn't the only one that had decided to get an early start. His was just a bit earlier. I rolled with it and headed out towards Uji, a short Shinkansen away. Uji is well known for its teas and it didn't disappoint with tea shops EVERYWHERE. Of course that means that it's likely it's tourist-trap-y but I'll leave the hidden-gem teashops for next time as the ones I went into and tried samples from were quite good and still cheaper than ordering good Japanese tea online. It was a really pretty town to walk around in. The riverside was beautiful in terms of both landscaping/human-curated-nature and in terms of traditional looking buildings which I really enjoy as I'm sure you've all heard too many times by now. It also had some nice shrines and smallish monuments that added to the atmosphere. When I went into stores to taste tea samples and to buy some teas, one of the funnest parts was getting to talk to the shopkeepers. I'm still amazed after my experiences in Montreal, where switching to English was par for course, at how easily they shifted to Japanese after trying English if I showed the slightest sign I could do it. It made my life (in terms of practicing) a lot easier. I ended up going to a traditional tea ceremony display the city offers to passersby, it was a lot more formal than the one I got to see in Shirakawa-go, at least in presentation and attire and implements. I was very thankful Kumi gave me a thorough explanation before as it made the ceremony make more sense as more than just a pretty ceremony. After that I walked a bit more and ended up talking to a shopkeeper for longer than some of the others. She told me she'd been very concerned when I first walked in as she didn't speak English (this particular store was a little more out of the way than some of the others where they clearly catered to foreign visitors to varying degrees). I tried a few of their samples while we talked there and they were quite good and it was fun to discuss tea with someone that does tea for a living. They had a section in the back where they processed the tea leaves which maybe I should have asked to see in retrospect because it would have been very interesting.
From there I decided to head to Nara, which was once the capital city if not for too long. I didn't get too much of a chance to see the city proper as I spent all my time except for the walk to and from the station walking around Nara Park. It's pretty big so it took a while. Japanese parks are the best, though this one was not quite as 'controlled' as some of the other ones. It was a lot more wide and spread out. It had a lot of deer running around but they were relatively tame. It had a lot of cool temples and shrines though I saw most of them from outside except for a couple as the entrance fees added up and due to time. Not to mention that my backpack was weighing me down a little after buying a bunch of tea and other stuff in Uji. But I did spend a decent amount of time taking in the park. I really like one of the zen temples/shrines? I can never remember which are shrines or temples or pavillions or whatnot. After getting my fill of pretty nature interspersed with cool shrinevillions, I decided to head back to the station. I took a somewhat residential seeming exit path lined with neat buildings and decided to step into this very unique looking coffee shop I found on the hill back down. The motivation was mainly to get a little break but, more importantly, because my phone was almost dead after some heavy usage that day (forgot to put it on airplane mode most of the day while taking pictures). It's funny that while this coffee shop was in many ways a lot more... kitschy? maybe than the super classical looking one I stopped at in Shirakawa-go, it had a very similar vibe and was playing classical music. Just somewhat more home-y. I wish I'd snagged a picture but alas.
It took a while to start talking to this barista? as he was a little preoccupied with doing some other stuff but we had started to do the "where are you from? how long in Japan?" dance when a couple of older ladies (spitting image of obaa-sans) walked in. This disrupted the rhythm for a bit but I got dragged back into the conversation for a bit after he started giving everyone some mangekyou (as I wrote down in my notes because I couldn't remember their name in English -- they're kaleidoscopes). He had tons and tons of kaleidoscopes of varying sizes he'd made himself and they were all around the shop. At some point in the conversation one of the old ladies asked me how many years I'd been studying in Japan which made me blush (at least internally) as she complimented my pronunciation a bunch. Of course that meant I had to leave! Well, I left shortly after but that's because by that point I was basically loitering as I'd finished my coffee (which again came with a sweet), and it was a pretty small shop and a group had left because there weren't enough seats so I decided I should proceed now that my phone had a new lease on life.
I decided to stop at Uji again on the way back as I was getting hungry and I'd seen a lot of restaurants offering tea-flavored/infused meals but by the time I got back they were all closed. I wandered far and wide which wasn't the end of the world as it's a pretty place to wander around in and I did get to see parts I'd missed (and ended up getting a nice kyushu to make tea) but I was getting hungry! At the end, defeated, I walked back the station and ended up in a diner type place that made me change my description of the coffee place from before to "excentric" as this was kitschier. It was a little run down but seemed alright enough. The food was nothing to write home about (though I guess I'm writing from home about it), I got curry udon which were a little watery but it came with a nice salad which I did enjoy. It was filling, though, which is what I needed.
Headed back to Kyoto and was thinking of going to Himeji or Kobe but looking at the time I was a bit worried that I'd find most things closed as things seem to close early everywhere. It didn't help that my phone's battery was again almost out as the brief stop to recharge in the coffee shop had only done so much and I didn't feel like being without some contact to the outside world was too wise. Instead I decided to head back to the hostel as I was also pretty tired due to the long day of walking around I'd had. Stopped briefly at a Joshin for another chair massage and in the process saw more of Osaka at night. I also ended up buying a portable battery pack I could keep in my pocket so that I wouldn't have to have a tradeoff between taking lots of pictures / looking stuff up on trains without plugs and having the phone available for emergencies. On the brightside going back earlyish meant I could get up early as well so after my second night in that hostel I headed out to Fukuoka on the western island of Kyushu. For the record the hostel was cheap and clean and close to the Shin-Osaka JR station so it's a pretty decent place to crash.
I'd originally thought to go to Hiroshima next and then explore other places around there but I figured I might as well keep going to Kyushu just to see what it was like since I had the JR Pass and it would only cost a couple extra hours. I'd been vaguely considering it previously but decided pretty much on the train itself. I thought I should go as far west as was reasonable and at that time was even considering Nagasaki just to see both bombing sites but in the end decided not to. So on the train I used my phone to research what there was even to do in that area as I didn't know much about it besides "it's far away". Also decided to look for places I might be able to sleep which came in handy later. Also hyperpedia.com is awesome for figuring out train schedules in Japan, made things very easy.
I got to Hakata station (the name for the station at Fukuoka) at around 10:30 or so. Left most of my stuff in a coin locker at the station and decided to head straight to Tosu as I'd read that it had a mall that specialized in selling older things and used items for good prices which seemed like a nice place to explore. I decided to get off a few stations before the closest ones and then walk to the mall just to experience a random town so I ended up getting out at Kiyama. It was a bit more suburban which makes sense given that it wasn't particularly near any cities. It was still very nice to walk around in, especially near the station which is probably closer to the downtown. As I walked out towards the mall (which wasn't even near anything else in Tosu) things became more and more farm-like. Smallish plots, yes, but lots of isolated houses with largeish plots of land. It was more rustic but a nice walk to take in a leisurely fashion while taking in the sights of Japan. It was a side I hadn't really had a chance to see except from the train. At some point sidewalks seemed to stop existing which was a little worrying as I really didn't want to walk 40 mins back to the station to do a different approach and there weren't many roads to route around. Eventually I did find a mix of traversable roads and roads that looked safe enough to walk on the side of (I did have to scale up and down some hills but that's fiine). I had finally made it to the mall! Now I don't know if the thing mentioning the mall was out of date or if the person who wrote about it was having a laugh but it was the most American Outlet Mall I could have imagined outside of the US. It would not have been out of place anywhere here in terms of layout and store choices. It's possible they meant a different mall but I doubt it. I guess this is why people tell you not to take Wikipedia (Wikitravel in this case) as gospel. But I don't want to knock on Wikitravel, the Japan section was invaluable and very thorough. But, yeah, that was disappointing. Defeated I took a bus back to the station and headed straight to Kumamoto, a city farther south.
Kumamoto was more urban which was a nice shift, though it was still very open seeming and lots of green. And it had trams which are really cool! Honestly they seem less nice than buses or subways (from a user perspective) and they are somewhat slow, but they really add a nice ambiance and are almost certainly cheaper than putting in subways. Either way, they are really cool to see and I like the way they make streets wider, it adds a lot to the feeling of openness. I headed towards Kumamoto Castle which is supposed to be one of the best to see (as if I could even believe th Internet at this point). Luckily the castle did exist and it was pretty nice! It had a great view of the city when you climbed to the top. They also sold Ikinaridango which is a delicious form of dango filled with boiled sweet potato and anko (red bean paste). Very tasty snack which I should try to make. After the castle I decided to walk around the city for a bit, saw another arcade mall, those are just everywhere. Found a nice little place to have some lunch/dinner where I had some gyoza and some kara-age that were quite tasty. After walking around a bit more taking in the city I decided to head back to Fukuoka where I'd left my things. After train-ing back I grabbed my stuff from the locker and headed to a "Guest House" I'd found online. When I arrived they luckily? had an open bed. This house was... not as orderly as the hostel I'd stayed in previously to be kind. There weren't even good places to leave my suitcase and backpack securely so I just had to leave them locked under my bunkbed while I left to explore. I took the crucial stuff, passport, money and rail pass in a money pouch as I did for most of the trip, yes, and it's not like I really thought someone would come in for them but... Anywho, after leaving my stuff I decided to explore Fukuoka (at night), so I walked around the city center for a while. I have to say it's really nice to walk around places without caring where you end up, what you see... just people and place watching.
I ate ramen at a delicious place, Ichiran. The atmosphere was almost cliche, every customer gets a partially sealed off booth to eat their ramen in peace. You buy a ticket outside with your order and could theoretically just hand it over wordlessly, get your food wordlessly, and leave after enjoying their perfected tonkotsu ramen. It was a pretty cool experience. Unfortunately it was also extremely filling because after leaving and walking around I saw these 'yatai' or covered food stalls of the kinds you might have seen in movies or shows where people come in to eat ramen or something. I would have loved to eat there but I couldn't eat another bite and it seemed rude to walk in there and not order food so I had to skip, unfortunately. I then decided that I should take this chance to go to an onsen again as I might not have the chance again, which unfortunately I did not. The one I ended up going to was not the fanciest but it was nice nonetheless. I love the outdoors baths during a chilly night. Now that I'm writing about it so much after the trip it really makes me want to go to one again. It was the perfect time to go to one, then, though after getting up early and walking so much. My notes are very emphatic that it was the best thing ever and just what I needed that night. The bed back at the guest house, Guest House Aloha Spirit, was a bit hard and all but whatever, a bed is a bed, and it was cheap but I wouldn't recommend it if there are alternatives.
I woke up a bit later than normal, 8am, and just missed my train to Hiroshima which was going to be my next destination so I had to wait around an hour, I think, maybe 40ish minutes which sucked a little. Given that I'd been very close to having to track down other places to sleep in Fukuoka I emailed from the train asking about space in the place I was thinking of going to, "Guest House Carpe", and luckily got a prompt response letting me know I could go check in pretty much whenever after 4pm and that there was space which worked out well for me. After the train ride to Hiroshima, one of the places I was most looking forward to seeing I had some trouble tracking down a locker big enough to put my suitcase in but eventually found an empty one. My plan was to repeat what I did in Fukuoka and come back for it at night before checking in.
So from the train station I headed to the Memorial Dome aka Memorial Peace Dome or Peace Dome or Genbaku Do-mu or A-Bomb Dome on a tram! They're so fun to ride. The dome itself was pretty moving (and was just the start of a very powerful experience). It was a ruined building in the middle of a beautiful park. And I know it's corny but it really hit me how connected this was to the bombing, to history. I feel a lot of attachment to this kind of epic connection, something like Roman ruins call out thousands of years, being in the old NASA headquarters in Houston where they directed the space program, these kinds of things really make me emotional by thinking of what things must have been like then. The contrast here was especially drastic, the city and the park were beautiful, really spectacular, and it's hard to reconcile it with this remaining specter, probably from all the worrying about the Cold War, which leaves me a lingering feeling that Hiroshima and Nagasaki should still be nuclear wastelands like Chernobyl. But aside from this monument it's almost the opposite. The park had other smaller memorials related to the bombing but by far the most impactful was that dome.
But the impact of the dome alone paled in comparison with what walking through the Peace Memorial Museum. That was heavy. Still kind of makes me tear up just thinking about it. Seeing documents from the time, explanations about the lead-up. Chills. Seeing the damage in pictures and models. Descriptions of how they chose the cities, how it being a sunny day "sealed the city's fate". Geez. Then reading about what happend after, reactions from people that were there, how buildings and people were impacted, a stone with the shadow of someone hit by the blast (which made that scene in Iron Man 3 a little eerie). Then how the city came back after. Yeah. Very heavy museum. It really hit hard thinking of so many thousands gone in the blink of an eye. While it's not the happiest place in the world to be I really recommend it, it was one of the most memorable parts of the trip, I think if I had to talk aloud it would have been very difficult. Interestingly while recently backing up old files I came across a history project we had to do in high school where a friend and I had to debate another pair on whether the bombing of Hiroshima was necessary and after going to there I have to say it only reinforced the conclusions I reached while doing it. After exiting I really understood why the park was so beautiful, you kind of need that. I took it slow for a while after that.
I headed to a place that seemed good after looking for interesting places to eat but got there just after they closed for lunch which was unfortunate so I walked around aimlessly for a bit as a lot of places that served food were closed between lunch and dinner. In the end I ended up at Okonomimura (Village of What You Like), basically a place full of okonomiyaki vendors which you may remember me eating in Osaka. The style of okonomiyaki here is slightly different as in Osaka they mix everything together whereas there it's a bit more layered. It might be due to the places I got both but I prefered this style. At this point it was after 4 so I decided to check in at the hostel just so I wouldn't have to later. Again in retrospect it probably would hav better to go check in after things started closing for the day but everything worked out so I can't say I'm too disappointed. I went to the train station, got my stuff, too a train to the Guest House and met my hostess, Kayo-san, right as I was getting there. She was super kind and told me there would be nobody staying there that night as a couple of people had just left and another one or two were coming the night after which was pretty cool as I got a dorm-style room to myself. She was pretty fluent in English but we did mix it up. I asked her what I could back to the city to do and she suggested looking at the castle and a park. Unfortunately the park would be closed by the time I made it there, a shame I think it was the kind of park I would have loved. The castle would also have been closed, but only the interior so I decided to go there. I took the tram there this time and somehow got on the wrong one which meant I had to walk a bunch more than I'd planned but that's not bad considering how much I liked looking at Hiroshima. The castle was not quite as imposing as the one in Kumamoto but it was pretty nice (a reconstructed replica, obviously). It was very pretty in the light of the setting sun and again I love the way a castle includes a nice garden outside.
After that I walked towards another park that would be open. Not quite a "Japanese garden" type park, but I felt like doing more things in the city. It turned out to be right next to the place I'd planned to eat but it was still closed so maybe it wasn't a matter of 5 minutes. I think I'd prefer to think it would always have been closed as then walking slightly less leisurely-y would not have made a difference. The park itself was ok, at first I was a little concerned because the path I took to get in was very...wild? and unlit which would be a problem very soon but soon I reached a more civilized part that had lights. It was nice enough but not too interesting so I decided to head back to the hostel as Kayo-san had mentioned a nearby izakaya (pub/bar/resto) that I should definitely go to. I got back to the guest house relatively early sometime between 7:30 and 8:30 probably. It was also really fun to leave and come back as I got to do the "itte kimasu", "itterashai", "tadaima", "okaerinasai" routine which is standard when leaving or coming back. Felt very nice to do it. Anywho, after some more brief conversation I headed over there somewhat nervously as I'm not usually that good at socializing with large groups of people I don't know at once and doing it in Japanese...
The izakaya is called "Oyaji no Mise" and it was a lot of fun, definitely one of the highlights of the trip (generally speaking Hiroshima as a whole is a highlight). It started out a bit slowly as I sat by the bar (not quite the same as they made food on it, but it's sort of the equivalent of sitting by the bar. There were a bunch of other customers there, not a lot of (none) English going on as this place was in Nishi-Hiroshima where the guest house is which is somewhat removed from the tourist-y areas -- though an easy train or tram-ride away. At some point the conversation started with staff and other people joined in. I stayed there like 3+ hours talking. I started with some beer and a sashimi platter (which was great), then ordered a salmon sashimi platter (which was amazing). Apparently in the mornings there's a fishmarket they get their fish from which I believe given how delicious things were. Of the other customers around the bar which I interacted with I met 2 girls around my age from Hiroshima (one of them high-fived me over our shared age), a businessman from Yokohama (Tokyo) that is working there but his family is back there (which seems somewhat lonely), and a guy from Osaka that was super stereotypically Japanese 'cool/tough guy', another guy from Hiroshima. They were a blast to talk to and maybe it was the beer or the environment but I loved how easily conversation flowed. I found the Osakan guy hilarious, he was right out of a J-Drama with his rough voice, his accent and flirtatiousness with the girls. He was also downing a gigantic bottle of sake on his own and ended up pretty plastered by the end. I had to use the traditional Japanese deflections when complimented which was also fun in a way, they were surprisingly surprised by my knowing how to use chopsticks!, but I loved hearing people's stories and not feeling like I was trying, and failing, to express myself which is one of the things that most frustrates me with non-fluent languages. It was very liberating to be somewhere where I had to speak Japanese and I was somehow doing it without feeling blocked, I think the guy from Yokohama was a bit better at English than he let on but in traditional style would never admit it but the other people there were definitely not very proficient which was great for me! At some point we all exchanged Facebook contact info which was funny, everyone whipping out their phones to add people but I do like getting random Japanese status updates in my feed now. Towards the end of the night, I think jokingly, the guy from Osaka brought up eating these crabs fried live and one of the staff members (not sure what to call them, servers? cooks?) was like "yeah, we can do that" and went out and came back with a little basket of small crabs that were alive and writhing around. Not for long as she cooked them up and served them for the 'table'. They were pretty tasty and it was definitely unique. As they were closing up they made some okonomiyaki for themselves and one to share for the remaining customers. Everyone there was awesome, friendly and kind, and I'll definitely go again if I pass by Hiroshima. I can't recommend the place enough if you're at least ok at Japanese. After that I crashed at Kayo-san's house which was a couple of blocks away.
Amazing, amazing day.
The next day was amazing in a different way. When I woke up the next morning in Hiroshima I would not have guessed that 24 hours later I'd be waking up after a short nap in a truck parking lot by Tokyo Bay... But lets rewind a little. I woke up at Guest House Carpe and left my stuff there intending to pick it up later before heading out to Tokyo. My morning destination was to be Miyajima (proper name Itsukushima) whose nickname means Shrine Island. It's an island off the coast of Hiroshima so I took a train to the ferry and got to the island proper slightly before 9. It's a very pretty island with small mountains giving it a nice sense of texture. Much like Nara Park it's full of small deer that (maybe because it was early) accosted people a bit more intensely. One of the shrines nearest the ferry is also its most famous, Itsukushima Shrine, which is partially lifted above the water and you an see tides change around the supports. Ended up catching part of a traditional party, everyone dressed up very nicely. I walked mainly around the lower altitudes as though there are hikes you can do and a rope thing you can take to go up the mountains I thought it better to leave that for a future visit due to the time it'd take to go up and down.
It was a nice place walk in, being an island it had a quaint style (not too quaint but a little more uniformly so) and it had a nice mix of nature and houses, a bit wilder than normal towns (but that sort of tamed wilderness that Japan manages well). As was to be expected it had nice shrines spread throughout the island, I liked Daisho-in which was a bit further up the mountain compared to sea level. It hard really nice ponds and gardens and rock structures. After walking around for some time I headed back down towards the area near the ferry, had a couple of pretty delicious oysters a stall was selling, then looked around for age-mojimochi, some kind of deep fried dish specific to the island. I looked around for a stall that sold them entirely too long, I have to say, but I did end up eating some kind of "sea eel" bun? can't remember what it was called that was delicious. I did eventually find the age-mojimochi and quite liked them. After that I left the island little knowing that I'd be going to bed for the 'night' at around that time the next morning.
After that I went back to the guest house ("tadaima", "okaerinasai") then said goodbye to my gracious host and a friend who was visiting before heading off to Tokyo. This time I contacted a bunch of hostels and places that gave out email contact info and I'm glad I wasn't as cavalier as I had been in some of the other cities as I got a bunch of "no, we're full" and lack of responses as I couldn't try calling and Tokyo is a bit too big to wander between various options. I did manage to get a positive response from the Ace Inn in Shinjuku which billed itself as a sort of 'capsule hotel'. Though I don't think it was quite as cramped as a proper capsule hotel. In this case what it ended up amounting to was bunkbeds lined up one next to the other (with some wooden panelling between them). They were reasonably spacious though so it wasn't too bad. I arrived there and left my suitcase (unfortunately their lockers are tiny and they didn't fit so I had to kind of leave next to everyone else whose suitcase was too big on the floor. Security through shared lack of security? Either way as before I had the most important things with me.
After that I headed straight out towards Shinjuku station proper to take a look around as it was already around 8pm and a lot of the normal attractions would be closed. Parts of it were super bright even at night, and this really felt like what I'd pictured of Tokyo. Very metropolitan with that extra Japanese element. It was nice to see things there and wander in and out of random stores. I decided to go eat somewhere that due to wandering around a little too long I was just slightly late for again. sigh. This is the problem with too much freedom and not letting overplanning catch you out. I wandered some more looking for something interesting and settled on a place that specializes in Japanese curry. I have to say I prefer my own way of preparing the boxed variety except for the chicken cutlets that came with it which were great! It was still good, but it's nice to know that those little cubes can reach those levels. I wanted to go bright and early to the Tsukiji Fish Market the next morning for some really fresh fish so I thought it prudent to go back and go to bed early so that I could spend the entire day I had in Tokyo doing things. "The best laid plans of mice and men..." that didn't happen' "...often go awry". It worked out at any rate. I took the long route walking back and ended up seeing less flashy parts of the city which was good for variety.
I got to the hotel, noticed that my floor didn't really have any available outlets and as I figured I might as well finish updating what I'd done so far I headed up to the common room on the 9th floor. It was probably around 10pm? I didn't take many pictures after this which means my timeline has been reduced to guesswork. And considering that for some reason I thought that "Tokyo :)" was enough to remember stuff by in my notes some of these details might be less accurate than they have been so far. I took out my laptop near an outlet and started typing up stuff that had happened, updating my notes, etc. The common room is relatively full of youngish people that were of clearly diverse backgrounds. The most relevant to this story is a table that was sitting next to me speaking in a melange of languages but mostly English as it was the only one everyone in it seemed to share. They were clearly predrinking before heading out somewhere, a club as I gathered through overheard conversations. A small pair that had branched off was coincidentally talking about going to the Tsukiji fish market in the morning and how you had to be there at 4:30am if you wanted to see the "Maguro beating" which to this day I'm not 100% what it means as I never looked it up. I piqued up at the conversation and injected myself. Oh, they had also been talking in Spanish which was intriguing. I think half of the pair was from Argentina? and was planning on doing that, but the other half was talking with a more Spaniard-y accent and it turned out she was from Poland and named Anna.
We talked for a bit longer but I honestly can't remember what, probably where we came from and all those other details you share with fellow travellers. I learned the group was composed of a mixture of students doing an exchange in South Korea and Poles that were linked through some of the exchange students which were members of both groups. It was certainly fun to talk to an international group of people in Spanish I met at basically a hostel in Tokyo. Living the traveller's dream! At some point I got invited to go out with them but I didn't particularly feel the desire to. I'd already mentally planned for a quiet night in followed by a long day of sampling Tokyo the next day after all! The traveller in me said, "DO IT!" and I'm glad I did as it was a great night. I'm not usually one to enjoy going out to clubs and the like when I'm not with a bunch of friends but it was a fun group. Some of them were from Netherlands, Mexico? I even met a Venezuelan girl that had spent most of her life in Ecuador. Very varied group so I think the internationalness made me feel at ease. The fact that they were all tipsy+ probably helped. They forced some alcohol on me as well but not enough to really do too much at the time. They also gave me a giant beer can which did move the needle a bit more by the time I was done with it.
After everyone got ready we met up at the ground floor and headed out via subway to a club. I feel bad for whoever was around as the group must have been a cliched-ly obnoxious group of drunk foreigners but from the other side of the fence it's a lot funner. During that walk at some point the Venezuelan girl and I bonded over how annoying otherwise liberal people had been over Chavez just because he dissed the US. It was a fun walk, got to talk to a lot of them. Found out Anna was doing an exchange in Taiwan and had lived in Barcelona for a while which is why her Spanish was so good and that she also spoke like English, Chinese (pretty well), Polish, decent French, some a lot of other things. I talked to a Japanese guy as well that had somehow snuck into the group when they went out the night before. It was fun to do a little more Japanese-ing and he seemed somewhat like me in being a bit calmer and already working, though he didn't have the benefit of being on a trip and just going along with the flow as much so he was a little more indrawn.
After we got off the metro we we walked towards where the club was supposed to be asking lots of people along the way. The path we took was increasingly less and less likely to be the path to where we thought we were going as I found out the actual destination was supposed to be the club in Lost in Translation. It was becoming really really residential to the the point where we tried (mostly successfully) to keep people from talking too loudly as it was late. This led to an almost mutiny by people that claimed we should turn back. When we made it to where it was supposed to be it looked like the most unassuming little cafe you can imagine with almost no indications there could even be a club there. They also wanted to charge us 3000yen just to get inside to see what this was all about which we were not too keen on, they did tell us the club was downstairs but it was hard to believe that it would be anything but dead given the lack of foot traffic in the area and how quiet everything was. After trying, unsuccessfully, to haggle with the bouncers we decided to head back towards Roppongi which would theoretically have other options to go to. I've since discovered the club, Club Air, was actually in that spot but you really would not have guessed so. Alas.
So we got back to Roppongi and wandered into a random bar where we had a drink and tried to dance a little but it was pretty dead and not much was going on inside so we left. We wandered around a little and then in front of a McDonald's (I think), when someone said they wanted to go get a snack before proceeding, Anna asked me to accompany her to an ATM as she needed some cash so we told people to wait for a sec, went to a convenience store to get some cash out and took a bit longer than expected as finding a machine that accepted foreign cards was a bit harder than planned. Then by the time we returned to the McDonald's there was no one around. We decided to call one of them to see what happened when... no, that didn't happen because we were all travellers without working cellphones so they were lost to Tokyo barring a miraculous event.
So after getting split off from everyone who had vanished and were uncontactable we were like, well now what do we do, the idea was born to go into a convenience store, buy a bottle of sake and drink it on the way to an actual club. So that's pretty much what we did while progressively more drunkenly asking Japanese people for directions. One group decided to suggest a different club that would be more fun and one of the guys in the group split off from his friends to guide us there which was super kind! Then we made it to the club, Camelot, and got in and they were playing surprisingly American-y music. The guy inside that handled lockers (there's lockers everywhere to put stuff in Japan, very practical to be honest) was some guy from Guinea (I think?) that had been working in Japan for a while and said his Japanese was now better than his French.
At the club we randomly met some Danish fellows that travel places because one of their parents is a pilot or somehow related to an airline, two of them were pretty cool, the third a bit sullen. Also randomly one of them also spoke pretty good Spanish, never met so many people who spoke it well just for kicks, so I talked to him for a while until I got dragged off to go dance, surprisingly fun times. After a while we left and thought to go to the Tsukiji fish market early almost as a callback to what started this whole thing but unfortunately it was around 3:30 or 4am and there were no trains running. In retrospect we could have taken a cab but the idea never came up for whatever reason so we just walked around Shibuya and even went to the world's busiest pedestrian crossing (in terms of foot traffic) when it was deserted which was fun. I think at this pont our plan was to take the metro to Tsukiji Fish Market once they opened again and after we got on I'm not sure if we over-shot, walked the wrong way after getting off or what exactly happened but we ended up farther away than we expected. Then, I'm not sure how we got on the topic but we decided to head towards Tokyo Bay as we'd wanted to see the Pacific Ocean and that was as close as we could realistically get.
So we started walking and walking (and walking and walking) towards where my Google Maps showed it was. It looked like it wasn't that far but it was a very long walk after a long day and then when we made it it was actually at a truck parking lot of some sort around 6am? Not exactly what we'd expected but nice in it's own weird way. We ended up taking an hour-ish long nap by the bay until an old Japanese guy came by to tell us we were too close to the water and we somewhat embarassedly decided to get up and head back (this time taking trains) and we ended up making up to the fish market at exactly when I'd planned to arrive the day before, 9:00am when they open the breakfast places. The path I took was quite different but it it was better than I'd planned. We ended up at one of the places offering food and unfortunately I was out of cash so I wasn't able to get some fresh tuna and she'd done come the day before already so instead we split some amazing unagi-don which funnily enough I'd been craving the night before. This does mean next time I go I have to get some fresh fish there for breakfast, though, which is good as it leaves me with things to do next time. After that we train-ed back to the hotel and I ended up falling asleep at around 11am in my capsule bed.
But this was not all! I woke up at around 5pm as I'd made plans to meet up with my old EAST 240: First Level Japanese TA, Kazuya Saitou-sensei! I went there straight from the hotel and he showed me a few more places like Harajuku, took me to a sushi place which seemed like a fitting last dinner. He had some plans to show me some other stuff but it was a bit later than planned due to the shenanigans of the previous night. In the end I dragged him along to meet up with Anna and some of her Taiwanese friends for dinner and had wanted to go to Karaoke afterwards but nobody was up to it! Sadness. That is something else I'll have to leave for the next trip. We didn't end up eating anything at that dinner because I was pretty full after the sushi (which after spending some time in the US is still something I wish were as cheap and delicious here) and we'd gone to a gyuudon place as he was still hungry. I missed out by being too full as I tried a bit of is and it was delicious. It's a fast food that consists of beef over rice with the beef being cooked in a nice soy sauce/dashi/mirin sauce that makes it very tasty. Another thing for next time. As karaoke didn't end up happening at that point we headed back to the hotel as my flight was at around 8am so I needed to get up pretty early (but luckily after trains started running) and it was a pretty uneventful ride to the airport and then flights back, no crazy almost missing anything. No traffic to the airport as in China. It was all silky smooth all the way back to the airport where my friend Alex came to pick me up and bring me back to reality.
I wish I'd been able to spend more time with Saito-sensei as he knows what to do in Tokyo and is a blast to hang out with. Next time! I also wish I'd had a couple more days to spend after meeting the people I met the night before as it was almost the perfect hostel experience that I kind of idly wished would happened when I was travelling alone and it did! And it was a lot of fun to walk around night-time Tokyo with Anna who I'd met just that night, very cool girl that totally beats me in the internationalness department which gives me something to strive for, haha. No, but really it did make me consider a lot of things about what is stopping me from moving to new places almost on a whim and it's something I'd like to do in the medium term as I do enjoy my job even if I wish CT were a bit more exciting. The week or two after the trip I was in almost trip shell-shock with my mind coursing full of ideas about just become a worldly nomad. The exposure to Buddhist temples did not quite rid my of my worldly desires so I'm going to do that delayed gratification thing and maybe do it anyway at some point because I know now and now know that it's something I can do.
I think I'll do that more retrospective post at some point (hopefully soon) as now I'm at 11 pages which is a bit much... Until next time those that are still reading this instead of just clicking through the pictures!