Day Two

After getting the refund from the previous hostel we headed to a new one I'd found on the web. It cost a fraction of what we already paid for the previous one, for 3 nights it cost 4000 yen, roughly 16 quid, compared to the 16000 yen for the previous hostel. But as you can see from the photos, there was a slight problem with the amount of space. The "hostel" was more like the sleeping cabing on the Krakow to Prague night train. Tatami mats with no real bed, and the people staying there had missing teeth. I had already decided to leave by the time we'd looked around, but I wanted to see the city first.
















We decided to head for the imperial castle, which was unfortunatly closed, this being the busiest time of year for tourists, the Japanese had been wise enough to close most tourist attractions. So we headed for the only attraction left, the war memorial, Yasakuni Shrine.










































The most amazing thing about the shrine, is probably that it is just like every other shrine here in Japan with one exception. In 1978 the Japanese priests enshrined some top war criminals in the temple. What this means is when you are "enshrined" to the Japanese, you've become a god. And thats whats pissed off just about everyone in East Asia. But apart from all that, there really aint that much there.

















This is the Torii (Main Gate) into Yaskuni. It was pretty big.
































According to Eastern Tradition, the more carp you have with different colours, the wealthier you are. Below is Yasakuni Shrine.




































After that we headed down to Shinjuku, probably one of my favourite areas. We ended up in a bookshop that one of my mates was pretty insistent about going to see. He wanted to buy a book called Eragon, don't ask me why. Me and my other mate Stu got fed up so went off trying to find a hostel for the three of us. We told him we'd meet him at Shinjuku station at 4. He never showed up. This was a massive disaster. We waited for 30 mins then tried again to book a hotel. We ended up getting back to hostel at about 7, and he still hadnt turned up. But as you can see from the photos., the place didnt look that decent in the evening.


This is the brand new Krispy Kreme thats just opened in Shinjuku. There was a queue to get into a queue and it took 2 hours to get a donut. I found it hilarious that these people would actually wait for a donut. In Japan anything that is a chain is considered to be superior to a normal shop.
















This is the hostel at night. It was a massive dump. The hotel we ended up was a lot better.

Japanese Adverts.

Thought I'd put some of the pictures I took of bizarre Japanese adverts. Who know's what there on about.

Tokyo Day One - Akhibara and Shibuya

I ended up getting up at 7.30 and my room was a lot colder than normal. I looked out the window and it was pretty much dumping about 10 tonnes of snow. What would normally be a 20 minute walk to the station turned into a 45 minute slog through the snow. But it did'nt matter coz I was going to Tokyo! The Shink (Bullet Train) gets you to Tokyo in 1.30. You kinda scoop around the mountains, then get into the massive plain which is where Tokyo sits. City stretches across the horizon. 32 Million people live in Tokyo and the vast plain that surrounds the city. Its really like the Japanese really didnt care about building an immense city. There are no green fields, football pitches, parks or woodlands. Its pretty amazing.

We ended up at this really good hostel on the 18th floor of a building in Illdabashi, central Tokyo. The view was pretty spectacular when we got there, and at sunset.
















This is looking west towards Shinjuku, one of the main entertainment centers of tokyo. We headed straight for Akhibara - electric town - to check out what was going cheap. I expected flying cars, holograms etc, but all thats there is about a ton of Ipods and little else. Its about 10,000 shops selling the same things, at the same prices. But they are pretty cheap compared to elsewhere.






























Oh yeah, small problem with the hostel. On the website it said there was a 11pm curfew. Which of course would be a major problem. So I called the hostel to be told it was fine and that we'd be allowed to enter through the fire escape. But when we actually got there, the w******* on the front desk told us that this conversation did not occur and that I'd made it up, 11pm was the curfew. So we thought about it when went out to Shibuya during the evening.

Its at this point that I want to let you know a little about the amazingly simplistic Tokyo subway system. Check it out

























So yeah it took a while to figure out. But Shibuya was probably one of the coolest places I've been. All the guide books and Japanese say it is a "young" area. But hey it was cool. There crossroads are supposed to be famous, it was in Lost in Translation, but Ive never seen it.















In Shibuya there was a building where you could watch a Japanese gameshow, but once you've seen one you've seen them all we decided to skip it and head to a pub. Ending up back at the Hostel for that all important 11pm curfew we ended up having a few beers. Funnily enough this amazing hostel actually had a lights out policy. We managed to get a full morning in the morning and onwards to the next hostel.