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.