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Japan – Day 24 (Tokyo)

Everything I planned to do today didn’t open until 10am, so I slept in and got my coffee and eventually got out the door towards Ginza station. I stopped right outside to see a Godzilla statue, which was actually tiny and he totally skipped arm day. Then I hopped on the train to Akihabara. The first stop was the Gundam Café, where I got a super delicious strawberry chocolate latte, it tasted like strawberry yoo-hoo heated up and with caffeine. The inside was pretty neat too, with larger Gundam figures and a menu dedicated to all the various characters from the different series. On my way out I got a lemon raspberry concoction in a Duo cup because Duo is my favorite.

From there I headed into Electric Town, and I was only supposed to be looking but I ended up shopping and spending more money than I intended buying stuff that I probably don’t need but man it’s so cool! I was planning on catching the sunset again, but decided to shop more and lose money on those cheating (but fun!) claw machines instead, and then gradually made my way over to Shinjuku. I wandered around the Shinjuku night time chaos for a while then tracked down their Christmas light walking path which was kinda substandard in my opinion. After a couple quick pics I got back on the train to Shibuya and walked to their blue light walking path which was AWESOME. They had those neon electric bright blue lights leading from the train station all the way to the Yoyogi Park entrance which lit up the entire area in an eerie blue color. Then they put a shiny path on the ground to reflect the light up more. It was all really cool looking. At the end of the path were a set of 100 year old bells, and there were four ropes which you were allowed to choose and pull one of them. The ropes would at random, from what I could tell, ring one or more of the three bells. Whichever one(s) ended up ringing meant you had good fortune in those areas. So if you rang all of them you were the luckiest person, in theory. I pulled a rope and one of the smaller bells rang so I asked the guy what exactly that meant, and he said the bell that rang was one for good fortune in school and studying, so I should be looking forward to education and learning in the future. I was satisfied with that, guess I should actually claim and start on that TEFL class I bought on Groupon back in September!

After walking through the lights I headed back to the hotel to drop off my bags. There were only a couple things left on my to-do list while I’m here, both food related: eat shabu-shabu and actually try some matcha ice cream for once. I hunted around for an ice cream store, but even though it felt like there was one on every corner before, I couldn’t for the life of me find one now. So I gave up on that and went to a shabu-shabu restaurant and ordered a meal combo…and oh hey matcha ice cream was an option for dessert! So I crossed both of those items off, the shabu-shabu was delicious but I don’t think I’m a fan of the ice cream. I mean, I still ate it all but I don’t think I’d order it again. After all the walking around my feet were hurting so I went to my room and soaked in the tub for a while.

Today was my last full day in Japan, tomorrow I’ll have the morning to take care of some errands and do a final pack of my bags then it’s back to the U.S.A. I don’t wanna…

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Japan – Day 2 (Tokyo)

To be honest, what makes me love Japan isn’t necessarily the endless ancient buildings or sightseeing opportunities or shopping or other touristy stuff…it’s the language, the culture, the people, and the little comforts and quirks and complete unexpected randomness. For example, I love that you can order from a machine, and you push a button when you need something instead of having a waitress. I love that everyone lines up and takes turns, I love the deep soaking tubs, the weighted blankets, the funny TV shows even if I don’t understand it all. How people respect and care about each other but also don’t give a fuck and come up with the craziest, wildest stuff. That’s what I enjoy about being here. So when I woke up this morning at 6am to my alarm going off I couldn’t be bothered to move from the cocoon I had made myself with this glorious cooling weighted blanket that’s standard here. I pretty much dozed in fluffy comfort (but with a firm pillow and mattress underneath because orthopaedics is a priority too) and watched NHK for 3 hours, just enjoying being here and not running around. FYI, the music for the weather forecast section of the news literally has not changed in 15 years. Plus, funny enough, they were doing a segment about Hikone Castle and how it was built and its history and stuff, so I took it as a sign to stay in and watch. Finally my stomach decided it was time to get up, so I got dressed and headed to the Starbucks at Shibuya crossing and had a mocha while watching the insanity down below for a while. Then I hopped on the train to TeamLab Borderless.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Tokyo already and seen most of the big tourist sights, but there have been some new additions in the last 15 years that piqued my interest so I specifically came to see those. TeamLab Borderless is a fully immersive art exhibit using light, sound/music, mirrors, temperature, smells, and touch to really get people into their exhibits and see how beautiful they are. They don’t give you a map, and the entire area is in darkness with juuuust enough light along the floors to not trip over your own feet, the idea is you go in and explore. There are rooms with strands of LED lights and mirrors floor to ceiling that make it look like it’s raining, a lantern room where I almost smacked into a mirror because you get so distracted, a balloon room, smoke light room, glass projection room, flower garden room, a digital waterfall, so so many rooms I’m still not sure I got them all even though I was there for over 2 hours. Still, I think I did except for the birds nest which had over an hour wait, so I headed out and waved quickly to the Rainbow Bridge and took the train back to Shibuya.

After getting some ramen, I strolled through part of Yoyogi Park and headed to Meiji Jingu since Google said it was open until 6pm, but when I got there at 4pm they were just closing the gates. Guess it’s sun up to sun down this time of year. No biggie, I walked a little further and went to Takeshita Street in Harajuku. It’s not Sunday so I only saw a small handful of the “Harajuku girls” but I did find the Totti Candy Factory and got one of those ridiculously gigantic cotton candy cones. Thing was 3x bigger than my head. People that know me know I can handle a lot of sugar, but even I couldn’t eat all of that. I also found a place selling nice chopsticks and had him engrave my katakana name onto them.

I passed on the exotic animal cafés, I’ve heard horror stories about them and keeping the exotic animals in poor condition…but I did come across a pet pig café. I figured pigs are domestic, so it was probably okay, plus I had never pet a pet pig before. There was only a 10 minute wait so I stuck around until I could go in. They had 6 or 7 pigs running around and they were adorable. They mostly came to me for ear scritches but there were four that had found their way into the laps of people with black pants (ALL black pants, they didn’t seem to care about anyone else with any other colors on, just FYI if you go!) They were cute, and seemed happy enough. I’d still eat them if they were made into bacon though.

Afterwards, I wandered back to the hotel to take advantage of another of those little comforts I mentioned earlier, the famous Japanese deep soaking tub! After being in Europe and Thailand where they favor showers over tubs 95% of the time to the point where they don’t even have tubs, getting into that deep soaking tub was like heaven. I relaxed and searched stuff for my next destinations until I started to get pruney. Now I’m going to try to go to sleep early so I can wake up super early tomorrow!