Tokyo Drift

After working through the weekend, ME, KC and I finally had our two days off! Destination? TOKYO! The three of us traveled together on what came to be known as the “Dream Tour 2011,” as we all worked together to make for a very fun, enlightening, and drama-free trip.

The Travelers

KC (“The supplier”): Always had everything we needed, from tissues to those little water-free toothbrushes when we were too exhausted to get off out memory-foam mattress in the hostel to make it to the bathroom.

ME (“The translator”): Her excitement to learn Japanese is contagious, and she frequently practices basic phrases and creates funny devices to remember them. We had to use a couple during our trip, and I know more will come in handy during future travels.

SW (“The reader”): One of my dad’s coworkers lent me a bilingual atlas of Tokyo, which proved to extremely useful in navigating the mumbo-jumbo of the Tokyo public transportation system. Subways, trains, you name it: we didn’t get lost once. I know I definitely looked like a tourist pulling it out every 5 seconds, but it was worth it.

The Timeline

Wednesday Night: After work finished at 6, some aquatics staff ventured out on Blue Street (the happenin’ area of Yokosuka) for some food and fun. We quickly (re)realized that Americans are LOUD, especially in comparison to the Japanese. In a typical American restaurant there’s loud music and everyone has to yell at the top of their lungs just so the person they’re sitting next to can hear what the heck they’re saying. Not so in Japan. At one point ME asked our group of ten to be quiet, and we were (quite literally) the only ones making any sort of noise in the crowded restaurant. The only reason we spoke so loudly was so we could be heard over our own noise. And despite our best intentions to keep the noise level down, we reverted right back to our natural instincts.

The rest of the aquatics staff returned to base to be back before their work day curfew, but the night belonged to the three of us. We ventured into a previously-visited bar in which we were the only three patrons the entire night. Awkward? Hardly. We got to know the bartenders well, exchanged Japanese and English phrases, and had a ton of fun. “You all from California?” “Yes.” *Bartender cues up “California Girls” by Katy Perry on the sound system.*

Exhausted, we stopped by our home base (7/11) for some (you guessed it) Coolish, and then collapsed in bed, ready for the adventures of the next two days.

Thursday: When traveling in Tokyo, you don’t just take a train and end up in the city. The city is so huge it’s divided up into culturally distinct sections, and you could spend a whole summer exploring without seeing everything. Here are the highlights:

Public transportation

All I can say is, Japan’s got it down. We bought a PASMO card, which allows you to hop from train line to train line (there are so many!) to the subways without having to buy separate tickets. When you run out of yen on the card, you just had more! And everything is FAST. Not necessarily in terms of speed, but in terms of train frequency. I think the longest we waited for a train was three minutes. Also, EVERYONE uses the public transportation, all the time. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is, it is ALWAYS busy.

  

Harajuku

Yes, like Gwen Stafani sings about. Since we weren’t there during the weekend, it wasn’t quite as poppin’, but still lots of bright, colorful clothing, interesting shopping (“no pictures, please!”), and good food. We ate at an Indian restaurant called Akasha, with THE BIGGEST naan and most delicious curry I have ever seen/consumed (see below.) After eating, we wandered and looked at shops and people for a while. A couple musings about fashion: 1) Everyone is always dressed nicely in Japan. I don’t think  they even sell sweatpants here. About 95% of the time, men are in white button downs and slacks, and women are in cute dresses (shoulders always covered), or fashionable shorts, stockings and flowy blouses. 2) I wonder if the Harajuku girls are accepted by the rest of Japanese culture, or if they are considered a weird sub-culture. Was that cute old little Japanese woman on the train a former Harajuku girl (making it an generational transition thing), or did she stick up her nose at them?

Tokyo Tower

We then made our way to Tokyo Tower, where we rode 150 meters up in a space age elevator to get a 360 degree view of the Tokyo area. There was a glass window on the floor so you could look down onto the view below, where old Japanese women held hands and shuffled across the surface, clearly afraid they would fall if they took one wrong step. Afterwards, we wandered around a bit and encountered a street rock concert. A study in contrast: Japanese men in business suits, fist pumping and chanting while a Japanese rocker chic sang and pointed at us Americans. We conducted an unsuccessful search for green tea ice cream (“green tea ice cream dokodeska?”), and then, exhausted, we took a train to find our ultimate destination…

Panoramas from KC. Friday pictures from KC and ME, after my camera battery died. Thanks!

Hooters

Yes, we went. Yes, we ate there. Yes, we bought shirts.

Friday

Asakusa

I had never heard of this area of Tokyo before, and it pleasantly surprised me with its cute little shops, chatty old men, and Sensō-ji, a famous Buddhist temple. But most importantly, SO MANY DESSERTS. I had a little sponge cake filled with green tea ice cream and a sweet bean paste, a fried sweet potato cake, and little fried pastry scraps. I had to remind myself that I had the whole summer to try food, otherwise I would have sampled everything in the vicinity, especially the giant mochi for 120 yen. (Rough exchange rate from yen to US $: Take off the last two zeros of a number and add 20% of that to the new number. ie 1000 yen = $12.)

The temple itself was intriguing, although we didn’t know much about it. We got our fortunes told at a little tourist-y area and watched people drink water and wash their hands from ladles in a fountain. I wanted to try, but didn’t want to intrude or do something wrong/offensive. It was still cool to observe people from all over the world compacted in one little area.

A ricksaw man appraoched us and asked where we were from. Once he learned we were from California, he yelled “SCHWARZENAGGER!” and proceeded to pose like a body builder.

Yokohama

Didn’t have much time to explore this fairly busy area of Japan, but had a cute little encounter. An old man apporached us and asked in a quiet little voice, “USA?” “Yes, we’re from California.” “Well, you are very beautiful girls.” It’s so funny to see the different reactions of people who find out where we’re from. Although I feel like the people of Japan do not dislike America, I still feel like we get more positive responses if we say “California” instead.

Overall, it was a great trip. For all that food, lodging, and train travel, I spent $150 total! (Pretty good deal! And it sounds so much better than 13,000 yen.) I had fun, entertaining, drama-free traveling buddies, and got to sight-see and people watch quite a bit. Next week’s adventures have yet to be planned, but I think they’ll involve some sort of activity, versus the wandering and observing we did this weekend. Both are good to do, I think, and it was a great way to get introduced to Tokyo.

Thanks for reading this marathon of a post! It was a great eye-opening weekend, so I felt like I had to write a lot. :)