Anyway, it was a long wait, but I actually had nothing much to write about. Until I went to TOKYO ! If you've been following the blog, then you know I'm a filthy hillbilly living in a small city in Osaka area. Since Monday 18th was a holiday here, I decided to take this opportunity to visit Tokyo once before my summer ends.
This time, since local trains won't do the job, I got to ride the famous Shinkansen. While it is pretty expensive to say the least, it's really fast and pretty comfortable, even on third class. Some aspects of it are just a bit confusing at first, like how only a travel ticket isn't enough to ride it, or where the non-reserved seats are located (I almost boarded late considering the train is extremely long). Anyway, here we go. Despite being fast, the view is really nice if you get a seat near the window. My only bad memory about it is how I started feeling tired but was too stupid to figure out how to move the seat in a comfortable position.
Even though it's ridiculously cheaper than the shinkansen ride itself, the tickets give you a free ride to a local train so you can arrive at a station that actually matters, which is kinda cool. So I took the (also famous but not so much) Yamanote line, which is a looping train line circling big areas in the center of Tokyo. Anyway, since it was late at night (Friday) I called it a day by simply getting some pretty good ramen, and then going to sleep.
Now buckle up, because this is where the fun starts ! The very first spot of interest is Asakusa, a very popular tourist destination. While we're on the subject, the tourist density was only off the charts compared to the town I live in, where gaijins are pretty much aliens (no pun intended), as opposed to popular areas of Tokyo where it feels like they make for 1/3 of the population. So, what is Asakusa and why is it a popular destination ? Well first of all, it is pretty close to Ueno and big subway/train lines, so it's easy to access. And the primary reason for its popularity is the huge buddhist temple in the middle of it.
Surprisingly enough, while this is a massive tourist destination, the area is still keeping in touch with the tradition pretty religiously (also no pun intended). The temples are still being developped with traditions like geishas being present, although not being a public attraction. However, there is no doubt that tourist vacuums are present. Huge shopping streets everywhere in a labyrinth, with a ton of crap to buy. I still got myself tempted by dango at a food stand. And honestly, it was really good, despite being extremely sticky and making my hands dirty for the rest of the day. Not to mention the lack of garbage cans, which is infuriating at times.
Because there's a lot to talk about this time, I'll skip talking about lunchtime to focus on the next area : Shinjuku. This is by far one of the biggest and most important parts of Tokyo, will corporate headquarters and fuckhuge building all over the place. The Shinjuku station itself is so huge it may as well be a city by itself. Everywhere, you can see skyscrapers with giant screens constantly playing ads (with sound for some), pachinko fortresses and a truckload of restaurants. I also learned that Atlus headquarters were in that area, but never got to see them.
If you're feeling brave, you can visit Kabukicho aka the ultimate Japanese red-light district. Be prepared to be robbed of your money (literally or figuratively) and have shady encounter with yakuzas and "hostesses". Naturally, it is only shady at night, and I visited during daytime, so it was pretty much empty. Fun fact : the city office is also located in that district. Aside from that, I also visited a super cool store called Book-Off. They have very cheap manga and video games, so I recommend it if you want to buy products in this category without raping your wallet.
One cool feature of the Shinjuku area is a government skyscraper that allows visitors to climb up to the 45th floor and have a splendid view of the surroundings. The elevator that will take you there can actually only stop at floors 1, 2 and 45. On this 45th floor, there is also a fair amount of tourist catcher, like postcards or various goodies about Japan. There's also a restaurant, but surprisingly it was a bit high class and expensive. Anyway, despite the slightly foggy day, the view was amazing.
Closing up Shinjuku, we move on to the last activity of the Saturday : a traditional festival that I completely forgot the name of (something like "Mitama Matsuri"). Anyway, it was a beautiful festival with over 30000 lanterns, and a lot of traditional stuff that I probably could not name and pretty cool music. However, aside from said traditional stuff, there weren't many things to see or do, but I was glad to go there anyway.
And that wrapped up Saturday. Crazy day huh ? Sunday was just as great though, and let's jump right into it.
I first started by exploring something pretty close to where I stayed : Ueno Park. It is a pretty amazing place, and also very crowded. It also has an access to a national museum, which I didn't visit however. I did not spend much time in there, but it was worth mentioning.
The big part of the day started when I took the train to the biggest place of interest. Give a warm welcome to Akihabara. This time, I don't think I need to explain what it's about. If there is any place you have to go if you're interested in modern Japan pop culture (unless that culture is fashion or music) including, for the most part, anime, manga and video games.
The shock of being surrounded by tall buildings is not so much after visiting Shinjuku, but it is still an impressive sight. Sunday is also a particular day in Akihabara, since that every Sunday, the major part of the area is reserved for pedestrians, so the main road is blocked to cars. Naturally, I aimed for that day in order to properly visit the area, and I think I did well.
Something that saddened me however, is that the most prevalent culture in Akihabara isn't video games at all, it's actually way more about moe stuff, which I can't say I appreciate very much. However, I did find some good video games shops, one of the most famous being Super Potato, known to be a hot spot for retro games. But you probably already knew about it since I mentioned it in my Den Den Town article. However, the one in Tokyo is in fact much bigger, which is understandable.
Unexpectedly, one of the buildings I spent the most time in is Animate, which is like the supermarket of anime & manga fans. Manga, doujin, anime BRs/DVDs, soundtracks, goodies (there's an entire floor about goodies), figures, you name it. They also sell pretty much all the weekly manga magazines like Jump comics. And of course, hentai. But that section was too awkwardly close to the counter where everyone was judging me constantly, so I became too self conscious and didn't buy any.
Aside from the electronics stores, all stores were about the same thing, except more about one particular weeb subcategory or another. Like I said, didn't find as many video game shops as I expected, but still buy some good games nonetheless. Very enjoyable area still, and there's a lot of stuff I haven't visited yet, can't wait to come back someday.
We're coming close to the end of the trip, so how about some fireworks festival ? This time, we went to Yokohama, the second biggest city in Japan, by the local train (only one hour, and much cheaper than the Shinkansen) to this festival. Compared to the previous day's one, this one seemed much more on the commercial side, with a shit ton of food stands and goodies. The fireworks were really cool, like all fireworks in general I mean, but nonetheless some of them were really impressive and original. I ended up not buying anything from the food stands however, mainly because I was not too hungry yet, and it was extremely crowded. Seriously, some of them came more than an hour earlier to set up their picnic area on the grass fields. We were no competition to such dedicated Japanese people, so we just watched the fireworks standing up and left to get dinner elsewhere.
And where would that elsewhere be ? Well, this was the last place to visit, but nonetheless a great one : Shibuya. Strangely, "The World Ends With You" might be one of my favorite video games, but I came to realize that Shibuya was probably not going to the best place for me. Anyway, this district is all about fashion, and also being young & cool. Nighttime Shibuya is still very crowded, and most of all populated by drunk, mostly fashionable/hip people in their early twenties. Which is the category I fall into, without of course the part about being cool and sociable.
Despite those hilarious self-deprecating jokes, Shibuya is very cool, pretty and flashy at night, and overall extremely active. There's also a big restaurant alley, which we had dinner in, and good places of interest that were sadly closed at the time we came in. It was very late anyway, so we just ate up our ramen, had some additional grilled meat at a food stand, and called it a day.
And then, after idling around the place for a bit, I finally said my goodbyes to Tokyo and returned to my cherished town of residency in the middle of nowhere. It was easily the most memorable visit so far, and if you allow be to make it a little more personal here, definitely sealed the deal about how I desire to settle in Japan. And I mean that in a serious way ! I'm taking this opportunity to say that it's an amazing place to live all around, and I'm not saying that because I like modern pop culture at all.
Anyway, that's it. For the context, this happened 2 weeks ago and I didn't do anything fun since then. Probably never will do something as fun as this in the foreseeable future, but I can still try some things. By the way, sorry for not posting as often as I wanted to initially. Hope you guys can stick with me until the end of my trip at least
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