Manaswi's Travels: Fascinating Tokyo

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Hope everyone is doing well. This is set to be my first post so far in this trip and quite honestly, I haven't been updating the blog as much as I wanted to mainly because there is not enough time! I was in Tokyo for a grand total of about 4 days. I'd consider 3 out of 4 of those days as actual productive days since the first day was pretty much consumed by my jet lag. Regardless, Tokyo hit me like a train from the second I made my way through customs. Narita Airport is huge and the people moving through it are on a mission, just don't get in their way. Here I am, with my huge backpack on (which I overpacked...), wearing basketball shorts, my husky shirt and a hat while holding a subway map and staring into the sky or at other people so maybe someone would stop and help. That didn't work out so well. Finally, I made my way to the information desk where you would assume English would be spoken, I mean, it is an international airport. That was not the case, so through a series of hand gesture (lots of thumbs up for answers I was looking for), head knods, and numerous drawings on pieces of paper, I made my way to the immaculate subway system of Tokyo.

My hostel was located in the middle of Tokyo, in a area called Jimbocho.The hostel was small, and it was all individual rooms, not dorm style. Overall though, it was a nice place to stay and really central for when I wanted to take the metro anywhere. My plan for Japan was to spend a couple days in Tokyo taking in the sights and sounds and then spend the last two in Kyoto. Unfortunately, Kyoto didn't work out because I was still all wrapped up in Tokyo, I barely scratched the surface of Tokyo actually in the 4 days I was there. On my last day, I actually went to a small beach town just SE of Tokyo called Kamakura, which is known for its Buddhist Temples and extremely old structures. Here's a little breakdown:

TOKYO

Ever so fashionable and definitely the land of high tops and skinny jeans (for men). Talk about GQ. Being in Tokyo sometimes made me want to scrap the whole taking pictures of temples and learning about history side of my trip and instead start doing some serious people watching and taking pictures of the Japanese and their crazy style (I guess there's people that already do that). It literally is the city of lights at nights and if you're into shopping, I guess you can say Tokyo is the place to go. Here are some pics from throughout the city:

This is right outside my hostel in Jimbocho, Tokyo

The Japanese love hot dogs...it was really weird. Especially this one, because Tully's sells it, so you saw someone having a casual double short latte with a hot dog on a plate (which was being eaten by a fork)

VIDEO UNAVAILABLE

This is the famed Shibuya Crossing. Shibuya, full of trendy hipsters and famous people getting their pictures taken was awesome at night. This video was taken a little early (around 9PM) because around 11PM this place is PACKED, esp the weekends.

This is overlooking a main street in Harajuku. It was really hard at first to try and find it, but this funny British guy literally told me to follow the Goths. He was 100% correct. I did follow them and then I ended up in the trendy yet fun neighborhood of Harajuku. This is a huge shopping area as well, but probably more known for its smaller boutiques. All the Japanese teens that hangout here look like they all just got off the set of Twilight, so its a little creepy at night. I just bowed my head whenever they came close...

That's all the pics I have for Tokyo right now, I'll post more once I can get them off my camera properly.

KAMAKURA

This is the little beach town I went to on my last day in Japan and it was an absolutely beautiful day. There's a lot of surfers that go out on the beach and I think the main form of transportation for the locals and tourists is by renting a bike. I have little to no Japanese language knowledge except for Konichiwa, Arrigato and Kudasei (Hello, Goodbye and Please) and the guys at the bike store were for some reason fascinated by me and insisted they take a picture with me as well. All the bikes they rented out were regular bikes with a basket up front, they looked like this. Everyone in the store insisted that this was not the one for me, and I didnt understand what they were saying until they started to take my measurements and finally decided the a front and rear suspension mountain bike would be best. I couldn't really complain, the bike looked good. So, looking like I'm in some sort of extreme excursion on my mountain bike, I set out into the quiet and pristine town of Kamakura. About 5 minutes into the bike ride I reached the water and the views were awesome.

attempt at self portrait

Moving on, I biked to one of Kamkura's most visited shrine. This shrine boasts inside of it a 25 meter high statue of Buddha. It is absolutely huge. One of those things you need to see to really appreciate. Story goes that it was cast in 1252 and around 1268 the shrine "Daibatsu Den" was built around it. What's intersting is that a tidal wave swept through Kamakura in 1498 ruining the town and the shrine, but the Buddha statue was still standing. Then a huge earthquake hit this area in 1928 and not one part of the Buddha statue was harmed whereas the shrine suffered again. Basically, its a pretty tough Buddha.

Finally, I parked the bike and made my way to the top of Kamakura hill (rough climb) where the oldest temples in the city were located and amazing views of the city were seen. It was really nice making my way up and interesting seeing a few graveyards that basically had the bodies of all the religious people that had worked at these temples for the past hundreds of years.