On
the second day of our trip to Tokyo we got to know the city a little
better, and what a city it is! It's still a pretty weird feeling to
walk around in a city among millions of people, being one of the few
foreigners and also one of the few out there that doesn't understand
a single fuck of 95% of the 'linguistic landscape' (the rest are
numbers and the occasional English/Engrish words). Despite that
disadvantage it's really great to go with the flow, seeing people
living their everyday life and do as the Tokyoites do. In the public
transport, in the streets, or in a restaurant facing some bowl of
weird food: do as the locals do.
We
started this day with getting some breakfast at a convience store, to
eat along the way, only to find out eating in public is not the
custom here. There you are, trying to find a litter bin to get rid of
the shell of your egg you just bought. After this little problem we
took the metro to the other side of the city center (which takes
about half an hour) to visit Meiji jingu, a cicade-filled park with
some nice shrines and torii located on the other side of the
railtrack at teen-favorite Harajuku. Having checked most of the
buildings in the park we crossed the railtracks again and strolled
through Harajuku and Ometosando and visited shops, looked at the
teen-culture there before heading back to the other side again to
check the other side of the park. Yoyogi-koen is a 'little' less
sacred then Meiji-jingu and used to be the place to be for all kinds
of subcultures on a Sunday. This time we only saw the rockabillys
doing their show at the entrance while the rest of the park was nice
and pleasantly filled in the sun, but the 'weirdo's' you'd might
expect were nowhere to be found.
After
this, the very humid weather and the fierce sun got to us a little
and we headed the half hour back to the hotel for a powernap, to
return about 2 hours later to Shibuya, which is just a couple of
hunderd metres away from the places we've been before. Arriving in
Shibuya we got out at the exit of the world-famous Shibuya crossing,
which easily takes more than a thousand pedestrians to the other side
of the road each time. Later on we just strolled through Shibuya and
visited shops, huge arcade halls, restaurants and Dogenzaka (love
hotel hill) there. The restaurants I'll describe a little later,
first Dogenzaka. The big city Tokyo is, with the millions of people
and the little amount of space for people to live in, caters for a
hill where quite a few hotels with themed-rooms can be rented by
couples for a few hours to do the old in-and-out. After being yelled
at and having beer fed by a Japanese dude in a man-string we ended
the night in Shibuya and headed back for the hotel. We'll back back
there this trip for sure!
About
the restaurants I can only say Japanese food is great and not even
that expensive! The izayaka we visited the night before seemed to be
a part of a big chain and we tried another part of the extensive
menu. It's quite easy: most of the dishes/drinks which can be ordered
on a computer at the table are 284 yen (about 2.80€), some others
are a little more expensive. And in the end, just walk to the cashier
(as is the custom in all restaurants we've been to) and pay for your
food/drinks. The other restaurant we've visited was a conveyor-belt
sushi restaurant on steroids or something. Sit at the conveyorbelt,
order your sushi by computer (at the giveaway price of 105 yen for 2
nigiri!!) and have it delivered by an automatic cart that will stop
right in front of you.
On to the next day!
On to the next day!