Day
5 – Asakusa / Ueno / Tokyo station
Our
fourth day in Tokyo started in the morning at the Asakusa area where
we visited Kaminarimon gate, walked through the Nakamise shopping
area to end up at Senso-ji, which is Tokyo's biggest buddhist temple.
At the temple we drew an omikuji, a buddist way of
fortunetelling, and luckily for us: we do get fortune. (If not,
people are suggested to draw another one, for 100 yen ;)). We walked
around for a fair bit in the area of the Senso-ji before we took a
detour to get some breakfast. Since there were quite some benches
close to the temple, we went to a department store, got some sushi
(we wanted to buy some grapes, but since they were 52€ a bunch, we
skipped it) and ate it while overlooking the crowds and the
buildings.
Later
we went to Ueno, went to a seven story toystore, had some
soba-noodles and visited the park afterwards, only to find out we've
reached our temple-maximum for the day, so we headed for the shopping
area to see what's going on there. My girl went to a catcafe while I
walked around at the shops that were located on both sides of the
railtracks, with the smallest shops located underneath it. And
although I was one of the very few foreigners there, I didn't
understand anything of the streetsigns (which can be quite annoying)
and my Japanese is limited to 20 words, it's not a problem to do so.
Almost no-one is bothering you trying to rip you off as a tourist and
a simple 'wakarimasen' (i don't understand it) is enough to stop the
conversation if they do.
But
still, the language barrier is ever present, as i noticed on my next
stop, a visit to a local bath (sento). Stuff like putting your stuff
in a locker, paying and the rituals of the Japanese bathing can be
done with some research and common sense. In the end, i managed to
get myself some soap and a towel at the sento and got to enjoy the
bath. First i had to sit myself on a small chair and wash myself
throughly, before entering the main bath which was extremely hot, but
enjoyable.
We
ended this day early with a visit to Character Street, a hallway at
Tokyo station with about 20 shops, all dedicated to one animated
character or one studio that designs characters. Only in Japan ;)
Day
6: Tsukiji / Imperial Palace / Tokyo Dome City / Karaoke
Getting
up at 3:30 on your holiday. Not one of my favorite things to do, but
since the tuna auction at Tsukiji is one of the mustsees in Tokyo,
line for the auction opens at 5 (or earlier) and is limited to 120
guests a day we wanted it to give it a try :) And although many shops
and (fastfood) restaurants operate 24/7, the public transport
doesn't, so we had to walk for 45 minutes through a warm Tokyo. At
the first part of the trip the drizzle was really comforable, but
when in turned into a real rainstorm we had to find shelter and buy
an umbrella. After 5 minutes we could continue the trip to the
auction and ended up getting there as the 115th/116th
persons or something, just in time!
The
auction itself was quite funny to see, lots of tuna lying on the
ground with their tail cut off so every buyer can check the quality
of the meat. Afterwards we headed for Sushi Dai to get some extremely
fresh sushi from the market. The really small joint can only fit
about 14 people so we had to stand in line for 1.5 hour (the people
that missed the auction probably went straight for the sushi). After
the long line we finally got in and got the omakase, chef's
choice. Without a doubt the best sushi i've ever had, and with 11
nigiri, some soup, an omelette and a roll more than i could chew. I
wouldn't really got there again though, the place is so populair the
pieces of sushi are served at a killing pace in order to have more
costumers a day and i doubt it if the sushi (although really good)
was worth paying 5-10 times more than other places in Tokyo. Having a
typical OMGLIKEWTFBBQ-it'ssoooooooooooogooooooooooood-American next
to you doesn't really make it perfect too ;)
After
the sushi we went back to the hotel really briefly and moved on to
the Imperial Palace where we've booked a guided tour at 10. At 10.03
I was bored as hell and i don't really care to blog more about it
than by telling that i think you can spend your time way and way
better. We woke up at 3:30, so in our case it was by sleeping. The
powernap was followed by a trip to Tokyo Dome City, the area
surrounding Tokyo Dome, with shops, arcade halls and even a little
amusementpark. The stadium itself had a baseballmatch going on and we
went to see it. We bought a 1200 yen (12€) ticket for the upper
ring and were told to choose either entrance 40 for the Eagles or 41
for the Marines. We choose 40 cause we liked the shirts better and we
won 13-2! We even got to see a grandslam homerun in the very first
inning. The Marines had way better support though, which was really
cool to see.
In
the winning mood after our glorious victory we went for a karaokebar
to sing some songs. It always looks so easy in all those travelshows
on tv, but they probably have a narrator, since we could barely
understand the girl behind the desk, we couldn't figure out the
control panel for the karaoke this first 5 minutes since it's
Japanese only and we didn't even bother to order drinks by phone.
But on the positive side: we got to sing some songs cause there were
some English names in the list we accidentaly entered through the
controlpanel! Since we didn't had any drinks at the karaoke we tried
to find a pub, and after seeing plenty of restaurants, but no places
to just have a drink we finally found one, took quite a few beers and
went to sleep after a little walk back to the hotel.
Day 7!
Day 7!