Saturday in Tokyo

We all got up and had breakfast at the hotel in preparation for our mandatory bus tour of Tokyo…we were told it started at 9am, but to be downstairs at 8:40am (SO Japanese!). I guess I missed the memo and didn’t realize that meant be on the bus at 8:41, because when I strolled onto the bus at 8:55 I was the last person!



We drove the 40 minutes into Tokyo, and got a less-than-informative commentary from our “English-speaking” guide, haha. We took a roundabout way to the destination, and were told about a few major sites on the way. We ended up at the Edo-Tokyo museum, which highlights a historical period of Japanese history. There were replicas of the city through different eras, artifacts and historical memorabilia. Honestly, most of us were relatively underwhelmed at the collection after about 40 minutes, and a group of us escaped and went to go have an early lunch.



The guide recommended a place, and a few of us went – we were seated in the back of the rather expansive restaurant, which actually contained a sumo ring in the middle of the dining room! We were amazed by a few menu items on the English-translated menu (Horse meat sashimi?! Whale bacon?! Drinks with collagen in them? Ew?). I ordered some sushi and dumplings, and some of the guys got hot pots. Our food was wheeled out to us on a cart, and we feasted! The guys with the hot pots had to wait while their food basically cooked in the pot in front of them, but our table was overflowing with bubbling cauldrons and sushi!



Everything was delicious, and I ate way too much. After lunch, we went back to the museum to meet back up with the group, and got back on the bus. We stopped briefly for a group photo at the gates of Tokyo University (the director of the program claimed the Japanese government liked “proof” that the students were here and doing educational activities…) and then ended our tour by getting dropped off at a huge shrine on the northeast side of the city. It was a sunny Saturday, and the street leading up to the shrine was PACKED with tourists.

Horse meat sashimi and whale bacon!

By the time I tried to get a group together to hang out for the day, everyone had gotten lost in the crowd besides Fernanda, a Brazilian girl doing her PhD in Geneva Switzerland. We joined forces, fought our way through the mob to see the shrine, and decided to escape the crowds and go somewhere else.  On our way to the train, we caught a good view of the Tokyo Sky Tree, now the world’s largest tower (I think).



Also, we saw the Asahi Beer headquarters building, which is supposed to resemble a giant glass of beer, with the top resembling bubbles. Also at the Asahi building is the “Golden Flame” sculpture, but my guidebook said the locals refer to it as “the Golden turd,” which I believe is quite an accurate nickname!

We hopped on a train across town to go back to Shibuya, since Fernanda hadn’t been there and I spent only a few minutes in the neighborhood on Thursday. We saw the crossing (with even more people on a sunny weekend!), grabbed a pricey 700 ¥ iced coffee, and did some shopping. We spent forever going through just one department store that had 8 levels with everything you could imagine. She was looking for a pen for her father, and we found an entire FLOOR of pens and stationary items – the choices were so overwhelming that it took her almost a half hour to decide which pen to buy!

We bought silly trinkets, and had to force ourselves to leave so we wouldn’t spend all our money! Fernanda hadn’t had lunch, so we decided to try to find conveyor-belt-sushi. There was a sushi restaurant listed in my guidebook really close to us, so we tried to find it. WE were completely unsuccessful, and again,  an nice Japanese person saw us staring at the map and lead us to where we were going…..we had walked by it about 3 times because it had gone out of business :(

We agreed to try to keep looking while we walked to the next neighborhood, and aimlessly ambled, window shopping and trying to find sushi. Somehow, we came across NO sushi places and about 45 minutes later arrived at the next big shopping district. Fernanda gave up on her sushi quest due to desperate hunger, and we had some dim sum-like dumplings at a random Chinese place.

We did a bit more shopping, and then headed to the train to go to Shinjuku, which contains the smaller neighborhood called Golden Gai where I grabbed a drink with Leah and Jon on my first night. We found another bar that had a sign out front welcoming foreigners and offering free admission for travelers, so we climbed up a steep set of stairs and grabbed a table in the totally empty place. We tried some fun drinks (Green tea liqueur fizz and some sort of sake cocktail), but after 2 drinks, we were tired of the smoke, and decided to get fresh air and look for another place.

The Golden Turd

Side note – smoking rules in Japan are very confusing to me. You CAN smoke in bars and restaurants, but you CANNOT smoke on the street. If you want to smoke outdoors, you can only do it in these silly little fenced in and signed areas. It looks like a playpen on the sidewalk for smokers, and I think it’s really weird!

We were looking for a bar when we stumbled upon a 100 ¥ store! It’s the Japanese equivalent of a dollar store, and we ran in just before it closed. We dashed through grabbing souvenirs and candy and random junk, and both ended up blowing a ton of money!

We left as they were locking up the store, and found ourselves fighting through the beginning of the late night rush hour crowds. It was almost 11pm, so we opted to play it safe and head to the train. We were glad we did, because the station was completely packed, and we had to wait in line for the train. We had a crowded yet uneventful commute home, and had a late night beer with some other students we ran into in the lobby of the hotel.

Fernanda and I had a good day together, so we were both happy to plan to team up again the next day and explore. We debated where to go, and settled on trying to see Mt Fuji and visit the natural park called Hakone. We agreed to not rush or stress out about leaving early (a lot of the other people were getting up super early to go back to the city or head to some temples, but we wanted something a bit more relaxing) and headed off to bed after a good day!

Midnight rush hour