<![CDATA[

Shinjuku, Japan

The ‘transformer train’ from the Tokyo airport to our hotel in Shinjuku split mid journey into two trains going in two directions. Fortunately our reserved tickets placed us on the right part of the train – clever aye? They even have tea ladies on an airport train! Wow!

Arriving in to Shinjuku train station at rush hour was a fast awakening to Japan’s hectic pace. There were so many people, all with next to no English. It only took a few ‘help me’ questions to the locals before we found one that spoke English to point us in the right direction. I later learnt that Shinjuku Station is officially the busiest station in the world. In 2007 it registered an average of 3,640,000 passengers per day and has more exits than any other station – over 200 at the last count and 36 platforms! I’m glad we got out alive.
“Thank goodness moment #1, pre booking accommodation for our first night in a new city and having a map to get there is essential.”

Our upgraded room has a toilet with 8 buttons including an upward shower, warmer and is much easier than the Asian toilets that I have become accustomed to using (the ones where a good aim is essential). It’s pretty funny that the public toilets have a music button to push when you wish to cover the ‘sound’ of a toilet flushing or bodily sounds!

Words can’t describe what we experienced tonight. In the basement of Shinjuku’s Kabukicho district, bikini-clad women staged mock battles using enormous robots – though it’s a more steroid-enhanced fairground attraction than modern-day Gundam. The restaurant looked like something straight out of Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, all migraine-inducing neon, video screens and mirrors (That’s straight from Google as I am still literally lost for words after experiencing the most random night of my life). Dave thinks if he had a seizure it would have looked like this. It was seriously an out of this world experience and very, very Japanesey “don’t you think so”?

Our first full day in Tokyo, was spent walking through the Japanese gardens of Shinijuku to Yoyogi Park and to Tokyo’s biggest Meiji Shinto Shrine. Shinto is Japan’s ancient, original religion and is rooted into Japanese way of life. It has no founder or holy book but has values, such as harmony and purity. The shrine has a pretty amazing story – It is dedicated to the souls of the emperor and empress. After they passed in 1912, the locals wanted to commemorate them forever so they donated 100,000 trees and volunteered to create this forest and shrine. Pretty cool place. Many locals spend the day in the park. I was surprised to see so many people wearing the traditional kimono.
Harajuku was an experience in itself. Seeing the famous street style and cartoon characters was definitely worth the visit. The only disappointment was when Googling ‘Harajuku Gyoza’ for lunch. The only thing that came up was the “Sake-Sake-Sake Harajuku Gyoza” restaurant in Brisbane. We later learnt that gyoza, meaning dumpling, is originally a Chinese dish – and not so famous in Harajuku! So we ended up at an Italian pizza restaurant with random comments and pictures painted on the wall with words in English written by Japanese – I’m unsure if the authors and artist knew what they were writing. For example a picture of a naked woman with the word “hungry” underneath or a picture of a cat with a hamburger on top of it with the comment “I like pasta, milk, wine”.

We met Dave’s old exchange student, Mieko, for dinner that evening which was a relief as we were finding Japan ‘hard to crack’. The very little English everywhere meant we were very much observers rather than actually understanding. Eating where the locals eat is cheaper but sometimes means you are spoken to only in Japanese, therefore you don’t really understand what’s going on. On a side note, I’m unsure why this should surprise me as when Japanese speak to us in Australia we respond in English, so there is no difference.
Until Mieko pointed out that we were actually in Tokyo City, I didnt realise it was the whole area. I thought we had to catch a train to Tokyo City but the ‘city’ is actually 2,200 km wide, has 13.2million people and is made up of 23 wards, of which Shinijuku is just one. Mieko took us to the Skydeck on the rooftop of the 55th floor, so I really got an understanding of how big it is. And it’s big! Huge in fact! Dinner was at a real Japanese restaurant, so real they had no forks and the local miso from the south was cold.

On the final day in Tokyo we headed for Asakusa, a beautiful little town where the atmosphere of Tokyo’s past decades still survives. The main thing to see was the Buddhist Sensiji temple, Japan’s oldest temple which was built in the 7th century. We also went to Tokyo Central station, nothing to report there and we got to the ‘over seeing temples stage’ so came home.

After two full days of sightseeing and eating out in the world’s most expensive city – it’s jam sandwiches and Asahi beer for dinner back at the room. Asahi is asa = morning and hi = sun. I fell asleep at 6pm.. that is a new record even for me!

“Useless fact #1: there are three main scripts in the modern Japanese writing system Kanji, Katakana, Hiragana”

Farewell Tokyo City, looking forward to seeing the rest of Japan over the next few days.

]]>