So last week I was a bad student and skipped a day of class to go to Tokyo. One of the most exhausting trips... OF my life.
On Friday night, my roommate Meredith, her friend Stephanie and my friend Eric all headed to the train station to hop on one of the last ones to Kyoto Station. We left in plenty of time, and since nothing went wrong, we also arrived about an hour before departure. Some butchered Japanese and pathetic "I'm lost" gaijin looks later, we found our check-in point and were told to wait a little longer to check-in so we took a quick trip to McDonald's for the 150 yen special on all sizes of french fries. Best special ever.
Even though we dominated the back row on the bus and got a little room to stretch out, I think Stephanie and I were the two who got the most sleep, and even we topped out at maybe 3-4 hours out of the 6-7 hour bus ride. Also, people from the Kansai area don't necessarily know Tokyo any better than gaijin unfortunately, and they can be extremely unhelpful.
Since we couldn't check in to our hostel (the Tokyo NINJA, woot) until 5 pm, we dragged our tired selves around the city, in the rain, for the next 10 hours. I repeat... 10.... hours.
Dumping our stuff off in a few lockers, which are a nifty thing all over Japan, we headed out to Shinjuku, which wasn't too impressive honestly. I might have been the rain too. After Shinjuku was Harajuku, equally as wet, but infinitely better shopping. I oogled many pairs of boots that I only didn't buy because my shoe size in Japan is non-existent. I also got to finally check out Body Line, which my sister could spend the entire Washington State Lottery on.
Originally we also planned to head to Shibuya at night to see it lit up, but by the time 4:30 rolled around, we were all hungry, tired, and probably two seconds from pushing each other down a flight of stairs. A shower and ramen never felt so good.
The next day was spent at TOKYO DISNEYLAND! Which, although not quite as good as Disneyland, was still quite fun. We saw a tranny sneeze on a water fountain a foot away from us, heard "Merry Christmas" five million times in the highest voice I've ever heard, Nightmare Before Christmas themed Haunted Mansion, and told Ishigawa-san thank you for all her hard work after she kept having to chase Japanese people away from an area they weren't supposed to sit in during the parade.
Akihabara took up the brunt of the next day. I bought far too much anime merchandise and even spent 1200 yen on one of those machines akin to the American 25 cent machine. They were Zelda pins and I wanted them... so I got 6.
Again, the plan after was to go to Shibuya, but three days in Tokyo thorough sapped our energy and we simply spent the remaining time in the train station being good college students doing our homework. Finding the bus stop was not a problem thankfully, and in no time we were headed back to Kyoto to stumble in to Japanese classes the next morning, half awake.
More lessons from Tokyo: Apparently only Americans are fond of water fountains, benches, and trash cans; none of these luxuries exist in this city, and Patient Zero has been found. Beware the outbreak.
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