So, before I continue on my tale of Japan, I was flipping through my guide book and realized I have been to WAY more places than I thought I had, so I thought I would summarize them for you all in a list here. A segue before continuing on my story of Tokyo, and the rest of my life. So here we go…

I have been to:

·         Tokyo

·         Hakone

·         Mt. Fuji

·         Nikko

·         Kyoto

·         Osaka

·         Kobe

·         Nara

·         Ise Peninsula

·         Hiroshima

·         Miyajima

·         Dazaifu

·         Nagasaki

·         Fukuoka/Hakata

·         Hirakatashi (obviously…)

So there you go… pretty neat eh? And I’m not even finished yet!! This makes me happy, hehe.

Alright, so continuing on with Tokyo… One thing I forgot to mention in my last entry! When we were walking across the bridge in Harajuku, I saw this one guy wearing Goth clothes (I swear he looked like a girl…) who was holding a sign that said “free hugs”. Of course, I had to cash in on this, so I got a free hug and a picture. Then the guy asked Kyle if he wanted one too, and it didn’t take much to get Kyle over hugging the guy (very awkwardly). Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you ask Kyle), my camera had a delayed moment and I couldn’t get a picture of that, drat!

Anyway…the next day (or continuation of Monday, depending how you look at it), Kyle and I got up around noon, which was incredibly painful, and went out for some breakfast/lunch. Both of us were moving very slowly, so it took us awhile to get to the train station. Finally, we made it to the subway though, and I bid him farewell at the station entrance at Asakusa. I myself headed back to the hostel, where I showered and called home to inform my parents of my clubbing adventure. I then decided I wasn’t going to spend one of my precious extra days in Tokyo sitting around recovering from a hangover (actually, it was more sleep deprivation at this point), so I headed back out into Tokyo, on my own.

It was actually really fun! I decided to visit Yasukuni shrine, which is a shrine dedicated to the spirits of all the Japanese war dead. This is a very controversial place, because the enshrined spirits also include eight Class-A war criminals, and the Prime Minister during World War II. Some people find it disturbing to visit because some of the descriptions in the attached war museum seem to glorify things such as kamikaze pilots and the men who manned the human-powered torpedoes. We had discussed it a bit in my Shinto class, and it was definitely on my list of places to visit.

So I got on the subway, and took my sweet time getting to the shrine. I had also picked a pretty good day to go to a shrine, as it was “Coming-of-Age day”. This is celebrated every January 14th, where any person who turned 20 years old in the last year goes to the shrine for a blessing. So technically, while I was walking around Yasukuni, I was celebrating my own “coming of age” day. The really surreal thing was walking through a shrine which a war-oriented shrine, and seeing girls my age running around in kimonos taking pictures with friends and praying at the shrine. Was an incredibly interesting experience, to be sure. I had seen the groups near the shrine by our hostel when I left, and there had to be hundreds of these young adults all queued up by the shrine, listening to the priests and chatting amongst themselves, holding their goodie bags which they had received. But seeing the same thing (though not NEARLY as many of them) at Yasukuni was really strange… though I suppose if that’s your shrine, you would go anyway.

After looking around the shrine itself, I decided to check out the museum. Inside, they had a Mitsubishi Type-0 Carrier Based Fighter, right in the front door. It actually looked like it could have just taken off right through the front window, which was a neat effect. There was also a locomotive, and a couple of guns which had seen actual battle, with the bullet holes showing along the barrels. Most of the displays were only in Japanese, which made it a little difficult (okay, a lot difficult), but I managed. They had the progression of armour in Japan, starting at the earliest times and moving forward through samurai and then into military uniforms. They also had the various kinds of weapons associated with the time periods and such. As you continued through, there was an entire area where the walls were covered with photos of the men (and a couple of women, I think) that were enshrined here. Also, the book with all the names written in it was on display, which is read aloud every year, and depending on whether or not Japan is fighting a war, names are still added to the list.

The strangest (and most difficult thing) for me, was the display room. They had tanks and guns from the WWII era, as well as a couple of torpedoes which had been recovered after they had been deployed. However, the worst for me was the collection of helmets, all which had seen battle, and all which had bullet holes, or were slightly disintegrated… needless to say, I made my way through that part rather quickly. It just seemed a little too disturbing… yet I can look at torpedoes that had people in them and not really flinch. Go figure.

Eventually, I made it out of the museum and back into the evening. The sun was starting to set (I wasn’t kidding when I said I had been taking my time that day), so I opted to head home and call it an early night. When I got back, I ran into a couple of new arrivals, both guys who were from Calgary. We had a lovely Canadian bonding moment, and they invited me out with a big group of people to go for drinks. I told them I had a couple of things to do first, but I would come out for one drink (it was still relatively early), but I would be packing it in earlier than I would. This seemed to confuse them, as it had been more than 12 hours since my last drink, and since I am Canadian, this should mean I am ready to go out again (hahaha… yeah… sure… ).

So they left, and I checked my e-mail and updated my iPod. I then decided, alright, I’ll give this a shot, so I headed out in search of the place that they had gone to. After wandering around for about 25 minutes and not finding a thing, I asked a security guard if he knew where it was. He informed me that it was around the corner, but it was closed. Great. Well, I decided that Tokyo was a big place, and I wasn’t going to try hunting them down, so I headed back, grabbing some fast food on the way for dinner, and crashed decently early.

The next morning, I was once again up, showered, and on the streets of Tokyo. However, because I could finally get up at my own schedule, I was able to take things at my own pace, and get an earlier start! My first mission was to head over to the JR Train Station and see about possibly heading to Mt. Fuji that day to go sightseeing, since Fuji-san had decided to hate me when Kyle and I went. So onto the subway, and over to Shinjuku Station. My guidebook had said that there was a JR train that you could catch to get to Fuji-san, so I figured I would give it a shot.

I walked through the station, which was jam packed with people, and tried to figure out what platform I should seek out. Finding no success in the signs, I decided to ask someone at the information desk. I headed over and asked a gentleman whose demeanour changed from pleasant to sour when he saw a foreigner heading for his booth, if he did in fact understand English. I received an abrupt no, and began trying to piece together my question in Japanese. He cut me off, saying something about having to take a bus to Mt. Fuji, and moved onto the next customer.  I sighed, figuring that there was no point in flogging a dead horse, and took out my guidebook to plan my next move. The Imperial Gardens seemed like a good choice. That way I could see if they were open, since I had missed out on that opportunity earlier in the week. So I jumped on the subway and headed into the heart of Tokyo.

The coolest thing about wandering through Tokyo by myself was it let me prove to myself that I could. I had my mp3 player on, and it was almost like I was just another face in the crowd, making my way from one location to another like I lived in the city, taking out my guidebook only once or twice if I found a sign that was completely in Japanese and I needed to reference my subway map. I was pretty proud of myself by the time the day was over, that’s for sure!

So I arrived at Nijubashi station, and emerged from the underground to the relatively familiar surroundings of the area around the Imperial Palace. I found the grounds (again, not hard, big open space in Tokyo), and went to the entrance, only to find out… they were closed. Yeah, that’s right, Mt. Fuji had apparently called the emperor and said “Hey, there’s this Canadian girl in town right now… let’s screw with her head alright?? Awesome!” So, slightly disappointed, I decided that I would just walk around the perimeter of the gardens anyway, just to see what I could. About half way through this lovely walk, I decided to put the guidebook away… and keep walking. Turns out, a lot of the stuff that I had been to (Yasukuni, for one), which I had thought were miles apart from each other because I had been taking the subway, were all in decently close proximity to each other. I was walking for a good three hours, just wandering aimlessly around the area near the Imperial Palace. I found a really nice park that had a concert hall in it, and sat for awhile by a waterfall in the gardens there, watching in amusement as the crows in the park chased each other around. I also found a small temple tucked away down one side of the park, and behind that was the exit, so it was back to the streets of Tokyo for me.

I headed back into the subway, and finally took out my guidebook to consult and decide on my next move. I hadn’t visited the Akihabara Electric District, and I had told my dad I would, so I decided that would be my next location change. Arriving in Akihabara, I realized that arriving on a Tuesday afternoon was probably a bad idea, as it was dead quiet, and there was not much going on at all. I found a Yodobashi Camera, which is a large 10 storey electronics store. We have a similar one in Osaka, so I figured it would be interesting to check it out the one in Tokyo. I was also hungry, so I stopped over at the Restaurants Floor and found an Indian restaurant, where I enjoyed my lunch.

The awesome thing about this Yodobashi Camera was that it had a Tower Records store in it, and I hadn’t really been to a music store since I got to Japan, so I decided to investigate. As I wandered the aisles, I found something really interesting – a Stars album with an extra track that was made only for Japan. (Stars are a Canadian band that I have really gotten into since I arrived here). So I decided, hey, what the heck, and picked it up. Then I remembered that I had been meaning to see if I could locate the Final Fantasy X soundtrack, so I began to search for that. However, Japanese music stores are rather difficult to navigate, and I could not for the life of me find the section that would have had it. So… I decided to be creative. One of the cool things about the iPod Nano is that it has a little picture of the album of the song you’re listening to in the corner of the screen. I walked up to one of the store employees and, with the aid of my iPod, managed to get it across that I was trying to locate the FFX soundtrack. She lead me to an area that had some soundtracks, and pointed to the CD set I had been looking for. I thanked her, and then stood in amazement in the aisle. Seriously, every game ever created, I’m pretty sure they had a soundtrack for it. It was soooo cool!! So after getting my soundtrack, and my Stars album, I left Yodobashi Camera a happy girl.

Next, I decided to try some more exploring. I had roughly figured that one of the subway lines I could use to get to Ginza, the downtown section of Tokyo, was not too far away, so I began to walk. And walk. And walk. I walked past a gentleman training two new employees for a job in a parking lot, guiding cars in. I saw a couple of foreigners wandering around, similar to me. After wandering down the street for about twenty minutes, I noticed I wasn’t really getting anywhere. I turned around, trying to rework my plan, and was approached by a very nice security guard who insisted I speak to him in English (though he misunderstood my request), and directed me to the nearest subway station; back the way I had come. I decided that I may as well, and went back to the station. I wandered around Akihabara a bit more, trying to see if there was anything I had missed, and then went back underground to the subway, riding it to catch the Ginza line, and then heading off to Ginza itself.

[Authors note: According to my memory and my photos, I ended up in Ueno before heading off to Ginza for good… but I don’t remember how I got there. I have a reason for this; I was initially searching for another temple where some people were killed and the tomb is still at the temple, and ended up not finding it, but finding another one instead. I kept walking after this discovery, and ended up back at Ueno Park, where Kyle and I spent our evening on our first day in Tokyo. I walked through a very busy shopping street that I found there, finding a vendor selling fresh fruit, where I had the first cantaloupe I had had since arriving in Japan. I took my purchase to a pedestrian bridge which overlooked the busy area around Ueno, and enjoyed my fruit, before heading back into the subway line, and THEN heading off to Ginza. It really was a fluke that I found my way to Ueno… was the dawning moment that being in subways all the time really does not give you a very good idea of the layout of the city above… money can be saved by simply walking around.]

Ginza is where a lot of the fancy stores are located in Tokyo. It’s a very bustling part of the city with lots of lights, a police station that looks like a cottage and has clearly been designed to fit its surroundings, and people wearing more in clothing than I probably get from OSAP in a given year. Wee bit intimidating to a girl walking around in jeans and a coat, but whatever, hehehe. I was playing observer and tourist, so it didn’t really matter.

Ginza is also the location of the Sony Store, another place I had promised my dad I would visit. I found my way there through Ginza station (after climbing from what felt like the bottom of the crust of the earth to the surface… some of those subways in Tokyo are INCREDIBLY far underground), and entered through the basement entrance. I still had my headphones in, and was listening to some Goo Goo Dolls when I noticed something peculiar; a sign to my right, at the bottom of the stairs, which said “Sony makes climbing stairs fun!” I took a step, and over my music, I heard a note played out from under my feet. Thoroughly amused, I turned off my mp3 player and began to walk up the stairs, each step playing a different note on a scale, all the way to the top. I had to resist the urge to giggle like a four year old.

I then made my way through all the different exhibits. I fell in love with the DSC-H3 camera that they had on display, and saw a bunch of really neat cell phones and laptops. They also had a little robot that danced when you played music, and it was the speaker. WAY too cool.

After my wonderful adventure into the world of Sony, I ventured out into Ginza. I walked through the streets, enjoying the scenery of night life in Ginza. I walked past a Nissan dealership where they were having a car show, and saw the weirdest mini car I have ever seen in my life. Each wheel was a separate entity from the car. Very strange indeed.

Once I finished my time wandering around Ginza (there really wasn’t much to do other than look, to buy anything would have meant taking out a loan), I headed back to the hostel. Once I walked in the door, I was immediately accosted by the two Canadian guys who had disappeared on me the night before. I told them I had tried to find them, but to no success. They said that was fine, I could make it up by going out with them tonight.

Great.

A bunch of people got together, consisting of myself and my two fellow Canadians, three Australians, and two guys from the Netherlands.  We headed out to check the surrounding area for a karaoke bar. Now, the main problem I had with this was that out of everyone here, I was the only one who knew any Japanese. At all. So guess who got put on Japanese communication duty? That would be, me. This was incredibly embarrassing because of what Japanese they did know, it was “nomihodai” which means “all you can drink”. So (especially my fellow Canadians) decide that it is a brilliant idea to just walk into random restaurants saying ‘nomihodai’ over and over again.

I can already for see dark times ahead.

We finally find the karaoke bar, and arrange to get ourselves a room. At this point I am seriously considering bailing because the group I am with is exceptionally loud, and can’t understand that you can’t order three drinks for each person all at once, that isn’t how these places work. A wee bit frustrating, not going to lie. I had to apologize more than once because the people who ran the place were getting fed up with us. But still, for the brief amount of time we were there, there were some entertaining moments. Including when three of the guys decided to demonstrate to this other girl how to “shake it” because she couldn’t do it very well (shake it = shimmy her shoulders). It was hilarious. There is video footage.

After our time was up at the karaoke place (we only paid for two hours), everyone decided they wanted to head to Shibuya, which is a really popular clubbing district similar to Roppongi. I wanted to go home, because I had to leave the next day, but they convinced me to go and I figured how often do you get to live like this, just travelling around, meeting random people, and then go out and do stuff. Not very often. So whatever, might as well.

Yeah…

Long story short: We arrive in Shibuya. It’s dead. Clubs aren’t open on Tuesdays. The Canadians start fighting over the Aussie girl. The guys from the Netherlands start arguing with each other. No one can get their acts together and decide what to do. I end up bailing and sharing a taxi home with one of the Aussie guys, who then proceeds to hit on me the whole way. I lose my change purse somewhere in transit. I get back to the hostel. One Canadian, and the Aussie girl, and the other Aussie guy are back. The other Canadian and two guys from the Netherlands return soon after I get back. More arguing. I go to bed.

The next morning, I wake up and get all packed, ready to head out of Tokyo. I manage to ninja my way around some of my fellow companions from the night before, who were very hung over and borderline comatose, and check out of the hostel. I do, however, have one more adventure to make before heading home.

The Ghibli Museum.

The Ghibli Museum is a place created my Hayao Miyazaki, who is a famous anime creator (movies like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away). I LOVE Miyazaki, I think he is brilliant, so clearly this museum was HIGH on my to do list while I was in Tokyo. I had made the reservations the day Kyle had left, so I was ready to go.

Only one problem: the museum isn’t in TOKYO, it’s in a suburb of Tokyo, about an hour train ride by JR. Which I didn’t realize until I followed the directions the nice people at the hostel had given me and arrived at the JR station. Hurrah, another epic adventure waiting to be conquered! So, armed with my luggage and confirmation ticket for the museum, I jumped on the train and headed off to the wonderful world of Miyazaki.

And oh. My. God.

It took a little bit of a walk from the train station when I got there. And people looked at me funny carting my suitcase behind me. But it was worth it. SO worth it. You show up and walk in and it’s like walking into another world! I can’t even describe it. There’s staircases and balconies and stained glass windows with characters from all of the movies in them. You can’t take pictures inside, which is a shame. There’s a viewing room, and three rooms with all the different phases of animation, and the ORIGINAL DRAWING BOOKS for all of the films he’s made. Just there. For you to look at.

Seriously. I almost died. I felt like a little kid!! It was awesome!!!!!

After my wonderful journey to the land of Miyazaki (which took about two and a half hours… maybe three… I lost count… it was so cool!!!!) I got my luggage back from the front desk, and left, walking down along the streets of Mitaka (where the museum was), to a different station then the one I had arrived in, so I could take in more of the scenery. The forests around the place, the river you walk along, the roads, everything, it was like walking on a movie set. So perfect. So pretty. Not to mention it was a beautiful day, with no clouds in the sky, nice and warm. Absolutely gorgeous.

I begrudgingly got onto the JR train and got all the way back to Tokyo Station. Navigating through the leprechaun maze, I found the entrance to the Shinkansen, and grabbed a quick bite to eat before catching my train back to Kyoto. I stayed awake, not even playing my DS because I knew the train had to go past Mt. Fuji, and I wanted at least ONE picture.

One picture I got. Sorta.

See, apparently Fuji-san has its own army, in the form of annoying clouds. Because when we finally reached where I could have dear Fuji-san… I could see the mountains AROUND it, clear as day. And there, right smack dab between two peaks, where the highest mountain in Japan SHOULD have been… was a damn cloud. And above this cloud, a small break, where you could see the very top of the mountain. Mocking me.

Mark my words, Fuji-san, I will get you. One day.

I slept most of the way back to Kyoto, arriving about 2 hours after leaving Tokyo. I made my way to Shichijo station, catching a train back to Hirakata. Or so I thought. Our train ended up stopping for good at a station called Yodo, where I was then stranded, in the cold, for 40minutes while I waited for the next train to arrive. Way to read signs Heather. I blame the exhaustion.

And then, at long last, I arrived back, safe and sound, to Seminar House 1, where I promptly collapsed into an exhausted heap after calling the parents and letting them know I was in, safe and sound. Now, currently here it is 1am, so I am going to go to bed, and tomorrow (and I mean it this time) finally become caught up with this blog.

Until next time,

Heather