| 11:00p |
Finally, the rest of the Tokyo trip!
Hi everyone -
I'm sure you all thought I dropped off the face of the planet but I'm still here. This last week has been very busy, with arriving, not having an apartment when I was supposed to - more on that later, starting my new internship, settling in, adjusting to the madness of Beijing, etc etc etc.
I'll get to Beijing in a bit but I wanted to wrap up my Tokyo trip before I forget what I did myself! After my camera destruction incident, I decided that karma was telling me that the night was over! I headed back to the trusty Juyoh and went to bed. The next morning I woke praying that the camera would magically start working again, but alas no, it was still busted. Well, what was I to do? I had to make the most of my last day in Tokyo - camera or no. As I mentioned, I had a tradtional film camera with me so I headed off to Ikebukuro to peruse the big camera stores. When I got over there, I scanned the prices for digital camera and got a big case of sticker shock. I decided that I wouldn't buy a replacement camera here, though I did attempt to get my broken one repaired. Unfortunately, a lack of Kodak parts, my lack of Japanese and the fact that the thing is probably destroyed anyway doomed any chance I had of getting it fixed. I bought some film and moved on! I also went to the Toyota Amlux showroom, a 6 story building full of model Toyotas and interactive displays. They had some beautiful cars there, including hybrids! I want a Prius!
I grabbed a Big Mac (!) and then I made my way down to Harajuku, which is sort of the high fashion area of Tokyo. Lots of little teenagers walking around, wearing all sorts of strange and/or stylish outfits. Before doing some strolling, I went over to the Meiji Shrine, which is dedicated to the Emperor Meiji, who defeated the Tokugawa shoguns and re-established the power of the emperor in the 19th century. The shrine was pretty, surrounded by beautiful tall trees. The weather was a little rainy, but it was actually nice, because it was cooler. Walking around the shrine was nice and peaceful and helped me to forget about my silly stress about the camera. Then I went back down to the main Harajuku area and did some window shopping. From there, I walked down to Shibuya - another huge shopping and business district. Tokyo has 2 or 3 areas that are comparable to Times Square!
Shibuya was also featured in Lost in Translation, primarily when Scarlett Johansen's characters is seen wandering in huge crowds on the streets. One of the main buildings has a giant video screen that curves, and in the movie, there is a big dinosaur walking across it. No dinosaur for me, but it was eerie to be there, because it was raining just like in the movie. The sheer number of people crossing the street was incredible. Now that I am in China, I would say that it was more remarkable that people actually yielded to cars and followed the signals! If Shibuya was in China, there would either be huge pedestrian deaths or no traffic would ever move!
I completed the LiT trifecta by going up into the Shibuya Starbucks, where they shot overhead shots, and I had a latte. From there, I could see all of the umbrella-totling pedestrians swarm the crossing every few minutes. I liked Shibuya. Then I metroed it back over to the other side of town to Asakusa, where I visited the Senso-ji temple. All of the guides mentioned this was a BIG deal, but it wasn't that great to me. Maybe after the amazing Kyoto temples, I was jaded, but it was just another temple! Maybe the increasingly harder rain dampened my enthusiasm, but it wasn't anything that I would have died about if I hadn't seen it.
I wish I could have made it over to Ueno Park but the rain was starting to really come down and it seemed sensible to get back to the Juyoh Hotel. I had a quiet evening there - ate some Cup of Noodles from 7-11 - and packed for the flight out the next day.
Check-out the next morning was super fast and I was off to Narita. I dozed a bit on the Keisei train and then made my schlepped my stuff to Terminal 2, where I got my huge bags that I'd stored there a week earlier. They were still there! =)
Luckily, Asian airports all seem to have free luggage carts, so it was pretty easy to get up to departures with all of my crap. The good news at check-in was that JAL didn't charge me an excess baggage charge. Yay! I searched all around Narita for a store that sold cheesy magnets. My parents need the Japan additions for their collection! Who's ever heard of an airport gift store with no magnets?! I finally found a few that passed for acceptable, but it was like pulling teeth!
Then it was off to Beijing on wonderful JAL - which served a great lunch on the 777. We had on-demand video - so cool - and I watched the Richard Gere/J Lo movie, "Shall We Dance?" Kind of a cheesy chick flick, but it was OK and it passed the time. Plus, I'd already watched Phantom and Spanglish on the long flight!
Well, I'm going to break off this post here and post again about the Beijing madness in a bit. Hope this tides you all over! Miss you all! Sorry I've been bad about email but I am catching up!!!! |