Japan Trip

 

Day One Tokyo

Tokyo Tower, Imperial Palace, Asakusa Kannon, Nakamise Arcade

I roped two girls into joining me on a trip to Japan which I was excited about because in addition to hitting Tokyo again would also visit Kyoto and Osaka.

The pictures in this report are a combination of mine and Lauren's. Mara used a disposable camera so she's greedily keeping her pics to herself *glares*. Because there are three of us, be prepared for three versions of some shots.

Yay, the nine and a half hour trip is about to begin! Don't we look excited for it? From left to right: me, Lauren (lddurham on LJ) and Mara (blackshearted on LJ). I knew Lauren beforehand because she's like my stalker or something. I was meeting Mara for the first time, however, and what a relief to discover she's pretty awesome. I could tell right away that the three of us were on the same page and would have a hell of a time on this trip.

The flight involved lots of food and the best, most relaxing service in the sky. Why can't all airlines be like Singapore? I've flown them four times and have been impressed every time.

Finally at Narita airport, we board our lovely bus for the ride into Tokyo. The girls look remarkably refreshed after their long flight.

Now, this tour group was a small letdown to me because I was thinking (erroneously) that it would be comprised of the same type of people on the last tour of Japan that I took. Of course that wouldn't be true because that group had consisted of young people. On this tour, the three of us were the youngest in the crowd. There were three really grumpy old people on board, too, which exasperated us to no end. We named one of them Cranky Pants because this old guy had to complain about everything in a loud, angry voice.

But we also met some nice people on the tour which balanced out Cranky Pants and Co.. And our tour guides in Tokyo and Kyoto/Osaka were wonderful, so I guess it wasn't too bad overall.

Checking into our room at the Tokyo Prince Park Tower Hotel. It was a gorgeous room in a new hotel. Really nice. I would highly recommend the hotel to anyone with the caveat that it's a bit of walk, 10-15 minutes to the nearest JR station (Hamamatsoucho) or subway (Daimon).

Me, immediately claiming the best bed. Because, you know, I deserve it.

The room's already a disaster and would remain so for the time that we were there.

Here's a short video showing our room and our incredible view. Note on videos: all of them will be quick and painless. The longest, from the Gion show in Kyoto, is only a minute and thirty seconds.:

 

Ah, morning tea beside our gorgeous view. Lovin' the bed-head. Puppy, notice the shirt I used as a pj (it's the one you gave me). I also left it in Tokyo because someone *cough*Lauren*cough* failed in her duties to check the bathroom for anything leftover when we checked out.

From our room we could see our first stop for the day: Tokyo Tower, a replica of the Eiffel Tower but red and weighing less, lol.

A view of Tokyo from the Tower.

Mara found some school girls to exploit, lol.

Here is one of the gift shop areas of Tokyo Tower. A small sampling of the gazillion cakes, cookies and candies Japan sells everywhere:

 

Then it was off to the Imperial Palace. Here's a view from just inside the gates looking back at the city. It's pretty cool how old and new blend together everywhere in Japan.

The Imperial Palace dates back to the 15th century and is the former site of Edo Castle and the present residence of the Emperor of Japan. You can't go into the Palace since he lives there, but we were allowed to walk through the East Gardens, which are gorgeous.

This is the tea house.

Garden area around a lovely lake.

This was the funniest moment of the trip. Mara ran over to the bridge and asked Lauren to take her picture. We didn't think anything of it until we looked at the picture on my laptop later that night. She's all scrunched up like a little toy soldier, lol.

The pond was full of humongous, beautiful koi.

Cool waterfountain.

Lauren wanted a photo next to this tree for some reason.

Then we were off to Asakusa Kannon, a temple dedicated to Kannon, the Buddhist deity of mercy and compassion.

We ran into some school kids who were having a blast.

There are temples everywhere and we didn't have our guide with us so I don't know what's what. Sorry.

This is where you clean or purify your hands and mouth before entering a temple.

This lady was rubbing the Kannon(?) statue and then rubbing her knees in the hopes that it would heal her.

I think these are prayer plaques.

Next we hit the Nakamise shopping gallery, which is a long street flanked by a hundred or so stores selling food and pretty much the same trinkets.

So we walked and walked and grew delirious from hunger. We finally found a place that looked palatable. It didn't turn out to be that good, but we were so ravenous it didn't matter. That would be a recurring theme during this trip. Often we were either too busy or too picky to eat and so we'd sometimes eat only one meal a day. No wonder none of us gained any weight.

After Nakamise, we were free to go wherever, so the girls and I headed to Akihabara. We stopped in the UFO catcher game store because I love checking out the various prizes on offer. Many of them are ridiculous -- heavy things like iPods and stuffed toys as large as a dog that the catcher mechanisms can't possibly lift. I spotted this sexy prize and had to take a pic. It's like one of those blow-up punching bags, except it's her. Yeah.

We climbed a few floors of the gaming place (in Japan, most businesses are multilevel, taking up to six floors of a building. You just keep climbing and on each floor is a different range of products). On this level we found the Taiko drum master game so Mara and I played. I kicked her ass, of course :P

I really wanted to play that dog walking game where you walk on a treadmill and earn points for, I don't know, walking well or something. But they didn't have it.

We headed on down to Comic Taranoana, where the girls bought some yaoi and I bought some hentai djs. Then next door to Animate where we bought more stuff.

It started to rain a little, so we bought $2 transparent umbrellas which were pretty awesome. What wasn't as awesome was walking home from Hamamatsoucho station in the rain, carrying all of our purchases. We all got pretty wet. But maybe that was fun in a way, too.

Here's the view from our room at night:

Next up:

Harajuko and Ikebukuro, with a side helping of freeway.