Well, we've been busy just keeping pace with life, but we did have a brief break recently, during Silver Week. Many of you will have heard of Golden Week, the week of serial public holidays that Japan has in about April or so. Well, this year it had a sequel, known as Silver Week, thanks to a random alignment of three public holidays in September. One of them was Respect for the Aged Day, but I don't know what the others were. We decided to head to Tokyo for a couple of nights, since I hadn't been there before (Clinton went in Golden Week).
We travelled on the Shinkansen. ZOMG, Shinkansen! I've always wanted to ride the Shinkansen, ever since I first heard about it when I was thirteen or so. I remember hearing about the train that could travel at up to 500km/hr and thinking "Wow! You could get from Launceston to Hobart in less than half an hour!". (When you grow up in Launceston, that's your benchmark for a long trip.) So, my dream finally came true, and I had a window seat on the Shinkansen. It's a very nice, comfy, smooth ride. Like being on a plane, but on the ground - so no turbulence and no bumpy take-offs or landings. Though, we did have trouble getting the snack cart girl to stop for us though. She either whizzed by too fast, or was walking backwards the other way, so we couldn't catch her eye.
So, in Tokyo, we basically went shopping all three days, because this is Japan and that's basically what you do. We started with Harajuku on the first day.Since Clinton had been there beofre, he could show me around the backstreets, where there are the best of the crazy little shops with crazy little clothes and crazy BIG prices. We ended up only buying a couple of things from some second-hand clothes shops. I scored a cute jumper, and Clinton bouth an awesome bowling shirt. But I don't have photos of those yet, so instead here is some stuff I didn't buy:
There was a cool gallery/community art space down the lanes of Harajuku, too. The front had decorative scaffolding with fake fur hanging off it. The inside had lots of interesting art in a variety of media.
Oh, and we did go to Yoyogi Park, but it was not the epicentre of wackiness we had been led to expect. There were just a few rockabilly guys dancing, but they were pretty crap dancers, actually!
Later in the day, we dabbled in a little tourism, as well, and went to seek out a view of Tokyo at night. Most people would head straight for Tokyo Tower, but I had had the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (aka Tokyo Tocho, in Japanese) observation deck recommended to me. Unlike the Tokyo Tower, Tokyo Tocho is free! So we had a crack at that. Clinton felt it was less impressive than Tokyo Tower, which has a 360 degree view, but I liked it. Oooh, shiny!
Tokyo Tower is in the vicinity of Shinjuku station, so for dinner, we went to a tempura restaurant in Shinjuku. It was light and crispy and hardly greasy at all - so tasty! We were seated in a tatami room, too, so it was super old skool Japanese style. Here's Clinton embarking on some crispy deliciousness while seated on a floor cushion:
The great thing was that the tempura came with a sheet of English instructions, explaining how to properly apply the range of condiments attached to the meal. It was very handy, because what we assumed to be tea (because it was in a teapot) turned out to be sauce!
After our traditional style dinner, we zapped forward in time and hit 8-bit Cafe. No photos, I'm afraid, but it was pretty cool. There was stuff to play with all over the place, mostly retro gaming systems but also board games and action figures. And in the (unisex) toilet, there was a sign instructing tipsy male patrons to urinate sitting down. I found this humourous.
So, that was day one. I'll tell y'all about the next day soon... Maybe even tomorrow!
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