Launching Over Japan

Tokyo Chronicles

Last weekend, my friend Sarah and I took a trip to Tokyo for the weekend. To get there we had a number of options. There is the Airplane which is expensive, and the skinkansen, which is equally as expensive. No, we opted for the overnight bus. It came a 11pm and we got to Ikebukuro at 5:45am. I now know that I can sleep on a bus. This is good. So let’s begin.

After we arrived at Ikebukuro, we stopped at Mcdonalds for Breafast. It was the first time in two months I’d been there. No big loss, but it was nice to have some grease in my body after so long. In fact, here is where we were. Keep in mind that there are many Macdonalds in Ikebokuro. This is just one of them.

Ikebokuro Macdonalds.

So, where do we go first? Well, we decide that we will go to Kamakura first. It’s an ancient capital of Japan, and a place full of shrines and a daibutsu. It’s about one hour away from Tokyo station on a local train, but we got to go through Yokohama on the way. Here’s some pics of Kamakura.

This is the group we met up with.

Triforce.

Me, Sarah, and Japanese Garden.

I’d rather not have to explain every temple I went to. So just look at the pictures and if you have any questions, just ask me. The one thing I will say is that many of the temples and the Daibutsu are well over 800 years old. Oh yeah, speaking of the daibutsu:

Dai!

Butsu!

After we got back from Kamakura, we went to Shibuya. There we dropped our stuff in a coin locker and went out of the station and saw this:

Building or Large TV?

There are always about 100000 people on the street at one time coming from or going to Shibuya. It’s famous for shopping and nightlife. That evening we went to a thai resturant for dinner and then to a dance club called Sprial where a live band was playing trance music. It was very surreal. Then at 4am we all decided that we needed sleep, so we took a taxi to shinjuku where we stayed in this cool place for 2800yen. 10 hours gives you a futon in a rest room with 60-100 other guys on the 7th floor of some building. It’s great. There is a spa in the place as well. The capsule hotel was 4200, but this was cheaper for a few hours to catch up on sleep.

When I woke up, I took the train back to Shibuya and met James and Melissa and their baby, Aislyn(cute cute cute). We went to lunch in Harajuku, and then later on, we went out to dinner at the famous(two pounds of meat) shabu shabu place. I tell you. I can still taste that meat. It was so good. And I’d swear we ate at least two pounds of the stuff. After that I said goodbye to the family as baby and parents were getting tired, and need to retreat bacl to their mountain fortress in Gunma.
I went back to Ikebokuro and waited for Sarah. We had four hours to kill so we caught a late showing of Teh Matrix Revolutions. After that, we got on the bus, went to sleep and when we woke up we were back in Senmaya. It was a wonderful trip I must say. I plan on trying to visit a major Japanese city once every three months. I promise to take more pictures. And that is all folkes. I’m off to sleep as I spent the night in Morioka(another big city) dancing and partying. Ohhhh my ovaries.