Ginza, Akihabara and Linh

Ola, today I shall talk about our very first venture out into big city Tokyo which mainly consisted of trying to get familiar with central Tokyo and most importantly, to pick up our super cute travel mate Linh.

We were to pick her up at Tokyo Station, a huge complex of infinite escalators, trains, shinkansen and pretty damn good foods. We could have spend the entire day in Tokyo station no joke, but obviously we wanted to get out and explore as much as we could. So the closest walkable district first was Ginza, the ritzy district full of expensive designer names and high end restaurants.

We arrived around noonish so it was time to grab lunch somewhere, once we got lost in Ginza, it wasn’t hard to find the endless deep alleyways of restaurants and bakeries. We could not make a damn decision on where we wanted to eat…!

We wanted it to be budget friendly, which wasn’t a problem. There were plentiful restaurants offering a decent lunch special/combo around $9-12. I was being really stupid and kept wanting to walk around and see what were our options but our hunger was kicking in and we both were getting pretty hangry (hungry+angry).

Finally, we settled for some typical japanese diner styled place…I had no idea how we came to decide on this, so i’m going to guess we gave the “fuck it” and went on in.

The place was pretty full, we weren’t sure if there were any seats, but hurray! they had a basement floor with lots of space. They had a funny system of delivering the orders down to the lower level. It was basically a elevator box for food which was right behind Scott’s head.

We ordered some pretty standard stuff, I chose a curry type dish and Scott went with a beefy lunch option. It was good for what it was. We were full and satisfied, we asked for the bill and went to the front cashier to pay as we left.

Scott and I had a decent amount of time to kill still before we needed to pick up Linh. I think her scheduled arrival was around 5pm-ish? We chose Akihabara as our next destination as we thought it was one of the more interesting districts to check out, it was in hindsight a bad idea because once we settled in and got excited from the many things to see…our time there was cut short because we had other priorities after all.

Oh?? Whats this? MOCHI? I love this stuff, so soft and chewy filled with yummy shit…oh man, i busted out my wallet quickly and started to scan what I wanted…Ice cream filled?? Even better!

This place was right outside of the Akihabara JR station, it was really easy to spot and not too hard to miss either.

The display looks sooooooooooooo good right?? Of course it does.It’s plastic after all…the actual product compared to the display was a little off, the size was definitely not what I was expecting.

The cute sales lady was trying to ask me in Japanese if I was going to eat this NOW or LATER,  obviously…I had no idea what the hell she was saying but luckily she busted out some English and we said it would be for later and so she threw a cute mini ice pack in the bag,

I can’t remember all the flavours we got, but the one in this picture was a caramel pudding. Yes, it was delicious.

We saved some for linh of course :D

So we left the busy district to head back to Tokyo Station where we stressed the fuck out trying to find her.

That’ll be left for the next blog post la.

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Conveyor Belt Sushi and Natto

Well, look who came crawling back to the blog space…kinda…anyways, so our journey to our friends humble abode went something like this.

NARITA >> TOKYO STATION >> TAKASAKI STATION >> HACHIKO LINE >> GUNMA FUJIOKA >> ALLEN’S

we had a collective total of 4 luggage, it was shitty, too much crap to carry around and too many escalators. I think I have mastered the timing between steps and my baggage. Climbing stairs, I left that to scotto.

I remember trying to call Allen ahead of time letting him know when to pick us up, I wasted a few dollars to try to call him, it wasn’t cheap to make those telephone calls.

We hopped on the Hachiko train line, tiny little train line that had maybe like 10-15 stops. We were suppose to get off at gunma fujioka, but we misheard and got off at another gunma stop…

We panicked. We thought of taking the train forward, but that would require us to wait over 1hr.

It also sucked since we wanted to not incur long distance phone calls but, obviously we had to bite the bullet.

Luckily, it was only one stop away from our initial destination, our stop was dark and barely lit. A few cars drove in but suddenly turned off their lights, shady as fuck. Maybe a drug deal was going down? (nah)

Anyways, our savior Allen sama and his adorable girlfriend Aki came to the rescue!

After dropping off the luggage, we opted for a quick late night dinner at a cheap conveyor belt sushi resto.

There I encountered my first experience with Natto…a disgusting fermented soybean that had the texture of what looked like slimey bug guts smooshed onto of rice and seaweed.

I suppose it was our first initiation into Japan, I guess you can’t be in this country without eating one of their most favorite comfort foods ever…

Allen was wise to film our first time eating it, Luckily he actually turned the camera away for a split second and that is when I let that vile piece of sushi roll off my tongue and onto an empty plate.

gross…look at that awful thing. my taste buds died that night.

Japan: Narita Airport

My brief travel to Japan has sort of put me in a spot where I basically did not want to leave the damn country.

My guess is because this place was fast pace, always busy, full of things to look at and eat…I suppose comparative to my little city, Japan made Toronto seem like the most boring place on earth.

BUT. Okay travelling to another place is always more exciting! I still love Toronto, don’t get me wrong. I think Japan is just so unique, strange and keeps things interesting.

I’m going to start blogging about the beginning of our journey like right now. 6 months later.

(Yes i’m a procrastinating p.o.s)

So i’m trying to find photos from the very first day of landing in Japan (no luck), Arriving at the Narita Airport, I remember us being like sheep and just following the other masses, we proceeded to check in by walking through security.

There was a camera censor thingy, possibly an infrared sort of camera, which apparently checks for “illnesses” so if you carrying some disease, you ain’t getting into Japan my friend.

Then we lined up to get our face, fingers and probably eyeballs scanned at the desk. I was kinda nervous, I looked like shit after that long ass flight, maybe they would deny me entrance for looking so dirty and sweaty haha.

After I got the O.K. I was then getting nervous for Scott, for some reason he look 10 minutes longer? Made him do a lot of extra steps.

Finally, we are ready to get our luggage and go through customs and show our smuggled goods. Scott “needed” to bring his huge container of protein of some sort? Whatever it was, it was a white fluffy powdery substance, had it set off any alarms, sorry Scott I don’t know you.

The customs inspector chuckled after Scott made a arm flex reference to show the relation to the cocaine like powder he was lugging over.

What did I smuggle? I had an entire suitcase full of instant noodles. Don’t ask. I’m just a deliverer of goods.

I just remembered why there is such a lack of photos from the beginning, basically I was a grump ol’ bish and didn’t get any sleepy time on the plane, now that I think back on it, I really really wish i busted out my tourist pants at the airport.