48 hours in Japan

For those of you who don’t know why I went to Tokyo, it’s a pretty good story. And by good I mean terrible. Jordan was planning on visiting me in Taiwan. Upon some, um, shall we say “difficulties” with customs, he was denied boarding for the last leg of his flight from Narita (Tokyo) to Kaohsiung, while I unknowingly waited at the Kaohsiung airport. Absolutely no complaints though - TOKYO. IS. AMAZING - so thank you, Jordan, for travelling on nearly expired documents. On Monday I booked a flight to Tokyo for the following Friday to pay Jordan a visit. Even though we had our meeting spot planned down to about 10 square feet and a 30 minute time block, nothing can prepare a person who’s been out of Canada for 9 months for the sight of a familiar face. Despite the knowledge that I was going to be seeing one, it still came as a huge shock…but a good one! It was great to have a piece of home around over the past couple of days.

My first night there was low key. We went out in search of Tokyo Dome, an amusement park somewhere in the city, and somehow this plan culminated in convenience store purchased drinks being consumed on a set of cement stairs in the middle of…well, we don’t really know. We’re just classy like that. Eventually we took our drinking indoors and found a bar in Roppongi, the Tokyo bar district. We had a few and then made our way home with the assistance of the 20 other bar customers who took it upon themselves to help direct the stupid white kids.

Saturday was a hideous day, complete with pouring rain and freezing cold. We powered through and went to Asakusa to visit the oldest temple in Japan, Senso-ji. We had lunch at some hole-in-the-wall Japanese place. I stuck some money in a machine, took the ticket it gave me, handed it to a cook, and a couple of minutes later I had a bowl of full of I’m not too sure. Half decent, although I didn’t touch the meat that Jordan could only identify as “good”. Mmmm…yah, I think I’ll pass. It was getting damn cold and damn wet, and my travel buddy was limping around like a 70 year-old man, so we headed back to the hotel and stayed out of the cold and rain for a few hours. We ventured out a little later in search of an indoor aquarium. Somehow our trip to see fish turned into Jordan, me, and probably about 100 Japanese people sitting in the most horribly uncomfortable, half-reclined chairs, staring at a domed ceiling…and then the lights go off…and then the Japanese narrator comes on…and then the ceiling lights up in a bunch of little stars. Every so often a random picture of an animal, a warrior, or something of the like would show up in a constellation. While I’m sure there was some explanation for it, the randomness of it is quite entertaining when you can’t understand a damn thing that’s going on. Every couple of minutes one of us would burst out laughing in confusion as to how we ended with our necks cranked around, listening to Japanese and starting a bunch of stars when we thought we were going to see fish.

After our unexpected lesson in astronomy, we went for dinner at an authentic sushi restaurant (read: the only non-Japanese people for miles). Thankfully Jordan had been there earlier in the week with a Japanese guy, so he knew what was going on. The dishes came along on a conveyer belt and you just grab one off. The colour of the plate indicates the price and they count it all up when you’re done. Now, considering the first time I ate seafood was only a few months ago in Indo, you can imagine the internal battle I had as I looked at a giant piece of raw fish slapped on some rice. I held it in my chopsticks for at least a few minutes before I bit the bullet and went for it. While it won’t become my meal of choice, it wasn’t terrible. I didn’t even stick to the wimpy California rolls. I’m very proud of myself. By the time dinner was over I’d had tuna, salmon, scallops, and…wait for it….squid. Yep, squid. After paying about $15 CAD for 12 or 13 plates of sushi, we made our way to take a ride on the world’s biggest ferris wheel, where some creepy teenagers took a picture of my boobs with their cell phone camera, unbeknownst to me, but definitely known to Jordan. Thanks for the heads up there, buddy. But moving on…the ferris wheel was closed, so instead we ended up in some giant, crazy, high-tech games room/arcade/indoor amusement park where Jordan’s propensity for riding giant mechanical pandas that have probably never been touched by anyone over the age of 4 proved us to be, yet again, the stupid white kids. Seeing Jordan cruise past me on a panda was definitely one of the funnier parts of the weekend. After watching some people pet their virtual horses through their computer screens at their virtual horse race, we took off to check out the unbelievable Tokyo skyline. Words cannot describe it and I’d be hard-pressed to believe that there’s a more impressive skyline anywhere in the world. Truly spectacular. The next morning we hauled ass out of bed at 5am to head over to the world-famous Tokyo fish market. It was 5:30 and we were very much at the train station by the time we realized that nope, the fish market is definitely NOT open on Sundays. We hopped on the subway and checked out the imperial palace. It was well worth it. While only a short trip, it was quite beautiful and the surrounding area was really, really nice. It wasn’t much after 6am when we got there, so there were no other tourists around and we got to see it without the crowds. Following that we went to Harajuku, the area of Tokyo made famous by its incredibly unique fashion. The Japanese girls in the Gwen Stefani video are supposed to be Harajuku girls, but upon seeing the real thing I think Gwen Stefani might be mentally incapacitated. Her “Harajuku” girls in no way, shape, or form resemble the real thing. These girls show up in normal clothes, presumably because their parents don’t know what they’re up to, then they gear down in the middle of the neighbourhood and put on these crazy little-bo-peep and hard core punk outfits with crazy, crazy makeup, rhinestones everywhere, and heads full of fluorescent, metal clips. It’s just another part of Tokyo that can’t be described in words. After that we made our way to another part of Harajuku to see a temple. We ended up getting a tour from some Japanese university students who wanted to practice their English. We had the rituals that we witnessed the previous day not only explained to us, but we also did them ourselves. Definitely very cool, although I’m sure we did something wrong and probably managed to offend at least 10 people. That was about the end of my sight-seeing in Tokyo and as I write all of this I can’t believe how much stuff we managed to cram into a less than 48 hour trip.

Tokyo is an absolutely amazing city. It’s immaculate, efficient, and beautiful and feels like it’s from the year 3000. I’ve never seen a city like it. It seems like all of the roads are freshly paved and painted, there are no garbage cans to be found anywhere, but yet not a spot of litter. It really is a place that cannot be described in words. The closest I can come to doing it justice is saying it’s spectacular. All I can say is this:

Go.

Happy New Year and a little bit of detainment.

Sahp! Gau! Baat! Chat! Luk! Ngh! Sei! Saam! Yih! Yat! Lihng! This is what I heard at midnight in Hong Kong. Like the countdown, everything about my New Years was completely different than every New Years past…and it was fantastic. See for yourself:

Outside our hotel in Hong Kong. L-R: Steph, Kara, Elena, Mouse, meDrinking at 7-11 with Kara (in dresses to boot!)...because we're classy like that. Just a couple of the random Chinese people who found the 5 foreign girls in dresses highly entertaining. Entertaining enough, infact, to draw gawking crowds and be asked by several people for pictures. Waiting in line in Lan Kwai Fong, where we counted down to 2006 in Cantonese. Steph, Mouse and I still in line... Finally inside Lan Kwai Fong (with Luke from England) and way too happy to have drinks in our hands.Having a great time on the dance floor with Alex, also from England.Steph with the cute Englishman.Not so sure where the gold sequins came from, but it looked fun.Elena and Mouse We went back to Lan Kwai Fong on our last night in Hong Kong. There were approximately 15,000 less people in the area.
The night started off in absolute hilarity. The New Years celebrations in Hong Kong were enormous, but since the Chinese have a different New Year, the parties were only in contained areas of the city...namely NOT the area our hotel was in. You can imagine what a spectacle 5 white girls in cocktail dresses made walking up the streets of China. People were crowding around to take pictures and stare, so we played the game right back and starting snapping pictures of the crowd we drew. Very entertaining.

We went to an area called Lan Kwai Fong, which for those of you who have ever gone out in Hamilton, is along the lines of a really huge Hess Village. It’s roughly equivalent to a couple of city blocks in size, and it’s up on a giant hill that is not accessible by car. Basically it’s just a street party every night of the year. Steph and I went last time we were in Hong Kong and had no problems, so we did NOT foresee the thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of people who had the same idea as we did. They controlled the crowds by making the line double back and wind around the blocks adjacent to Lan Kwai Fong. We waited for probably 2 hours to get in, and sadly, we rang the New Year in angry, sober and waiting in line with several thousand other angry, sober people. We got so frustrated a couple of times that we almost turned around and went back to the hotel. We powered through and after finally getting into Lan Kwai Fong, we found an awesome bar that was full of really great people and playing really great music. We went from angry and sober to drunk and happy in under 5 minutes. The night turned out to be the best New Years I’ve had.

It was an awesome New Years that was supposed to be followed by an awesome visit from Jordan. For me, Jordan’s cross-ocean trip began and ended in 2 hours at the Kaohsiung airport. Due to some difficulty with his passport he was denied boarding the last leg of his flight from Japan-Taiwan. He was unable to get a hold of me, so I went to the airport to pick up an MIA Jordan, or “white man” as the non-English speaking security guy who was helping me preferred to call him. At this point things are up in the air. He may or may not make it to Taiwan in a few days and I may or may not make it to Tokyo for the weekend. Instead of being in Taroko Gorge with Jordan last night, as was originally planned, I was here:
Having some drinks with a few of the great people I’ve met over my 8.5 months being away from home.