Spontaneous Tokyo Trip!

I was going through my friends Instagram story posts and discovered that some of my friends from University of Denver who are also studying here in Japan were going to be meeting up in Tokyo for the weekend. The post I saw was from my buddy Tan, who I had computer science classes with last fall and winter quarters. Tan is studying up at Akita International University, along with Max and Mark who I saw a few weeks ago when they visited Kyoto. They were planning to meet up with Alliyah who is studying at Waseda University in Tokyo, along with Momo who was flying in from the states just to visit Japan for a bit. I asked Tan if I could link up with everyone and he said I was more than welcome to, so I last minute booked a night bus from Kyoto to Tokyo. I arrived to Kyoto station to board the bus at midnight Friday night. The bus trip was less than ideal; the seats were too narrow for my frame, there wasn't enough leg room for my height, and I couldn't get into a comfortable enough position to sleep even though I was exhausted. However, the price of the bus for how far it takes you is where the trade-off lies. Taking the Shinkansen only takes 3 hours, but costs about 14,000 yen, whereas the night bus takes 7 hours but only cost me 5,700 yen, and was only 2,700 yen for my return trip on Monday.

I arrived to Akihabara station at about 7:00 AM. Tan and the others had been out clubbing all night, so he was still awake when I messaged him on Instagram. He told me he was going back to his hotel with Max and Mark to shower, and then they would be heading to do some thrift shopping at a flea market. I thought that sounded like fun, so I took the subway over to their hotel, grabbed my breakfast (a coffee, donut, and fried chicken from 7/11) and dropped my backpack off first before heading out with the three of them.

It took us about an hour going by bus, then by two different trains to get to the market. I didn't take too many photos while we were there, but it was a huge area to explore. Half of it was outside in a parking lot, and half of it was underneath the two tiered parking garage. There was a wide array of vendors selling different products. Most had second hand clothing, but there were also plenty of cosmetic and collectible shops, including jewelry, watches, glasses, plushies, and anime figures. I bought a Kirby plushie for 500 yen, which I planned to replace the terrible neck pillow I had brought with me. At the same booth, there was a second Kirby plushie that Tan bought as well! I also picked up two pairs of aviator sun glasses since I lost my original pair of Raybans.

After leaving the market, we headed back to the hotel to rest, since none of us had gotten any sleep in 24+ hours and were exhausted from the sun and walking around. I grabbed my bag from their hotel, and walked to my hostel, which luckily was only 15 minutes away. I checked in, took a shower, and took a 6 hour nap. I woke up at 8:00 PM, walked back over to Tan's hotel, and walked with the boys to the bus stop, which we then took over to the area we were meeting up with everyone for dinner. The group had decided to go to an izakaya which had all-you-could-drink lemon sours, which would turn out to be a huge mistake for most of us that night.

Tan had told me how he "never gets drunk" and how he had once drank 15 shots in one night and never felt a thing. I was skeptical of this, so we decided to put it to the test while eating dinner. Tan and I stayed consistent drinking the same amount of lemon sours until I tapped out at 7, but he somehow ended up drinking almost 10. We left the establishment with most of us absolutely blasted, and since we had already missed the last train home (wow, this just keeps happening) decided we would go to a karaoke place until the morning. We had to make a pit stop at a conbini for some water and recovery drinks, where outside unfortunately Tan lost his entire dinner. We made him drink some fluids before all making our way to the karaoke building, and after checking in those of us with energy sang for a few hours, while the rest just slept in the room. Finally 5:00 came around, and we all took our separate transportation home and all crashed again.

I think I woke up around 1:00 AM or so, and forced myself to get up and at it since I only had limited time on this short trip to explore Tokyo. It was raining that day, so I decided to walk from my hostel through the streets of Taito city towards Senso-ji, a huge Buddhist temple. Despite the rain, the streets were packed. I wasn't able to get into the place I wanted to eat at because I was by myself and would have been taking up a whole table to myself. Instead, I had to opt for some street food, so I picked out a croquette stall to tide over my hunger temporarily.

I meandered around the temple area, bought some charms for myself and my friends back home, and then started to think about what I wanted to do next. My friends had said they would be heading to Shinjuku around 5:30 to do some exploring, so I had a few hours to kill before needing to meet them. I decided I wanted to go to Akihabara, Tokyo's center for pop culture and shopping. I walked towards the station I need to get to, and found a quiet ramen shop to eat at before I got on the subway. It was pretty good, but a little expensive for the portion size, even if there was a good amount of pork with it.

Akihabara was crazy. I walked down the street from the station to Animate, a huge multi-floored manga store! I took my time walking around all the shelves to see all of the series the store had in stock, and ended up leaving with just two volumes because I didn't want to compromise my already limited backpack space for the trip home: Bocchi the Rock for myself, and Kagurabachi for my friend Max back in Missoula Montana (who actually moved to Rapid City, South Dakota recently for a new job. Congrats!) Inside Animate on the top floor, they had a expo going on for an anime / gaccha game franchise that I had once been interested in, Princess:connect, so I had to get a pic of the cutout of Pecorine, the main protagonist. On my way to the station to get to Shinjuku, I passed pillars decorated with characters from Genshin Impact, another gaccha game franchise that some of my friends are obsessed with back home.

Shinjuku was fun to walk around for a bit at night. Lots of people to watch, we went to a little dance club for a while before leaving to find food. After that we just checked out the tall buildings and the neon signs, while I tried to avoid being targeted by hustlers trying to convince me, the only white man in my group, to come to their strip clubs "for free". I actually found a Youtube video about this the next day, and turns out these were most likely scams: men are convinced to go into strip clubs alone under the impression it will be free, and then are either drugged and/or intimidated into giving the establishment money. Pretty scary stuff.

Shinjuku station was also crazy to experience. In terms of people serviced per day, this station is the biggest in the world. I got extremely lost just trying to make my way out of the station to find my friends. People always talk about how big and busy Tokyo is, but it is really hard to imagine, especially for someone from such a small town originally. Being there and actually experiencing the volume of people and the complexity of the railway system was somewhat mind blowing, to say the least.

I left my friends to explore because I didn't want to stay out for an entire night again, and called my family before taking the last train back to my hostel. The next day I got up at 9:00 AM, did some laundry, and left around 10:30. I had to shove all of my possessions into my backpack since I had to take everything with me, so Kirby had to stick out of the top the entire time I was walking around for the day. I had been contemplating a few different options for the day; Legoland, the Ghibli museum, the Science museum (Miraikan), and Smallworld, a miniatures display showcase. I did some research while I walked to the station, and finally settled on the Miraikan and the miniatures, because Legoland was pretty expensive for the experience, and the Ghibli museum required tickets bought in advance.

This journey brought me to the south side of Tokyo near the bay, where it seemed to be a combination of huge office buildings and venues, with industrial buildings lining the harbor. I took a bus after the train, and then walked for about 40 minutes before finally arriving to the Miraikan. I was feeling really terrible, and realized it was because I hadn't had a decent meal in about 16 hours, and luckily I spotted a food truck that gave me a heaping portion of food for a very low price. I told the truck owner that his food was delicious, and gave him a 5 star rating on Google Maps before heading into the Miraikan.

The science museum was cool, but the displays were orientated mostly for a much younger audience, so most of the information I already knew and wasn't super interested in exploring. They had some displays on robots, space and matter, the process of aging, digital information processing, which were all very interactive. However, it seemed like there were about 5 different elementary school trips going on at the time I was there, so it was really busy. From there I walked over the miniatures showcase, and passed the life-sized Gundam statue and the small Statue of Liberty on the way.

The miniatures museum was definitely the best part of my final day in Tokyo, and I would be lying if I said I didn't go because I mainly wanted to see the Evangelion display. Evangelion (or Eva for short) is one of my favorite anime's, and I had remembered seeing a Youtube video about someone who had visited this display case, so I was super excited to check it out. The other displays were cool as well; they had the Kansai airport, some fantasy world scenes and villages, and some sci-fi creations as well.

The Eva displays were super cool. They played music from the show, had the mech suits moving up the deployment rails, and even had the cityscape rearrange itself just like in the show. I spent a good while here just taking in the details and all the little replications of places from the anime. In the one photo with Eva-01 (the purple and green one) you can see three characters from the show above in the control room! I left, satisfied with my time spent at the museum, and did some searching for dinner. I had barely eaten that day, so I scouted out an all-you-could-eat shabu shabu place to spend a few hours at while I waited to go to my bus at Tokyo station. I ate until the last possible moment of the 2 hour time limit because I did not want to be hungry on the bus ride home. I walked to the bus station to get to the station, and went into a bit of a panic when the bus showed up but was completely full - I was worried I wasn't going to be able to make it back in time to get on my bus! Luckily, there was a station for the monorail fairly close, so I showed up to the bus location 10 minutes before. I lucked out for the trip back home because nobody was placed next to me, and I was actually able to sleep a little bit with the aid of my Kirby plushie. I was woken up suddenly by the driver, who thankfully remembered that I was getting of at Kyoto station, and got off the bus still half asleep. If the driver hadn't remembered about me, I would have just kept sleeping and ended up all the way in Osaka, which would not have been good at all. The subway wasn't even open when I arrived at 5:00 AM, so I had to wait about 20 minutes. I finally got home, crashed for about 3 hours, and then got up to go to class. Wild weekend.