So arriving in Tokyo was like arriving in Japan all over again. What a completely different place! The people are less friendly and less fashionable, there are homeless people everywhere, even the atmosphere is stressed with overworked salary men. We arrived at a painful 6am, with luggage in tow, in the middle of Shinjuku, one of the busiest hubs in the world. The station itself is massive, with an underground map that looks like a bowl of spaghetti. I met up with my two friends who had elected to take a more comfortable bus than I was willing to pay for and we set off to figure out where to start.
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| Tokyo Subway Map o_O |
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| Shibuya, Tokyo |
So where do we go at 6:30am on a Monday morning in the middle of Tokyo? One of the only places open: McDonalds. Tokyo wakes up surprisingly late for how international it is. Normally back home people are out and about by 6:30-7 and it’s getting on to rush hour by that time. But it was dead here. Nothing open, nothing to explore. So after eating we went to visit some sites that didn’t require being open to see. We set off to see Hachiko, a statue of the most famous dog in Japan that’s located in Shibuya but we discovered that we could get an all day JR pass for 730 yen and we just couldn't pass it up. So since it was free to go everywhere in the Tokyo area, we decided to stop by Harajuku first because it was on the way. Harajuku is known as a fashion spot of Tokyo. Not for it’s high model fashion, but for its unique street fashion. It’s the known hang out spot for the crazy Japanese people dressed in cosplay and hair 3 times the normal size. It’s known to have an active nightlife because of these frequent goers. However, seeing as how it was still 7 in the morning, nothing was open. We did have a good look around though, and the stores are gigantic, 10x the scale of American ones! After getting lost several times on our way back to the station, we decided to come back to it later.
We continued on to Shibuya from there, the fashion district of Tokyo, which is one of the largest fashion capitals in the world. Our train was delayed though. A Japanese person had committed suicide on the tracks. Talk about shock. I had heard that Tokyo has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, but to have it happen in the first two hours of being in the city? On our line? Either it was a really big coincidence, or this is so frequent that we just experienced a regular occurrence. After you realize how frequent suicides are in Tokyo, the preventions Japan takes to preventing them seem more noticeable. I didn’t really pay any mind at first, but then I started noticing the walls put up around the tracks in almost every station that close and open with the train doors, the “happy bird” replica that plays at the station to give a less city like atmosphere, even the music that plays to announce the train coming is supposed to be an “uplifting” noise to get your mind off of depressing thoughts (though I found it quite annoying actually). It’s really crazy to know they need to put so much effort in just to decrease the statistics.
When we finally got to Shibuya, it was about time that the shops were opening up anyway so it was perfect timing. One of the first things we did was take the epic walk across the famous crosswalks. It’s one of the busiest crosswalks in the world, sporting five crosswalks connecting a four way street. Being in the middle of one of Tokyo’s busiest districts, when the walking man turns green, it’s like a swarm of people mashing together from all directions. Then I got a white mocha from the Starbucks that is located across from it. It’s always advertised in the background when showing this famous scene so I had to get something hehe.
I took this from the top of said Starbucks. Watch the madness unfold ;)
From this point on, we discovered the amazing stores that the Shibuya district houses. We spent a good two hours in Forever 21. But this was not like the dinky, one room Forever 21’s that you see in the States. There were no racks packed together, or articles of clothing and jewelry messily strewn about. This was Japan run, five floors of amazingly cute, cheap, women’s clothing, with a sixth floor just for accessories. We were taken hostage haha. After making it out of there, our wallets considerably lighter, we shopped around a bit more; hit H&M and such. We also got a free “3D” picture done outside of Shibuya 109 where we looked like we were on a tight rope over an ice glacier type thing, which was pretty cool. We then went in search of something to eat. Shopping is hungry work! So we went to look for something good but affordable, where we could sit down and rest after shopping/traveling all day on 2-3 hours of sleep. So what better place than MOS Burger? Lol The Japanese burger place that is second most popular in Japan, lagging behind only McDonalds in sales. I found out later that MOS burger stands for Mountain, Ocean, and Sun. We originally thought it was because it was saying that it served things from all those places; “everything under the sun” type deal; but it really only sells burgers, so the name is a bit of a mystery. The name used to be MOST delicious burger, but the T somehow got dropped, probably due to Japanese pronunciation. I actually prefer it over McDonalds. The typical burger is like, a beef patty, plus a sloppy-joe type substance, with a tomato and mayonnaise (the Japanese put Mayo on everything).
When we left to finally visit Hachiko, two Japanese people stopped us right before the crosswalks. They started talking to us in Japanese and asking us where we were from and held up this paper bag and asked us if we had ever heard of it. We told them where we had come from and no, we had never heard of this “fukubukuro.” They told us that near the New Year, Japanese stores start carrying these paper bags that can have really cool things in it, even a couple of hundred dollars. They asked us if our countries did this during the New Year and what we thought of it and then they were like, could we borrow you for a few minutes? And they started pulling out this video camera. And we were like, “ummm…” *thinking of our 2 hours of sleep and increased exhaustion from shopping* “suuure, I guess?” So we got interviewed on film about the fukubukuro and it will be broadcast on Japanese TV on the 5th of January at 7:20am. It was pretty exciting! We even got free hugs from these Japanese people who were giving them out. And when we asked them why they were giving out free hugs, they replied that they just wanted to connect with foreigners and Japanese people alike.
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| Free Hugs! Isn't it adorable? |
Okay, I'm going to put a break here in the Tokyo Adventures. Stay tuned for part 2! \(^-^)/
Word of the Day: 電鉄、でんてつ。Dentetsu, literally Electric Railway. This is the kind of train I ride at home, which is different from a subway (Chikatetsu) or the JR line (Japanese Railway). The JR is the line that spreads across all of Japan. If you visit Japan for 30 days or under you can get a JR pass that goes all over Japan for just 200 dollars!
それではまた次回！
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