Day 2, Shinjuku – Hey, that rhymed!

Rain, lots of it.  That’s what today was.  It was an ugly day from beginning to end but did that stop me from having a great time?  Well, read on and tell me cause I don’t think it did!

I don’t know why but last night I was wired and didn’t go to bed until 4am, jet lag works in weird ways but I wasn’t tired even though I should’ve been.  I woke up at 11am and was pretty good to go so I think I adjusted instantly to Japan time, no complaints from me.  I woke up, messed around on the computer a bit trying to figure out the Tokyo subway system because I know today I was going to be taking it to get to Shinjuku since my friend Rob from back home would be meeting up with me there.  I did a lot of research online and it turned out to be much easier than it appears.

The shower is amazing, about as amazing as the toilet I showed everyone yesterday.  This thing has jets everywhere and it’s like getting a massage in the shower, I want this also, along with the toilet!





Here’s a shot of the rain and the umbrella (ella ella eh) situation in Japan.  It must be a law where everyone needs an umbrella, preferably clear.  I was the only one who wore a rain jacket with a hood instead of an umbrella.  It was pretty amazing, luckily I'm short, even in Japan, so I never almost got my eyes poked out by a rogue bumbershoot.




I started my day off with some food I got from a 7-11.  I know you might be wondering why I got convenient store food but you should know that convenient store food out here is amazing and incredibly affordable.  Here was my breakfast…


So, besides the egg, I have no idea what else was in the food part of this meal but with most Japanese food, I never know what I'm eating.  The drink was a milk tea from a vending machine, it comes out warm and is really really good!


After eating, I head over to the train station, this goes a lot better than it did the day before and I wasn’t nearly as overwhelmed.  Amazing the difference a day makes.


This is the Ikefukurō-zō, it’s an owl in the Ikebukuro subway station, a popular meeting point.  Nothing funny about it, just an owl statue.


Just taking a picture on the train.  It’s not that busy but wait till later in this blog post, it definitely gets busy.  This was sorta mid-day.


When I get off the train, I'm in Shinjuku, about 4 stops away from where my hotel is in Ikebukuro.  My friend Rob described Shinjuku as being inside a pinball machine and he wasn’t kidding.  The awesomeness of this place at night is impossible to show in pictures.  Before the night time, it had to be day time and of course, another opportunity to eat.  This time I stopped at a random place near the train station.  They had food in the window so I figured I could just point and it would be easy.  Japan loves machines, and anyway they can use them, they do…




So what you do with the above machine is you find the food you want outside in the window and then see which number it is and pay the Yen for that number and select it here.  You get a ticket which you bring to the chef and he makes your meal.  It’s actually way better than me ordering from a waiter because it removes all language issues I know I'd inevitably run into.  He did ask me in Japanese if I wanted udon or soba noodles but I didn’t understand and just said “yes, thank you”.  He then had to come to me and show me what he was talking about since I said yes to a question about a choice.  Oh well, I'm getting used to making an ass out of myself.  Here was lunch…


Yea, i’m not sure what this is but there are great noodles on the bottom and a crunchy tempura like thing sitting on top of them in the broth.  It’s like a ramen but not quite.


Thanks to the rain, I found every excuse to go under awnings and into stores so I went into a pharmacy and saw some candy, one of the interesting ones was this…




Tokyo has a lot of underground tunnels that you can use to get from one part of town to the next and in bad weather, these are a god send.  It’s like a city under a city and unlike the Seattle underground, it’s actually useful.  I took one of these and ended up above ground near the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (city hall).  Here it is…




After this, I aimlessly walked around, which I love and pretty much is what I'll be doing the entire time I'm here, and I ended up at something call Hiltopia.  This was a very very old school mall which really makes you feel like you are in the 1970’s in Japan.  It was really cool, unfortunately the only picture I got of it was the directory which is great because it shows pictures of what the store sells or does, how come malls in America don't do this?  New Jersey can be pioneer this!


It’s called Hiltopia because it’s underneath the Hilton, clever eh?


As I leave Hiltopia, I give Rob a call to see what is up for later since he will be meeting me in Shinjuku for dinner and to hang out for the night.  He will be my first English conversation since I got here and probably my last for a while.  The area I am now in is the business district in Shinjuku, very professional.  I am just walking around, not really having anything in mind, just taking in the sites and sounds.  While I'm walking around, I stumble on a shiatsu massage provider.  I figured, I'm in Japan, how can I not get a real shiatsu massage.
I go inside, it feels like a doctors office, so far so good.  It’s 1,600 Yen for 15 mins, not bad, less than $20 to get my shoulders and back worked on for a bit.  I pay my money, I go upstairs, and they gave me a kimono to wear, woo hoo!


I don’t know why my face was weird here, probably because I shouldn’t have been taking a picture of myself with the guy right outside waiting for me to get the kimono on.


The shiatsu was amazing, the guy was nice, spoke some English and laughed that I called my trip to Japan an adventure, not sure why this was funny but he was hysterically laughing.  The only experience I've had with shiatsu massage is those chairs at Brookstone, this was way better.

So I still need to kill time before I meet up with Rob so I decide to do something I really wanted to do, go into the residential areas of Tokyo.  If you know about Tokyo and Japan in general, it’s an incredibly safe country, you can go anywhere, even the places not in the immediate downtown areas.  Here are some pictures of the residential areas of Shinjuku, definitely what I wanted these places to look like, they were awesome.





I really loved this, getting to see Japanese home life really is amazing, I could walk these streets all day.

I sorta got lost and had to find my way back to a main road that was familiar with but this area was new.  I was near a large park in the middle of Shinjuku and at one end of it was the Park Hyatt Tokyo.  Why is that important to note?  Oh, well nothing big, just that a little movie called LOST IN TRANSLATION was filmed here!  Here is the beautiful and amazing Park Hyatt Tokyo…


The hotel lobby is on the 41st floor!


I go inside the hotel and I'm flipping out like a 15 year old Twilight fan heading to Forks for a weekend.  I had to lie and say that I was just looking at the hotel before I checked in this weekend because I didn’t want them to hate having a tourist here taking pictures because of some movie.  I cannot believe I am in this hotel.  I’ve seen this movie so many times and never ever thought I'd be where it was filmed.  Here are a bunch of pictures I took that were places that key scenes from the movie were filmed…


This is where Bob (Bill Murray) sees the women exercising in the pool.

This is the hallway that Bob walks down after he drops off Charlotte (Scarlett Johannsen) after their first night out.

The elevator Bob and Charlotte said their first goodbyes to each other in. 

This is where Charlotte gave Bob back his jacket, while he’s getting photos taken.  The elevator you can’t see on the left is the one Charlotte took after this scene, I was in the same elevator!

This is where Bob pulls up to enter the hotel for the first time and then again at the end of the movie.

This is where Bob first meets his Japanese contacts and says “short and sweet, very Japanese”.


I LOVED being in this hotel and it was just so amazing and surreal to be here, words almost can’t explain it (“words can’t explain it” will be something I say a lot on this trip).  I took some random pictures of the hotel also, ones that aren’t scenes from the movie…


This is me with the amazing view behind me from the 45th floor of the Park Hyatt.  Note the soaked REI rain jacket in my hand.

The view of Tokyo from the lobby on the 41st floor, yes, the first floor of the hotel is on the 41st floor of the building.


At this point I was spending way to much time in this hotel and it was time to move to the train station to meet Rob.  I make the wet gross walk to the train station and it’s hilarious seeing Rob.  He’s about 6’4, about a full foot taller than most people here in Tokyo, he stands out like a sore thumb, unlike me who blends in really really well.  It was so nice seeing someone I know and someone who I can actually talk to.  He’s learned the city really well because he’s been here for 2 weeks.  He shows me the pinball part of Shinjuku and it’s such visual stimulation, it’s hard to comprehend it all.

The one thing Rob wanted to do was satisfy his culinary dream of eating fugu.  For those who don’t know what that is, it’s blowfish that is poisonous and if not cut correctly by a licensed chef, you can die.  The government regulates this process and even controls how it is disposed of so it doesn't get into the wrong hands.  I’ve been dreading this meal and couldn’t believe I was doing it.  Apparently if your lips go numb after eating it, you might wanna head over to a hospital tout suite!


Your friend and mine, the fugu.


We went to a place that Rob found and ordered the blowfish, several varieties of it.  It was pretty much a blowfish dinner.  I was dreading having this blowfish and now I end up with several courses of it!


Rob’s sake with dried blowfish fins.

Blowfish sashimi.

Here it is, all that fugu, the entire fish that is possible to eat according to Japanese law.

“What kind of restaurant makes you cook your own food?” – Bill Murray, Lost in Translation

I wish I videotaped the waitress making this soup out of the leftover fugu cooking broth.  It was so intense and specific and awesome,

The end dish was a sort of egg drop and rice soup, it was an amazing way to end the meal.


The dinner ended up being really good.  Fugu is amazing and I'm not dead…yet, although my lip is getting a bit numb, hmm…

After dinner, we walk around the pinball machine known as Shinjuku at night and it’s just so much, but like most of Japan, it's never enough.  It’s loud, full of people, neon as far as the eyes can see, and a never ending maze of back alleys full of restaurants, comic book stores, and less savory places.  Think City Walk at Universal Studios combined with Times Square plus new AND old Vegas, and now after you do that, spin on a baseball bat for an hour and a half.  The result of all of that is Shinjuku.  Pictures can’t even begin to do justice to what you need to see to believe.



See, it is a parasol party here in Japan!

We went to a Pachinko parlor but unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to use my camera.  I did get a quick picture with my cell phone but I have no data here in Japan so unless I find some WiFi, I can’t show that picture off yet but it will be coming soon.  We both lost 1,000 Yen really really quickly.  To be honest, we had NO idea what we were doing and explaining it is like trying to get me to teach a snake how to drive a car blindfolded.

By this time of the night, me and Rob are soaking wet and freezing and he had to pack up to leave for Seattle the next day so we decided to get back to the train and head home.  Great moment was us trying to figure out the map near the Shinjuku train station and Rob looks at it for 1/2 a second, realizes it’s all in Japanese and makes no sense to us and says “Yea, it’s right there, we’re all set”.  Of course we have no idea where we we’re going but his attempt at confidence was hilarious and appreciated.

We get on the train and it’s packed, crazy packed, and it’s just a Monday night!


He’s sleeping standing up, that’s impressive but easier said than done when you realize he's a sardine forced to stand up straight because he's sandwiched between two people keeping him vertical.


I say goodbye to Rob, tell him god speed on his return home and to me for the rest of this trip.  Now I’m back in Ikebukuro and of course I get lost finding my hotel because I took the wrong exit from the train station.  I did find some cool new alley ways and about 50 hotels in a very very tiny amount of space.  These are little boutique hotels and love hotels that Japan is famous for.

Now I’m back at my hotel, working on this blog for the last 3 hours but it’s ok, I don’t sacrifice vacation time doing this, just sleep and that’s ok, I'll sleep when I get back to Seattle.

Tomorrow is Akihabara, the electronics and videogame capital of the world.  This is a good time to say I’m sorry in advance to my wallet.

Alright, this is as good opportunity to stop writing.  I write like I talk and I talk a lot.  I'll keep writing this much because in a few years when I want to remember this trip, i'll have this journal to give me all of the details I forgot because I'm older and my memory isn't as good as it once was.  I’m interested in who will read all of this, I wrote a LOT and I'm pretty sure just my mom and dad will take all the time out to read this.  They are doing that on day 2, not too sure if they still will on day 13 but it’s ok, 2 nights down, a bunch more to go!

Oyasuminasai.

- DAK

Day 1, The Beginning of an Adventure

And so it begins.  I’m now sitting in my very very tiny hotel room in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, and to say this is surreal is the understatement of the year, almost as much of an understatement as me saying that Japan has already overwhelmed me.



The day started off simple enough, got on the Link in Seattle with my luggage, something I've done several times before, so far so good.





That’s my luggage on the Link if you couldn’t tell by all the dog hair Sandy got all over it.




Got to the airport, did that whole process of sitting at the gate, walking down the walkway, I think you all know this, if not, you might wanna travel.  Doesn’t even need to be very far, if you live in NY fly to Providence, if you live in Seattle fly to Portland.  Ok, here are those pictures.








This was the menu for the flight.  I’d rather fly 10 hours on an international flight than a 5 hour domestic flight any day of the week!  The ice cream bar was frozen though.




After the long flight which got to Narita International Airport in Japan at about 5:30pm local time (1:30am Seattle time), this is where stuff got interesting.










I was assuming that the airport here in Japan would be somewhat easy for a non-Japanese speaking person to navigate around and not feel completely overwhelmed, nope, I was wrong.  I had to say now though on my first blog post that I was stupid and didn’t learn any Japanese prior to this trip except “hai”, “gomen nasai”, and “sumimasen”.  I realize this lack of effort to learn the language is already starting to hurt but I shall overcome.  The rest of the night won’t show this but let’s remember this blog post in a few days to see if it still holds true.



I somehow, by the grace of god, manage to find my way to the Narita Express train to Ikebukuro and while on it I spend the entire time trying to figure out how to make a phone call with Sprint in Japan (spoiler alert: I figured it out).







I recognize a 3, 12, A, and the Yen symbol.  Yup, that's about it, good luck to me!




Once I finally get to the train stop in Ikebukuro, I think I have another angel on my shoulder because, well, picture an even more confusing version of the subway under Times Square because this one somehow has more people and again, all in Japanese.  I figure out how to get above ground, this took about 20 mins.  It was fun though, people must’ve been looking at me and laughing.  I get above ground and now comes another fun part, finding my hotel.


I stop a taxi driver, tell him the name of my hotel, he’s never heard of it.  I try asking around and realize that Ikebukuro is a big local area, not so much tourist so not so big on the English speaking.  Ok, it’s gonna be all on my shoulders, I'm up for this.  I walk around, see countless Pachinko parlors and even see a Izakaya restaurant I take a mental note of.  I stumble upon my hotel and couldn’t be happier to have done it all on my own (for the record, it was about 2 blocks from the taxi driver who never heard of it before).








I love my futuristic Japanese toilet  The seat is warm when you sit down.  Also, that control panel to the left is for the toilet!  Come on America, catch up!  Also, my lack of Japanese knowledge was ok, that control panel has pictures of what each button does, yup!




Now that I'm in my hotel room, I settle in, even Skype’d with the parents, I knew I had to go out and explore Ikebukuro even though I really should’ve gotten sleep.  My hotel is pretty centrally located here with an incredible amount of restaurant and arcade filled alley’s that unlike America, here they are incredibly safe and amazing.  Almost as amazing as the fact that there are more vending machines in Tokyo than taxis (not a real stat, just something I've observed.  Yes, I will be getting Pocari Sweat from a vending machine before I my trip is over).




So many vending machines!  These aren’t the weird ones you hear about that are full of underwear though, just lots of coffee and tea and Pocari Sweat.


All those back alley pictures you see of Tokyo are true, and I'm sooo happy it is and it’s not just some Hollywood creation.




Arcades are dead in the USA but they are alive and well here in Japan.  Oh, also, if you’ve seen Lost in Translation when Charlotte goes to the arcade, it looks JUST like this.  Yay for movies actually being based in reality!




It’s getting late, I have to eat, here comes my biggest challenge of the entire day, ordering food and getting what I actually want and paying for it and saying thank you in the end.  This did not go well at all, no other way to explain it.  The restaurant was cool though, it was in one of the alley ways on the 3rd floor off of a sketchy elevator.  I really wanted an off the beaten path restaurant and I found just that.  I pointed at a picture on the menu, thankfully it had pictures.  I tried ordering tea, no luck, ended up with water (I must remember, green tea is "ocha").  I think I had a Korean beef dish which is interesting since I’m in Japan and should be eating Japanese food.  Either way, it was delicious and the waiter laughed at me, something tells me he wishes I spoke Japanese but oh well, can’t do anything about that now.






This was really delicious, it came out sizzling.  I don’t know what it was other than something beef but I loved it.  Great first start in Japan.


My meal was 312 Yen, I had to break a 10,000.  This isn’t an important part of the story, I just feel cool saying “I had to break a 10,000”.




At this point of the night, I'm just slowly walking back to my hotel, seeing the after midnight Sunday night crowds in Ikebukuro and it’s so incredibly safe, people in parks and homeless people but nothing compared to Seattle.  I stop by a “New York style” bagel place, needless to say, I'll be trying that out in the morning (I have to see if Japan knows how to make a bagel because Seattle sure as hell doesn’t).  I also find a Sunkus, it’s a 7-11 sorta and find this random chocolate snack for pretty cheap so I get it.  It’s good, it’s chocolate covered something.  I don’t think it’s it's a chocolate covered animal so we’re ok.










So there you have it, the first day of my adventure.  I hope you enjoyed reading this blog.  I’ll be doing this once a day because it will be great for me having this journal of my vacation when I come home.



If you want to get in touch with me, my phone is basically non-existent.  I can make phone calls but to conserve battery and the $1.69/minute charge I have to pay, reach me another way.  I will be checking Facebook and gmail (dakaplan@gmail.com) whenever I can get to a Wifi hotspot for my phone to log on to.

I think that’s it for tonight.  I hope this first blog post was coherent because I’m on well over 24 hours straight of being awake.  If I'm not coherent, I hope it was at least entertaining.



Oyasuminasai.



- DAK

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