Day One

Day One was an absolute cracker, but also a killer in terms of sheer exhaustion. We set out at about 9.30 and walked to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, on the West side of Shinjuku, away from the red light district, which is more the bijinesu (business) side of the district. Anyway, what I didn't allude to was the amount of time we spent wandering around,trying to A) figure out which exit to enter and exit from at Shinjuku Station, B) working out the Japanese maps and C) getting lost, even when we thought we'd got hang of the maps!

The sheer confusion of Shinjuku Station is overwhelming. It has about a gazillion exits, and is absolutely humongous. Apparently 12 million people pass through Shnijuku Station on anyone day... One good thing about Japan is that everything is quite well signposted (in English) and there are lots of maps everywhere- butwhat is confusing is that they change the orientation of the map, depending on where you are! The map doens't always point North, which is generally the case, so everytime you come to a new map, you have to work out where everything is, and where you're going all over again (map reading is obviously NOT my forte- which probably explains why I was so crap at orienteering at school).

Anyway, we went to the tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, to visit the Tourist Information Centre.


Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building

We went up to the North Tower Observatory, and took in some breathtaking views of Tokyo:




Mount Fuji in the distance


A close-up of Mount Fuji


Looking down

We also got accosted by this elderly gentleman, who asked us if we wanted to attend a hands on demo of flower arranging, which was probably the highlight of the day. There is a special branch of the Tokyo Government, which specialises in introducing tourists to Japan's cultural experiences. We got to do a ritual style ikubana (flower arrangement). Ikebana are created for one of three purposes- to worship to the Gods/deities, to beauitify the home, and as a hobby, to express creativity.






We had luch at another Izakaya this time, one that specialised in ramen. You had to order your ramen via a vending machine at the front of the store. Then, when you got upstairs, you had to fill out a little form about what hardness of ramen you wanted, how spicy you wanted the soup, and got to choose four ingredients. It was all a bit mystifying, until the guy gave us an instruction sheet!



It also took me aaages to work out how to stop the water from running whe I went to the loo, when I washed my hands. This was an interesting toilet setup, where there is a tap built into the top of the loo, which turns on the tap when you flush the loo. The water runs into the cistern ( really hope that it's not recycled water!!) But it ran for aaaaages and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off! I ended up flushing the loo about three times, before I worked out that it just ran for aages and then stopped automatically.... I'm pretty sure that the guy out the front could hear, so I bet he was wondering what the hell was going on!!

Then, we spent the rest o fthe afternoon traipsing around trying to find an adaptor plug that would plug an Aussie thrre pronged plug into a Japanese outlet. And man, we had to ask about a thousand people! We tried so many stores! Also try explaining this to people when we don't speak much Japanese!! But what we realised is that the Japanese people are really lovely adn will bend over backwards to help you out, which is just so lovely!! I think the reatil industry in Aus could really take a leaf out of the Japanese book, because the shop assistants are so nice here and so mean back home. (I can speak from experience, seeing as I was quite a shit retail assistant in my time!!!)

Then, we went to see the Tokyo Tower, which was inspired by the Eiffel Tower, and is the highest structure in Tokyo. It gave another spectacular view of Tokyo, this time at night. We went up to the main observation deck, 250 m up, then went up to the special observation deck, which was another 1050 m up.