A Week in Tokyo 2011-2012

O hi there. It's been a while, huh? Sorry about that.

Do you remember how we had a going away party for a roommate that was moving to Japan a little while back? I dressed up as a geisha. OK, well, I went to go visit him and his new city of Tokyo, Japan, Asia from the days of December 29, 2011 through January 6, 2012. Crazy how it's 2012, right?

Anyway. I took some pictures when I was there. Here they are with some words below them written by me.

My friend lives in an area of Tokyo called Shinagawa. This is right outside the train station. It's pretty quiet and not stereotypically Tokyo here. He says it's like the K St. of Tokyo as it is mostly businesses and such so dies down at night. 

So shortly after I got there we went to Shinjuku, which has the busiest train station in the world and is stereotypically Tokyo. 

The madness that is the intersection outside of the train station  in Shinjuku. There are a lot of people in Tokyo. And lights.

The first thing I ate in Japan: random parts (liver, cheek, etc) of chicken on a stick and raw horse. Now you probably won't find raw horse in the US--and that's probably a good thing--but if you're in Japan, you should try the horse as it's delicious. Don't judge me. At least not too harshly, please.  

All throughout the city there are vending machines like this one where you can get hot drinks like coffee and tea in addition to the normal soda and watch and such. Tommy Lee Jones is a spokesperson for them. 

There is an area of old Tokyo in Shinjuku called Golden Gai that is a series of alleys that have dozens of very little bars. It was my favorite part of Tokyo. 

This is the little place that we ended up in. Most can't fit more than like 7 people at a time. Really delightful. 

My first bowl of ramen of the trip to cap the night. 

A view out of my friend's apartment.

This is Japanese fast food and it is the fastest food I have ever been served. They are really efficient there. 

In an area of the city whose name I cannot remember we came across some busyness on a side street...

It turns out people were clamoring for some octopus leg things and giant crab legs, which are not pictured.

We had some time to kill before my other roommate got in so we sampled some sake, beer, and horse jerky from Nagano.

And then I had my first sushi of the trip. This was one of like three of these plates that we had in this sitting. 

Once my friend arrived we went out to Shibuya. Outside of the train station there is a statue of a dog that was famous for his loyalty. Apparently he would meet this guy outside the train every day and when the guy died the dog kept showing up. For like 10 years. It's hard for me to respect an inability to learn. 

Shibuya. We were looking for places to go out here and we ended up at this club that was charging like a $40 cover so we started walking away when the "bouncer" came after us and said we could enter for free. We ended up being like the only three people in the place. 

We drank for like 12 hours straight the day before so this was our hangover curing lunch. 

Akihabra, Electric Town. There are a lot of electronics stores here.

Random temple in Electric Town.

If you can't make it out, this car has like 10 electronic devices in it in some pretty dangerous looking places. 

Harajuku. It's a really touristy place. 

This was the only place in the city that I found street vendors. 

This is probably the most random thing I encountered in Tokyo--three slices of white bread packaged for like $1.50.

After drinking some champagne in the lounge of my friend's apartment we get in the elevator to head out when three Australian girls get in and convince us to go out in Shibuya. We ended up at this bar here where people were doing these things on the stage. 

After the above bar, we stopped in a British-type pub by my friend's apartment.  This lady was asleep on the bar the entire time. 

On New Year's Day we ended up by Tokyo Dome. A brand unfortunately titled Kinky Kids was selling stuff and there was quite the line to buy it.

I was standing right here when the ground started shaking from the earthquake off the coast. 

Eventually we made our way back to Harajuku to this microbrewery. In addition to the beer, we also had a tray of raw chicken. Again, probably not going to be found in the US but in Japan it is delicious. 

I have found that I have gone out pretty similarly for both New Year's Eve and the night of January 1st. This year we ended up in an area of Tokyo, Roppongi, that was like the Adams Morgan of the city as that is apparently the place for young people and tourists to go out. 

Every year on January 2nd the emperor comes out to say "hey, yall, happy new year. stay safe and prosperous"  or something like that. So we went down to the Imperial Palace to see him do this. This is a nice photo taken outside the Imperial Palace.

So guess which I saw first: the emperor of Japan after having been in Japan for like 4 days or the president of the USA after living up the street from him for like 3 years? You already know the answer to that question. 

And then we had curry, which was delicious as everything there was.

So I was told Tokyo has ten times as many restaurants as New York City. It's probably because they cram them in story upon story in the buildings and underneath the bridges and train tracks like this...

...and this.

Tokyo International Forum. Nice architecture that we photographed and moved on.

There is only so much yakatori, or random parts of chicken on a stick, that one can take. This was me reaching my limit.

McDonalds in foreign lands is usually a good cultural experience so we tried it out. Everything is the same at the ones in Japan except they offer a shrimp fillet sandwich, which I had.

Edo-Tokyo Museum. The inside was not nearly as imposing as the exterior.

In the museum they had a section on Tokyo during WWII. The red areas on the map are where the US bombed the city. It was almost completely destroyed. I was looking at this when a little girl looked at me and said something in Japanese; probably, "you did this you bastard white man." Obviously her math is a little suspect because no way could I have been alive to do this, child.

Visiting this temple and throwing coins in the fountain, or what I assume was a fountain (I couldn't see where I was throwing my coin I was just throwing it where everyone else was), for good luck in 2012 was the most touristy part of the trip. 

Ending up in this random restaurant landed me with one of the the best meals of the trip. Raw horse again. This was also really the only time where a language barrier came in to play. We had been trying to find restaurants with pictures on the menu, which are really common, but this one did not so after just pointing to something entirely random they brought this out and subsequently stared as I struggled to figure out how to go about what to do with all this. My friend had a translator app on his phone and I wanted to ask him how to say "stop staring at me, bitch. you saw that i had no idea what i was ordering so why are you so amused by the fact that i am equally clueless as what i should do with it?!" But I didn't.

I spent the entire time in Tokyo except for the day we went to Yokohama, which is still in the Tokyo metropolitan area but I guess different, technically. There is a Chinatown there, so we went there and got Chinese food. 

That's the tallest building in Japan.

People wear pretty much whatever they want in Japan. Costumes like this aren't normal but it wasn't really abnormal either. 

Ramen Museum--the world's only food-centered amusement park. It's basically a re-creation of old Tokyo with several ramen restaurants built in. 

And get delicious ramen like this. 

I asked my friend where the Columbia Heights of Tokyo is; you know, where all the young people live that aren't rich. Apparently this is it.

I really like this building in the skyscraper district. 

We went to the top of this building, the Metropolitan Government Offices, for the observation deck.

That's Mt. Fuji there to the right of the sun.

Back in Shinjuku we visited a video game store. I was told people sleeping in pubic is pretty common.

We went back to the area with all the really small bars that is awesome and found this one. The no charge is referring to a table charge where they charge you just for entering and then charge you for what you buy. It wasn't really a deal here though because the beer was like twice as expensive as normal. But he did speak English.

For dinner on my friend's birthday we ended up on one of the top floors in this restaurant. 

Okonomiaki. I don't know what all is in that other than egg, squid, and mayonnaise but it was tasty and the largest portion of food I had there. 

The morning that I was leaving we got up really early to go to the Tsukiji Fish Market. They have a couple places where you wait in line for like an hour and for like $50 you get like 15 pieces of the best, most fresh sushi you can probably possible have. 

The sushi guy said "shell fish. it's alive." My roommate said he saw it move. I panicked mildly but I didn't see it move. I just tossed it in my mouth quickly before I either started crying or threw up.

The best sushi you can get is oh toro, or fatty tuna. This is like a $10 piece of sushi and it tasted like $100. 

Fish at the fish market.

That's me leaving Japan.

So the biggest takeaway from my eight day trip to Japan was that I was going to start eating smaller portions because no one there is fat and I want to be like them. 

The first meal that I had upon returning to the United States was a giant tray of chicken nuggets from Chick-Fil-A. It was my roommate's birthday so we went and got 500 nuggets of chicken on seven different trays for each of us. 

It's hard trying to be someone I'm not.

And then jet lag kicked in and I slept 14 hours on Sunday.

O and my right ear still hasn't unpopped from the plane ride. And I can't get it to go back to normal. Does anyone know if this is fatal?