6 days in Tokyo

Day 1

The flight to Tokyo arrived on time at around 9:30am, I passed quickly through immigration, dispite not knowing the address of where I'm staying; I gave them a name and they seemed happy with that. I walked to the baggage reclaim and saw my bag straight away, grabbed it and then passed straight through customs.

Once in the arrivals building I went straight to the bus limosine desk. They do a ticket for 6000Y (£51) This includes travel from Narita airport to the other side of Tokyo (Where I wanted to go), a return ticket back to the airport from any of the stops in the city and 2 days metro pass. I could have got the express train with the same deal instead of the bus for about £10 less but decided the bus had the advantage of storing your luggage in the hold and the added benefit of being able to see a lot of the city as we drive through.

Tourist information gave me some a guide book, a large detailed map of the city and a metro map. Whilst at the airport I also bought 2 x 2 day metro passes. This is the cheapest place to get them, they cost 980Y, quite a bit cheaper than buying daily passes in the city. With these travel passes it meant I only really have to pay extra for journeys further out of the city. The train prices are fairly reasonable to buy individual trips at the stations.

I got changed at the airport into the standard board shorts and a vest. Having carryed my backpack around for about 15 minutes, my t-shirt was already soaked in sweat, I quickly realised that my limited amount of clothes probably aren't going to stay clean for very long.

I headed outside to the bus stop. The bus arrived perfectly on time and provided an extremely easy journey into the city. Everyone I encounted at the airport were very friendly and helpful.

I got to Ikebukuro station and easily found some lockers, a very large locker was 200Y for 3 hours. There were English instructions which is lucky because I've found out now that barely anyone here speaks enough English to communicate. I dumpped my stuff here and headed out on the metro to see a bit of the city.

I mainly visited the Tokyo palace

Tokyo palace

Tokyo over the moat

I found food to be the hardest thing, I'm quite fussy in the first place and like to stick to what I know and like. It was obvious this was going to be a problem here as I'm struggling to bring myself to try the local food. This isn't helped by not having a clue what any of it is because everything here is in Japanese. Lucky I sourced a McDs to fill myself up. This may become a regular visit whilst I'm here. Whilst in McDs I used the toilet, afterwards I pressed what I thought was the flush and went out to wash my hands. As I'm washing my hands I notice a jet squirting out of the toilet and hitting the ceiling soaking everything, absolute lol. I run back in, ducking under the jet and managed to press the stop button. I'd unknowingly pressed the arse-cleaning button, this was a quick learning experience.

After eating I collected my bags and got on a train heading to the station I needed to get to to meet the guy I was staying with for the next two nights. I got to the station early and waited there for him. He turned up exactly on time and showed me to his house. His house is really nice. I found the most amazing thing was the quality of everything; the toilet and shower are all electronic and automated, it makes the UK seem like living in the dark ages. The toilet flush bowl refills from a tap over a sink bowl at the back of the toilet, that is such a clever idea.

Having not slept for the last two nights I was falling asleep in the evening and had to go to bed pretty early.

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Day 2

It was my first full day in Tokyo, whilst I was staying in the North East area I made the most of the short train ride out of the city towards a town called Kawagoe. Kawagoe is a historic town with many temples and shrines. I went on a walk around the town without a map attempting to find some interesting areas. It's supposed to be a tourist area but I didn't see another tourist all day.

I managed to find a temple, completely deserted of course. Whilst I was looking around, two Japanese teenagers turned up and started talking to me with very limited English. As with all other Japanese people I'd met, they were very nice and helpful. They started walking with me, showing me the area. They ended up staying with me until we returned to the station.

The friends I made

One of the temples

I returned back to the area I was staying in to meet my host, Sho, for some food. He introduced me to some Japanese food and taught me how to use chopsticks. We then went back to his house and chatted. He showed me some Japanese idols, mainly the most famous girl group in Japan, called AKB48. He informed me that they did a show in Tokyo and I could get tickets to watch. I scheduled this in for the following day. When his girlfriend came back from work we took some photos and chilled for a bit.

Sho's dog, Choco was so cute

Sho, his girlfriend and Choco

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Day 3

Today I had to make a transfer between my 1st and 2nd couchsurfing hosts. I decided to spend the day in Tokyo, leaving my stuff in a locker at Ikebukuro station. I had planned to meet my new host at their station for 3pm. I knew I couldn't make it so I contacted them to say 4:30pm. Unfortunately I got stuck over the other side of Tokyo; after talking to them on the phone we re-arranged for 23:30.

During the day I walked for many hundreds of miles (well it felt like it). If you want to see a lot of Tokyo, the best way to do it is on foot. I went on a tour to see the Sony building in brand street, the world trade centre, a large temple and the Tokyo tower.

Typical Tokyo

Tokyo tower

Following this, I went on a mission to try and find the AKB48 theatre. After a long search of the area I thought it was, I'd found nothing. I gave up and headed to the nearest station. On my way I stumbled upon electric avenue, an area of Tokyo full of electrical and computer shops, arcades, cafes and anime shops. This turned out to be my favorite area of Tokyo; where it all happens - massively busy.

So Japan

By shear chance I noticed a massive building with an AKB48 sign. Got pretty excited about that. Being English and not speaking any Japanese the guy at the ticket office for the AKB48 show took pity on me and reserved me a ticket for the following night. Result! I hung around this entertainment complex, playing some guitar hero and watching crazy Japanese guys on the dance machines! I then headed back to collect my stuff and make the trip on the metro subway with all my stuff to the next location.

I arrived at my arranged destination about 22:40 and Tomo turned up about 23:10. Straight away we went to get some food close by to the station. The food was good, kinda an American diner feel to it. Just randomly a big group of girl cheerleaders walked in while we were eating. They were the cheerleading squad of the local university. So with my translator at hand I went over to chat to them. It turned out one of them spoke very good English which was quite handy. Luckily they had a practice scheduled for Saturday evening, whilst I'm still here so I arranged to go along and meet them for their session.

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Day 4

After a late meet up last night, I chilled out in the morning before my host Tomo, returned from his rugby training. He took me to a cheap indian restaurant. The food was amazing, as good as the best I had in the UK. They served a curry dish with all you can eat naan and rice for less than £5 which is very good for Tokyo.

We then visited an Onsen, a traditional Japanese spa. Again, as with everything in Japan; it was amazing compared to anything I've experienced back at home. The water is pumped up from about 1500m depth and then cooled to 40*C. It's completely natural and very very high in salts; the water was actually black! It was a bit weird at first, going into a spa completely nude, but I guess everyone in Japan is used to it so after a while it just seemed normal.

We then went into Tokyo centre at Shinjuku station to visit a viewing tower. By chance we arrived at the top just as the sun was setting over mt Fuji, incredible view with this in the distance and the mega crowded Tokyo in front of it.

Sunset over Fugi mountain

A view of Tokyo from the the viewing tower

Tomo then 'forced' me to eat sushi which I've never done before and didn't like the idea of. I'm quite a fan of having my food cooked... and hot. Never-the-less, I did try 4 different types and they were all ok, much better than I'd expected. I'm glad I did it, ticked it off my list of things to do in Tokyo.

From here we split as Tomo had to go to work. I had reserved a ticket to see a show over the other side of Tokyo so headed off to see that. The show was AKB48, a massively popular singing / dancing girl pop group in Japan. The show was excellent, the girls are all very talented. What entertained me more was how excited and into it the Japanese men were. They were screaming at the top of their voices, singing and dancing along to it. Very Surreal.

I headed home and found a random Tesco as I was walking back though the suburbs. I went in to get some bits and used my Tesco credit card; the woman on the counter loved it. I wonder if I got any points on my clubcard for it???

When Tomo returned we had some drinks and chatted about the great day we had.

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Day 5

When I woke up Tomo cooked a massive traditional breakfast of stirfry noodles, rice, fried eggs, mashed sweet potatoe and green tea with some Japanese sweets made from Azuke bean paste. The noodles were so good and I loves the little sweets. He then had to rush off to training; I wanted to have a bit of a chill day so I stayed in and caught up with a few things on the computer.

In the afternoon I managed to fit in time for a run and some exercises; I found a good route to run laps and a small park with a chinup bar. When I was in the park I managed to make some friends with some little Japanese kids. Embarrasingly their English was better than my Japanese however I couldn't really communicate with them. I showed them some gymnastics on the bar and some handstands which they loved. They were so cute screaming 'bye' down the street.

I packed up all my stuff and headed out to meet the cheerleaders. With a bit of help from some random guy and then the university campus security I managed to find the sports hall. Unsurprisingly the university had some amazing facilities.

Before I arrived the girls on the team had already seen some videos of me on youtube and when I turned up I got an amazing reception, the whole team gathered round and chanted something in Japanese. They had a 4 hour training session and I was able to stay for about 2 hours before I had to head off to meet my next host over the other side of Tokyo. I've never experienced such intensive and precise training. I was shocked at how good they were; in terms of the stunting I saw, they were in a different league from anything I've seen in the UK. If you saw how hard they trained then you can understand how they become so good.

Before I left I got to do some partner stunt with one of their flyers. She'd never done it before but after 3 go's we did toss platform lib. Apparently they don't really have male cheerleaders in Japan so they absolutely loved it. We took some group photos and as I left they all formed a tunnel with their arms for me to leave by. Such a good evening.

A lib with one of their flyers

Meiji University Jaguars cheerleading team

I'd arranged to meet my next host, Inoue, at 21:30. I had less than an hour to get to the other side of Tokyo from the university campus. I think I made a world record for the quickest time for this journey and somehow arrived dead on time. I was met by Inoue and his friend. They both spoke very good English; I later found out they had studied for a year in the USA, this was a common theme amongst the people I met that evening.

We popped out to the supermarket to get some drinks and snacks, then chilled in his common room. His accommodation is right in Tokyo, Its almost exactly like student halls back home except with better shared facilities. This was actually really good, they each had a small room but the massive shared living room and kitchen gave it a really great social atmosphere. We were quickly joined by quite a few other residents, many of whom spoke decent English. We stayed up chatting until 3am with Inoue getting pretty drunk (he suffered for this the next day lol).

I met a Korean girl who had previously been studying chemistry before switching to languages. She'd moved to Japan to study Japanese a year ago and now I believe she's pretty fluent. This year she was on a course studying English AND Chinese in Japanese even though she is a native Korean speaker; pretty impressive. She was really nice, I showed her some English stuff which she loved.

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Day 6

After a late night I got up to make the most of my last day. I had a few more places to see over this side of Tokyo. Nothing that exciting, just a few tourist areas.

The temple in Asakusa

I came back to collect my bags before making the long trip to the airport. I got to the bus stop on time, but when the bus didn't come I found out that at this stop you have to make a reservation even if you have a ticket. With time ticking down before my flight I had to make an emergency plan to get to the airport. I had to get back on the metro, make 1 change (400m between platforms carrying everything) and arrive at the city airport bus terminal. I managed to get on a bus in good time. At the airport, checkin wouldn't let me take the flight because my visa hadn't been arranged. This was a massive cock up by my flight organisers. I knew something was up so a few days previous I had chased it up by email but they didn't managed to get it sorted. To get on the flight I had to pay a ridiculous visa fee at the airport which I'm now going to have to claim back from them.

After a lot of messing about dealing with this, checkin had closed and I was escorted to the gate by the Narita airport Jetstar manager, he was very friendly but a bit stressed out because Quantas had just grounded all their flights due to strike action. I got on the plane which was pretty much empty and caught up with some blogging on my laptop.

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Thoughts about Japan

From the moment I stepped of the plane at Narita airport, my whole experience has been very positive, I don't normally like being in cities but it's amazing here, love just being around the people and culture.

As for the transport system, cleanliness of everything, morals manners and attitude of all the people, how safe it is here, how well everything is done; all I can say is the UK is an embarrasment. Things aren't just better here, they make the UK look awful.

Japan is so much more advanced than the UK of the USA. Everything is so effiencient, just small stuff like how fast the supermarket checkout is, how fast the fast food service is (your meal is ready and waiting before you get your change) and how well laid out and well sign posted the transport system is enabling extremely quick travel times.

In conclusion I was just shocked at how much better things can be!