We left you all with me binge drinking the free Asahi beers and Will unconscious and sprawled across the plane aisle. A couple beers and hours of sleep later we made it into Tokyo safe and sound. On arrival we managed to stumble our way through and out of customs but about three hundred feet later we came to the realization that we were in no way prepared for the language barriers that we would encounter here. (Typical American) Just saying that it was overwhelming doesn't quite portray just how vulnerable it makes you feel though. We truly were thrown into a new world. After about 15 minutes of wandering around we were able to find someone who pointed us to the right train and we were on our way to Asakusa.
Once we got all settled in at our hostel we decided to go take a look at our surrounding district. Turns out we are about half a mile away from the tallest tower in the world, The Tokyo Sky Tree. It stands 2,080 feet tall but Dornes and I swore that it was around the height of the space needle… (it was dark?) Regardless the tower is sick, but doesn't open up until next month so we weren't able to go up and check out the view.
After exploring we decided to head back to the hostel, have a couple beers down at the bar below our hostel and then we called it a night.
April 20th: (Will) The day that never ended.
After going to bed around 11:30 we both for some terrible reason woke up at 6 am. By 7:45 we were out the door to explore this foreign city. Our hostel was located in Asakusa, this district of Tokyo is home to the oldest temple in Tokyo, SensÅ-ji is a buddist temple built in 645 A.D. There are an abundance of shops surrounding the temple and after visiting the temple we wandered around in circles until finally getting something to eat and heading back to our hostel around 1.
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After doing some research we decided to head to Shibuya, home of Tokyo's Time Square. Shibuya was flooded with people at 3 in the afternoon, with neon lights that rival the Las Vegas strip.
After taking pictures of the square from the second story of a Starbucks overlooking the square, we meandered into an 11-story department store, tiny shops all the while attempting to take in the massive amount of people who were crowded here. After eating some amazing sushi with each plate being only $1.05 Yen it was one of the best deals for sushi. After dinner we headed back to the hostel to meet up with an Aussie named Celli to go grab some brews at a bar near our hostel before heading out to Roppongi, which is Tokyo's westerner party district. This is where our day/night starts to get interesting.
The beers were only 280 Yen or about $3 and were roughly 22ounces! While throwing back beers like only cougs could Celli told us that the entire metro system stops at midnight and doesn't reopen until 5 a.m. This posed a serious dilema, do we go home after drinking with our friend or stay out until 5? Obviously, we're Cougs so we have a reputation to maintain and we're in Tokyo so naturally we decide to stay out. We bought some drinks for the road and drank them on the last subway to Roppongi. After getting off the subway we walked around the district looking for a cool place to go. A club promoter came up to us and told us to come in, we were skeptical so we said no unless he has something good to offer. He told us he would get us in for free and that he'd make sure we got our first couple of drinks free. We should've known this was an offer too good to be true. After he lead us up into his "club" we found out it was a strip club with absolutely no one in it. As soon as we walked in every girl instantly stood up and stared at us as though we were fresh meat and didn't stop staring until we left.
From there we went to a few other bars and met some other travelers. By 3 am and 21 hours since having any shut eye we hit a wall. So we decide to try and wait off the remaining 2 hours by getting something to eat. Inside this restaurant we sat down in between two 40 something year old men who were there by themselves. Both men were in full suits and were completely passed out. After eating our food and chillin for about an hour, both men were still asleep and one of them even fell out of his chair. He eventually woke up and resumed eating his food as if nothing happened. All the meanwhile nobody is paying either of these guys any attention, like it's completely natural. We eventually start to doze off ourselves and decided to go outside to see if some fresh air would keep us awake. Nope. We saw another 40 year old man in a suit passed out on the subway steps so we decide to follow suit. We woke up around 5 and caught our subway home but about 5 stops from our Asakusa stop we both passed out and neither of us remember anything until 7 when both James and I were awoken by a metro steward. We had ridden our subway to our stop and all the way back to the end of its line where we were forced to get off and pay another fare to get back home. We eventually made it back to our hostel at around 8am and proceeded to pass out
April 21st: (James) As you might have guessed we decided to sleep in a little later than usual on Saturday. At around noon my body started to forgive me for the "lack of sleep" and we finally got out of our beds (planks of wood with cloth) and went on a mid afternoon hangover stroll through the Imperial palace. I've found that I have become really jealous of people who live in old cities like Tokyo and places all across Europe because they have such great history within their grasps at all times compared to the states. The fact that the Imperial palace had multiple renovations hundreds of years before our country was even a thought should give you an idea of just how old some of these temples and buildings are. After wandering around the palace for a few hours waving our Coug flag wherever we could, they finally kicked us to the curb with all the other tourists at closing time.
After that we jumped on the train to Shinjuku which is just a big shopping district like Shibuya and we walked around and picked up some things we needed for the rest of our trip. Then we headed back home for a Saturday night in since we were still way to tired to go out clubbing/ spend all our money. Yeah I know we are lame but we had to be up early to check out plus we are saving up to go HAM in Bangkok and at the full moon party on the beaches.
April 22nd: (James) This was our last full day in Tokyo so we left our hostel early in the morning to go and explore a park called Yoyogi ( @jpetursson ). Apparently the park gets packed with people that get dressed up and perform in front of the park goers. One of the more popular park groups dresses up as Elvis (Asian Elvis x 100?!) But of course Dornes and I ended up entering the park at the wrong entrance and missed out on all of it... On the bright side though we did get to explore the historical part of the park where we witnessed a traditional Japanese wedding and we even wished good luck upon all of you clowns for some dumb reason. (There's a picture below of the plank we wished you all good luck on.)
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| Biggest mistake of his life. Oh well more for us. |
After we got our prayer on we decided to head out to the
shopping center that was close by and the only reason I mention this is
because we found a store specifically made for @o_mac .
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| Face to face brooo |
Anyways after that we just headed off to our new hotel in the Kawasaki district which was a lot closer to the airport making it easier on us for our early Monday morning flight. This hotel fucking sucked though! It made the hostel we stayed at look like the Ritz. I really wish I would have taken a picture of the place but I guess I didn't want to have any vivid visual memories to haunt me. The room was tiny, they said the bed fit two but clearly they were thinking that infants counted as full size humans, the shower was about 3 square feet and that happened to take up half of the bathroom and the room was cold as the arctic circle. I hate that place. Not much more to say.
April 23rd: (James) So this was a travel day for us. Nothing all that interesting went down other than the fact that I got moved to first class for our first flight out of Tokyo. Oh one thing to note if you ever try to stay in a hostel in Hong Kong make sure you take street view pictures of the entrance on google before you leave... Dornes and I spent about an hour wandering around 1 block trying to find the entrance to our hostel. Worst entrances ever. Anyways we are just kicking it in our room now and we are about to watch the new Game Of Thrones so "Toodaloo motherfuckaaaaas!!!
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