Monday, October 08, 2012

Tokyo - Day 1 Arriving to Shinjuku


17/9/12

1138 (local time)

Tokyo, Japan

Written in: Jack (couchsurfers) nice cold apartment in Osaka, Japan – after a big party with some guys that I met in Syria!

Tokyo is such an amazing city! Every day I went out it just completely blew me away! Ok so this post is going to MASSIVE as I have so much to say about the places I visited, so at the end of each major day ill write a little TL;DR which stands for Too Didn’t Read!

6th of September - Day: 1 Arriving to Shinjuku!

So I arrived to Narita airport from a brutal 23 hours in Moscow airport, fortunately I had met an awesome Japanese dude on my flight called Kosuke but I will talk about him a bit later. So we both caught the cheapest train from the Airport to Shinjuku station which took roughly 1.5 hours and cost about $15AUD.
When I got to Shinjuku my plan was to find a place to dump my big bag and then cruise around the hustling and bustling city of Shinjuku. After about 1 hours of constant sweating I found a place to store my bag – it cost 500YEN ($6.5AUD) so expensive! But I had to do it!

So I walked around the city and my main aim was to head to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building which has a great observation deck on both the east and west sides, and the best thing is… is that its FREE! Perfect! So I took the elevator up 42 floors and saw the hazy city with the storm clouds coming across.
I was absolutely knackered from hardly sleeping, but I just focused on keeping my eyes open. After I took some photos from the top, I saw a nice park near the tower that I thought I would check out. After walking for about 30 minutes I realized that it wasn’t so close.

When I eventually made it too Meiji Jingu park the weather closed in and it started to rain, which wasn’t so great. I was just trying to find stuff to do until 8pm until I met my first couch surfer in Tokyo – Brad.
8pm rolled on in, and I met Brad who is this unfit 30 something year old Aussie guy, that has been teaching English in Japan for 8 years yet has never really spent the time to learn the language.

I dumped my bags at Brad’s place then we went out to a local restaurant where I spent a lot of money on delicious traditional food and all you can drink, I wasn’t all that keen for it, but felt obliged seeing that I was staying with Brad. The night ended pretty late and I was ruined. Jet Lagged and drinking is a bad mix!
TL;DR – Made it to Shinjuku, walked around the city, went up the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, Met Brad my Couchsurfing Host had some lovely food and drank too much.

My first proper view of Japan... somewhere in Shinjuku.

Little side streets full of neon signs!

High Buildings litter the sky!

From the observation deck!!

See the storm looming!

Blacken out the city!

"Take care not to bump into the glass" How many people would have done this to make them put a sign up!

storms are coming!



even japan does some good clouds!

This is the building where the observation deck is "Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building"

The entry of the park!

When your inside the park, you dont feel close to the city at all!

Entry to the shrine!


The Meiji Jingu Shrine

Finally Tokyo at night! Look at the neon signs!!


Next Blog Coming Soon! Tokyo Day 2 in the Electronic District!

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