Best Western Shinjuku ASTINA Hotel Tokyo

A memorable Thur night in Tokyo...


Tokyo has many unique aspects, but these two have to top the list; the `Shibuya Medical Prison` and 24 hr karaoke.

The cheapest room in my hostel is the 12 room mixed dorm. It's actually quite nice and spacious and a great way to meet people, esp. since I'm alone during the day while my frien...

Tokyo Izekayas What's an izekaya? These are the Japanese version of a pub and they come highly recommended. There are many large chains - some popular names are Tengu, Watami, and Wara Wara. Besides the big chains there are thousands of smaller, locally run operations that will let you really experience Tokyo up close and personal with the local...

Getting to Tokyo was no mean feat. We heeded the warnings that taxis from Narita were expensive so took the tokkyu train. Deciphering the herioglyphs was made easier by a very helpful and pleasant travel assistant. Narita is 65km outside Tokyo so it took over an hour to reach central Tokyo where some very nice little (by this I mean smaller than...

As the title of my travelogue says, I'm writing from Tokyo at the end of my first week here. It was an eventful week, though it got off to a fitful start. I'm going to back track a little so as to give a little perspective to my experiences thus far. I began planning this trip back in February, not so long after returning from my last trip. My p...

Holy hell... what a huge day. The plan for today was for us (Chris, Christie and I) to setup our bank accounts, and get phones... and we did all that, and saw some of the craziest things in the process. So the day started when i met Christie and Chris at their station, and from there we rode the train into Shinjuku station (around about 30 minut...

Tokyo here I come - after a long flight and a horrible landing - apparently this is the norm for Japan I arrived and met up with Josh. The first thing I needed was a cig and then he showed me the map of the subway which was insane and how we are getting to his place. When you are at Narita airport you are about 60 miles from the city so it takes...

Japan Day two August 7, 2006 Today we left for Nara. For lunch we stopped at a hotel for what is called Japanese boxed lunch. It was latterly in this wooden like box. It had fried shrimp, sausage, macaroni salad, and chicken. And of course we had a bowl of rice with it. We went to this is one of Japans previous capitols. First we stopped at the ...

A dream has been achieved today people, and for once reality lived up to the dream. First off I would like to congratulate Mum and myself for successfully navigating our way through a transfer from the subway to the JR Line (an overland train). It could have been a disaster but it went very smoothly and we made it to our destination and back aga...