Jetlagged in tokyo!
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2005
1
2
20
Trip End
Apr 13, 2005
Tokyo,
Japan
Saturday, January 8, 2005
our flight left toronto at 6:20am (which meant leaving for the airport at 3:30am - in true helen style, i was frantically packing all the way up the second the cab arrived at my door) so we thought we'd be all smart and stay up all night and then sleep when we got on the plane (long haul plane left from DC after 11am).. but our sleep on the plane (which was full of southern viet people heading to ho chi minh city) was all of 2 hours, if that. so feeling all delirious by the time we landed in tokyo, we attempted to navigate the most confusing subway system in the world and get to our hostel, located in the more old school/traditional area of asakusa.
things are well here so far, except making us rather broke pretty fast. everything is fairly expensive and considering we budgeted for southeast asia and not tokyo, we're draining our money pretty fast, mostly just on transportation, food and accomodations. i have been having a helluva time trying to find affordable veg food and often have to just pick meat out of stuff, pretending that the little tiny bits of meat aren't really there as i slurp down my noodles. i guess my japanese pronunciation is really bad too since everyone seems to stare blankly when i attempt to ask if they have anything vegetarian.
aside from starving to death, jess and i have just done a lot of wandering around different areas and often ended up randomly stumbling into cool stuff. wandering around asakusa, we stumbled across the big temple here and the market areas.. a 'free market' by yoyogi park where people just randomly(?) set up their second-hand wares on blankets.. and lots and lots of lights in bustling shinjuku. lots of homeless people around the river setting up what seem like almost 'permanent' cardboard box beds with their worldly possessions next to them.
we also feel like possibly the biggest geeks here since we are sporting our ugly travel clothes which makes us stand out like sore thumbs as we walk amongst the super cute and super stylish tokyo young people. this is a seriously big and bustling city and it makes us feel like hicks, even though we're from toronto (nothing in comparison to most major cities around the world) and i spent a year living in london, UK a few years ago. also, i guess it's official that i look japanese since a bunch of locals have told me they thought i was japanese. oh, the confusion! just wait till i get to vietnam when everyone there thinks i'm japanese or korean..
not sure what we're doing tomorrow - probably people-watching in harajuku, a taiko show in the evening, meeting up with shiu sometime in the afternoon, and ???
next stop - a 7-hour plane ride to bangkok on monday!
