|
  | |  |
Officialy Aliens!
Entry 16 of 17 | show all | print this entry |
Well, we have finally made it into the land of the sushi, manga and short people! Its taken us 4 months and lots of countries along the way,but we still cant quite believe we are actually here.
We left Ko Samui after our nice period of sunbathing and chilling out and headed back to Bangkok, where we went for our fitting of our suits and hit the shops! Everything was so cheap in Bangkok so we wanted to stock up before Japan. Slightly stupidly though, we headed to the biggest market in the world on Sunday - over 15,000 stalls!! And, it was almost 40 degrees! We literally melted, but it was certainly an experience. They sell everything there from food to pets. The pets/animals section was the most interesting as there are hundreds of dogs, cats, fish, iguanas, spiders, snakes you name it, any pet you could possibly want on sale. It was a bit cruel though with puppy's in small cages and over heated too.. but hey this is Bangkok, you see animals in a much worse state on the street, not nice but you kind of get used to it.
It was so annoying that the weather became so much hotter once we were in Bangkok, but you win some you loose some i guess! But at 40 degrees we had a pool so it could have been worse and I'm glad it wasn't minus 40!
So now that we are in Tokyo we are officially aliens and need to get an alien card! Very funny when we got the little bits of paper saying `welcome alien!` We have been generally browsing the Tokyo streets, trying to find shoes and bags for school and not getting too upset that I'm now a large to x-l! Glad I'm only a size 10 then!! I think the first thing we brought was 2 coats. And I brought some wool and have knitted 2 beanies to keep us warm too! Its been really cold here, but, its getting warmer now and there's talk that the cherry blossom will be blooming pretty soon over the next week or so, which will be great. We took a walk around one of the parks in Ueno - not that far from our new home and there were a few trees that had bloomed already and they looked very beautiful. We`re looking forward to the Sakura viewing parties!
Oh and don't worry everyone, I can satisfy my craft urges!! There's an amazing store here called Tokyu Hands which is the biggest craft shop ever! Quite expensive but amazing all the same and I'm very impressed. It'll be hard not to overspend in there, but ill try to be restrained!
However, we have been learning a little bit of Japanese and have honed the phrase `Eigo O Hanasimas Ka?` - `Do you speak English?` It lets you off a little with your pronunciation even though its blatantly obvious that we aren`t Japanese. We`ve had less people staring at us than i read about which is good. A few people have laughed at us and have been stared at while using chop sticks, but you can sort of ignore it and we need to get fairly used to this I guess.
We start work on Tuesday after meeting a rep on Monday who will show us to our hotel. Unfortunately the apartment we`ll be staying in isn't ready until Sunday so we`ll be living in a hotel until then. Bit of a pain to move yet again but looking forward to the apartment when we get it. We took a trip to our new home station and wandered around the other day. It all seems fine. Except as its been really cold here so we didn't want to wander out in the cold too much.
We decided to go to a local restaurant near to the station and try the local food... hhmmm note to foreigners eating in Tokyo... do not eat at restaurants where there's no plastic food (they have plastic food outside showing what the dishes look like so you can point to the one you want - and you get exactly the same as the plastic version- only edible!) and don't eat where there's no English menu or photos of the dishes!! We used our phrase books well and asked her to recommend something... We ended up having our worst meal yet.. We had cooked squid, chicken(this was OK), something which wasn't beef - tongue or horse perhaps? and the worst part- raw squid!! yummy -not.. I'm afraid i couldn't eat it and Jonathan had to wolf it down, although he said it was OK the one mouthful i had was bad enough. So, from now on, we are sticking to pictures and plastic food places!!
Today we are off to a part of Tokyo called Odaiba which is on reclaimed land just off of Tokyo bay. Its a big area for shops and has the Toyota museum and Sony museum where you can see the latest gadgets etc, so that should be good.
I'm afraid that its taken us 10 different people to ask for an Internet cafe and we went round in circles twice. In the end a guy who we had asked actually took us there, which was really kind... so until we get our Internet sorted it may be a bit of a mission to contact you all, bit of a pain, but I'm hoping that the school will have Internet access. And, on Tuesday we should be given our new mobile phones which will be great.
Its a bit weird, I keep forgetting its Easter Sunday. Of course they don't celebrate Easter here, so there`s no bunnies and eggs here, just lots of Sakura (cherry blossom) things everywhere. So Happy Easter everyone, I hope you are all having a lovely relaxing weekend.
|
|
If you like this entry, search for other entries by tofty, from Japan or try a new search. |
| |
Back to Entry - Back to Home
|
3 votes 
