Rock On To... Electric Avenue
Trip Start
Oct 03, 2008
1
11
18
Trip End
Oct 19, 2008
Tokyo,
Kanto,
Japan
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Tokyo is really bright - it's literally blinding in places. All of the main parts of the city are like the centre of Leicester Square but spread out over a far greater distance. And probably with higher watt bulbs. To combat this, we went to a place called Hobgoblin for our first stop - a British style pub! One five-pound pint and some pub-grub later and we were on the road again. This time stopping off at Gas Panic, a club described by the Rough Guide as the "sleazy side of Tokyo" and a "place everyone should visit at least once". We did. It was like the club in Basic Instinct minus Michael Douglas in his green sweater. We left ASAP.
Our third and final stop in Roppongi was a whole lot more succesful. Whilst walking down the street, avoiding the people offering us entry to more salacious joints, we heard the strains of David Bowie's 'Let's Dance' coming from a second floor bar. Obviously we had to go in. This place had the coolest DJ of all time (picture attached but unfortunately very blurry because I got scared and was already practically running out as I pressed the button). And we stayed for a while until the last train back to Asakusa where the Hostel is.
After following the Rough Guide to a football bar that didn't exist (I'm telling you, these Tokyo backstreets are like Labyrinth and the Rough Guide is like those floor sprites moving the slabs with the arrows on) we stopped into a Japanese fast food restaurant chain, Coco Curry and went back satisfied.
Today was spent in Akihabara, or the 'electric town', playing video games, browsing shops and looking at robots. There are loads of multi-storey shops and arcades that seem to cater for every need - from the simple computer game lovers to the slightly more disturbing sorts who really like scantily clad women in robot suits. We did managed to impress some locals in the arcade by kicking ass at a punching computer game which, we think, was about two cops, one with a shuriken in the back of his head, fighting a giant Dennis Rodman lookalike. Did I mention this place was a little weird?
I am loving this country and Tokyo is my favourite place so far. It's so bustling and not entirely dissimilar to London, but it has a much friendlier and slightly wierder vibe.
