So me and Neena are on our first Shinkansen (“bullet train”) right now. Pretty awesome! We have 14 day rail passes that run from today til the day we leave (the 28th). It’s quite cool, lots of space, my own little table and everything. I’ve Disturbed pumping out on my headphones right now, so it sounds kinda like we’re gonna die screaming. It’s all air raid sirens and explosions, in case you didn't click that link . It’d have cost us about 120 to get on the train and another 30 to reserve a seat if we didn’t have our rail passes, so between today and tomorrow we’ll have gotten our money’s worth from the rail pass. All the trains afterwards are technically free!
Anyway, in terms of your reading of my wonderful adventures, that’s in the future. You should know, there really are robots here!!! By which I mean, we’re planning to go to the robot museum in Nagoya later tonight or in the morning.
So, back to where we left off.Monday 13th September
We met downstairs at 10 to check-out and then made our way to the next place, a proper backpackers hostel. It was only about five or ten minutes walk from one to the other, but even at ten, the heat was fairly fucking intense, especially with our bags. I wanted a shower and a change by the time we got there!
However, we couldn’t check in til one (which is perfectly normal just about everywhere, so don’t think that’s a complaint on my part). We were able to put our bags into storage, so we did and had a quick look around the place. Looked nice.
Two things immediately struck us. 1) it was a lot cleaner, bigger and more open than the last place 2) there was a big common space, where people were actually talking to each other. More or less exactly the kinda place we were looking for.
We decided to head out for the afternoon, until after one at least. A day that started *really* well, however, started to slide a little downward from here. Mostly it was the heat, coupled with a few unfortunate events. It was definitely the hottest day of the trip, if not my entire life, though Dubai would probably give it a bit of a run for its money. But I wasn’t walking around Dubai, I was sitting by a goddamn pool! Or in it!
We headed out to the Imperial Palace, most of which you can never go into, but the eastern Palace Gardens are open to the public – except that they aren’t on Mondays or Fridays . . . and if you’ll glance upwards a moment, you’ll notice what day this was.
Not only that, but the underground station we got off at was GIANT and we walked out on the wrong side, took us about ten minutes to get from the exit to the Palace and in the heat it felt more like an hour. We could have walked underground, in the air-conditioned niceness, but we were idiots.
Although, it should be noted we did buy a box of krispy kreme doughnuts for breakfast. We threw out one, because it had custard in it, but the rest went down a treat.
Then we got to the gates and realised it was closed, and we nearly cried!
But we weren’t so easily defeated, and vowed to return the following day, full of the fire of our touristness!
We then went back into the metro station, this time through an entrance conveniently located just across the road from the Palace gates and headed to Shibuya. Have you seen that Richard Gere film about the dog that meets him at the station every day? Well this is where that all actually happened. It’s also a big shopping district, so we wandered around.
Then we got lost, and eventually came across a love hotel . . . which offers rooms by the hour and they come with costumes!! We didn’t, however, avail of the facilities, we just legged it and tried to find our way back to a normal place.
Neena was looking for some runners so we found an Adidas shop. The way it works is a staff member will come over to you and ask you if you need help and then take you around the shop. The person we met was an Australian girl, who asked if we knew what we were looking for, which we didn’t really, other than runners. She was like, “Can I bring you up to the third floor and talk to you?” She seemed very happy to have English-speaking people to talk to. Can’t remember her name, but she was from the Gold Coast and she was pretty funny. Seemed very glad to be talking English for a while. She also told us that it was supposed to be the last day of the extremely superhot weather! We disbelieved, but hoped she was right all the same. They didn’t have any decent runners though, so we had to leave.
We found another place, where Neena bought some new cons. We also noticed that Japan is already gearing up fo
r Halloween, which at the time I found really really weird! Apparently it's only a recent thing that they celebrate it. We went to a good few places, including a three storey Disney shop. Steph, you’d have loved it, and possibly stolen things. They even had an Andy’s room!
Also, Stitch (of Lilo and Stitch) is really big here, probably because he’s a cute, destructive monster, which is more or less the definition of Japanese kids stuff . . .
Eventually we ended up in Tower Records. It had like ten floors, one of which was just books and magazines, including titles in English. They even had copies of Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader by Neil Gaiman in paperback, which you can’t even get at home yet.
By the time we got back to the hostel the only thing on our minds was showering and being clean! We checked in for two nights, although we’d actually only booked one and it turned out to be the best plan coz the place really was brilliant.
Neena was looking for some runners so we found an Adidas shop. The way it works is a staff member will come over to you and ask you if you need help and then take you around the shop. The person we met was an Australian girl, who asked if we knew what we were looking for, which we didn’t really, other than runners. She was like, “Can I bring you up to the third floor and talk to you?” She seemed very happy to have English-speaking people to talk to. Can’t remember her name, but she was from the Gold Coast and she was pretty funny. Seemed very glad to be talking English for a while. She also told us that it was supposed to be the last day of the extremely superhot weather! We disbelieved, but hoped she was right all the same. They didn’t have any decent runners though, so we had to leave.
We found another place, where Neena bought some new cons. We also noticed that Japan is already gearing up fo
r Halloween, which at the time I found really really weird! Apparently it's only a recent thing that they celebrate it. We went to a good few places, including a three storey Disney shop. Steph, you’d have loved it, and possibly stolen things. They even had an Andy’s room! Also, Stitch (of Lilo and Stitch) is really big here, probably because he’s a cute, destructive monster, which is more or less the definition of Japanese kids stuff . . .
Eventually we ended up in Tower Records. It had like ten floors, one of which was just books and magazines, including titles in English. They even had copies of Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader by Neil Gaiman in paperback, which you can’t even get at home yet.
By the time we got back to the hostel the only thing on our minds was showering and being clean! We checked in for two nights, although we’d actually only booked one and it turned out to be the best plan coz the place really was brilliant.
We also had another plan – get food and watch the very last episode of True Blood's season 3, which had only just been on. I know, we’re in Japan, and we watched TV! But meh, it was really fucking awesome and we were too wrecked to do anything else after being in the heat all day.
So what we did was, shower and get all scrubbed up and then headed out to KFC for dinner. I eat my first meal, realised I was still hungry and got the same again, after which I felt better. Then we headed back to the hostel and got started on True Blood. There were actually other people watching both True Blood and other things, so we didn’t feel too bad after we saw that! Although there was a moment of sheer panic when I looked at some guy's laptop screen and nearly saw something from late in the episode!!!
We watched that, which I will not discuss in case you haven’t seen it, and then watched the promo for the new HBO series of A Game of Thrones, based on George R.R Martin’s amazing A Song of Ice and Fire saga – Winter Is Coming! Should be starting around the time I get home too!
Neena went to bed to read/PSP shortly after that (though it was probably around eleven or twelve) while I blogged and Facebooked and got chatting to a few people around the place. A dude from Singapore (impressed that I knew where that was and had been there), a fella from Holland and the guy who had been watching True Blood, who turned out to be from Norway.
Then it started raining and we went outside to see! The Asian people in the hostel probably thought we were fucking lunatics, standing out in the rain, but it was only a shower really, slightly more than a drizzle, but still cool on the skin and nothing like you’d get at home and still walk in. The death-heat was finally breaking! Wahey!
Went to bed shortly after that, read for a bit, slept.
Tuesday 14th September
I woke up way before Neena, and so got dressed and headed up to the main area to chill, laptop and whatever. There were these people from a local radio station who had come down to do a survey about breakfast in other countries, so they were asking people about the stranger things from their home countries. While I was trying to explain black pudding to two Japanese people, this German girl was pissing herself laughing at the whole thing, since she knew what it was. The two Japanese people were just like, “You eat blood, eugh!” Except of course being Japanese they didn’t say that! But you could see it in their faces! It’s not like I even really eat it very often!
Anyway, that whole debacle got me talking to the German girl whose name is Anika (and probably isn’t spelled like that) and her Swiss friend Bridget (who definitely doesn’t spell her name like that). Bridget was very, very impressed that I first of all knew where Bern (she’s from Bern) was, and that we had stayed there. She actually knew the hostel where we stayed, as well as the pub where we met the infamous dancing lady! And for those reading this that don't know that story, I'm so not ever telling it, ever!
Anika is studying Japanese, and had been staying with a host family in Japan for the last five weeks, while Bridget had been visiting her brother in Seoul and popped over to Tokyo for a few weeks since she was in the area. Anika’s English is worth a mention too by the way – this is a German speaker, who had been speaking Japanese for the last 6 weeks, and was still able to carry on a perfectly intelligible conversation in English, even she thought she couldn’t. We, on the other hand, only speak one language, and it's not really English is it? They found "ye" quite confusing; as in, "what are ye doing later?"
I had been eating from the self-service breakfast all morning, and it wasn’t until Neena came down and was like, “Oh, I better pay for breakfast!” that I realised you were supposed to pay for it – although there’s a large sign in English that says how much it costs! Oops! Don’t worry, I did immediately go up and pay them at the front desk, where they laughed at me, though I’m not sure if it was for the mistake or for paying them after I’d already finished eating!
So anyway, Neena ate and then we headed off to the Palace for our second attempt! We also went to the bank to get out some money, which went fine for Neena and not well at all for me! The transaction wouldn’t go through with my bank card and the machine wouldn’t take my credit card because I’ve one of those “fancy” AIB student cards still with the curved corner bit. At least the machine gave it back, not like that time in Spain where my card got eaten! Anyway, tried a Citibank machine a few hours later and there was absolutely no bother getting money so no worries there.
So finally we got to the Palace (this time exiting the station through a sensible exit) and wandered the gardens and stuff. It was very beautiful, and the palace walls were quite impressive. Not much to say really. I’ll put the picture up on Facebook in a few (as you read this, they might actually already be up – you might even have seen them).
After that we headed back to Shinjuku for more wandering and to go back to the Dubliners because of the awesome chips and because I really wanted a pint of Guinness/not beer or spirits!
Headed back to the hostel where we did very little, ‘cept hang out, talked with Anika and Bridget for a few hours, messed around with laptops and facebook and blogs and stuff. It was fun, though I do realise it doesn’t exactly make for good reading! Sorry bout that! It was good craic for us though!
Then we obviously got up this morning, had breakfast (which I remembered to pay for), said goodbye to Anika (Bridget was gone for a walk) and Norwegian guy, and headed for the train!
Anyway, getting off the Shinkansen now, in Nagoya for the night.
There’s no internet in Sinead’s place though so it could be a little while before you hear from me!
Talk laters!
Shane!
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