Tokyo

After five days of temple exploration in Kyoto and Nara, I decided to get on the bullet train to Tokyo and have a weekend there. It was easy enough to get a seat ticket using my rail pass (I even asked in Japanese: Tokyo ni ikitai desu) and then I was off. The shinkansen moves pretty fast from the word go; it took about three hours (to do about 471km) and then I had the fun of trying to navigate Tokyos incredibly complex metro rail system in order to get to Asakusa, where I had a hostel booked.

I stayed in the Khaosan Annex, one of a chain of four in the same area of the city. The hostels distinguishing feature was that the dorm beds were in individual wooden cabins. Cool idea, but they were damn hot every morning when I awoke. I used my rail pass to go around the Yamanote line which loops around the central part of the city. Its a bloody big place. I spent 3-4 hours a day just getting around on the train and subway. Most of the areas I visited were quite similar, in that they were very busy and had loads of shops, but not really much else of interest. I didn't even see any business men reading schoolgirl manga porn on the train.

Before I arrived, some other travellers had told me that the Japanese were quite unfriendly to foreigners. Judging by my experience so far that isn't true as I've met a lot of friendly, helpful people. They can't always speak English very well, and some people expect foreigners to be able to understand Japanese, so perhaps more so than the other countries I've visited in Asia having a bit of language skill is very handy (not that I have any myself really). It is true that it is a relatively expensive place, fruit in particular is extortionate (although cigarettes are cheap), but I don't think its any more expensive than Australia or European prices.

I had a big night out on saturday. I went with some other guys from the hostel to Atom in Shibuya, probably the most expensive club I've been to (3500 yen entry) and definitely the most rammed and hottest. The music wasn't great so it was more for the experience of seeing young Japanese going crazy that I hung around (like Louis Theroux or something). I lasted until about 3AM (the club shuts around 5.30AM) then escaped. There is no public transport at all in this, one of the biggest cities in the world, until 5AM, so rather than hang around (no way I was paying for a taxi) I walked about two hours in the direction of my hostel, which only actually moved me a fraction of the way back, then finally caught a train. The next night I was out again in a karaoke bar.

So after all that malarky I thought it would be good to get out into the countryside, so I took a series of trains to get me to the Fuji five lakes area. I had a wander around the lake nearest to where I'm staying (Kawaguchico) last night and its very scenic, with a nice view of Fuji-san topped with a bit of snow. A couple I met in the hostel last night are taking the bus this morning to the fifth station in order to attempt a climb so I 'm going along then. Climbing season doesn't start until the 1st of July, so there are not many buses on at the moment, but at least it won't be too crowded. There's some other walks in this area too so I may hang around for a few days more. I still haven't decided whether to go to Hokkaido - its a long way and will probably involve me going back to Tokyo but the area sounds really nice for outdoors-y stuff.

Til next time!