So as I mentioned previously I will be moving some of our travel journals over to this blog. We were late bloomers when it came to travel & had our first overseas trip in 2005 for our honeymoon :) Below are the entries of our journal.
26th October 2005
Helloooo everyone!!!
We're here.
It's so amazing & beautiful and scary all at the same time :)
Our flight was longer than it was supposed to be so we took off at 9:10am and landed at Narita at 5:30pm. We didn't get on the bus to Tokyo till 6pm and arrived at the Hotel at around 7:30ish. Such a long day considering we were up at 4am!
The hotel here is AWESOME! It's better than the Hilton in Brisbane!
Our room is soooo good! The bathroom is bigger than our bathroom at home and it has a bath! The room it's self is HUGE and it's a corner room & we have a nice view of some of the Imperial Gardens/Palace & part of the moat that surrounds it. Our bed is HUGE, I think it's a king size :)
We can't get any service for our mobiles here, something is not right as we were told it would be fine >:(
For some stupid reason I woke up at 4:45am (tokyo time) today :P
We just had b'fast and they have the strangest things to eat here. of course there is the normal bacon, eggs, pastries. But they have grilled salmon, seafood pasta, of course fried rice and a few different odd soups. Also a salad bar....for b'fast!
We are off today to have a look at the Imperial gardens and shopping at the Ginza district. Ohhhh yeah I can't wait for the shopping!!
We will probably update everyday so keep watching!
Ok gtg paying for the net.
26th October 2005
OMG
We went to Ginza at about 10:30am this morning. That place ROCKS!
Can you believe that we successfully navigated around. I am very proud of Tony's map reading skills :)
First we went to the Sony Building, which was great & fun. Then we headed off to find the Volks doll supply store to have a look. Then came the fun. Hakuhinkan Toy Park...OHHH YEAH!
We spent about 2.5hrs there on all 6 floors. Oh man...it was GREAT!
We will be going back cause there is more stuff I want to get...plus we have discount vouchers.
The sales clerk noticed my jack tattoo & well all the Nightmare stuff I was getting & told me that Tim Burton was at the store last week. AHHHHHHHHHH!! He brought lots too :)
Oh in my last post I forgot to tell you about the toilets here. It's true. They have weird electric loo's here! Our toilet in the hotel has a heated seat according to room temperature, it has a bum drying feature, a beady and a bum washer. Plus when you flush it everything inside it swirls like a whirlpool.
Which is cool & odd :P
Oh I had the best Waffles today! I know it's weird eating waffles in Japan :P But they were cheap & warm.
We got caught in the rain today & I to find a shop that sold umbrella's. It was a chemist that had about 50 people in it also buying umbrella's. It was funny cause everyone was chucking money around & yelling.
Oh girls I got some of those cute wooden dolls we saw in the valley the other weekend. They're so cute & cheap here!
Anyway I had better go. Tomorrow we're spending more time at the Imperial Gardens (it's across the road) and then going for a afternoon tour. At night we will be hanging out at the Electronic/Anime district.
Man I am so bloody tired!
But I our Japanese is getting better! I can say 3 things really well now.
Sumimasen ( excuse me)
Arigato Gozamos ( thank you )
Wakurimasen ( I don't understand)
Kudasai ( please )
29th October 2005
So where did I leave off last time?
Oh yeah Thursday morning we went back to Ginza to get something from the Volks store, then back to the Toy park for 30mins. We jumped back on the free shuttle bus back to the hotel.
We then got picked up for our afternoon tour.
After everyone meeting at the bus we went to a pearl store. They had a presentation & as you went in and took your seat they asked you to select a number in a basket. Then they had a presentation on how natural pearls grow & how they make cultured pearls. We already knew but it was interesting anyway. They had some cultured oysters there from their farm & in one of them was a "lucky" pearl & who ever got the random number this little machine thing said won the pearl.
Tony won it! So we have a beautiful cultured Japanese pearl. On the way back to the bus we could look around the shop. I brought a pair of silver Japanese pearl earrings. They're so nice!
Then we went to the port to get on a boat for our river cruise. That was interesting. They dropped us off at a Buddhist temple (I don't remember the name) we got to go in & pray and the guide told us the story behind the temple. The we got to wonder around the MANY shops there. We then all got back on the bus & drove back through the city. Tony and I got dropped off at Akihabara which is nicknamed "electronic town" oh man...that place is AWESOME! We wondered around there for a while & then decided to brave the rail system and catch the train back to Maranuchi (the suburb we are staying in). It's actually not that hard, as long as you don't have to change trains etc it's pretty easy. Most everything is in English.
Friday:
TOKYO DISNEY!
We didn't manage all day there but we were there from 11:30am till 7:30am. A good effort I think. We went on the Pirate of the Caribbean ride. We had to get fast pass tickets for space mountain and haunted mansion. We had to wait a LONG time to use them so we just basically wandered around till then. OMG space mountain in the scariest bloody roller coaster I have ever been on! Think Starlight Express from expo '88 meets Cyclone from Dreamworld & make it 10 times faster. OMG it was freaking great! Then we watched the afternoon Halloween parade, which was ok. The haunted mansion...Nightmare before Christmas style! OMG I was in PURE HEAVEN! Oh man....we taped the whole ride!!!
Today we are headed to Ueno and maybe back to Akihabara.
There is no point in trying to get an early start on your shopping here. Nothing opens till 10-11am. They're all open till about 8-10pm though. Also if you catch the trains before 10am or before 7pm you are likely to be a sardine.
I will never get used to the smoking in restaurants!
Right I had better go back upstairs & get ready for today!
30th October 2005
Man the Japanese are SERIOUS smokers. They all smoke!
The weird thing is that they can smoke in restaurants, bars, hotel lobby, train station etc. But on the street in Ginza & Maranouchi ( where we are staying) and probably other suburbs there are special "smoking" corners on the street. Go figure! They are only JUST introducing a smoking/non smoking sections of restaurants now.
Also we were told that only 2 years ago the police started to crack down on drink drivers....2 YEARS AGO! I guess it's better late than never!
Yesterday we went to Ueno shopping district. There is a awesome 6 level toy store there. We went on an adventure through some side streets....that was interesting. There were a few adult stores & we decided to go into one. It was really funny, like being in a 7/11 because there were lots of people there just browsing & testing the merchandise..in a non rude way :P
There was so many clothing side market shops there too! Then we came back to the hotel cause I was still stuffed from the day before. We decided it was time to try & sort out our purchases & see if we need to get another bag to take it home in. We're still in the middle of it :P
We attempted to go out for dinner last night late around 9pm. It was the start of a bad night. The first restaurant around the corner we went to was closed. It's in a area where there are lots of fountains & these little shallow man made rivers running across the ground from the fountains. So as we were coming back from the restaurant to go to one near the hotel we turned a corner where there were about 7-8 Japanese teenagers hanging out. Sure enough we walked straight into one of the shallow rivers. Which came half way up our shins. So back to the hotel to change clothes & shoes by the time we had done that all the restaurants had closed. GAH!
Today we are sorting out our packing and going to Harajuku.
1st November 2005
Sunday.
We spent this morning packing up our bags to see if we need to buy another one while we were out. Turns out we did need one :)
Then off we went to Harajuku which was not so good shopping wise. But as it was Sunday afternoon + Halloween there were SO MANY cosplay & gothic lolita & punk etc etc out on the bridge. It was awesome!
We then went back to Akihabara to buy another bag to bring home & to have 1 last look around.
Monday we left Japan :( We got back this morning at 7:00am. Neither of us slept at all which sucked, But we just got up from a nap & I am not so tired.
So that was our trip to Tokyo! We didn't want to leave :P
We are currently sorting out all our photo's and video so you might be receiving some soon!
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