Marks Travels: Tokyo

Friday night was our last night in China. We had to stay late in the office til 9pm to do a sort of last second video conference with St. Louis and then we rushed off to Hong Kong in a company car.

We arrived at our hotel in Hong Kong at midnight, slept for six hours, and then hustled off to the Hong Kong airport (which is walking distance from the hotel). We hopped on our flight to Japan. Up until this point my journeys have been just me and Cody, but we have now joined forces with my other coworkers Shawn, Katie, and Laura. We hopped a bus to the part of town where we were staying in Tokyo, checked into our boutique hotel, and hit the town.

We stayed in a part of town called Shibuya which is a very hip area with lots of restaurants and bars and shopping all packed together. Every store or restaurant was tucked away in a tiny alley, up a flight of stairs, or down in a basement , there’s more stuff going on in one block, than the entire town of St. Ann.

That first night, we didn’t have a lot of time, we ate at a cool very traditional Japanese restaurant. The sushi did not disappoint. It was excellent! Then we hit the shops. I was surprised at the lack of English signage. A lot of times things were not labeled… sometimes the prices weren’t even written on things in English. It was fast paced and very very crowded.

Sunday we were happy to sleep in a little when we found out that nothing is open til 11:00 am. We were disappointed to see it raining however. Our group grabbed several umbrellas from the hotel and did our DUTY… which was to shop for inspiration in this shopping/art/design mecca. We thoroughly shopped Shibuya… which was probably my favorite area with a lot of cool little architechture and some really awesome unique boutiques… but very pricey.

Shibuya was compressed shopping…. But as we walked north through the city, it turned into more of a sprawl of big designer stores and brands… more like NYC. Then we ran into Harajuku.

Harajuku street is world famous for shopping fashion and general weirdness. Kids go to this area to hang out, dress up and show off. Sunday afternoon is supposed to be so jam packed and insanely busy that all the tour stuff that we read said its best for sightseers NOT to go at this time. We were cursed with rain all day, but it seemed to make shopping in Harajuku pretty tame however. It WAS very crowded, but we were able to easily navigate through the sea of umbrellas. I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t crazier … I expected to see some really weird stuff.

After literally walking all day long in the rain, we went back to the hotel soaked and tired. We changed our clothes and then headed back out for dinner, but first we took a short hike over to the train station to buy tickets for our various needs the next day. Katie, Shawn and Laura had arrived in Asia just shortly before Japan, so they had to get back to China the next day and finish their business… but Cody and I were done with our trip. When we booked it we found that we could actually get cheaper airfare if we fly from Tokyo straight home… the catch was that we had to wait an extra day before leaving.

This resulted in a personal day! Mt Fuji! We had planned for it long in advance, but were never really sure if it would work out because of weather, scheduling, transportation, etc…. but by Sunday night… We knew we would ascend the mountain!