April 8th, 2009

At about 8 o’clock this morning we arrived after a very long night on the bus at the Tokyo train station.  I was extremely tired and exhausted as the lack of sleep is catching up with me but I can sleep when I am dead.  So I was ready to start the day after a little star bucks pick me up. 

 

First we went to find our hostel to see if we could place our bags down for the day.  The direction my mom gave me were perfect and we found the hostel by 9 am, it was a piece of cake.  I could already tell the hostel was nicer than hostels I have stayed in before.  There was a full snack/ coffee bar downstairs with computers and tables.  The woman at the front desk showed us where we could place our bags for the day until we could check in.  Once we were all settled and made sure that Jessica and Amanda were able to get a room we headed out for the day.  All the girls yesterday had decided they wanted to go to Tokyo Disneyland.  I was pretty apprehensive but didn’t say anything.  I was honestly hoping it might be too much money and that we would have to find something else to do.  Although the tickets weren’t too expensive and we decided to go, at the beginning of the day I wasn’t too excited because I thought there were other things I was supposed to be seeing doing or people to be meeting.  After the first ride I realized I needed to at least have fun with what we were doing and enjoy my day.  The Disneyland was almost identical to ours with the exception of many things being in English with Japanese underneath it.  Many of the rides songs were partially in English and partially in Japanese which was interesting. We went on all the main rides like Space Mountain, Honey I Shrunk the Audience (that was still really amusing in Japanese), the log ride, it’s a small world (I hate the ride but agreed to go on since we have been going around the world) and finally pirates of the Caribbean.   For some reason I found all the Japanese women dressed up in their costumes were so much more funny than at home, although they were the same silly uniforms.  A few other things that made me laugh was the popcorn with soy sauce and the seafood that was offered at a few of the food courts.  On our way out we were trying to find a shirt that said Disneyland Tokyo, one would think this task would be easy.  But I found it easier to find thousands of pairs of boxers instead of t-shirts.  We never did find the t-shirts and gave up finally heading back to the hostel to check in and get ready for the night. 

 

I was hoping to make it back to the hostel so I could walk to the imperial palace before it close at 5 although we arrived back at the hostel at 4:45.  So we got settled into our room and took a quick nap while others showered.  Once we were all ready we had asked the front desk of a converbelt sushi restaurant near by we could go to.  The restaurant was two blocks away and a very local place.  This was the highlight of my day!! We all sat down and were slightly confused how to order or how it worked.  They didn’t speak much English in the restaurant but we eventually figured it out.  You could pick things up off the belt, and according to which color plate you took that was how much that sushi cost.  For example a blue plate was the cheapest I believe a little more than a dollar, then a green plate about 2 dollars going up to a black plate that would cost 8.  We started off simple ordering some type of salad from the dollar plates.  It was one of the most amazing things I have ever had.  I loved it so much I asked for another.  I then saw Dylan get something made for her in a seaweed hand roll, she said it was even better than salad I just had.  I ordered one of those and completely agreed with Dylan.  We weren’t too sure what we were eating or ordering but new it was amazing.  I then asked our waitress to pick her favorite, again not sure what it was but I trusted her and loved what she ordered me.  I was still slightly hungry and hadn’t even spent ten dollars yet.  So I ordered one more roll of a similar type to what was in our hand roll to finish off my meal.  Courtney and Anna once again went somewhere else for dinner but joined us later and had a little saki.  We convinced Courtney to try the “amazing roll” that’s what I am going to call it since I am not sure what it was.  Courtney looked hesitant but tried it, she loved it!! We knew that if they were able to eat the right kind of sushi they would enjoy it.  Courtney ordered her own roll and I was pleased we were finally able to show them how good sushi was.  That night was the best sushi I have ever had and the cheapest ever.  It was cheaper than any meal I had previous to this one in Japan and tasted better than any of them.  After such a great dinner we were ready to go out and experience Tokyos night life. 

 

We were told that all the young kids go out in a place called Shibaya.  We took the subway there but I knew we would be heading back to late to catch the subway and would need a taxi.  So I had money set aside for the end of the night for the taxi, which is extremely expensive compared to the subway.  When we got off the subway we weren’t sure which way to head but there were so many lights and people everywhere it didn’t look like you make a bad decision.  I was amazed by the lights, and everything going on I thought this might be what it felt like in New York City Time Square.  I will have to make it there one day to make the comparison.  We were determined to find a club to go dancing because that is what we thought we should do.  That turned out to be a much harder task than we thought.  We wandered around for a very long time asking locals and finding out that not many clubs were open because it was a Wednesday.  Also some bars we tried to go into wouldn’t let us in because we were white; other had a cover charge of 10 dollars we weren’t willing to spend.  After some more wandering we met some more locals and asked them where we should go.  There was a very nice man who made me laugh because he had a British accent but was clearly Japenese.  He explained he had studied abroad in England for 5 years and may have picked up the accent, I wasn’t sure I believed it but I went with it.  He looked about 28 and was nice enough to walk us in the right direction of where we thought we might find the club.  He even got on his phone and started looking up clubs and the phone numbers calling them to make sure they were  open.  We walked with him for about ten minutes and didn’t make much progress, the other girls were getting annoyed he didn’t seem to know where he was going.  For some reason I trusted him and thought he knew what he was talking about.  I knew he wasn’t dangerous as there were 7 of us and people everywhere.  He said if we were patient and walked another ten minutes we would find a club.  Although the girls at this point were fed up and decided we just wanted to go to a karaoke bar.  Our tour guide for the night understood and found us a karaoke bar and we parted ways.  We went in and it was I believe a 12 story karaoke place.  We each paid 8 dollars for 30 minutes of a karaoke in a private room and all the drinks we wanted.  We went up in the room and had a blast singing!! I was glad it looked like everyone was finally having a great night.  We stayed in the room until the kicked us out when we ran up our time.  When we were done some of the girls were ready to go back to the hostel because we were going to wake up bright and early to go to the famous fish market!! Anna, Courtney and I decided to stay out a little longer.  Anna had been trying so hard all night asking people where we could find dancing and wasn’t that successful.  Although the last young girl she asked, said “I speak English! You want to have fun come with me!!” and we did just that.  She was heading downstairs into a small bar.  There weren’t too many people but it was the first place we had been in with young kids and were people were actually dancing.  To my surprise there were even a couple of other SAS kids.  We each had one last drink and enjoyed dancing for another hour or so.  Here I also met a kid who is studying abroad in Tokyo but goes to UCSB.  It is instances like that that make me realize how small the world actually is.  We finally made it back to the hostel around 2:30 I think and I was getting up at 5:45 to go to the fish market.