Tokyo - Part One

I arrived in Tokyo around 6 in the morning on March 20th. The sun was up, but the streets were still quiet. Prior to that day, I had only seen a glimpse of Tokyo as I passed through on the way from the airport to Yamagata, so on this morning, everything was still new to me. I met my friend Yukari at Ueno Station, and we jumped on the train to go meet Vaibhav at Narita Airport. Despite his already-dark complexion, Vaibhav was noticeably tanned from his many days under the sun in Thailand and India.

Ginza

After a bowl of ramen for breakfast at the airport, the three of us took the train back to Ueno station, and changed to another train to head to our hotel in Akabane. We dropped off our stuff, then got back on the train to begin our adventures in Tokyo. First stop: Ginza, the famous high-priced shopping area. We wandered around a bit, eventually making our way to the very impressive, four-story Apple Store. I had intended to replace the battery in my iPod, but declined when I found out that they actually give you an entirely new unit (which is actually a pretty good deal for around $50, but means you lose all your songs and data, and I didn't want to do that).

Akihabara

After lunch, we took another train, this time to Akihabara, the otaku heartland where you can find endless stores full of electronics, video games, computers, manga, anime, plastic models, and so on. Vaibhav was on a mission to find a little electronic turtle he'd seen that can dance around, have races, and do other amazing feats, and Akihabara was the best place to look. Sure enough, it wasn't long before he found and bought one of those little critters. I wanted to have a look at a new MIDI keyboard I've been waiting for, and I knew I could probably find it at Sofmap. It turns out, though, that Sofmap's many departments are spread out across 16 separate locations in Akihabara, and it was an adventure in itself trying to figure out which one to visit!

This area is truly an otaku paradise, and there were indeed many shining examples of Japan's special class of nerds to be seen in every corner of the endless parade of colorful stores.

Shinjuku

Next stop: Shinjuku. Although Tokyo is spread out across many different wards, Shinjuku is pretty much the central "downtown" part of it. This is where all the young people go to shop, hang out, and party. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around here, strolling through the many busy streets and the infamous Kabukicho — once the entertainment capital of the city, and now its red light district. I've heard things don't get interesting around there until after dark, though, and the sun was still up when we wandered through.

On the last day of our trip, we ended up back in Tokyo, and I had a chance to take plenty of nighttime photos of Shinjuku. I've grouped them together with the shots from the 20th.

Akabane

Yukari lives in this part of the city, so I booked a hotel for Vaibhav and I in the same area. We went back to the hotel, dropped off our stuff, and went to a delicious okonomiyaki and monja place for dinner. The rest of the evening was spent strolling through the very peaceful shopping streets in the area, which seemed like a blissful paradise compared to the insanity of Akihabara and Shinjuku.