Day 9 – Return to Tokyo
I woke up in time for my creepy breakfast in the cult hostel and went downstairs to the dining hall. It was a classic Japanese meal with miso soup and rice and such. The food was pretty good but I still felt out of place and couldn’t figure out why there were so many people that lived there. After breakfast I caught the first bus out. Two other people took the same bus, the old lady the I met the day before and a British girl about my age.
The British girl was really nice and we sorta hit it off. She also thought the hostel was pretty creepy and couldn’t figure out what was going on. We both needed internet so I asked around and we finally found a place in the lobby of a hotel where there were pay kiosks. I looked up other hostels including the cheap Tokyo hostel/hotel the guy in Miyajima told me about. As usual, I took a picture of the map and directions off the screen, and when I was done I said goodbye to the British girl and headed back to the station to catch a train to Tokyo. On the train I took a few more pictures of the massive fields and farms just to show that Japan isn’t all city and mountain.
I had decided to just head back to Tokyo early since I was so tired overall and I couldn’t figure out where else I could go with so few days left. I really wanted to see some places up in Tohoku or Hokkaido (the far north), but it would take too long to get up there and back. Even on a bullet train, it takes 10 hours to get to Hokkaido from Tokyo. It also leaves me something new to see late. Hokkaido is the Alaska of Japan and is mostly beautiful wilderness. It wouldn’t be as easy traveling and getting to the beautiful places up there, so I’ll go back one day when I have more time, money, and experience.
I didn’t end up doing too much this day because I got to Tokyo so late. I found the hotel without too much trouble and checked in. I say hotel because you get individual rooms, but they were hostel prices (about $23 I think). It was just a tiny room with tatami and a futon on the floor with a little chest with a TV in the corner. It was similar to my Kyoto apartment, but even smaller. I doubt most foreigners would fit lengthwise in there but it was fine for me since I’m Japanese-sized.
I left my things in the hotel and went around to explore Tokyo a little bit before it got too late. It was especially exciting to be able to drop my stuff off again and wander around without a heavy backpack. I mainly just did a quick run around the most famous places to see what Tokyo was all about. There’s a rail line that runs around the center of Tokyo called the Yamanote, and it covers pretty much all of the modernly famous places in Tokyo. I did one run around that getting off about every stop or two just to get a flavor for all the places I’d heard so much about over the years.
First I stopped off somewhere that didn’t have anything famous but had the tourist office for Tokyo. I got a map of the city and rail/subway lines that was the envy of everyone who saw it in the coming months. I don’t know why you can’t get that map anywhere else, but it’s extremely useful if you’re ever in Tokyo. That tourist office is a little out of the way and hard to find but it’s worth it. When I was looking at my map out on the street once a lady who spoke pretty good English came up and asked if I needed help. I thought that was really nice of her but I told her I knew how to get around and I was just deciding where to go.
For once I don’t think I’ll go into detail about what I saw here. Everywhere I went this day, I visited again in more depth and nothing particularly special happened. The city places aren’t really something that can be experienced alone. This time I was really just wandering around taking on the feel of Tokyo, but it’s hard to really experience it without having other people there and getting in to do the things you do in these places. So I’ll write about the Yamanote sites (Harajuku, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Akihabara, etc) when I come back with friends from school.
After it got dark and I had some dinner at a little outside ramen shop in Akihabara, I headed back to hotel. I just chatted with some people in the lobby there for a bit before going to bed.
