In Yatta We Trust

Tokyo...at last! Finally, we arrive in the crazy mega huge Tokyo and we ll be there for a week of pure awesomeness! program : walk, walk and walk again

Tokyo night view from City Hall>

We stayed all the week in Tokyo in Kimi Ryokan in Ikebukuro (north west), a traditional japanese hostel. It was not that expansive, but the rooms were small, no private jakusi ^^. But this was a good starting point to visit tokyo, and it was located near one of the biggest train station in the city.
Speaking of subway and train, it was not easy to understand how it works at first. In tokyo, there are several companies which runs different train and subway so you cannot get anywhere with the same ticket. But after a few days, you kinda understand the whole thing, if they can do it, we could do it

Because we were big nerds, we made our first stop at Akihabara, the electric town. The place to be for all geeks, nerds, Hikikomori, and strange creatures This is the area where you can find all the electronics, computer shops but also manga, video games and toys. Basically each tower is a shop with 4 to 10 floors of stuff. For example you got the action figures shops, each floor is a theme. There is the mecha figurine floor, the final fantasy figurine floor, the big boobies figurine floor ("figurines à gros seins"), a floor for cars and train toys and another one for US figurines (marvel heroes and stuff like that). It's huge! and there are dozens of towers like that. Even though i couldnt find a Goldorak (Grendizer) figure, its too old fashion there

Akihabara, geek paradise

Shibuya

Shibuya is a cool place too, very young and trendy! Lots of fashion shops, game center and clubs. Have a look at the video of this famous crossing, where thousands of people cross the street here every 3 minutes.

On sunday, we went to the Yoyogi park, famous for its weekend animation. There we went to a japanese wedding photograph session. Don't they all look pretty ?

Beside the park is the Harajuku bridge where every weekend, teenagers gather here and dress up like manga characters or visual key stars. They come with their suitcase and put on their weird funny clothes. You got different categories : the dark rocker ones, the gothic lolitas, the one dressed like dolls... They pose proudly for photos, Grom made a friend there. A cool place to go!

Again in Yoyogi park we met these rockabilly addict, who danse on classic rockn roll all day here. That was so funny, these guys are true rockers ^^ they got like 2Kg of wax in their hair and are wearing all the badboys leather stuff. They danse and take pose like Elvis. Whatch the video below!

Some crazy dude and The Beatles!

Ahhhh Ghibli Museum. We had to do it, with that famous photo that everyone takes when they go travelling to Japan. The museum wasn't that great, the building itself is funny, cauz its like a big cartoon mansion, but there were not that much infos on the films and the shop was crappy. Better get your Tottoro stuff in akiba, there is more choice!

We did so much stuff i can't remember. One day we ate the biggest ramen in the world, we were kinda hungry so we took the large 800Y bowl of ramen. There was probably 2Kg of noodles in there. So yummy but so BIG, we managed to finish it. Some dude was sweating and fighting for surviving beside us while eating. That was sport! Going out of the place, i was dying, i couldn't walk. I think i never ate that much in my life. That restaurant was near the Sensoji temple.

We went to the sumo stadium, unfortunately it was not during sumo season. But i managed to snap a photo of a big one here!

At the end of the week we tried the capsule hotel. Here you pay for a night in a capsule, you sleep there in your honeycomb beside japanese business man snoring. You got all the modern confort, a little case to put your clothes. Then you put on their pink sexy pijamas (a pitty i didnt kept it). You go to your capsule, there is a TV inside and a radio. It's 2m long (maybe less because my feet were touching the end of the capsule), 60cm wide.
The thing is that you can't sleep in this place. First because people are snoring or making strange scary noises (there was a porn channel, with blurred film on the TV :), that would explain a lot), and then because everybody sets up their alarm clock at different times. So begining at 5.30am there is some dude waking up, and so on every ten minutes
In the morning you take the elevator in your little pink pijamas to go to the bathroom, and there you take your shower japanese style : on a little pink stool beside other guys. A little gayness was not going to scare us away! You can even take a very hot bath in a swimming pool, like we did in Hakone.

On our last day, we were homeless with our big backpack. We spend the night in a manga cafe, a place where you can stay all night long reading manga or playing ps2 games. With free ice cream and free drinks! Lots of people stay there waiting for the first subway in the morning. We didn't sleep that night, and went straight to the Tsukuji fish market at 6am in the morning.
Tsukuji market is the biggest fish market in Tokyo, and probably in Japan. Every morning, tons of fishes are braught here to be dispatched in tokyo restaurants and shops. We managed to survive here, it's quite dangerous to walk around, because there are lots of electric chariot going around crazy fast. We've seen some big red tunas, octopuss or squid and some other stuff we dont know what it was!

A lot more photos about Tokyo here in my flickr gallery and here!