The last four days in Japan I used to see some more sights in Tokyo, going to Nikko and Yokohama and meet with local couchsurfers in Tokyo to celebrate the cherry blossom and experience the night life of Tokyo.
Since my last entry, I could use the rest of my time to slow down a little bit. Luckily my host Alisa in Tokyo could have me over again, so I didn't had to deal with people coming back home at 1 or 2am and others that got up at 5am already in the hostels.
I went to see the East Gardens, were I've seen the Japanese Royal Family by accident. Later at night I met Oliver and his girlfriend again. We went together to Akihabara to a Maidcafe. So much fun and it is it's own experience. Later that night, we went up to the famous New York Bar in the Park Hyatt Hotel. It's been known from the movie "Lost in translations". I had one glass of whiskey for about 30 euros. Pretty expensive. They had live music there and the view from the top floor was amazing.
The day later I actually tried to get up earlier to go to Nikko, but for some reason I couldn't get up in the morning! Instead I went to a Couchsurfing meeting organized from a local girl from Tokyo. We were a group with about 15 people. We did the a boat tour along all the white and pink cherry trees! The blossom was amazing!
After that tour we went to see two different parks. The last one was Ueno park. All the Japanese people were celebrating Hanami. Thousands were sitting in the park, having drinks and food together with friends and family. We also had a place to sit down and simply having a good time. It was such a nice atmosphere there with all the trees and the little lamps.
On Friday I managed to get up early at 4:30 am to see Tsukiji the fish market of Tokyo. Together with some other Couchsurfers I explored the market which was very busy. You could easily tell that the people working there were definitely annoyed by all the tourists blocking their way and tacking pictures. You really had to watch out to not get hit by one of those small tiny cars they all drive there. People say that at the fish market in Tokyo you get the best Sushi on the world. To get in the restaurant that's famous for that, you had to wait in a queue for more than two hours. I can't say much about it, as I don't like fish and seafood at all, but people definitely seamed to like it.
My next destination after the fish market was Nikko. I took the Shinkansen one more time heading to North of Tokyo for an hour and another hour with a local train. "Nikko is Nippon" that was written nearly everywhere on the train and in Nikko. The town itself is famous for it's temples and shrines. Most of the sights are UNESCO world heritage. I spent about two or three hours there to see them. It was rainy at the beginning, the sun came a bit later, that's why many pictures I have from Nikko are rainy unfortunately.
Compared to all the other places I've seen in Japan, the tickets for the entrance were three times more expensive and you had to pay extra for each area. Because of that, I ran out of money very quickly. But nearly all the ATMs in Japan don't accept foreign cards. You hardly can pay with credit-cards, so I had a problem somehow I was really getting hungry and couldn't buy anything to eat. Finding an international ATM in a small town where almost no one speaks English at all was a bit annoying.
Saturday, my last full day in Japan I slept until noon to adapt a bit to the European time zone again. I went to Yokohama in the afternoon for a bit. I took some pictures of China town and the port, which is Japan's biggest. I was lucky, because on that day also Japan's biggest ship was in the harbor.
Saturday night I met Michael. We had our last Japanese dinner. We had Shabu Shabu in a place my host recommended in Ginza. Later that night we went to 8bit cafe in Shinjuku. That was a great place. It was tiny and they played music from very old computer games from the eighties and early nighties. They had very old Nintendo computers and tons of games to play. It was fun to play some of them again. I had a cocktail called "Dr. Mario" there. Later we had a short stopover in a Metal bar and it was nice to listen to Rammstein music in Tokyo.
The last place we went to was in Shibuya: Club Atom. It's a famous club there. The entrance fee was pretty expensive and I had again the problem with running out of money and no international ATMs or English speaking people to ask for directions close by.
The club had three floors, one for commercial club music, one with Hip Hop and the third we stayed at, played Rave/Techno/Trance, which was pretty good. We stayed there until five in the morning and headed back home for a short rest before we flew back to Europe today...
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Japan Tour 2010
Releated articles of my tour
- Japan Tour 2010
Main article about the trip
- Day 4
All about Tokyo and first impressions of Japan
- Day 11
Visiting Kyoto, Hiroshima and it's sad history, Himeji castle, Osaka, Nara
- Day 12
My incredible trip to mount Fuji, having a bath in an Onsen and walking around in Kawaguchiko
- Day 16
Tokyo again in cherry blossom, fish market Tsukiji, seeing the three monkies in Nara and Yokohama
Photoblogs from the trip