Good Day Everyone,
Well technically it would be おはようございます because it is currently 0400 in the morning while I am writing this. This story is going to talk about my multiple trips in Tokyo. My first experience in Japan was in 2014 when I did a computer science study abroad program and we were hosted at Waseda University. I remember I invited my sister and an ASU friend to travel with me before my program started so we arrived in Tokyo two weeks early so we could explore Japan. At this point my sister has already came and visited Hong Kong when I was living there and we made it into a tradition of whenever I travel and stay somewhere for a long period of time that she comes visit.
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We flew from LAX to Haneda Airport which was an 13 hour flight boy we were exhausted on top of us skipping a whole day because of the time difference of Japan time zone and the Pacific Time zone.I remember the plane circulating for an hour because there was too many planes arriving at the airport at the same time. When we got off the plane my sister rushed to the toilet and she came out looking puzzled and asked me how is she supposed to use them. The toilets in that bathroom were essentially open holes and I though it was so funny. The toilets in Japan usually have seats but some do not. The toilets also have waters jets that you push a button and a rush of water shoots into your butt. The toilet had other functions too like singing a song and controlling the temperature of the seat and water stream. My friend welcomed us when we arrived in Tokyo. He is from Yokohama and I did not realize how big the metropolitan Tokyo area is.
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We arrived late and I reserved a room at a YMCA somewhere in Tokyo. I tried to convince my sister to sleep in the infamous pod hotels but she is too elegant for that. I remember when I called them to check on the reservation and they put me on hold and the ice cream truck song was playing on their phone. It was so strange and funny me. It is strange that the YMCA is used as a hotel in Japan because I am not aware of any YMCA’s in the USA that does that. The breakfast at the YMCA was delicious. I had some type of soup with some vegetables and something similar to kimchi with a side of rice. There was an American woman and her son that were eating breakfast next to us and the mom was telling us that she came with her 7-9 year son because he wanted to see a real live ninja show. I thought that the most amazing thing to hear and to see that lady exposing her kid to different cultures outside the US. My sister and I told each other when we have kids we will take them all over the world so they will have the opportunity to see how vast and beautiful different regions of the world are. A lot Americans do not leave the country for some pseudo fear about safety abroad which the media is mainly responsible for.
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The main parts of Tokyo you hear about is Shinjuku and akihabara which are the most busy parts of Tokyo. Shinjuku is where the night life is with all of these different themed bars and restaurants. there is a robot restaurant where they robots serve you food and take your order. There is also animae themed restaurants where the waitresses are dressed up in some character. I went with my classmates to one of them where they were dressed like a princess or something and had us saying these enchantments to pretty much beg for the food. It was very strange but funny and they get you with the service charges it is expensive more than the food.
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Akihabara is known for Animae. You walk around and see animae characters everywhere. There are also tons of sega arcades there too. It was surprising going to the arcades and I would expect to see kids playing in the arcades but it is mainly adults in suites. It is like a leisure to play arcade after work and those places people smoke so much that it was hard for me to breath. these places have like 12 floors to them. I played this one local guy in street fighters in the arcade and he beat my ass in that game. I barely got two hits in and he pulled a BIG KO on me (game players know what that means) to where the screen turned black and 火 symbol showed. That is like the worse type of KO to get in street fighters. I went to play someone in Dance Dance Revolution, never again will I play that game. They take it so serious I never even knew what that support bar behind the dance mat was for until I played a guy. Warning, if a person put their hands back and leans back before the game starts that means they are about go crazy on that game.
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Y0u would see mario kart characters driving around the city which was the coolest thing ever! In 2014 I wanted to to it but some reason we did not do it but I think it was because we needed an international drivers license. I ended up doing Mario Kart in Yokohama in 2018 since I was out there for work at the Navy base and I did not need to use a international license. Of course I went as my best character Yoshi and I drove around Yokohama fore 3 hours during a Typhoon to make it more interesting.
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This was Waseda University which is equvalent to Harvard in the US or Oxford in the UK or Tsinghua dauxue in China.
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We went to this place called the Tree Tower in Tokyo where this is the tallest structure in Tokyo and you can oversee the whole metropolitan area. Tokyo has the largest metropolitan area in the world which I believe it is 36 million people. That is equivalent to the population of the State of New York.
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Translations in Japan have literal meaning. One morning we had breakfast and they offered pancakes but when I ate it it was very sweet like cake batter so I had to ask why the pancake was so sweet and apparently a pancake in Japan is a sweet versus the USA it is not sweet. The orange juice they gave was literally orange but it was not oranges it was apricot juice. You know that confused look you get when you think something is going to taste a certain way, but it taste totally different from what you expected that is the expression I had on my face.
Another crazy thing about ordering food in Japan is that in fast food places like ramen shops, sushi shops etc you order your food from a machine that spits out a ticket and you give it to the chef and he prepares the meal from that. Some sushi bars they have a conveyor belt that circles around with different pieces of sashimi and you just grab whatever you want and they count your bill from the number of plates that you stacked up and by their color code.
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I was taken on a tour of disneyland, we went to the Nissan factory with our professor, and we also went to the Tokyo main broadcasting TV station which was amazing. There were autonomous robots everywhere. The broadcasting station was working at that time of ultra HD television like 8K or 4K i forget but it definitely was not out in the US at that time.
So eventually I went to Osaka and took the Shinkansen which is the fastest train in the world. It was so fun but Osaka will be for another post. To be continued…….
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