Tokyo: Saturday

All right so here it is: the blog post about Tokyo. Finally, I've stopped being so lazy and I'm going to do this. Let's start, shall we?

So in Japan, there is a week that is rightfully known as Golden Week. No, it has nothing to do with King Midas, but it is actually their version of Spring Break.  In the US, we have a week off from school during spring known as Spring Break, but here in Japan, there is a chain of 3 days or so with nothing but holidays so school is out from Thursday-Sunday. Heck, we also got the Monday off too, so I only had school on Tuesday and Wednesday. This was the week starting on April 30th.

So I went to Tokyo with my friend Nikii from the Friday evening where we took the Overnight bus until Sunday evening when we took the bus back. So really it was only 2 long days of Tokyo shenanigans on Sat, May 5th and Sun, May 6th. Nikii actually arranged most of it since she wanted to go to the Dolpa (aka Dolls Party) on Sunday. I had never been much into dolls, but it ended up being really fun and interesting to see something new (for me) and to see how a convention is done in Japan. I DID book the hotel, which was actually a hostel of the Khaosan variety. It ended up being really cheap and a really nice accommodation to boot!

The overnight bus itself wasn't too bad, though it was kind of hard to sleep for me because I have such long legs and we were only on the standard bus, but it was all good in the end! It was cool to see Japanese highways and to see the city from a different perspective other than train.

So we get to Asakusa where our hostel is, and we drop off our things and start our sightseeing early on, though still a bit tired from the bus ride. We went to Kaminari-mon Gate and Sosenji Temple for sightseeing and shopping. The temple and gate were both really beautiful; the architecture is truly a sight to behold. The shopping was also really enjoyable, especially considering the variety of things to buy. I bought a really nice pair of jika-tabi for about 3000yen (almost $40), and they are really comfy and great for walking.

 After shopping though, the crowds were getting really crazy: a sign for us to LEAVE! Afterwards, we decided to head to anime otaku heaven a.k.a. Akihabara (or Akiba for short)! The crowds were big there, too. And rightly so:

Huge buildings with billboards like this EVERYWHERE. You can find pretty much ANYTHING anime/game/geek related things here. I did my fair share of shopping for sure, especially in the six floor Book Off =)

We also did a little cosplay, well Nikii did anyways. I just wore my yukata :3 We even did some cosplay karaoke, which was mostly a breather session but still lots of fun. There were a lot of maids in the streets advertising for their maid cafés, which are very common in Akiba.

Clearly, Akiba is one of those places in Tokyo you HAVE to go to at least once, even if you are not an anime otaku, just to see the geek culture and all the different walks of life, kind of like Harajuku, which will be discussed in the post about Sunday.

After tiring ourselves out from all the excitement from Akiba, we then went back to our room at the hostel to relax. Later, we met up with Nikii's friend from high school, Manami. She was incredibly nice and friendly, and she took us to Tokyo Tower. So all those handkerchiefs and knickknacks I see with the Eiffel Tower engraved on the outside....nope, it's actually Tokyo Tower, and it really does look like its French counterpart. However, Tokyo Tower definitely has its own charm, and the lights at night when we went were really spectacular. We went up to the observatory to see Tokyo from above, and the view was just unparalleled by anything I have seen.

A picture is worth a thousand words (like in Final Fantasy X-2) :P

Afterwards we were greeted by a new set of tower lights.

A great end to an amazing day ^_^