So Will and I left 3 of our suitcases to get delivered tomorrow morning and we made our way to downtown Tokyo with one small carry-on suitcase. Downtown Tokyo is about 2 hrs away from the airport and taking a cab will cost about $300 so we did public transit. The public transit here is REALLY confusing because there's the trains and the subway and BOTH of them have multiple companies that run them. They all connect but since they are different companies, you have to buy a transfer to switch between systems. It's pretty tricky but we made it! Unfortunately, once we got out of the subway, it was pouring out! We needed to walk two blocks to our hotel in the pouring rain. Our North Face rain jackets were in our suitcases being delivered tomorrow so we had to use our ghetto rain ponchos I stuffed in my backpack in case of emergencies. Well surprise surprise, we opened them to find out they were the ghettoest rain ponchos. People were looking at us like we were crazy like they've never seen a rain poncho.. and maybe they haven't seen ones like ours because our ghetto ones were practically sleeveless!! Who makes sleeveless rain ponchos? Anyways, we made it to our hotel. Our hotel is really clean and cool looking but the rooms are TINY (smaller than the ones in NYC).
After we checked in at the hotel, we walked around the immediate area which is an area called Shinjuku. We ate breakfast but missed lunch and it was too early for dinner so we decided to get a small snack off the 100yen menu (similar to the dollar menu) at McDonalds! Will basically got a big fried chicken patty. I ordered the "McPork" which ended up tasting EXACTLY like their breakfast sausage patty on a hamburger bun. I must admit, it was pretty tasty! Then we walked around. Japan is already amusing me with their strange habits. One thing we noticed is there are numerous arcades that have only crane games. You know, the ones where you pick up a toy with a crane?!? Well, they have them with all different sorts of prizes ranging from toys, ice cream, tupperware, etc. Some are a regular crane and others are more difficult like trying to position a skinny pole to fit through a small hole. It costs about $1.50 USD to play and people play 10 or more times to win what is often a cheap prize (ranges from ice cream-Tupperware sets). The weird part of it is many of the patrons are grown men! They are there in their business suits playing over and over again until they've spent $20 to win a small anime figurine. This cracks me up because everyone talks about how the Japanese are workaholics and there's even an official cause of death being "overworked". Apparently these Japanese guys aren't working as much as they're trying to win crane games.
As you can see above, Will loved the selection of gumball machine toy prizes. Isn't insane how many there are?? And they're not just for kids! I'm on the right with the crane machine that picked up ice cream.
Next, we had dinner. We went to Izakaya place which is like Japanese Tapas. Everyone on the menu is 270 yen and so you order a bunch of small plates. You order using this small touch screen on your computer and then they deliver the food. The food was pretty good but the only random thing is when we ordered "fried shrimp," the shrimp came as just the heads. We didn't eat much of that one.
Now it's time to rest up for tomorrow. Tokyo is going to be even more exciting than Seoul because we have lots of activities planned in our itinerary! On a random note: Japan is really expensive just like everyone says! It also feels especially bad after coming from Korea where everything was so cheap! Oh well!
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