Day 2 - Asakusa

Today we spent the day in Asakusa (ah-suk-oo-sa).
The big attraction here is the Senso-ji Temple. These is a large iconic gate at the front which is followed by a long path towards the temple. This path is lined with lots of market stalls. There is also other streets off this main road with even more shopping and places to get food.
Below is our group in front of the main gate to the Senso-ji Temple.

The temple is a very big shrine and therefore has the customs to go along with it.
There was a large place to burn inscents were you were meant to push the smoke onto your body where you would like to be healed (push the smoke onto your back if you have back pains, etc.)

This market place had gift shops, toy shops and places to eat and drink.
One of the first places we noticed was this automated machine that makes small snacks. These snacks looked like biscuits, but they were soft sponge with some sweet filling. I believe the filling was some sort of bean mash.
For ￥200 we got at least 10 of these snacks in a bag, which works out to be $2 - $3 all together.

A little further up the path there was a sweet (non-alcoholic) sake stand. A cup of the sake cost ￥100 (~ $1.30) and was hot and really sweet, which was great because it was like having a hot cup of tea on a cold day that warms you up from the inside.
After chatting to one of the workers there, we found out that when they make the alcoholic Japanese sake by fermenting rice, the left overs are mixed with sugar
and water to make this.

The strange part for us was that they asked everyone to drink in a particular area and not to walk away with the cups. They were disposable plastic, but I guess this guarantees no litter.

The costumes that the workers here were wearing looked like traditional Japanese clothing, but then some customers (below) were also wearing the same sort of clothing. They look very intricate and add to the whole feel of this place.

As for crazy costumes, I had to get a photo with this guy! This pretty short old man had a stall in the market, but we weren't interested in what he wanted to sell, just his choice of clothes.

Surrounding the main temple were lots of small shrines for different things. Below is a shot of our group in front of a shrine for the god of luck.

The shrines them selves looked so great and were topped off by the really nice gardens the surrounded them.

 

Just behind the main temple was an amusement park with rides and games. We were about to go in but realized the price of admission and then the rides were fairly steep and that we would be going to Disneyland soon enough so decided to go get some lunch and give it a miss.

For lunch we walked through the market place and found a McDonalds! Instead of eating there, we decided to go with a more Japanese meal instead, which was right across the path.
Robert ordered a shrimp dish and sounded quite pleased with it and I ordered noodle soup with pork. The soup itself had lots of flavor and I think it had tofu pieces in it, but I couldn't really tell.
We also ordered the real alcoholic sake, which was very strong!
It is served hot in a small ceramic jug and just as I put my lips up against the little ceramic cup, just the fumes made me cough, lol.
I had about a cup and a half, but only to help Sarma finish off the jug :)

Just near this restaurant was a place called "Jumbo" which is a "Pachinko" place. We went in here mainly because Anthony was trying to find a toilet. When we opened the door the it was like we just walked in to a supersized, extremely loud timezone, but the games were just slot machines and some sort of marble game.

This photo does not do the size of this place any justice - it was massive!
Flashing lights as far as we could see and so loud that we had to yell to each other to talk.

That night we discovered the rest of our Aoyama-itchome train station and found that there was a sub-way (sandwich place) and lots of other places to eat in the building.
So that night we went to an Italian restaurant here (after checking that the prices were reasonable).
The food was ok, but the pizzas were "Italian style". In other words, very little topping on cruchy pita bread that explodes with you put your fork to it!
We also order pasta (which had chilli through it... yuck) and desert which consisted of a glass with ice-cream, cream, custard, banana, chocolate, corn flakes, topping and some sort of (what we think was) alcoholic sauce.

The language barrier is proving to be a little difficult, but we are doing pretty good and our Japanese vocabularies are slowly growing :)

After dinner we went for a walk around town and then back to the hotel to find out that the rest of the group had arrived. Their room is just down the hall a little so we did a very brief introduction and called it a night.

Not a bad effort for our first full day!

Day 1 - Arrival

Today we left Melbourne at 6:00 AM to go to the Gold Coast, from there we would go to Narita Airport in Tokyo!
After minor delays arriving in the Gold Coast due to bad weather, we finally got there where we had to collect our bags from the domestic arrivals and check them into the international departures. After we were all checked in we got some breakfast in the food court and waited for our flight.

The flight did not include food, etc. so we ended up buying sandwiches, snacks and drinks every now and then, but still didn't spend too much.
After a pretty long flight, we finally got Tokyo! There was a train to get from the plane/gates to the rest of the airport, but it looked like it didn't go very far (easy walking distance).
Once we got through customs (which was pretty simple) and got our bags, we caught the "SkyLiner" to Ueno, and from there we caught the Tokyo Metro to Aoyama-itchome which is only a short walk to our hotel.

The train, train stations and all the streets are so clean. No graffiti, litter or vandalism anywhere! They have people on the platforms with wireless microphones to announce the trains, and they depart perfectly on time! Its amazing how smooth such as complex system can run.
Ticketing was fairly straight forward, we simply found the name of the station we wanted on a board to find the price of the ticket we need. If we were to get it wrong though, at each station is another machine called a "ticket adjustment machine" where you can get a refund if you paid too much, or an opportunity to pay the remaining fee if you didn't pay enough.
There was also a pre-paid card option called a "Pasmo" which requires a ¥500 deposit.

We eventually got to our hotel and the staff were already expecting us and before we knew it we were settled in to our room. Our room was pretty good, nice and basic. We were in the "old" building, while Anthony and Amy were in the "new" building, but their room was much smaller.

It was late and we were tired, but we got to make a quick call home and went to to get some dinner. After talking to the hotel staff, we went for a quick walk and found a small fast food place just around the corner from the hotel. There was also a "Family Mart" which is like a 7-11. The fast food place was strange, but we were lucky enough to see a local person order first. There was a couple of vending machines were we order from. You put money in, choose (or in our case guess) if you want take-away or eat in, press a button to pick your meal and it will give you a ticket, then you just sit down and eventually someone brings you your meal.

We also had our first experience with a bidet. This is what the toilet in our hotel room looks like.

As soon as you sit on it, it starts to flush justs a little to make sure its clean.
When your finished, there is a "spray" button that squirts you with warm water. There is also a "bidet" button, but I think that is just for women. When your done, you just press "stop" and dry up. Pretty weird but its a little more advanced than the hose from Thailand :)

Preparation

In about 9 days, we will be leaving leaving for Tokyo, Japan!

I have always wanted to see Japan partially because its the electronics capital of the world, and I love gadgets :)
Also because so many people have told me what an amazing time they have had when they went there and it has caught my interest ever since.

I wanted to go on this trip now to celebrate finishing my 4 year degree at RMIT. This is really the perfect time for me to go because I just finished uni and resigned from my part time job. Now I have a few months off before starting my new graduate position in 2010 and then its full time work... forever!

Oh yea, and we get to celebrate New Years Eve in Tokyo!! :D

The preparation has been pretty good for this trip. Initially it started as getting estimates for flights, accommodation and living expenses to see if anyone else would be interested in coming along - which we now have about 10 people in our group.
Then came all the research into places to see, things to do, etc. - which was largely due to Amy, who is almost as pedantic as me when it comes to organisation!

So, at this point, I think all we have left to do is to pack and go!! :D
We have organised passports, flights (and seating), accomodation, travel insurance, cash, money on a mastercard, day trip plans, registration with smarttraveller, confirmed medical considerations, formatted my eeepc, setup a wiki (with most of the important info), set up a VoIP account and software and now this blog.

... Now I just have to learn to eat Japanese food :P