Tokyo + Sendai

Tokyo:

Had a decently unpleasant overnight flight from Sydney to Tokyo, even with premium economy seats which I was led to believe gave a lot of reclining space which in practicality didn’t. Maybe if you’re under 6foot tall. Personally I couldn’t get comfy at all and may as well have just been in economy, the seats are simply not made for larger people, leg rest was utterly useless and the ANA catalogue and infotainment system may as well have been running on windows 95 ,it was so last century. Suffice to say once in Tokyo when we landed at 5am, I was quite out of it for most of the day running on no sleep similar to my Canada trip, yet again 20yr old Rosyth would think I’m quite the little bitch for complaining about going 1 day no sleep.

Started the day off by wondering around Tokyo airport (haneda) and sort of sitting in a sleepless daze as we had to wait until 645am to collect our JR rail passes which is essentially the Japanese version of a eurail pass, lets us catch all JR branded trains in Japan including Shinkansen (bullet train) so a very cost effective option. This was the first introduction to japans oddly outdated vibe and poor flow or as my housemate jack from five dock would call it Feng shui (the Chinese art of arranging objects and spaces to create harmony and balance). Japan is full of nonsensical and poor flow arrangements such as immigration into the country, nearly everything they run off (besides parading as a very modern country) uses paper. For example our $800 JR passes are solely a paper slip, that if lost or damaged negates it for everything and you cannot get a replacement one, you need to buy a new one. This paper slip needs to be accessed often for all transport and is linked to your passport so you must have your passport with you when travelling too which is a nuisance. I’m not quite sure why this country is so paper dominant despite having such ridiculously complex systems and pioneering lots of high tech products. Anyway, poor user experience is a staple of Japan, lucky for me I speak enough Japanese for that to not be an actual issue.

We then caught the Tokyo monorail from the airport to hamamatsucho the suburb our hostel was in and dropped off our luggage there for the day. The monorail was insanely gorgeous with nice big windows and seats that were 100% designed to flex the view of the harbour on anyone travelling. Went to grab breakfast or really dinner again since we hadn’t slept a wink at CoCo ichibanya we all had pork katsu udon. The style of restaurant we went to is very common in Japan and you have to pay a pretty penny to experience the same in Australia (roughly triple). You essentially waltz into the table you want to eat at and order off an iPad connected to the wall and your food arrives very very quickly, when done just go and pay at the counter. Pioneering amazing food experiences like this and then having that contrasted by how non digital the rest of the country is astounds me. Post udon noodle, we went to the anime area in Tokyo a place called Akita. Entire street and main avenues completely lined with anime figurines of Pokémon, bleach, studio gibli characters etc. Liao really wanted to do some shopping and find a specific hello kitty stuffed toy for his girlfriend (which we were unsuccessful in finding) at this mega superstore called donkee a 7 story behemoth that sells literally everything from skincare and makeup, anime figurines, suitcases to the most niche sex toy, we even found lingerie for men which is not something I thought existed. Walked away from this shop with 2 pairs of joke socks to give away. There were some very cute totoro and Kiki’s delivery service socks I wanted to get Kiera, unfortunately Japanese people are very small and the largest socks they had were still tiny.

After this we caught a monorail to one of the artificial islands from Akiba which was basically the entire start to finish of that line, I’m told the views are very spectacular, I however trusted that my friends would be paying attention and opted to rest my eyelids for a while. We travelled to this virtual museum experience called team labs which boasted lots of sensory experiences etc. Liao had booked which was good as it’s so popular it’s impossible to enter without a booking. We had to take our shoes off as one of the exhibits had water knee deep. The museum was really cool, there was a large room filled with mirrors and lots of lights, a room filled with water and projections onto the water, another room with mirrors and flowers where you sat in the middle of the room and it kind of felt like you were falling through the fabric of the universe. A lot of the sensory (touch) exhibits were a bit pointless, they were meant to be thought provoking about space and your place in time and matter blah blah, but it was really just a dimly lit room that you walked through with black mattresses in it. We then went to the sensory and “athletic” exhibit which visually looked very cool. There were exhibits with essentially semi circles on the ground, lit up from projections so it looked like you were hopping across mushrooms which a lot of people struggled with balance wise. I was fairly skeptical as I know from my time on exchange in a Japanese high school how ridiculously unathletic the Japanese population is, maybe it was harder than it looks though. I decided to put my thoughts of superiority to the test, disappointingly all these balance obstacles were very very easy, easily done with my hands in pockets. Clearly the Japanese population need to spend their childhood rock hopping in rock pools like I did to acquire these skills. We then went and had dinner at sushi train which was pretty cool, a loooot of raw fish. Then I went to bed at around 6pm whilst Liao and Vivek went to wander Ginza the busy section of Tokyo for some shopping.

Next morning woke up and went and got some onigiri from this shop near the train station that locals had been swarming the previous day so I figured it must’ve been good. Zero English signs or speakers, so it was a bit of a mission to read what the sushi rolls had inside them. I can read the hiragana and katana alphabets decently well but a lot of food has kanji randomly mixed in which shares lots of characters with the Chinese and Korean alphabets and it’s ridiculously complex so I ended up just asking the owner in Japanese. It’s a very good feeling conversing in complete Japanese with the locals, it’s also quite funny to see the relief flood from there faces as they’re dreading speaking English or whatever potential European language they assume I speak when they hear my Japanese which I’ve been told multiple times now has no accent which throws them off massively.

Went to Tokyo tower, then back to hostel to check out and go grab the Shinkansen to Sendai about 1hr 30min north. The express train we were intending on taking ended up being seat reservations only which we didn’t have. Now, theoretically you can book seat reservations through the JR railway pass website, however according to this website my account does not exist and I cannot send a reset password. Liao has a similar experience where he has access to his account but according to the website he does not possess any JR rail pass. Yet another pleasant experience in the user experience of Japanese systems. We then had to go back to the main station and get a seat reservation from a kiosk which was a fairly quick and easy experience. Just a pain in the butt. we then spent two hours on the Shinkansen travelling from Tokyo to Sendai. It was good fun to look at my phone and see we were at an average of 238 km an hour. I was sat next to a Japanese businessman, who was eating some sort of bun that he looked like he was enjoying and I asked him if he was enjoying it. Now, he as a Japanese person clearly is not used to people striking up conversation, and when I asked him “oishi desuka “ let alone a big white looking people like myself he did a double take and then laughed to himself as he realised omg someone’s talking to me and oh yes he’s just asked if my food is yummy. Then the trip became quite pleasant because he also did not speak any English so we had a good conversation in Japanese where he asked me lots and lots of question such as, where are you from? Where are you going? Why are you here? Why don’t you have an accent? What the actual hell? what school did you go to when you were here? My nephew went there, when you were there? Liao and his friend Vivek were experiencing me having an actual two-way conversation with a Japanese person for the first time (Vivek was unaware I knew any Japanese beyond surface level) so his reaction was funny. The train was really quiet and comfy.

Sendai:

Once in Sendai we checked into our hotel, and quickly went to explore the arcades. The arcades are like a long section of street, full of shops. What we didn’t realise is that there are multiple arcades here and they all connect at different points forming a massive arcade that you can walk through with lots of small avenues filled with tiny little shops that have space for 6 to 8 people inside of them, it was very cool. We grabbed some Ramen from a store for dinner. There was no English translation so I bought what I thought was pork Ramen with soy broth and some beef dumplings but I didn’t get dumplings. I just ordered extra meat on my Ramen. After this it started raining so we wondered around to go to Jozenji dori Avenue (which is a funny name as Dori actually means Avenue or street or road in Japanese so it’s like saying jozenji Avenue Avenue) which unfortunately was not lit up at night so we didn’t actually do anything there as the lights don’t start until December annoyingly then after a protracted stroll we went back to the hotel and made use of the Onsen which was a bit of an experience as you have to be 100% naked for it. It was very relaxing and I felt very at peace afterwards.

Had a decent sleep and woke up the next day to a fairly yummy hotel buffet breakfast Japanese style, today we were destined to go visit Matsushima a town near a large bay of 100s of little islands and rocks. On the way to the train station to get there my nose couldn’t deny myself the sweet buttery smell of the fantastically delicious Japanese pastry. So Liao and I obviously picked up some pastries to eat on the way there. 47min train ride that was very packed to a fairly obvious tourist destination and onto a boat we got. The boat was fairly old and you sure as heck could smell the diesel fumes from the engines when on the stern of the boat. Although all up it was about $16 for a 1hr tour of the bay were we got to sit on the top deck with a nice view and a fairly unique bay that we definitely wouldn’t have similar types of in Australia. A lot of the trees all looked like bonsai trees too, just bigger obviously. After our cruise we went for a wonder on this island that was connected to the mainland by a 200m long red bridge that was very aesthetically pleasing to look at. Again a fairly easy $2.50 entry fee to connect to the island which we wondered for the better part of 2hrs mostly taking nice photos of the gorgeous trees and their colours. As we went to leave we decided to get a different train line back to Sendai for the sake of variety. However, when we got there the guard informed us of something so shocking I wasn’t sure if he was joking. The train, had been delayed by 60mins due to heavy rain. Which, is very unheard of for Japan, they give businessmen late notes if their trains are 5mins or more late usually. So now we were faced with two options. Wait 60 minutes or walk 15 minutes to another train line. We obviously offered to walk the 15 minutes and see how long we could wait for the next train. We walked through the thick suburbs of Japan. It was very pleasant not another soul in sight. Kind of had a eerie Ghost Town vibe but also how anime portrays it when people walk through the suburbs. I really like the vibe we got on the train at this next station which luckily wasn’t delayed by 60 minutes, got the train back to Sendai central where we then went into one of these massive JB hi-fi type stores. This place was an absolute labyrinth. Holy heck I don’t understand how they have so many staff. They had genuinely everything we could ever want all the latest gear and gizmos. I bought a thing for my camera so I can upload directly to my iPad for this blog and your viewing pleasure. Then had dinner at a place which had specialty beef tongue. Unfortunately going north with the Shinkansen. Every single Shinkansen requires a reservation which is a pain as you would’ve read the JR website is unhelpful so we had to go into a kiosk late today to get our reservations sorted for our trip to Morioka tomorrow.Leia mais