Tokyo Surprise!

Hey,

Welcome to our first actual blogpost with real content. We're on day four-ish of our little trip, and have had a lot of write-home-about worthy experiences already. So without further ado, here is a words-and-pictures narrative of notable parts of the trip so far.
We started out in Vancouver BC, with Kat joining me a few days prior to our departure to take care of a few odds and ends. Like getting our Chinese money.



The Vancouver stint involved a bit of fun too, as we got to catch up with the Vancouver peeps, as well as the Cullen/Howard parents, but it wasn't too long before we were due to catch our plane.

The plane ride was surprisingly eventful, first, our tv's didn't work, leaving us much time for solemn introspection over the next ten hours. Then we discovered the location of Mount Doom. Unsurprisingly, its in Siberia.




We landed, exhausted, some months later, and began our long quest to find our hostel. Finally, after a long sojourn through the Tokyo subway system. We arrived a Khaosan Smile Hostel. Exhausted, we stepped through the door and proceeded to the check-in counter. There, the friendly, bilingual staffer kindly informed us that we were, in fact, at the Asakusa Smile Hostel, which now stood in the place of the Khaosan smile, which apparently had closed not long after we had booked our rooms. Needless to say, they did not have our reservation.

Luckily, the Khaosan Hostel company is a chain, and they had another hostel not far away, after a bit more exploring, we found ourselves checked in to the Khaosan annex hostel. Our introduction to this hostel was inauspicious, as, upon walking through the door, we were greeted with the sight of an overweight European man playing Guitar Hero, wearing nothing but a Sumo loincloth. Not a pleasant sight.

Anyway, we finally got settled in and crashed at about eight o'clock. We awoke early the next morning for our first of two days in Tokyo.

The next day brought us to the Imperial palace Garden, a small but picturesque portion of which is open to the public year round. How picturesque? well...




(the moat)


Quite pretty really.

Anyway, after that we bummed around central Tokyo for awhile, before we found ourselves in the 'Electric City' which is a large, brightly lit madhouse of streets overflowing with cheap electronics, anime, and seven floor video arcade palaces.

The camera really doesnt do the place justice but...





Anyway, that day involved about 10 hours of walking around. So after the Electric City we settled down in our hostel with some Supermarket Tempura (Delicious!) for the night.

Day two started at an amazing Buddhist temple just around the corner from our hostel. We were interviewed by Japanese schoolchildren, schooled in the art of proper fortune telling, and even given our fortunes.

Tom's: Best Fortune, everything goes your way.

Kat's: Bad Fortune, very bad to make a trip, all your plans will fail...




After that, and a bit of a tour through a really cool marketplace, We found our selves at the Ueno Zoo. Which was the first zoo Tom had ever been to. Lame, but we corrected his deficiencies. He even gasped when he saw his first hippo.



After the zoo we were a bit tired, so we decided to take in a movie, in lieu of heading back to our hostel. This quest led us all the way to the other side of town, a quiet little neighbourhood called Shibuya. (aka: times square on crack)




We spent the next seven hours in the same three block radius, and saw just about everything urban Japan has to offer. We even got a private karoake room and found a few english songs to belt out (Rasputin!). Again, the pictures don't quite capture the scale and sheer overstimulation of the place, especially after dark.

Anyway, our Shibuya experience came at the tale end of our brief Tokyo tour, so we said Saynorah to Asakusa Annex and hopped a train over to Mito, near where Kat's sister is teaching English. Highlights so far include a Buddhist temple graveyard in Tina's backyard, Sushi-go-round (same as in Vancouver, but still tasty), and one of Japan's top three best waterfalls.



and that more or less brings you up to date. Kyoto and Osaka are next on the itinerary, followed by the proverbial (and in our case, literal) slow boat to China.
Just a few more days to butcher the language and enjoy the sushi!

Hope everyone's well
Tom and Kat