The plane ride over was delayed for like 2 hours before we took off.. some passenger decided it would be cool to show up at the airport late.. so by the time we waited for him to get though security, his baggage to appear on board, and then refuel, so that the plane could essentially go faster, we were finally off. The food of the plane sucked ass... and for some reason they gave us a really old plane, so we didn't have our own control panel to watch whatever we wanted to (to New York you do, but Japan, the land of the technological advances, we didn't)... didn;t make much sense, but then again, when does Air Canada ever make any sense?
What made me laugh was that we actually were served noodle cups on the plane.. it was good don't get me wrong, just the most random thing ever to be served... haha.. and it was totally bright all the way to Japan, didn't fly in the dark once.. haha.. I guess a 13 hour plane ride and a 13 hour time difference does that to you... We lost an entire day travelling to Japan. We left on wednesday from Toronto and arrived in Japan on Thursday evening. It took us 2 hours to get from the airport to the hotel and once there we totally crashed (well after taking a much needed shower (ewww we were totally gross)).
Friday came around and we decided to walk to my mom's company's office, so we set out, first looking for a breakfast place.. good old starbucks.. no Joke.. there is a starbucks on every corner and sometimes there are 2.. the Japanese love there starbucks. Two seconds after we walked out of the hotel we were all dripping with sweat.. ya i know it is gross, but it was disgustingly hot... no sun, just really humid and wet hot air, all around us, pressing into us. I guess that is why the Japanese don't ever walk anywhere...
After visiting my mom's office, we then decided to go to this shopping place. Take the Eaton's centre and multiply it by 10... i think that was the size of the shopping center that we went to, all with super high end clothing. It was located in 5 buildings, all linked together somehow.. it was the neatest thing there was actuallly a store for just hankerchiefs... very bizzarre, but really kinda cool too... We had sushi for lunch/dinner... and while it was a fast food type place, it was the best sushi I have had.. soo good and fresh.. yum! We all completly crashed at 3:30pm and after a 45 minute walk back to the hotel we all fell asleep, which ended up screwing us all over cause we all woke up at 1:30am and finally went back to bed at 5:00am.
Saturday had us waking up and showered and dressed by 7:00am... we decided to go visit the Fish market... Oh my god was it the coolest thing ever... this place was also like 10 times the Eaton's centre, of just fish and seafood. They had these huge saw's and were cutting Tuna that weighed 75 kg and up in to pieces and packaging it.. meanwhile there were motorized vehicles like tractors running up and down the aisles, thousands of people everywhere.. it was the coolest thing ever... Attached to that was this cool market that was like the St. Laurence Market only bigger... it had all these cools veggies, and stores that had almost everything in it. There were these awsome noodle places that were litterally holes in the wall, that seated like 4 people infront of their little store fronts. We really wanted to eat at the places, but we had no idea what was in the bowls, and no one spoke english, and my mom deadly allergic to shellfish, and us all not eating pork, well we decided it was a risk we weren't going to take -- at least with my mom with us.. hahaha...
That afternoon we went to this part of tokyo called Akihabara. This is a whole city pretty much of just electronic stores -- no joke... huge buildings with floors of electronics. One floor dedicated to one type of electronic, like there was a floor dedicated to cellphones, another to laptops, another to desktops, cameras, pens and pencils, mp3 players, etc... my god the first building we went to had 12 floors and was bigger than the eaton's centre... it was huge! there there was like streets and streets of more electronic stores, the convience stores all sold laptops and cds and dvds.... wow talk about overload to the max! brands I have never heard of, the coolest things that probably won't come out for ages... and so full of people. The stores were packed to the brim with people.
The coolest thing ever about places in Japan is that every tall building has a floor (so far it has all been consistently the 8th floor) that has at least 10 restaurants (sit down) to eat at ranging from sushi, to korean bbq, to chinese, to india, to spanish, to dessert. They all have plates with the special of the day sitting out side the restaurants, but we never have any idea what is in them, or what they are because we can't speak or read japanese.. which totally sucks.. so we ended up eating at an indian restaurant with a waiter who spoke japanese, english and hindu... the funniest guy ever.. haha.. good food too...
We managed to stay awake until 9:30pm and then we fitfully slept... waking up to watch the game at 3:00am and then taking a nap until 10am..
Today, Sunday, We spent the whole day at this place called Odaiba.. it is called the futuristic place.. although the only futuristic place is the museum of creative innovation and the fuji building which looks kinda cool. The rest of the area is full of shopping malls... like huge ones.. it is funny that a place with soo many people and soo little space, has such large areas of shopping and so much green grass, trees, flowers...
The othe thing is all the women here dress up soo much and all wear high heeled sandals.. like super fancy ones you would wear to a wedding or something.. it is the weirdest thing..
So, so far it has been a very cool experience. It is difficult getting around (we are always getting lost in the subway, on the streets... haha.. but that is an experience in itself) and trying to eat things.. but it is amazing and we have always managed to get around ok :)...
Anyway, I just wanted to write down some thoughts and experieces and share it with you all... my dad has taken close to 500 pics so far and my bro has taken about 300 too... so I have tons of pics to show you guys when i get back..
Miss ya lots!
~Lish
