Tokyo

Two days after Sydney I was off to Tokyo to meet Eva and Teresa. I hadn’t had much time to plan out the itinerary so I left that to Eva, who had been in Tokyo for a few days and gotten comfortable with the wildly inefficient rail system.

My stay in Tokyo was an absolute blur. I only stayed for 72 hours and barely remember it (and no, not because of blacking out). The pictures that follow are mostly of people and relatively ordinary things, hardly Tokyo-specific, but they’re how I’ll remember my weekend in Japan.

Tsukiji Market

We went to Tsukiji Market– the largest seafood market in the world– the first morning I was in Japan. The place was enormous, reeked of raw seafood (thankfully it wasn’t summer time) and some creatures for sale that I’d never seen before in my life.

There were a lot more eye-opening things at Tsukiji than these octopuses...

The next few photographs are of people that I was able to take (sneak) shots of while they were candidly in their own worlds.

The Medical Mask

Tsukiji Transport

Grandmother Kabukicho

Yoyogi Coupling

Imperial Guard

When Eva and Teresa left I was on my own for Sunday night. I checked out the tourism guide and saw a bridge with a pedestrian path (one of my go-to activities in a city with water): the Rainbow Bridge over Tokyo Bay. After an hour on the subway (and nearly 15-20 minutes lost in the subway station) I got there just before they gated off the path. There’s more embarrassing aspects of the story that involve sweating, snot and my screaming “screw you guard, I told you I could make it across in time,” but that’s for another time.

The Rainbow Bridge over Tokyo Bay

Tokyo Tower

On my last day in Tokyo I had to wheel my suitcase around because I foolishly opted for that rather than my hiking backpack. First stop: Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, Observatory Deck.

Okay, so the building isn’t the sexiest sounding location, but it was a free vantage point in the center of Tokyo!

It took me like 10 minutes to work up the nerve to ask someone to take a picture =(

I paid $50 to sleep here. Now I understand where coffins get their price tags.

I had an interesting trip to Tokyo. The cost of everything (from a $65 taxi to $13 bowls of ramen) put a damper on our moods but seeing the juxtaposition between Japanese and Korean fashion was really refreshing. Oh and I also got to get a picture in front of this place:

I'm really mature, I swear.

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