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hey guys
so this is my first ever blog of my adventures around the world! my first week is over and im very tired! ive done so much! with also so much more to do!
my first thougt when i got off the plane was: wot the F am i doing in tokyo! i really never believed that i would come! but hear i am!
thursday: 11.09.08 after getting to my hostel and having a well needed sleep! i deceded to explore my hostel and see who was about...i met 2 ozzy guys calld mike and jimmy who were on there way out to a kareoke bar called smash hits! when we got there it was dead..just one small japanses buisnessman singing to himself in a bar of invisible men. after seeing that we decided to head to the clubbing distict if toyko roppongi. it was their first night out in roppongi too! when we got there it was a real shock!, we ordered our first pint! a pint of guinness as Nowhere is japan has cider....1500yen about a conversion of 9pound! that drink kinda set the tone 4 the night overall! everywhere we went it was just super expensive. Roppongi being a tourist club district was stupidly overpriced! somthing i would have to avoid for my time hear. after trying a few bars we found a poolbar where we tryed a local japanese drink.. not sake sumit else! and oh me oh my was it bad! im talking awful like! undistilled un filtered vodka! like worse than asda price vodka! and i just paid about 6pound for it! eventually we decided to head back to the hostel before the subway closed. an go to sleep which was well needed for me by this time as i was still quite jetlagd.
friday 12th: i woke up to 2 maids poking me in the face...teling me it was half 11 an i needed to switch to my other room! i got up and after a hour or 2 of sitting in the lounge feeling like poo! decided to go 4 a skate around tokyo...BAD IDEA! i got totally lost! dnt ask me where i was cos i didnt have a clue! i only knew the name of one place shinjku so i just kept goingup 2 peopleand gettin them to point the direction! after about another hour of hopeless loastness i found a metro and realised i sumhow made it to the other side of the city! i hopd on to a train an headed for shinJuKu..not realiseing i was going the wrong direction for shinjuku. after about 20 minites we stoped at TOKYO central where i hoped of and took a walk down to the imperial palace! when i got to the palace the gardens were closed and so wree all the bridges so all i could see were the outerwalls and some of the traditional japanese buldings that surrounded!. which were all so gorjus! after leavng the outer gardens i headed back to the station and traveld to ginza on of the many shopping districts of tokyo. i found myself a small resturant down a allyway and ate some wiered cucumber covered in chilli and some meetball on sticks which was goorjjus but actually quite fatty and i could tell Totally unhealthy(felt like food back at home) after i headed back to the hostel and played a very drunklen game of ring of fire with some people from the hostel!
saterday: 13th me mike an jimmy headed out to a onsen...a natural volcanic hotspa, it was boiling and when you have to be totally naked, going into super hot water aint good! i got into the slightly kooler pool at a rype old temprature of 38degrees and huggd the area around the cold tap! jimmy deceded to go 4 the HOT pool which was 42degrees, way to hot 4 me an michel. after taht we showered and headed to ginza to look around at a bhit of expensive japanese fasion! and to have a peek at Japans first H&M which pend today! we got to ginza and headed to h&m straight away! we foubnd a small queue outside and we went to the back where a man in a black suit pointed across the road where we saw the queue carry on a bit! at this point it lookd like we wree gunna have to wait about 30 mins 2 get in so we headed for that queue where we saw it carry on again down another road! we gave uphope of actually being able 2 get in today when the queues stared going past 3 blocks long! the queue ended up about a mile an a half long! and it took us about 15 minits to get to the end. i swear that would neva happen in the UK not 4 a H&M!!!
sunday 14th: today was a good day! sun was out and blue skys! the perfect day to go on a day trip to lake ashi (a bit west of tokyo) where we would get the best views of the maassive MT Fuji. we took a bus from shinJuKu station which took 2 hours to get to the lake! we slept most of the way as you can see by some of my lovely facebook pictures that paul took of me asleep! By the time we had reached the lake the weather thad taken a turn for the worse! it was raining and we could hardly see the mountains closest to us never mine MT Fuji! after takling a short walk along the lake side we found a peddelo rental! where we rented a swan to go around the lake in! it wasnt the nicest but it was fun! i neva realised how tough they are to paddle! i feel sorry 4 all the times my dad had 2 paddle 4 us when i was a kid now! after returning our pedallo after about half a hour we headed for the cable cars that ran up the mountains hoping that we would get a decent view of Fuji from there! i didnt really like the idea of a glass box being dangled over a mountain on a piece of string! it wasnt the most conmforable id been! we ghot to the top of the mountains to descover some sulphure springs! oh me oh my they smelt bad...the air just smelt like roten eggs and it didnt help that as we were walking around it stated to rain again! we had had enough at this point so we headed back down the mountain to a local resturant where we had spagetti bolognase japan style with tiny lil mushroons rice and noodles! aha. after we headed back to our bus 4 a long journey home 4 sum sleep!.
Monday 15th: today we went fasion shopping in shibuya! to 109 a fasion bazzarr! after about 8 floors of girls fasion i was really impressd! the girls fasion was so ahead of the uk! not somthing i could say for the mens fasion! it was about a year behind! they were gettin the ryte look just making it look really old or lame sumhow! all the men in the shops were wearing propper lumberjackshirts with vest jumpers made of what i can only describe as the horrible bobbaly rug that people sometimes hav around the floor of there toilet! we had a good look around at some othert shops my fgav being the barbie shop! where girls could buy the same outfits for them as barbie wears! (why oh why would you wanna do that). we took a train down to harijuku, a street of little clothes shops that really experiment with waky clothes! and we met some crazy girls that dressd up in ballgounds for a casual day out! after a few housr of shopping around and many crazy pictures later i headed for ahkihabara the electrionic district of tokyo! where all the buildings are lit up like christmas with billboards and banners and huge screens on the sides of the building deispaying what they sold inside! ahkihabara is very much the geek wonderland, its a place where you can go to a maid cafe where your served by cute japaneses girls in kinky maid outfits or schoolgirl outfits! no before you think it i didnt go in! im not that sad!!! i after exploring a few of the 8 floor manga shops with giant lifesize models of manga girls in procatious positions i headed back to shinjuku to pik up my nintendo ds whioch i had left on the bus the night before! the japanses are very honest people! you know that if you lose something that they will allways hadnd it into the police or lost property! you dont find many people like that in the uk!
Tuesday 16th: sumo day 2day!!! tim a guy from the hostel was soo excited! its all he had come to japan for! he got up at half 7 in the morning to go buy us tikits for that nights tournament! and what a tournament it was! it was crazy the amount of people that love sumo! its as big hear as football is in the uk! we sat for 4 hours watching match after match of giant flabby men in thongs slap eachother up an throw eachother about! its actually a very exciting sport! some fights really dont turn out jhow your expecting! the No.1 sumo in tokyo lost to a sumo not even on the ranking! its wierd because when he loast every1 cheered for the winner while throwing there seats into the ring in dissapointment 4 the No.1 sumo. after 4 hours of wrestling we left and headed back 2 the hostel to meet every1 as we were heading out to roponggi for the night!
wednsday! 17th i woke up thismorning thinking! THIS AINT MY BEDROOM! id totlly 4got i was in tokyo! the night before had been a very bad night we all got really drunk and i spent about 3 days budget! i was severly hungover! an deceded that i would stay at the hostel an not leave all day! i eventually got hungry and headed for some macdonalds! noodles and rice wont cure a hangover...Greece an fat cures a hangover!
Thurday 18th pritty mkuch a similar day 2day as yesterday i had to keep my budget low so i deceded to stay around minowa the area of tokyo i was staying and just go 4 a walk! turns out theres nothing in minowa! just houses an noodlebars and very expensive fruit shops! fresh fruit isnt something you can get hold of easy in japan and if you can its expensive!
monday 29th of sept:
its been a while since i updated my blog! ive been hungover constantly so not done much. ive been sleeping all day and spending most my nights out! so im just gunna sum up my past 2 weeks in a few paragraphs!
after spending a few more days in tokyo exploring and sightseeing! i decided to travel to kyoto a city to the south of tokyo with a friend i had made in tokyo named becky. it was so nice there just all the hustel an bustel of the city was gone! kyoto was a really slow moving chilled out place! no huge skyscrapers and hours on subways ourt hostel was within walking distance of most of the cittys attractions! at the hostl we met a ozzy called strath an a american called chris an we decided wed go have a look at the yasaka shrine up in the hills behind our hostel. it was beautiful up there and we evben got to watch a amazingly bad magition mess up half his tricks an stull get a large applause from the audiance! the next day we traveling down to gion an area in lower kyoto 4 a walking tour around kyotos backstreets and to see the more elaborate shrines and temples along the wayas we walked up chawan road eating green tea icecream we saw teh unmistakable orange pagoda of kiyomizu-dera rising out of the skyline! after vising the temple and taking a few pictures we toured the streets of sannen-zaka and ninenzaka we headed for otani cemetery a huge cemetery of containing the toombstones of thousands of familys! by this point it was getting dark so we headed back 4 a pincnic with the guys back on teh river! next day me an strath rented a couple of bikes an followed the kamo-gawa river out of kyoto, and followed it to a small lake full of hugekarp and wild turtles (thers a video on the blog). and after chilling out at the lake and catching some rays headed down the river passing all the shanty villages that teh homeless had made under. there are alot of homeless peopkle in japan and there is a slight unwillingness by the people to help them as they believe that it is theer punishment of something bad they had done in a previous life.
next day i hopd onto the bullet train back to tokyo! it costed me alot but after the 8 hour bustrip downin seats madefor small japanese people i swore i wudnt doit again.
i spent the rest of the day in the hostel chilling out, i didnt want to spend too much money as it was my bday the next day an i wanted to spend extra that day instead!...alas to newyorkers has chekd in that day and we ended upb playing driniking games till 2 in the morning and ended up sleeping in the toilet.
after stumbling into bed that morning an sleeping for half the day! a large group of hostelers and i went to an all you can eat all you can drink party! which is a perfect way 2 start of ya bday nite! it wasnt quite what we wree expecting... the bar was just to tables full of beers an spirits with a man standing behind passing out the drinks! and the food was just a large buffet of meat an cottege pie running through the centre of the room. we still had a good time tho..how can you not have a good time when its all you can drink! the barman got anoyed with us tho after a while, we kept ordering white russians until he ran out of milk an had to send someone to the shops to buy more ahaheehehe. he was even more peed off when we made him runn out of vodka! i fink we must hav drank double what every1 else at the party had drunk! after the party we headed for a english pub which turnd out to be totally unenglish!you had to queue for the bartil who would then give you a tikit 4 your drink! by this time we were all out of our faces an tottally fgot about the train! which we mnissied and ended up booking a small hotel down the road an fitting 10 people into a room! they wernt happy! but i got to wear a kamodo! i looked like a samurai! defo gunna buy 1 before i leave!
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