Arrival into Japan

I am now in Tokyo. It was a long 12 hour flight especially as there was little inflight entertainment. I landed in Japan at about 9am on Thursday. It was quite a smart airport. Once through immigration and customs I went to find a way into the city.

At the airport train station I was able to pick up my rail pass and reserve seats on the shinkansen so I definitely have a place to sit when travelling between cities. After I went to the ticket office to get a ticket to Kuramae, this was quite eventful as the officer didn't know much English. I was able to get a ticket and the officer told me go to platform 1 and remember to change at Oschiage. I am on the train hoping it is the correct one. It took about 45 minutes to get to Oschiage, and then onto Kuramae. Once in Kuramae it was quite easy to find the hostel.

The hostel is quite nice and the people are friendly but I have no idea what they are saying. The room is quite nice but a bit noisy from the road outside.

While at the hostel and sorting a few things before I went out exploring, a friendly Japanese man suggested some places to visit while I was in Tokyo. As one of them was just up the road I headed out. 

I headed north to Asukusa, here was Senso-Ji temple.  It was very beautiful.  Surrounded it was some gardens and leading up to it was a row of stalls selling a range of things.

I am near the river so I quickly took a look from the bridge.  On the bridge I saw this really strange statue on top of a building.  What do you thin of it?

After I went to look for a place to eat. There were quite a few places that looked good but everything was in Japanese so I didn't understand it very much.  Luckily they either had photos or plastic models of the food they served.  See the example below.  I picked what I want now to order it.  I walk in and notice that people are using the machine to the right to order the food.　I try pressing a button but it doesn't work.  I guess the waitress saw I was a bit confused so told me I need to put the money in first and then press the button for the food, again luckily the buttons had pictures on.  The waitress then showed me to my table.  It seems a lot of people dine out by themselves in Tokyo as I was sitting at table height bar.  The food then came out, at this point I don't really know what I ordered I could only see a picture, so a tray with a few dishes came out.  There was bowl of soup, I tried it but it wasn't very nice. There was also a bowl of salad so I passed on that also. The main dish was beef, beansprouts and green beans and then a bowl of rice.  the beef was very nice, it was more of a steak.  The rice was very sticky so it was very easy to eat with the chopsticks.

After the meal I went back to the hostel and fell fast asleep, I was knackered from not sleeping very much on the plane and walking around Tokyo for a bit.

Next morning I decided to go to Akhihabara.  It was a few changes on the subway.  The Tokyo subway is great it literally goes everywhere.  The only thing there are 3 different companies that own different lines so you have to make sure you have the right ticket.  Akhihabara is known for its Anime and Manga and also electronic shops. It was very colourful and a lot of shops that seemed to sell the same things.  

After Akhihabara, I went back to the hostel and found some lunch.  It was a rice ball with a filling, again I had no idea what the filling was when I bought it.  Once I got to the centre I found out it had some sort of fish roe which wasn't very nice.  Would nyone else be able to translate this:

After I tried to go to the Anime and Manga Museum near Ogikubo but once I got to Ogikubo, I realised my guide book didn't give me directions to the museum so I went back to Shinjuko.  Again this place was a bit like Akhihabara.  I looked around there for a while.  By this time it was getting close to the evening rush hour.  It did get a but busier on the subway but no where near as what i expected with people being pushed onto the train but I believe that is more on trains on a different network.  

Tonight I went to a different restaurant and again used the same system as the last with the machine so I knew more of what I was doing.  I ate a very nice pork and egg ramen.

Well I think I will be off to bed soon as I am still very tired from all the walking and it being a nine hour time difference.