#13: Tokyo! (July 4-6)

Last week might've been the best part of my entire trip. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were the days of the highly-anticipated 2-night trip to Tokyo. All 40 of us and the program directors loaded up early Thursday morning onto two big buses and we drove off for one of the biggest cities in the entire world.

A neat part of the trip were the various stops on the way there Thursday and on the way back Saturday that broke up the drive. Thursday we saw Suzuki's museum for their car-making as well as Yamaha's museum of their motorcycles, boats, jet-skis, and other stuff. Saturday's were of a different theme: we saw a geothermal hot spring near a volcano, took a ride on a pirate ship across a mountain lake, and saw Mt. Fuji from the Mishima Sky Walk bridge. All were really cool. I greatly enjoyed Yamaha's museum, and seeing an active volcano and a snow-capped mountain on the same day when I had never seen either before was really awesome! Mt. Fuji is very, very incredible, even when you're only looking at it from many miles away.

As for our time in Tokyo, we arrived at our hotel around dinnertime Thursday and left early Saturday morning. Thursday night several of my friends and I bought tickets to see the nighttime view from the Tokyo Skytree tower, which is the tallest building in Japan and has an observation deck almost 1500 feet in the air! That is higher than stacking three of Lexington's big blue 5th/3rd bank buildings on top of each other! From the top, looking out all you see in every direction is city, city, city, and more city, and since Japan builds their cities with much more verticality than the U.S, tall buildings in every direction, and with millions and millions of lights red, green, yellow, flashing, blinking, etc., etc. All the way to the horizon it was just Tokyo. 

Saturday my friends and I spent most of the day on foot, picking a train station in the city center and exploring any shop, cafe, arcade, restaurant, or hobby store that caught our eye. We played guitar hero games on the 7th floor of an arcade, bought figurines in a hobby store, saw what a Japanese army surplus store looks like, went to a Cat Cafe where you enjoy your coffee in a room full of cats you can pet and feed, got an amazing dinner at a random place we just ventured into, and much more. I took a lot of pictures that day, and slept very, very well back at the hotel once we finally got back. And yes: Cat Cafes are cafes where you take your shoes off, pick out your favorite beverage from the vending machines, and sit with the cats in a cafe with relaxing music, comfy sofas, and about 12 or so cats of various colors and personalities. And you can also play Super Smash Bros., which I gave more attention than the cats.

I've spent two nights in the one-and-only Tokyo, Japan, and I must say that I do like it. It had the widest sidewalks of any city I've ever seen, which it needs since people fill them to capacity every day walking to and fro, a gigantic rail network with dozens of stations that, while a bit daunting to newcomers, makes getting anywhere in the metropolis easy, safe, and efficient, is quite clean and safe, and has an endless supply of interesting places to explore and enjoy. I'd enjoy a chance to return there in the future.

Motorcycles at the Yamaha Communication Plaza

Tokyo View

Skytree Tower, 450 meters

The Cat Cafe

A typical Tokyo sidewalk. To the left of the trees is the road

                             
One of my favorite dinners of my entire trip

Hakone Volcano Geothermal Zone

Hakone Pirate Ship Cruise

Mt. Fuji




Comments

  1. Kel J. HahnJuly 10, 2024 at 3:21 AM

    It's a been a month since we dropped you off at the airport. Less than 10 days until you come home--we'll be glad when you're back!

    ReplyDelete

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