Japan Part 3 - Tokyo Day 1

Ant and I got up near to the crack of dawn (7ish) which equates to a sleep in for me... Sleeping on wafer thin mattress on the floor left Ant with a worse-for-ware back pain. I caught up with a bit of Pokemon action on a local TV station (Pokemon was making about the same level of sense as it would watching it with English - eg: not much. That little Pikachu does remind me of the "Drawn Together" character of "Ling Ling" - a cute but totally malevolent character hell bent on destroying stuff and murder. In the episode of Pokemon I was watching - Pikachu was dancing with some cute characters - then got hella mad and blew up a hot air balloon - Pikachu is pure evil.

Japanese TV and TV commercials is one of our favourite past times in Japan - it is totally off-the-wall with super kitsch presenters and ads with Robots peeing out sports drinks. Who wouldn`t love it! Also of note are the super cheesy TV news and current affairs shows - where they will add dramatic music and black and white footage to make all the alleged murders look more evil. Today Tonight has met it`s match.

After grappling with the crazy hostel shower (you basically wash yourself on the floor and get everything in the room wet) - we ventured out to get us some bakery goodies - asia style. If you have never experienced them - asian bakeries are truly strange yet compelling. You might think you are buying a jam donut- but infact - the donut is filled with curried meat. After trekking thru the electronics district at 9am on a Sunday morning (aka everything is shut) - we found an upmarket bakery. Unfortunately - the guessing game wasn`t needed as all of the curried donuts were translated into english.

We caught the subway to the National Modern Art Museum for a bit of a culture fix. It housed purely Japanese stuff from the 20th century. It was interesting as some of it was very european influenced (big on impressionism, cuban stuff and surrealisism) and some was very traditional Japanese - but in a way - the Japanese culture is a great mix of the traditional and the west, weird and wacky.

We headed via foot to the Imperial Palace and Gardens　- complete with snow still on the ground from a snow storm the week before. Apparently - my brother and his girlfriend were stuck on the tarmac at Narita Airport for 6 hours because of the snow storm. But hopefully - this will all be good for our skiing bit of the holidays at Niseko. The gardens were pretty and all the gardening was very Japanese-y - everything was trimmed within an inch of its life including all the lawn.

We wandered into Ginza - a downtown business/rich b###h area and checked out the shops... They had a fantastic exhibitation centre - which makes Federation Square look like the Canberra Convention Centre (or worse... the Queanbeyan bicentennial Convention Centre). According to a crappy map we got at the hostel - this was the hottest of hot tourist attractions.... Bit of a hyperbole..

We made tracks down to Shibuya for a bit of a pop-culture fix - Japanese style. Shibuya is full of neon signs and giant tv screens and young peoples. I can`t remember if my brother said that this was the "Pink" district (aka Red Light in Engrish) of Tokyo - but it wasn`t sleazy. After giving the National Energy Museum a miss - we headed onto Harajuku via foot.

I think Harajuku has become a bit of a "hot Tokyo touristic attraction" - thanks to Gwen Steffani and her love affair with the local Harajuku girls - who spend all their time dressing themselves in crazy clothes and standing outside Harajuku station on the weekends. Here - it is not only OK to stand and gawk at the girls - but taking photos with them is encouraged. Marylin Manson seems to be really big or something - as most girls looked like Marylin groupies complete with black coloured contact lenses and goth clothes. Ant was worried about the girl who was dressed up like a Nazi stormtrooper...(WTHIWWJP!) There were a "cool" couple who were cranking out some J-Rock numbers to a tracking tape. The guy had an electric guitar and was doing some Van Halen moves. Nearby - a masked superhero (with a beach towel for a cape) was dancing along. Rock out!

After this - Ant wanted to make tracks to Snoopy Town - a store full of, you guessed it, snoop and peanuts merchandise. The store was full of young girls rummaging thru all the s### and 6"ft2 Ant was sticking out like a sore thumb.

We went to the Shiujuku Gardens - complete with Tori Gates of the non-floating variety. We even did a "Lost in Translation - Kyoto scene"style wedding crashing as a traditional wedding ceremony was passing thru the Hinto Shrines in the middle of the park. Ant was running around like the paparazzi taking pictures of the wedding couple.

As Ant has eaten something somewhat off (probably Qantas` in flight cooking - ironically it was me who had the fish and I feel OK).... so we are back at the Hostel and chilling　(hence I`ve been writing the blog). I`m close to going on a rampage because the stewpid internet radio is playing Kelly Clarkson for the umpteen time and it is reminding me of our noisy neighbour back at Canberra.... With the added bonus of this annoying kid playing virtua Pachinku on the computer next to me with the sound turned up real loud.　　Agghh..

Anyway - saynoara for now!