For the past 8 months I've happily sat watching the sights of Tokushima through the season changes. Typhoons, droning cicadas, harvesting rice, whimsical winter flowers, hit and run snow flurries, the replanting of rice, and an uncountable number of beautiful sunrises & sunsets.
However, last week I finally left the comfort of my own prefecture to see some of the things Japan is more well known for! Like temples, cities, trains, electronics, cherry blossoms, touchscreen vending machines, and even a maid cafe.
Although I'm interested in different cultures, and even living in Japan, I've never really done much traveling before. (unless you count several trips to Florida..) So approaching these 8 days of jam packed on-the-roadness had me a bit apprehensive. Luckily, my companions were seasoned pros at it. One of my friends from college is studying abroad in Hong Kong this semester and has been country hopping around Asia just about every weekend this year. So he and a couple other students hopped on over to Japan over their Spring break, which happened to coincide perfectly with mine!
There's really too much to explain, so I'll break it into segments over the next few posts.
TOKYO (Day 1)
After taking an overnight bus up from Tokers, I headed over to the fish market to eat a bowl of just-caught raw salmon. "Give it to us raw and wriggling," eh?
Next I spent an hour and a half looking for the elusive Godzilla statue. When Mom and Dad went to Tokyo, they heard some other tourists trying to find it. The tour guide said it was tiny and not worth seeing, so they didn't go. As the next member of the family to be in Japan, I felt it my duty to take up the quest. I went right to the area it was said to be in, yet no one around there seemed to know of it. I asked parking attendants, people giving out fliers, and even a policeman - the guys with descriptive maps of the entire district - and no one seemed to know of it. Finally, though, my request hit on the ears of a young businessman with a handy dandy cellphone. As four parking attendants stood around debating possible locations, he looked it up and showed me an exact map of how to get there. Now, take a moment and think about Godzilla. Gigantic, city terrorizing dinosaur, right? I think they ran a little short on the budget on this one.. Well, although the actual statue was a bit disappointing, the search was worth it!
I spent a lot of the rest of that day just walking around the city. I had hours of time to kill before my friends' arrival at the airport, so wandered past the imperial palace, into a thrift shop, through Akihabara, and finally to wait at the airport after my feet gave out from all the walking.
