Japan 🇯🇵 - Day 45, 46, 47 & 48 - Tokyo

I first arrived in Tokyo at 5.45am after a long night in the bus. It wasn't comfortable, but at least it was cheap. The ticket was only ¥3800 (23.75€) instead of easily 80-odd € for the train.

I originally planned and booked to get off at Tokyo station, but the driver announced Shinjuku at one point, which was the area of Tokyo where my hostel was, so I quickly jumped out of the bus. As I collected my bag from the baggage hold, the driver told me this wasn't the stop I'd booked—he obviously thought I was getting off too early—but told him it was intentional and I knew where we were (roughly, that is, of course). I must add, all of this interaction was with very few words once again.

Even though it was still very early in the morning, the city was anything but sleeping. There were quite a few people around, lots of cars and buses driving by, and plenty of places were open for business.

As I had barely slept that night I didn't have the energy to walk around too much just yet. I saw the Wendy's just across the street—the red sign right behind the bus in the picture above—was open, so I went in there for a bite to eat and a sit down.

I ended up staying there for 5 hours. It didn't seem to bother anyone, and I noticed some other people also taking a nap so I just joined in on the fun. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

After a nice long mildly uncomfortable rest in the fast-food restaurant, I finally decided to get up and walk around a bit. My first objective was the hostel, which was just a 15 minute walk away. Annoyingly, most accommodation places in Japan seem to accept check-ins only from 4pm, so I could have access to a bed until mid-afternoon, but I could still go drop my big bag off to avoid having to carry it around all day.

With a lightened back, I made my way to the nearest park, stopping at a convenience store to get some food. There's a unbelievable amount of convenience stores in Tokyo. This map shows the amount of convenience stores in a 0.66km² area. Absolutely ridiculous.

When I got there, I found out the park had a paid entrance. Since I'm too stingy to pay to get in a park, so I resorted to sitting down in an alley right on the edge of the park. It wasn't the nicest but good enough.

After a nice long sit down, I walked around the city for about 2 hours, with no particular objective. I just explored the big streets as well as the little side streets, and went into a few shops and buildings/shopping centres, just to get a feel of this huge energetic city.

It was then late enough in the afternoon to finally check into the hostel. I started with a lie down and a short nap, then I got hungry again in the evening—late evening—so I went back out for a stroll. That's a great thing about Tokyo—and probably big cities in general—you can always find a place to eat, even if you go at some ridiculous time like 3am you still have enough options to choose what you fancy.

This was my first walk around Tokyo by night (it was already 10.30pm) and let me tell you, I was impressed.

This city really never sleeps, but not the same as New York or some other western cities. There's always people in the streets as you'd expect, but also a lot inside buildings, doing all sorts.

I went back to the hostel for the night around midnight.

The next day was a bit of a lazy day again. I had a random walk around Shinjuku, got another feel for the city.

I was surprised to find convenience stores also sell some items of clothing, like underwear, socks, shirts and ties.

The next morning, I found some people to meet up with thanks to the HostelWorld app. We said we’d meet around 14.30 in Akihabara, another area of Tokyo. It was just a short metro ride from Shinjuku.

I met up with a Swiss-german guy called Linard and an American guy from Arizona called Patrick.

We started wandering around, and we went into an arcade centre. It seems to be a very japanese thing, and some people really stay in there a VERY long time. It also looks like they come in here quite often, given how skilled they are at some of the games.

We just had a look around and played a few games. Some of the game stations are fitted with all necessary equipment for live streaming on platforms like Twitch!

The arcade centre is really time black hole. As soon as you walk in, you lose all sense of time. There are no windows anywhere in the building, so all lights are artificial; every square metre is fitted with stimulation to get you spending. You can even find food and drink vending machines..

We got out of there probably at least an hour later, and continued walking around Akihabara.

We found a backstreet full of interesting little shops. One of them sold these old school tech stuff, like retro walkie-talkies. (Sorry to those who still remember using those, I don’t mean to call you ancient)

Just before 6pm, we went for food in a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It was a very small but busy place.

Soon after the sushi, Patrick needed to go to another place where he’d agreed to meet up with some other people. We were invited too so we tagged along.

It was an all-you-can-drink saké bar. If you think that sounds dangerous, you’d be right, especially in Japan. The japanese aren’t used to drinking much, so it seems they can’t regulate themselves well when it comes to drinking.

I’m happy to say there were no incidents to report there for us, and I got to try some very good saké.

They had a huge collection to choose from, with wildly different flavours, ranging from fruity to sweet to bitter.

I got back to the hostel fairly early considering, and went straight to bed.

The next day, I went for a walk around the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery, the Akasaka Palace and the park around it.

Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to go inside the palace park, but the surroundings were lovely nonetheless.

In the evening, I craved some more familiar food, so I found a surprisingly cheap kebab place in Shinjuku. I didn’t hang around too much in the evening, as I needed to leave the hostel just after 6 in the morning to catch a coach to the Japanese mountains, but that’s a story for next time!