Stephanie and I in front of the famous Hachiko statue in Shibuya, Tokyo
Stephanie and I in front of the famous Hachiko statue in Shibuya, Tokyo
After our one day, two night stay at Hiroshima, we took the shinkansen to Tokyo. There, we stayed at Ashinaga's larger student dorm, the Ashinaga Heart School (Ashinaga Kokoro Juku). We requested places we would like to go to in Tokyo, and for the next full week, different students would take us to those places each day.
Front of the Ashinaga Heart School in Mogusaen, Tokyo
For our week in Tokyo, plus a few extra days after returning from summer camp in Yamanaka, Stephanie and I stayed at Ashinaga's largest student dorm. It has over double the number of students that the Kobe dorm has, so naturally it's a bigger building and has more facilities. Ashinaga Heart School is located at the top of a very steep hill, an exhausting 10-15 minute uphill and downhill walk to and from the closest train station, which unfortunately we had to endure pretty much every day XP Luckily, we were able to take a taxi if we were carrying a lot of luggage or if it was late at night. Also, despite being in Tokyo, the dorm is located in a very quiet forest area with a lot of trees and residential houses.
View outside the Ashinaga Heart School: The view outside our 3rd floor room. Since it's on a residential hilltop area, it's a lot prettier than the Kobe view XD
Uphill climb: Here's a taste of the kind of uphill, major sweat-inducing walking we had to do for a good 10-15 minutes in order to get back to the dorm. Good exercise, but this is one part of my Japan trip I will not miss XD
Bedroom: Here's the room we stayed in during our time in Tokyo. Like with the Kobe Rainbow House, there are only beds, desks, and closets in the room while the other facilities are in different rooms and are shared amongst all the girls.
Kitchen: The girls' kitchen area on the 2nd floor. There are two sinks, refrigerators, stoves and other things.
Dining room: Before dinnertime, they cook the food in the kitchen area in the back, then leave it in the cooler on the right for students to take and heat up in the microwave when they're ready to eat. You can't see in the photo, but off to the left there's a small lounge area with a TV and seats. This is all just like the Kobe dorm except bigger of course =)
Neighborhood: Once you make it down the hill, this is the area you'll see. Restaurants, convenience stores, super markets, gift shops, the usual. The train station for the Keio line is across the street behind that vending machine in the photo.
Crowds at Harajuku
Our first Tokyo sightseeing place was Harajuku, a famous shopping area specializing in clothing and fashion accessories. I'm not particularly interested in this kind of stuff, but we went to karaoke afterward so that made up for it =D
Harajuku entrance: The first part of Harajuku you see after getting off the train. Go down the street between the two big buildings and you'll find tons of little shops and booths selling fashion items, apparel, souvenirs, and other things. Just beware of the hordes of people!
Crowds at Forever 21: We saw a lot of American stores at Harajuku, including Forever 21, Gap, Nine West, The Body Shop, and Shakey's Pizza. Here are people waiting in line in front of Forever 21. Apparently it gets so crowded that they have to have security cops there to regulate how many people are in the store at once.
Harajuku crowds: It was very crowded when we went, but not as bad as it could have been. Getting through that narrow street with all the shops on either side was a bit tricky, though.
Karaoke!: After looking around the shops for a while, we stopped at a karaoke place in Harajuku. I've done karaoke a few times at places here in Southern CA, but this was my first time doing karaoke in Japan. It was a blast! Here's me and the girl who took us out that day singing "Hare Hare Yukai." As you can see, many of the anime songs have actual scenes from the show on-screen while you're singing. In addition, if you look at the palm tree on the wall, you can see how the wallpaper lights up and the room darkens while you're singing, then goes back to normal once the song is over. Way more advanced than the karaoke places out here XD
Karaoke song searcher: The karaoke places I've been to in CA still require you to find your song by searching through a bunch of different books, then inputting the song number on a remote. Japanese karaoke is again, way more advanced; using a touch screen and stylus on this little device, you input the name of the song, singer, or anything else and it will search amongst all the songs in the database to find the one you want. Much quicker than flipping through books!
Tokyo Tower
For our second sightseeing day, we went to two places; Tokyo Tower and the Machiko Hasegawa Art Museum. At 1,091 feet, Tokyo Tower is the tallest self-supporting steel structure in the world and Japan's tallest artificial structure. And Machiko Hasegawa was one of the first female manga artists and is famous for creating one of Japan's most well-known and longest running animation series, Sazae-san.
View from Tokyo Tower observatory: A view from one of the many windows in the Tokyo Tower Main Observatory. At 492 feet, it certainly takes your breath away.
Another view from Tokyo Tower observatory: Another view from Tokyo Tower. You can see pretty much the entire city, though it wasn't clear enough that day to see Mt. Fuji.
Floor windows: One of the rooms has windows on the floor so you can see directly below. Not for those who are prone to vertigo!
Arcade: In addition to observatories, Tokyo Tower also has arcades, restaurants, museums, displays, and a ton of gift shops. Here are some cute Pokemon UFO Catchers in the outdoor arcade area.
Sakura-Shinmachi: This is the street that the Machiko Hasegawa Art Museum is on, which is made obvious by the banners and even the poles and electricity boxes on the street having Sazae-san characters on them.
Inside the museum: In addition to a small art gallery and gift shop, the Hasegawa museum also has little games you can play to win prizes at the booths you see in this photo.
Photo with Sazae-san family: Despite the heat, I couldn't resist taking this photo outside the museum ^^
Sensoji temple in Asakusa
Our next sightseeing place was Asakusa, a popular shopping district for souvenirs, and it also houses the famous Sensoji Buddhist temple.
Asakusa shops: This mall-like area was lined with tons of little shops that sold all manner of souvenir gifts and food items. And of course, lots of people there too XD
Sensoji: The front gate of Sensoji.
Another temple: Another temple nearby. On the right you can see the rickshaws-for-hire, which are pretty common in tourist areas of Japan, though I never actually rode in one.
Ningyo-yaki: At this shop you could buy freshly made ningyo-yaki, a Japanese confectionery food made out of baked bean jam. It was so fresh, I had to wait a while for it to cool off before I could eat it.
Boats: A short while away from Sensoji and the shops, there was a wharf where you could take boat rides around the area on Sumida River. We didn't get a chance to go on the boats, but we took pictures anyway.
Me in front of some anime poster ads in Akihabara
For our fourth sightseeing day, I lived an otaku's dream; first we stopped at the Pokemon Center in Shiodome, then spent the rest of the day at Akihabara, a major shopping area in Tokyo specializing in electronics, video games, collectibles, and anime/manga goods – pretty much everything I'm interested in! I liked Akihabara so much, I went a second time during the third week of the program to buy the last few anime goodies I wanted. Thus you can see more Akihabara photos in the Week 3 section.
And if you want to see all the anime goods I bought during my two times at Akiba, I wrote about them on my blog here.
Pokemon Center front: Me in front of the Pokemon Center.
Inside the Pokemon Center: The Pokemon Center had all kinds of products; plushies, DS accessories, apparel, stationary, figures, toys, and snacks among other things. Despite Pokemon's international success, you won't find these kinds of products anywhere else but Japan.
Pokemon figures: That back wall in the photo is lined with figures of the different pokemon. Unfortunately they didn't have all 493 pokemon, but they had more variety than I'd ever seen.
Akihabara: Akihabara, with its tall buildings, giant anime posters, and crowds of people.
Anime posters: Animate, Gamers, and the other anime stores had posters like these adorning literally every inch of wall space, much like my room actually XD
Evangelion elevator: This elevator at Gamers was covered with an Evangelion ad. Anime posters completely covered the inside of the elevator too.
Figures: Figure display in Gamers. I noticed the "Do not take photographs" sign right after I took the picture XD The figure display in Animate was even cuter than this, with the figmas and nendoroids from different series put together in an amusing scenario. But unfortunately, with the store people close by, it was hard to take photos.
K-ON! display: During the time I went to Akihabara, K-ON! was one of the most popular new anime among fans and the most promoted in the stores. All the major stores that sold anime goods had some kind of K-ON! display like this outside or at the front of the store.
Me in front of the Tokyo Imperial Palace
The next day we went to a few different places; the shopping area Ikebukuro, the moat outside the Tokyo Imperial Palace, and one of the most crowded areas of Tokyo, Shibuya.
Ikebukuro: Walking through the streets of Ikebukuro.
Nekobukuro: Nekobukuro is a unique place at Tokyu Hands in Ikebukuro where they not only sell all kinds of cat products, but there's also a room where you can play with real cats =^.^= Here I am with three of the cats.
Nekobukuro housing: When they're not out playing with visitors, the cats at Nekobukuro hang out in cute kennels like this.
Outside the Tokyo Imperial Palace: You can't actually go inside the palace unless you have special privileges, but people are free to walk around the wide moat area outside and take pictures.
Hibiya Park: After walking around the palace outskirts, we hung out for a while at the peaceful Hibiya Park nearby.
Crowds at Shibuya: What amazed me most about Shibuya was the crowds. This is a photo of what's called "the world's busiest pedestrian crossing," located in front of the JR station in Shibuya.
Crowds in station: Here's more unbelievable crowds going up the escalator and coming down the stairs in a Shibuya train station.
Me at Rikugien
For our sixth day of Tokyo sightseeing, we went to the beautiful Rikugien garden, quite a treasure amongst all the crowds and buildings. After that, we went to a few places in Shinjuku.
Rikugien: Rikugien is a large garden you can walk through right in the middle of all the traffic and buildings. It was a nice, peaceful escape from the noise and crowds we were dealing with the days before. Here's the big pond at Rikugien. Lots of koi fish and turtles inside.
Rikugien view: If you climb up a certain set of stairs in Rikugien, you can see this breathtaking view of the garden.
Shinjuku streets: Walking down the streets of Shinjuku.
Odakyu: View outside the big mall Odakyu in Shinjuku.
Kinokuniya manga: The Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku was amazing; 9-floors tall, totally dwarfing the 1-floor Kinokuniya stores I've been to in Southern CA. Here's the floor with manga and similar books.
Anime DVDs: The new release anime DVDs at Kinokuniya that day. I wish I could see things like this in CA! XD
Pokemon stamps: In Shinjuku, we also went to this enormous stationary/arts and crafts store called Sekaido. It has many different floors with stationary, paints, sculpturing material, picture frames, and all kinds of similar stuff. Of course I noticed these adorable Pokemon stamps ^^
Unfortunately, I came down with a cold on our seventh day of sightseeing and had to stay in bed. However, Stephanie went out by herself with one of the other students to Ueno, famous for its many museums and large public park. The following day, despite still being sick, I packed my suitcase and headed out on the bus with Stephanie and a bunch of the students from the dorm to the summer camp at Yamanaka Lake.
