Welcome back to the saga of Japan with no ja-plan.
The puns were numerous. The plans were not.
Our second day in Japan (first full day in Tokyo) started a little later than I had hoped. The combination of the storm the night before we arrived in Japan and the day spent traveling to Tokyo the day before kept me in bed until mid-morning. I woke up to find that of the five people who had planned to share our hotel room, only one other person was in it. The rest of the morning was spent piecing together the night before and making our way to brunch.
The group was rolling about fifteen people deep, which anyone will tell you is about 10 too many to get anywhere without some amount of hassle. But, we made it to Bama Lohas to meet up with another group of friends for (my first) traditional Japanese meal.
The food in Japan was stellar. This meal had dim sum, soup, peppered beef, and a couple other unintelligible dishes (something purple, for instance) that were all consumed and enjoyed. Gettin’ good with the chopsticks already!
After we finished eating, we were ready to start seeing the city. One problem though—no one had any idea where they wanted to go.
A very good friend of mine from work who knew I had caught the travel bug a long time ago gave me a copy of 1000 Places to See Before You Die for my birthday last year. From that book, I had made very brief notes on a few places that I thought looked interesting. By brief, I mean wrote down the names. So I volunteered to lead us to the first stop—the Imperial Palace.
Japanese mistake number 3 (hope you’re keeping track): not doing any research ahead of time.
Turns, out I led the group to a destination that is never open to the public (except on the Emperor’s birthday, of course), so I dubbed this move the ‘Imperial Fail.’ I would repeat said failure the following day as well. Luckily for me, everyone managed to get a couple great pictures out of the deal, so that kept the grumbling to a minimum.
The place really was beautiful.
Our next move was to the Harajuku district. By this time, I felt as though I had mastered the subway system (which I hadn’t) and by some stroke of luck, we popped out of the subway right at the heart of the action—Takeshita Dori.
This place was a tourist’s dream. Harajuku girls dressed in crazy outfits dodged the clicking cameras of foreigners. Vendors selling everything from ice cream crepes and meat on a stick to samurai bandanas and 1980’s inspired outerwear fought fiercely for our business. There was even a 7-Eleven strategically placed at the corner where we found our ‘refreshments’ for the walk.
The ultimate purchase, by far, were a pair of shorts that two boys found in a back alley market. They looked like a mix between Zoombas and something Lisa Frank would be proud to call her own. The boys still wear them on the ship, almost daily. The only thing we haven’t decided is what to call them: ja-pants or ja-pris.
You decide:
After purchasing entirely too much random crap, we decided to have dinner, go home, regroup, and head out for the night.
Going out at night in a foreign country with a group of 600 college students creates a very comical dynamic. Everyone wants to meet up and party together, but there just isn’t a place that can accommodate all of us at once. So, instead of blazing a trail and finding a unique cultural experience, most people hop from bar to bar, chasing ‘the scene’ like 6-year-olds chase a soccer ball around the field when they first learn how to play.
It’s hysterical.
So, everyone had been trying to plan ahead for the nightlife in Tokyo. For the ten days prior to arrival, all anyone said was one word that we thought would define the Japanese nightclub scene: Womb.
The place has its own Wikipedia page, for crying out loud.
For the sake of not losing you on this tangent, I’ll just show you the picture that explains it all:
That’s as close as we got to going into Womb.
Turns out, the place is teeny tiny, in a residential area, costs a bundle not only to enter but also to drink in, has bad music, and just generally sucks. Really happy I dodged the 4000 Yen cover charge.
The rest of our night was spent doing what you do when there is no ja-plan: bouncing around to bars and enjoying the people around you. Basically, doing what we should have tried to do in the first place.
We started out at a bar in the same neighborhood as womb, then migrated to our new favorite place in Tokyo—Roppongi.
Pretty late night of dancing… don’t think any of us made it back to the hotel before 5am.
That post was a little longer than I had anticipated, so I’ll take a breather before going on to the second day in Tokyo, which was actually my favorite. I decided to stay behind an extra day to see more sights, and I was not disappointed.
More saga coming soon!
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