Last days (for now) in Tokyo - Shibuya, Omotesando, and the Tsukiji fish market

Since Shanainai had just arrived from the US, and we were all exhausted, we skipped the fish market that morning and slept in. By slept in we mean that we all woke up between 6:30 and 8:00 am, but at least we didn't use an alarm clock, and we did stay in bed (using the term loosely) and rest a bit until around 9:30.

After hanging out for a couple hours in the morning (after all, Talia and Shanainai have been friends for 19 years and needed some time to catch up), we headed out with our new friend from the hostel, Dave from New York City.

Our first stop was Shibuya Junction, which is basically a replica of Times Square in New York City. It's big and awesome, and a zillion people there cross the street, all at the same time, without bumping into each other. It's beautiful. After oohing and aaahing for a while, and taking some pictures, we had some lunch and started walking up and down the streets in the area.

Shibuya Junction - their version of Times Square

Our destination here was Meiji Jingo Shrine, which is in the middle of a large park. The pathway is beautiful, full of trees, and really fun to walk through. Before you reach the entrance, there are many barrels of wine (without wine), that were presented as gifts. (We think without wine, this has not been personally corroborated.)  This shrine, like most of the others, is gorgeous, and many people came to see it.

Meiji Jingu temple (lanterns)

Our next stop was the Meiji Jingo gardens, but we didn't really have the energy to go in and Shanainai went alone. Meanwhile, Talia studied the map to make sure we were able to find what we were looking for.

We then walked part of the way back and went to Omotesando street, which is compared to the Champs Elysees. We can see the comparison - it's a long and wide street, lined with trees and expensive stores. But it's not quite the same. For example, Talia is 97.7% sure that the Champs Elysees wouldn't have a store with this name:

On Omotesando street

Anyway, at this point, Talia and Shanainai were left along because this was a girly area, but they had no problem with it. :-) We stopped at a cute (albeit expensive) coffee shop and tried two of the local desserts. We have no idea what they were, but they were really delicious! After chatting for a long while (after all, we hadn't seen each other in over a year), we continued to walk down and check out the scenery.

Omotesando desserts

We turned onto one of the side streets and started randomly walking up and down the streets - they were all so beautiful and picturesque and lined with the coolest and oddest stores. We continued walking for a while, and then stopped at the Chanel store. Oh, wait, we stopped at the store after Chanel, which is called Oriental Bazaar, a store that was recommended as a good place with fairly-priced souvenirs.

At this point, we had about an hour before we had to get back to Shibuya Juntion to meet Rony and Dave and Shanainai's Japanese friend for dinner (we were planning on walking back, which was about half an hour). We started walking back and then remembered that earlier we saw some weird yelling and a big sign that said "Sale Bazaar" or something to that affect, so we wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

OH EM GEE, it was insane. It must have been stock day or something equivalent (where they try to get rid of all the merchandise) because the sales were all between 50% and 90% off. Salespeople were yelling with megaphones, customers were pushing each other to the racks of clothes, and all hell had broken loose.

We found it hilarious and had to take pictures.

After looking through a couple of stores on the first floor, we decided to go upstairs to take a picture of the insanity from above. What we didn't count on was:

1) Traffic
2) Really awesome sales

We noticed, as began walking (shoving) up the stairs, that there was a line of women all up the stairs. After about 2 minutes, Talia realized that they were waiting in line to get into the store. Upon closer inspection, we saw that the store was now 90% off, so the line was somewhat understood.  As we turned the corner of the first stairs, lo behold the line extended up another flight of stairs! It was insane.

The sale is just THAT good

We really only had time to find that open space where we could take  picture of the downstairs insanity when the sight of the most incredible shirt appeared before Talia and suddenly we found ourselves spending 10 minutes waiting in line to buy this incredible shirt. And then we took the pictures.

We went downstairs and since it was suddenly raining, decided to take the subway, even though it was only one stop away. This ended up being:

1) A good decision and
2) A bad decision.

A good decision, because the rain got REAL hard while we were in the subway, and bad because it took us over 10 minutes to figure out how to get out of the station, even though we arrived a couple minutes early (this is important for Talia to point out). It probably would have taken us less time to walk there, although we would have arrived with pneumonia.

We met up with Rony, Dave, and Shanainai's friend, Ken, who is a local, and he took us to this wonderful restaurant where you order all of your food on a touch screen and everything on the menu costs 270 Yen ($3 more or less) regardless of what you order. And omigosh did we eat!

AWESOME dinner - part of it, at least

The food was delicious! Ken started us out by ordering a bunch of local foods that would interest us, and as the evening progressed we ordered more and more food. Basically, each plate is like a tapa, a small amount of food that gives you a great taste of the dish. Anyway, we had an incredible dinner and Ken ordered some local alcohol (not sake) to sample (hey - we weren't driving the metro), and then we headed back to Shibuya Junction to see Hachiko, the famous dog statue, that we missed in the morning.

Shibuya Junction at night - it really DOES look like Times Square!

The story of this dog (portrayed in the film Hachiko with Richard Gere) is that every day, the dog would greet his owner at the end of the day at Shibuya Station. One day the owner died, and every day for the next nine years the dog waited for his owner to return, until the dog died. It's a very famous legend, and a bronze statue was erected in the square to commemorate this amazing story of loyalty.

We then returned to the hostel to go to sleep because the next morning we woke up at 4:15 am to go to the Tsukiji fish market. We weren't insane, we just really wanted sushi. We mean, going to the Tsukiji fish market before the break of dawn is an experience that is highly recommended - and we could see why.

We took the 5 am metro (the first) to the fish market, and spent the next 15 minutes looking for the office where you sign up to be an observer at the tuna auction. Eventually we found it and were able to make it, even though there's a limit of 70 people, probably because it is winter and off season and freezing.

We given orange vests to wear over our clothes, which marks us as observers, and were supposed to watch an instructional video, but we arrived in the middle of it and it was in Japanese and were far away and were all "dude, it's tuna, we get it" so we were cool. :-)

At 5:30 am - don't you wish your vest was hot like ours?

We walked into the tuna auction area and it was bustling with sellers and buyers. It was a really awesome experience! Each seller had a few tunas lined up together with notes on them listing how many kilos they each weigh (some were over 100 KG!) and buyers walked through the room, cutting off the edges to check out the quality and freshness of the fish before deciding to bid on them.

Checking the tuna for quality

In case you are wondering, this is how you can tell if the tuna is of high quality of freshness: Yeah, we have no idea.

Anyway, there were a few auctioneers walking through the room, ringing a bell not unlike the Salvation Army bell to inform people that an auction was coming up. The auctioneers were hilarious. Of course, we couldn't understand the words, but the sounds they were making were priceless.

When the auction was over, we had to return the chic vests and leave the premises until at least 9. This includes the market area itself, which is only open to businesspeople until 9 am. Of course, we got lost on our way back, too, and ended up walking through incredible stands of fresh fish and seafood, of which many were still alive (creepy).

We then went to have some sushi for breakfast (for real) at a really famous sushi restaurant that can only seat 13 people at a time. We got in line around 6:30 am or so, and got in very quickly - at 8:30. Yes, we actually stood in line for 2 hours for SUSHI. But it was worth it - it was soooo delicious! The best part was making friends with Canadians in the looooong line - we ended up exchanging email addresses and everything.

Mmmm... Breakfast!

And that was it for Tokyo. After breakfast, we returned to the hostel to pack our things and check out, and catch a bullet train (about 200 KPH) to Kyoto. We were finally able to start using our Japan Rail Pass. It cost us about $700 (57,700 Yen) to use for 21 days. While this sounds expensive (and it is - we haven't yet found a winning lottery ticket on the streets), take into consideration that a single, one-way train ride from Tokyo to Kyoto costs about $150. As such, the amount of traveling we will be doing over the next 3 weeks makes the pass definitely worth the price. Our pass will actually run out before the end of our trip, but we will find alternate ways to get back to Tokyo. Is hitchhiking OK? :-)

See you from Kyoto!

Previous album from Tokyo and Nikko (we hadn't published it with the first draft):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=607350&id=906005363&l=f7ebb6de16

New album from Tokyo:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=607836&id=906005363&l=12ed0fadb0