Electric City
Wednesday 6th November – Alright, I’m in Tōkyō, birches!
This morning I said goodbye to Juan and Elmira and took a bus for Nagoya station. There I quickly found the right platform for the Shinkansen towards Tōkyō, which came pretty soon after. There are lots of these bad boys speeding across the country. Yeah!
As your JR Railpass will stipulate, you need to make sure you do not travel by Shinkansen designated as Nozomi or Mizuho. The type of Shinkansen that will be arriving, is mentioned on the information displays at the platforms.
So anyways, the Hikaru (or Hikaru?) took me to Tōkyō in what was the longest trip by Shinkansen that I have taken this journey. And it’s such great comfort!
Fun fact: Mount Fuji (Fuji San) isolated to the north of the Shinkansen trail. Also, that’s one big pile of rock. Mesmerizing really.
But before this, and also rather quick after departing from Nagoya eki (station), the woman in the window seat noticed that I had started taking pictures and kindly offered to switch places with me. Wow! That was so nice if her! Yes, it’s unfortunate that Shinkansen windows are almost no bigger that airplane windows, which is small and mostly awkwardly located.
Many pictures later, including those of Mount Fuji, I arrived at Tōkyō eki. Here I bought what I think is called an IC card, which is a prepaid public transportation pass. Very handy this proved to be, so far! Available at a kiosk for ¥2000. And remember, if you’re thinking of ¥1 as €0.01, you’re doing it right. (atm anyways)
I located the proper subway line and took a trip to eastern Tōkyō, where my new host Junko-san was kind enough to pick me up.
We had a pleasant walk and talk to her house, where I have a wonderful room. After some more talk I finally was ready to head out again. Junko-san advised me to go to Akihabara to enjoy the Electric City (Chuo Dori, exit Suehirocho subway eki), which it in fact is: many bright lights, even more loud sounds and shouting or even screaming street vendors and lots and lots of seemingly bewildered gaijin or otaku, like myself.
Pachinko & slot, depāto (department stores), vinyl figurines, trinkets, fast food joints, you’ll find it all. Don’t forget the second hand games store I mentioned before.
After walking up and down the street I walked towards Okachimachi eki where many street vendors had setup small shops where you could buy many things cheaply. Lovely atmosphere to just walk around in! I ultimately found a small restaurant type joint where I ordered another ōkonomiyaki. The chef came over personally to take the order and deliver the plate. He was pretty keen on making sure I would like his Tōkyō style ōkonomiyaki, and to practice his English which in fact was pretty good. xD
After that I walked to Ueno eki and took the subway back to my room. Unfortunately I rode the express densha (train) which passes the eki I need to get off of. xD So I needed to take the next densha back. Oh well..
I got off, walked by a kombini to make sure I would have breakfast the next day and a short while later I got home, after yet again getting lost. Yay for not being a homing pigeon!
When I got home, Junko-san was still awake and this presented the opportunity for some more talks about anything, which I so much enjoy. 🙂
She was also nice enough to help me do the laundry. This made sure that I would have enough clothes for living through the last couple of days of my trip.
It was already late when I finally got to bed, so much do that I decided to finish this post later. Deal with it. 😛