Not knowing any Japanese, or being able to recognise the alphabet seems to be a lot more of a problem in Japan than elsewhere, perhaps because they're not so reliant on tourism. Nevertheless I made it (with some wild armwaving and asking of dumb questions) to my rendezvous with Jonny at the West Exit of Yokohama Station. This was also a feat because I was struggling with jetlag-induced narcolepsy on the train from Narita airport, so I could have ended up anywhere.
So my first proper experience of Japan was a greasy burger joint near Yokohama station where as Jonny gave me the directions to his room in Motosumiyoshi (25 mins on the slow train, 10 minutes walk already rehearsed using Google Streetview) I tuned into the background music to hear a Welsh Folk Song (The Ash Grove) playing. Pretty weird. Walking to his guesthouse I passed an elementary school playground where surreally after no sleep, there were various groups of children in coloured togas, shaking maracas.
The following day I mainly slept, although experienced two small earthquakes. It's hard to explain what they feel like, but I guess gentle rocking is probably the best description, and anything free hanging in the room was swinging gently. Having checked online and seen that there have been plenty Magnitude 4 and above since I arrived, I think I only felt the first two because I was sitting around not doing much.
Saturday was spent moving to Jonny's new room, a short walk from Yokohama station, and exploring the surrounds. His place we've estimated is 8-10m above sea level (based on the high water level in the nearby canal) and at the bottom of a hill, so we're pretty confident of our tsunami escape route if needed... We walked to the tallest building in Japan, the Landmark Tower, shocked ourselves with the cost of chorizo slices in the posh deli (£10) and around 5pm ish local time sat in a park overlooking Tokyo bay waiting for the world to end. Needless to say we were fine, and so we celebrated by looking at lego ninjas and getting lost on our way home.
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| Yokohama at night (Landmark Tower in background) |
Today (Sunday) we made our way into Tokyo, which is a 30 minute / £2 train ride from Yokohama, arriving into Shibuya station, outside of which is the famous extremely busy crossroads (although it turns out not quite as busy on a Sunday). We made our way to Yoyogi Park and watched some of the entertainers, the 'street' dancing was pretty awful - guys dressed up like they were in Grease, dancing about as well as I do after a few drinks, but we spent a while watching 3 ladies mime / act / dance who were actually rather good.
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| Yoyogi Park - Pretending a pretend baguette is a violin |
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| Wet shrine |
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| Better prepared |
After this we found a 'Jonathan's Cafe and Restaurant', which ironically was a major disappointment and not worth the trouble (think Little Chef pre Heston), although my pigeon English accompanied by manic hand waving appears to be improving. It was still raining so we decided on an early dinner, where Jonny upstaged my sign language with an apparently understood 'biiru o futatsu kudasai' (2 beers please). Before heading home we trundled around Harajuku, half of it was more teenagey bright coloured stuff, the other half was more to my taste, but with a wide range of price tags. And it doesn't pay to get your currency conversions wrong, there was a nice dress for £30 that I was thinking of trying on, until it turned out it was actually £300. We left the shop. However I plan to return on my birthday with a bit of notepaper with yen conversions... and my credit card.
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| Harajuku after the rain |
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