This past week/weekend, I took an overnight bus to go visit my close high school friend, Diane, in Tokyo. I was on the bus for about 11 hours and you would not believe this, but I forgot my earphones back at the school. I almost cried when I reached into my empty pocket. I ended up buying earphones at ドンキホーテ in Shibuya for the night bus back. Anyways, the first day I got there Diane had work from 11AM-5PM so I headed to Asakusa to meet up with some AIU peeps that also decided to head to Tokyo. We walked around Sensō-ji, an ancient Buddhist temple. I just learned it’s actually Tokyo’s oldest temple, as well. After walking around, we had time to spare, so we walked around and found a barbershop for Nico to cut his hair. He ended up paying half the price because the barbers were too afraid to cut his hair too short. They were really sweet though. One of the barbers asked Jeremy, Thomas, and I to come sit inside since it was sprinkling. We decided to sit outside though, as you can see in the picture above.
After a long night out, Diane and I decided to head to Yokohama. My mom suggested we go there since they have a Cup Noodle Museum. It was only a ¥500 entrance fee. One of the floors even had a workshop where you could make your own cup noodles. Unfortunately, there were too many children and Diane and I were too hungry to wait. We ended up heading to Chinatown and eating there! There was so much panda merchandise and stores selling Baozi (steam filled buns). After walking around everywhere, Diane and I headed to her rehearsal – she’s in a startup band with Avex. I brought my camera with me because she wanted me to take videos of them performing so they could look over it. I couldn’t help smiling the entire time I was recording. They were killing it. Diane is the vocalist, along with another girl. She has always been a good singer. Going to karaoke with her can be intimidating sometimes because she belts the songs out, especially when Lady Gaga comes on. We actually went to karaoke the night before though and we all sang Jackson 5. Well, she sang it and the rest of it just yelled obnoxiously.
Unfortunately, it rained the entire time I was in Tokyo so I didn’t take many pictures. BUT, on my last day the sun decided to come out. We woke up in the afternoon after a night out and headed straight to the Sky Tree. The picture above doesn’t do it justice. It’s the tallest structure in Japan at 634 meters. I wanted to go to the top despite the price (¥4000) but there were too many people. You had to stand in line to get a ticket to make a reservation to buy a ticket. We didn’t have enough time to wait and we didn’t want to wait either so we headed to Tokyo Tower. This is definitely worth mentioning though, the train from Sky Tree to Tokyo Tower was wonderful. The air conditioning was so refreshing and the felt seats felt so nice (lol). The entire time I was there, Diane and I made sure to stand in the area where the AC was blasting on the train. Thankfully the trains weren’t too crowded most of the times we went on. Anyways, we arrived at Tokyo Tower after the sun had set. It was definitely not as tall as the Sky Tree but we went up to the 250th floor and the lights were beautiful. It was crazy seeing the concrete jungle below us.
Just wanted to show you guys this picture. I took it from Diane’s balcony – she lives on the 12th floor. If you look very closely, like super closely, on the top left you can see the Tokyo Tower. Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention: the new earphones I bought at Shibuya? Yeah, I already accidentally washed them in the laundry…
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