A Long Weekend in Tokyo

Late December and January were kind of crazy for us. Our school went on winter vacation right before Christmas for about a month. During this month, the English teachers get 2 weeks off and 2 weeks where they teach an English Winter Camp. Michelle went to Cambodia for 2 weeks and Olivia went to Cambodia, Thailand and Laos with her family. Then we came back and taught Film Analysis to 1st-6th graders for 2 weeks (we just watched "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" a hundred times). After these two weeks, we had a long weekend before classes started up again. For this long weekend we decided to head to Tokyo, Japan.

Our flight was with AirAsia (basically a charter company with cheap flights around Asia, planes kinda sucked though), and we left out of Busan. It was our first time to Busan so we hoped to check it out a bit, but that didn't happen so we'll just have to go later. Anyways, our flight was at 11am on Saturday, so we got to Tokyo at around 1pm. It took a bit of time to get to our hostel, Hotel Kawase, in the Asakusa district of Tokyo which is about an hour train ride from the airport. When it comes to the hostel accommodations let's just say it was far from a 5 star resort. It basically had 1-2 showers for like 40 beds or so, but it was near empty so it worked out well. Saturday was spent walking around the Asakusa district, checking out the area and getting dinner at a ramen restaurant. The little restaurants have an awesome system where you put your money in a machine and press the button of the meal you want, it pops out a ticket, and you hand it to the cook behind the counter to whip up for you.

Nakamise Street in the Asakusa district

It was still rather early after dinner, so we were able to go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building which goes up 48 stories and gives you a free view of the city. We went at night because if you go during the day, the smog descends and you can't see much. It was really great to see, but inside of where they had all the people stand they had way too many lights so half of what you saw out the window was the reflection from inside. There was also an elegant looking wedding going on, which seemed interesting with the gift shop and number of tourists going on. Food smelled awesome though.

View from the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building

Sunday morning was spent moseying around the Tokyo National Museum. It is a massive museum with exhibits from all over the world. We just stayed in the areas that revolved around Japanese history and archaeology, it was quite interesting. When we realized we had been there for hours, it was decided it was time to head to another part of the city.

Standing Fudo Myo-o, 11th century, Tokyo National Museum

We went to the Harajuku in the Shibuya district to eat and people watch. Harajuku is famous for having Japanese people dressed in really crazy outfits walking around. Unfortunately for us, we went in winter so everyone was wearing winter jackets. We did see a few outlandish outfits and some shoes that told us "under that jacket I know you're wearing something bizarre." When it came to eating, we went to a "70's themed" diner, which was clearly trying to pull off the 50's diner theme and just failed miserably at their decade. But that isn't the only problem with this place, we are pretty sure it is the reason Olivia contracted a bad, nasty case of food poisoning. So, we went back to the hostel so she could lay down and we could figure things out.

While we were in Tokyo, it happened to be smack dab in the middle the 15 day January Grand Sumo Tournament. Win. We were able to go to the sumo Stadium early Monday morning and get General Admission tickets for that day for around 16 USD. We were technically able to enter the stadium immediately that morning, but Olivia wasn't feeling well so she went back to the hostel for some more rest and we decided to return around 3 when the higher ranking sumo fighting began. While Olivia was resting up, Michelle did a bit more exploring of the city. One of the sites most people will tell you to go in Tokyo is the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest fish market in the world. The big thing to go to is the tuna auction which occurs at 430am with massive fish and apparently tons of energy and is really interesting. We can't tell you if this is true because we skipped that. So Michelle just went later in the day to walk through the market and see the fish they were selling. It was pretty cool to look at, but it was really busy and as a tourist, it seemed extremely intrusive and in the way to be there. But, there were some strange fish being sold and some interesting sights such as men cutting fish to sell while smoking cigarettes and dropping ash everywhere, but whatareyagonnado? 

Tsukiji Fish Market - the largest fish market in the world

Many of the stands looked like this with varying fish and seafood.

After the fish market, Michelle headed to check out the Imperial Palace. It was a Monday so it was closed to tours, but you are able to walk around the park and see everything from the outside. This is probably the 100th time it crossed one of our minds that it would be really nice to visit during a non-winter season because it probably would have been very beautiful to walk around the park if there were leaves and such, but it was just cold and barren.

The closest you can get to the Imperial Palace on a Monday.

After that, it was time to meet back up and go to the sumo tournament. Luckily, Olivia was feeling much better after a day of rest so was able to happily go to the tournament. And let us just say, definitely the coolest thing. Until in person, you really don't realize just how large these men are or how into sumo people in the audience are.

Ryogoku Kokugikan Sumo Stadium

It was really cool to watch but probably would have been much cooler had we known what was going on. There was clearly a lot of ritual going on during each bout which we later found out was because sumo has strong ties to Shinto. For example, the wrestlers would get into position and appear like they were ready to fight, then stand up and go to the side of the rink and stretch, smack themselves, and throw salt at different angles at the rink. This would happen about 3-5 times before they would actually begin to fight. While we would like to know what they were doing at why, the most confusing part about this was that at seemingly random times, that to us seemed like every other time they would do anything, the crowd would erupt into excited cheers. No clue why. Another interesting part was the number of western men who were involved because, being Americans, neither of us could possibly figure out how you get into sumo if not in Japan. All in all, hands down the coolest thing we did while in Tokyo.

     

Sumo Tournament

After the tournament ended for the day, it was only about 630pm, so we headed to another district to check it out. The districts in Tokyo are all vastly different, so a good strategy to touring the city is to visit as many districts as you can. We chose to go to Shinjuku, which has all the government buildings on one side (where we went to see the view) but on the other side it is the home to Tokyo's Red Light District where the mafia hangs out, Kabukicho. So, we went there to walk around. The place was really lit up with some skeezy looking clubs and people. Once outside of Kabukicho, it was still really lit up with tons of people and really "Tokyo" in our eyes. Both of us had this image of the city from movies, that so far we hadn't found. This district seem to meet that image and it was pretty interesting.

The Shinjuku district

The Shinjuku district

After walking around Shinjuku we grabbed some food then headed home to pack and get ready for our flight early the next morning. We got back to Korea in time for the last few weeks of the school year before jumping on another plane to Malaysia, a trip we have just returned from and will post about soon!