Tokyo at Christmas

Apologies for taking so long in updating, I will catch up now!

So after Cait and Brit left it was the 22^nd December. Hannah and I stayed in most of the day but got bored and decided to wander over to Akihabara. The first time we’d walked over there! It took about 40mins but was a nice walk through the sky scrapers, we even diverged off the main road to find very old style Japanese boat houses in the river behind skyscrapers. Akiba itself is famous for it’s large concentration of anime, manga, games and electrical stuff. It was certainly that, very busy with maids advertising cafes on almost every street corner it felt. Sadly it didn’t feel the same without having money to splerg on the figurines and I didn’t get as excited as I thought I would. We visited Akiba one more time the day after that with Myra who’s another Kent student studying in Waseda in Tokyo. I think I’ll need to go back there on my own before we leave and have a proper explore of the area and not get scared of using the DDR machines in the arcade (I’m worried I’ll look like an idiot compared to the insanely skilled Japanese kids in those arcades).

Then it was Christmas eve and all through the house...well anyway, eve was a busy day. Hannah, Myra and I went to Tokokawa Inari shrine and then to Heiei shrine which is based on the god of Mt Heiei (I cant spell it) which is another larger shrine in Kyoto area that I have yet to go to. Then we walked over to Tokyo Tower! We almost got lost but were ok in the end and omgoodness the view from Tokyo Tower was AMAZING! It really was worth the 1500yen we spent climbing up it. Especially because we went just before sunset before it got busy and got to see the sun setting and then Tokyo at night. SO COOL! Then wandered over to Roppongi Hills to see the famous Christmas lights, which were ok, but not that amazing. AND THEN we got the train to Myra’s place and ate tempura don (don lit means something on top of rice) which was nommy. AAAAAND THEEEEEN we went to Myra’s dorm for a bit before going out with her friends and kereokeing until 5am!!! Ahhh it was a good night ^_^ As Hannah and I arrived back at our house at 6am we could see the dark sky slowly getting brighter in the East on the city, but didn’t stay up watch the sunrise and instead went straight to bed.

Christmas day itself was, apart from the karaoke, not that entertaining, just sat in bed all day until it got late enough to Skype home. Watching Christmas happen through a computer screen was the weirdest thing. It was really nice still being involved in Christmas and seeing everyone, but it was like watching a film, I was involved but not part of it. But it was still lovely seeing my family again and I miss them a lot. I also opened the presents they’d sent me in the morning and that made me miss them even more hahahah!

Boxing day Hannah and I met up with some friends of hers in Harajuku but we weren’t really impressed that they didn’t want to see the temple in Harajuku park or that they wanted to go to Shibuya to an American clothes store where they’d been to the other day. But that aside Harajuku is cool! There weren’t as many people dressed up in extreme clothes like you would think there would be but that could have been because of many reasons. Tired of foreigners taking photos of them; found somewhere else to go; had already been and gone; where mostly wandering around instead of hanging out on the bridge; I’m just used to seeing that extreme wear after being in Japan so long. We also went to Shibuya (where the American store was) and it’s where the famous crossing is. We crossed it. It wasn’t as big as I thought it would be XD

And then that was the end of boxing day and Christmas :( Oh well. At least in Harajuku I got free hugs!