24 hours in Tokyo (The real deal!)
This is a bit after the fact but I just found this un pubished post from my travels... thought you might enjoy...
On my way home from my awesome trip in Thailand, I had a scheduled 24 hour lay over in Tokyo... I thought that this would be an amazing opportunity to make a small film of my adventure. So! Here is the small film I made... It's not as cool as I thought it would be. You might notice lots of trains and subways... I think I spent more time on trains in Tokyo than the actaul city itself...
My 24 hours in Tokyo, was pretty much a nightmare. My Tokyo experience pretty much started about 36 hours before I left for Tokyo in Chiang Mai, when sitting with friends, I made the brilliant decision to not get a hotel room. Yup! I wanted a real 24 hour Tokyo experience, spending the wee hours in some crazy Tokyo bar until the rising sun beckoned me out in to the streets so that I could continue my adventure... well.... that never happened. no... It's funny how we tend to romanticize things in life...
There were many things I hadn't taken in to account; most importantly the fact that I would pretty much arrive at the Bangkok airport at midnight and spend the night wide awake, waiting to check in for my 7am flight to Tokyo (@ 4:30am).... yeah... slight oversight... so that meant that I would have been awake for already 24 hours... ok... so I catch my flight to Tokyo and I am able to get about 5 hours of sleep, yet they forget to wake me up to eat... so I haven't eaten since I left Chiang Mai... about 14 hours ago... shit. I finally make my way in to the city and arrive in Shibuya at around 18:00.... by now I'm starting to feel faint from lack of food and exhaustion. I grab a quick bite at the McD's as I had very little energy or patience. Ughh... I'm really not feeling all that well and Shibuya is.... well... overwhelming to say the least. By 20:00 I've got a small migraine coming on... this is no good. By 22:00 I made my way over to the Akihabra area... everything is closed and there is nobody around... shit.... As I walk out of the train station, the temperature seems to have dropped from a comfortable 20 degrees to a very nice 12 with wind... and oh great, spiting rain... nice... I'm still dressed for Thailand... gougounes (flip flops for you non Quebecers), shorts and a t-shirt... great... ok... now is when the migraine decides to step it up a notch and call his best friend "fever" over for a party...
ok.. go back to Shibuya... it's the only part of town that I'm remotely familiar with and I'm sure that there are some 24 hour places there to hang out. So back on the train and back in Shibuya... now I want to puke... hey maybe some green tea would help my stomach... HOLY CRAP!!! Who would have thought that finding green tea in DOWNTOWN TOKYO would be an impossible task. Finally at a STARBUCKS! i found some mint green tea... holy crap... ok.. maybe I should try to find a hotel... yeah right... "No were full" was the greeting in 4 hotels I visited... bullshit. Ok, maybe some Aspirin would help with the fever and the headache... so I spend the next hour wandering the streets looking for pills... being past 23:00 everything is closed... shit... from dépaneur to dépaneur to 7-11 (which are like cockroaches in Thailand and Tokyo) trying to explain to the poor cashiers that I needed aspirin... finally in a fucked up store that sold TV's, food and fetish wear I happened to find Aspirin... I pop the pills and I back to hang out in the Starbucks until midnight (closing time)... great... not feeling any better... but I have to keep moving as when I sit still the nausea just gets worse... I ralize that I haven't really eaten since I arrived, so looking around for food, all I could find was the 24 hour McDonald's... ok... so I order some food and I head up to the 3rd floor eating area and essentially spend the next 5 hours nursing myself, trying not to puke and pass out... So, the part of the video from 24-5; that was my view for 5 hours while I hung out with the partiers, drunks and homeless of Tokyo. oh yeah.... around 4am, it started to rain... great. However, by this time, the aspirin had kicked in killing the fever and headache (I took 4 500mg pills).
OK... It' raining and I still have a few hours left to explore Tokyo... what to do... the park with all the cherry blossoms is out of the question. The famous temple in Tokyo is too far walking distance in the rain... everything is closed until 10am... ok... The famous Tokyo Fish Market!!... At 5am, depart from my McRefuge on the early morning train to the Fish Market near the Ginza district. This place looks cool, but it's 6am and it's deserted... I think this is where they shot parts of Lost in Translation.
.... more later (I'm tired)
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