We spent 4 days in Tokyo and they were jam packed full of sightseeing and activities, definitely no time or energy to write in the blog, so I’m playing catch up now. Zane and Sam happened to be in the city at the same time as us, so it was great to catch up with them and do things together. Tokyo is so huge, we would love to spend 2 weeks here exploring, but alas our time has come to an end and we have barely scratched the surface of all that Tokyo has to offer. Here is a quick rundown on all things Tokyo.

Shinjuku alley ways: we arrived into Narita airport in the afternoon on the 9^th of April, caught a bus to Shinagawa station, checked into our hotel, met up with Zane and Sam and then made our way to Shinjuku. Shinjuku station is the world’s busiest railway station (I think). I read that it handles more than 2 million passengers every day! There’s lots of tall buildings, flashing lights, malls, department stores, and wide clean streets. We walked around for a bit, and then made our way to Piss Alley, which is quite the opposite of what I just described above. It’s cramped and dingy, and a local hotspot! It’s a series of small restaurants and bars stuffed as tightly as possible into narrow alleys wide enough for one person to walk through. The first night we ate delicious barbecue and drank litre glasses of beer, and the second night we liked it so much we returned and ate at a popular Japanese spot too. It was great!

Shibuya crossing: Shibuya is known for its packed shopping areas, restaurants and nightclubs and is an extremely popular area for tourists. Shibuya crossing is apparently the most famous crossing in Japan. It’s a 5-way intersection heavily decorated with neon lights, huge video screens, and advertising and gets flooded by pedestrians each time the crossing light turns green. I’m pretty sure a fair few movies have used this crossing, and lots of people come to get professional photos taken there. It was cool, something to tick off the bucket list.

Temples and shrines: We visited a few different temples and shrines around the place. They are all very peaceful and calm. The intricacies on the buildings are beautiful and elaborate.

Snowboarding street: Stephen was most excited about this part of the trip, an entire street dedicated to snow gear shops – boards, boots, bindings, accessories, apparel, you name it and you could probably find it here. He executed extreme self-control and only bought one new jacket, but there was definitely a lot we could have spent our money on!

Snow wear street

Street art

Golden Gai: Another well-known area in Shinjuku, we made our way to Golden Gai for drinks one night. Again, it is one of those rare places in Tokyo that hasn’t been bulldozed and redeveloped. We heard rumours that it will be before the 2020 olympics, which will be quite sad, as the area has a lot of character. It’s down-to-earth, locally minded and still wonderfully bizarre. It’s a couple of blocks of packed, slightly ramshackled, buzzing alleyway bars. Most bars will fit around 3 to 10 patrons at a squeeze (super small!). In the last bar we visited the owner, a great middle aged Japanese man who loved to play the guitar, got us all singing along to Japanese classics – it was great!

Aqua Park: Tuesday rained ALL day, and not just a light sprinkling, absolutely pouring rain. There was an ‘Aqua Park’ a short walk from our hotel, not somewhere we probably would have visited if it weren’t for the rain, but being inside and dry seemed far more appealing than anything else we could come up with, so away we went. Well, it was so much better than we expected. They had an amazing array of tropical fish, an incredible jellyfish experience, and some great freshwater sections too. Unfortunately, there were 2 big sea turtles and some large stingrays in a small enclosure that really didn’t seem fair (and wasn’t really necessary to the overall experience of the park) and a dolphin show which we didn’t pay for or attend. But overall it was a great way to pass time on a rainy day.

Street Go-Karting: I don’t think you can go to Tokyo and not ride around the city in go karts dressed up as iconic characters. Zane and Stephen dressed up as Mario and Yoshii from the Mario cart game, while Sam dressed as Eeyore and myself as Stitch (from Lilo and Stitch). It was so much fun! I almost pulled the pin on the whole experience as it was absolutely bucketing with rain ALL day and I was nervous to be in those rickety little karts amongst the Tokyo traffic in the rain, but come 8pm (when we were due to go carting) the rain eased. We drove past Tokyo station, through Ginza and back to the cart place in Akihabara. The two guides that were with us took so many photos and transferred them all to us at no extra charge. The whole experience was so much fun and really good value for money (you just have to look past the fact you have no seatbelt, no safety gear, and drive about 50km through busy Tokyo traffic in a tiny kart! Haha).

The crew! Stephen, me, Sam and Zane

Stephen aka: Mario. Megan aka: Stitch

Fish market: Well what a story we have to tell about the world-famous Tokyo fish market! At 5am every morning the fish market auctions of some of the largest tuna and fish in the world. Stephen was so keen to see this, and they let 120 visitors into the auctions each day. So, on our final morning in Tokyo we decided to go. We got up at 4am (after not getting to bed until 1:30am mind you) and made our way by train to the markets. We walked for about 1.5kms and got there just after 5am, but…it was closed! Can you believe it! It is only closed a couple of days a month, and we happened to go on that day. What a shame. And because of how early in the morning nothing was really happening at all. A handful of vendors were open selling sushi or soup, but no market stalls and definitely no auctioning.

Early morning walks through Tokyo streets

At least we saw one tuna at the markets

Yoyogi park: With the fish market not being open it was 5:30am and we had nothing to do and nowhere to go, so we made our way to Yoyogi park. This took Stephen and me on our first subway ride in Tokyo, which was good. When we got to the park it was simply breathtaking. The sun was low in the sky, still rising, the air was crisp and clean, and once you walked through the gate you had completely no idea you were in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world. It was like a hidden paradise. We walked under ‘Otorii’ the biggest shrine gate of the myojin style in Japan! It stands 12 metres tall and 17 metres wide, and the wood steamed in the morning sun. I could have spent all day in this park. But at 9am we said farewell to Zane and Sam and made our way back to the hotel to pack and check out. What a great way to end our Japan adventure.

Early morning rays peeping through the trees

What a season! We have had the best four months here in Hokkaido. Working a season overseas was not something I had ever imagined myself doing, but something Stephen had always wanted to do. I’m so grateful that he introduced me to the idea and together we made it happen before we turn 30 later this year. So many fantastic memories have been made. We are due to board our flight in less than an hour and make our way from Sapporo to Tokyo. Marie and her boyfriend, Yoshimi, came to the airport to say goodbye, which was lovely and a little bitter sweet. But we hope to see them again in Australia in the not too distant future.

Today we drove to the city of Asahikawa where we will base ourselves for the next 2 days. Along the way, we stopped at the Shirahige waterfall and saw the Blue River, as well as visiting in the Blue Pond in Biei. We tried to find an Ainu museum (Ainu people were Hokkaido’s first peoples), but unfortunately, we couldn’t find the museum and it was getting late so we had to give that a miss and check into our hotel.

Shirahige falls and the blue river, although not huge, were really interesting and quite beautiful. The waterfall stands around 30 metres tall and the water actually flows from ground water and comes out between gaps in the rocks. The colour appears blue because of the minerals in the ground water.

Then, just a short drive away we visited the Blue Pond. Unfortunately, it was still completely frozen over, however it was still pretty (I’ll put a photo from google so you can see what it looks like when it’s not frozen too).

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After a busy day of sightseeing Stephen and I arrived into the city of Tomakomai. Tomakomai is located on the southern coast of Hokkaido and is the fifth largest city. We are only stopping over for the night, but we managed to walk around the streets a little bit and have the most delicious dinner.

Let me introduce you to shabu-shabu. Shabu-shabu is a Japanese hotpot dish of thinly sliced meat and vegetables boiled in weak watery broth (called dashi). The term is an onomatopoeia, derived from the sound your food makes when the ingredients are stirred in the cooking pot and served with dipping sauces. It’s a great experience because you cook the food piece by piece at the table, and then dip it into whatever sauce you like. There are 2 traditional sauces: ponzo and sesame. Ponzo looks like watery soy sauce but has a kind of bitter tart taste. Sesame is literally sesame seeds crushed up with a tiny bit of dashi added to make it smooth.

Tonight we chose two types of dashi – the traditional style, which is water and kelp; and a spicy chilly dashi. The deal was all you can eat (tabehodai) for 120 minutes for 2,800 yen per person (pretty sweet deal, about $30 aussie each). We consumed a lot of meat and vegetables and finished the meal off with a scoop of creamy icecream, and it was all delicious!!

Two types of dashi heating up at our table

Three dipping sauces: salty garlic, ponzo, and sesame.

Thinly sliced meat, selection of thinly sliced vegetables, and chicken mince to make your own meatballs.

↓(Below are some photos of a shabu-shabu we ate in Kutchan back in February. I never got around to writing a post about it back then, but that one was a bit more traditional in that it we ground our own sesame sauce, the dashi was in a traditional clay pot, and the food was presented to us thoughtfully and artistically in a deep bowl).

Clay pot filled with traditional kelp dashi

All of our shabu-shabu ingredients.

So much deliciousness!

Hope you enjoyed the photos, and we’ll shabu-shabu with you when we get home.

M & S.