From Tokyo to Seoul

Wednesday was our last full day in Tokyo. 

We obviously woke up pretty late. At evening Rebecca & I met up with Tsuyoshi & Hide. We mainly strolled around in a few stores around Takeshita-Dori, and then walked to Shibuya to spend time in game centres & to eat.

The next day we strolled around downtown Ueno before heading to Narita airport to take the flight back to Seoul! 

Me at First Kitchen. 

Rainy Ueno. 

The train to Narita. So exciting!!  ...............

Mmmm, flight dinner. Well, actually - it didn't taste good. And still, I am a huge fan of flight meals. 

The queue at Incheon airport, for the train taking us to another terminal. Yay.... 

Zushi beach & The Lockup

Intense Tuesday.

We went from Tokyo to the Zushi beach, located about an hour by train from Shinjuku. It's a nice beach, very popular among locals and visitors. Sometimes there are big parties arranged there. For example, Otodama Sea Studio arrange performances of artists & DJs there during summertime. I actually considered to visit it last year when my 90's Jpop idol KAN (video link) performed, but unfortunately I couldn't. This particular day there were not many events really, but nonetheless a great day at the beach. Very windy, but the weather was really warm so it was very enjoyable!

Yay!!

The beach! As seen in Life by Kimaguren!

Jonas! As never seen before!

The day was good. We ended our beach visit with eating some food at a beach restaurant. Before going back to Tokyo we also stopped by McDonalds.

Hide eating curry rice!

Ice cream at McDonalds!

Hide! Happy as usual! 

While Nathalie, Yannick & Agnes went home, the rest of us stayed in Shinjuku. We went to The Lockup. New experience for Jonas & me, and such a cool one! It's basically a jail bar with some horror theme. 

Yeah, these pills were served with superstrong alcohol. Wow. Intense!

Awesome drink!

When entering the bar, Jonas was wearing Hide's birthday gift - a Swan hat! It was glowing in the dark! 

I have no photos of it, but we played a kind of food game. A food roulette game, basically. You order 5 pieces of some kind of food, and one of those five pieces are with a different filling than expected. Oh well, I now have tasted the spieciest Korokke ever. >_<  But it's fine, since I experienced to watch Hide eat a mustard-filled dessert. Very amusing!

We ended the day (night?) with some Karaoke nomihodai for the rest of the night! Awesome!!

26th of July - Akihabara!

On that Monday we went to Akihabara.

We spent some time at Yodobashi Akiba, the huge shopping complex (mainly for electronics) in Akihabara. It sure is the biggest one there, but probably not the cheapest one. Actually the only thing I bought from there were 'My Neighbor Totoro'-playing cards!

Outside Yodobashi Camera.

One thing we really wanted to experience was to visit a Maid cafe. And that's what we did!
 We weren't allowed to take photos of the Maids (unless we paid money) but it was fine to take photos of the drinks ordered.

It was as tasty as it looks like!

Jonas' new computer! Yes, it's a stationary one.

An itasha-car! Nice one.

Totoro playing cards. Cute, huh?

Sunday in Shibuya

Hey! ^^

Ok, so on Sunday we went to Shibuya to meet up with Hide! We woke up pretty late, so the plan was basically to eat & drink and to go sing Karaoke.

Yannick & Jonas on the subway.

Hide & Rebecca at the restaurant.  

 

Minestrone soup & salad. 

Quite good! Even though I prefer Japanese food. 

 

Fun at the Karaoke. 

Jonas performed a wonderful rendition of the Tarako song. 

Ok, well - after Karaoke Agnes & Nathalie returned to the guesthouse while we tried to find any fun club to go to. Since it was Sunday it was quite difficult. Oh, and of course I got a headache and had to rest at an Internet cafe in the middle of the night. Typical me. After feeling better we all ended up at an izakaya.

Everything was blurry. Literary.

It was around 4-5 am, waiting for the first train to take us home to Ueno. 

Well, that pretty much summarized our Sunday.  Cheers!

Dramatic Saturday

Our return in Tokyo couldn't have been worse.

We were dead-tired after a horrible bus trip overnight, and the heat & humidity was really intense that day. We carried our luggage to the place where our guesthouse were supposed to be and sure - we found our guesthouse - but it wasn't at all as we thought it would be. They advertise themself as the cheapest guesthouse in Tokyo (which might be true) but it's by quite a small margin so we thought the acommodation would be good enough. We have stayed at plenty of other places before at around the same price margin, and they've been good!

A little tight space, but didn't look too bad from the outside.... err well.

The guesthouse I am talking about is JGH Hostel. Upon arrival we met the owner (I don't know his name, since he didn't introduce himself), which was really arrogant towards us. We asked some questions politely, and got the reply "Don't complain. I am Japanese, I am no cheater. So don't come here and complain" and everytime we questioned his behavior he said "Don't talk here, people are sleeping you know! You cant talk here!" which was quite odd, since he was the one who brought us there. I'll quote their information online "If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to ask us."

This was one of the private Double Bedrooms. It's not private, since the walls are not even real walls - and the room is not really a room - just a bed! The one Air Condition there was were used for the whole guesthouse - and turned off during daytime.

Another "Double Room" with "Privacy". The problem is that it's a bunk bed over the other one! Notice the so-called "walls".

 We left the guesthouse to go to an Internet cafe to try to find a solution. The weird thing is that this guesthouse has such high rating on Hostels.com. Looking around the net it seems like they offer you lodging and other stuff for FREE if you in favor give them high ratings. It wouldn't surprise me. Well, be careful when choosing where to stay!

Everything went fine from then on - as we discovered there were still rooms left at the guesthouse where Yannick & Natto stayed - at the excellent Hostel Komatsu in Ueno. For just a margin of more money we got two spacious Double Bedrooms with AC.

The day before leaving for Osaka

On Sunday we were still in Tokyo - leaving for the nightbus taking us to Osaka the night to Monday.

While storing our luggage in lockers in the Shinjuku station we spent time around the area. There's so much to do in Shinjuku so you never get bored. 

To spend some time, we went to a really nice Internet comic cafe. You can read manga & magazines there, watch anime, surf around on the internet, or rest if you'd like. You even get the opportunity to drink as much beverage as you'd like (alcohol-free).

 Kaiten-sushi in Shinjuku. Inexpensive, but to be honest - not that very good. Nonetheless, better than most sushi found in Sweden.

We are pirates! ARGH! This game in the game centre was really fun! Sadly I don't remember its name, neither do I have any photo of the game itself. 

 

Jonas in his natural habitat. 

 

Rebecca!

Me!

My dear friend, Mr. Tonkatsu. Basically pork cutlet coated with Japanese bread crums (panko). Delicious!

At the Love sculpture in Shinjuku. As I remember it from Densha Otoko! :P

 See you soon, Tokyo! <3