(I'll just let the best opening line of any blog I've ever written settle in for a little while....)
One of the things I enjoy about Asia is their lack of proof-readers. Honestly - anyone who wants to make themselves thousands of pounds could make a wonderful living out on this continent correcting mistranslated signs or things which come across differently than the way they were intended.
I've tried not to make too much of a big deal of it on this journey; A/ because I should be a little more mature than pointing it out considering that their English is far better than my ....(insert any language here). And B/ having been to Asia on several occasions I should be pretty used to it by now, and I'm doing my best to act like I've been in the endzone before now that I'm here.
Having said that, it does cause a lot of laughs each time I see one, and I took great delight when I first moved to Korea pointing out hilariously bad signs which had definitely been translated by typing the words directly into Google Translate before verifying them with an English speaker.
This kind of thing first came to my attention in 2008 when Beijing prepared to host the Olympics and I remember coming across a website that was filled with signs which were written in 'Chinglish' and were basically the most literal translation of what the sign said in Chinese.
I believe that the IOC stepped in to ban these signs as the subways and Olympic Village itself was littered with them and it was causing quite a lot of embarrasment.
You'll still see this kind of thing written in the occasional place, but it's a lot less common than it used to be.
More regularly you'll see people wearing t-shirts with slogans that don't actually make sense. I think it was my mum who pondered whilst she was here whether or not the wearers actually know what the words mean, and I guess in most cases the answer is no. A lot of the time it just seems like random words on an item of clothing which actually mean nothing!
I'd say I've had differing experiences in Asian with people understanding, and not understanding English, but I have certainly heard that to people on this continent they see the English language as something which is 'cool' and that's why it's written on signposts, billboards and many shop signs as it is said to attract people in. I guess it's kind of like the reverse of how people seem to want to get tattoos of things written in Chinese or Japanese because they think it looks better.
Language errors are common place, but at least they're trying to have a go at catering for us 'foreigners' who can only speak one language.
One thing that I do find funny is when I've been at the airport or somewhere and I've heard people using English as it's the only common language they they have between them.
Depending on where I've been, signs have usually been written in the native language and also in English although in Korea, China and Japan they've also been in the other two of the other three languages of the country I haven't been in (you might have to read that twice for it to make sense - basically in China, things were written in Korean and Japanese as well as English, and here in Japan you'll see things written in Chinese and Korean). I guess it depends on what kind of tourists they are expecting to receive, but I can certainly say that I have been very grateful for the fact that on all forms of public transport announcements have been made in English, and also the scrolling sign also shows English. Quite a lot of restaurants also have English menus, and I noticed today that in the subway, the information booklets are also available in pretty much every language going; you just have to look in the right place for them.
Obviously I have done the majority of this journey alone, but it can be strange to think that on some days I might not actually speak to anybody in English.
I've done by best to learn at least the words "Thank You" in each country that I've been to, but I've been so busy with organising things and making sure that I've been in the right place at the right time that I really haven't had the opportunity to delve into things relating to language a bit more. I feel like Japan might get the best deal because I'm here for the longest, and obviously I am exposed to things a little bit more than I have been in other countries.
I just hope when I come back that I haven't totally forgotten how to use the English language....
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Even though I have only been to two of the seven cities I will be visiting in my trio of weeks here, I have been having a great time out and about doing my best to soak up everything Japanese.
I'd seen a couple of signs up in the elevator of the hotel today about the water supply being turned off at 10am, and partly inspired by an inability to have a shower after a certain time, and also having created a busy itinerary for myself I decided that I was going to get up early this morning and set about completing a laundry list of activities.
I spent quite a lot of time working on things last night - even using Google Maps to take screenshots of each of the places I was going, and then also working out routes of how to get from one place to another.
Although things worked out to be OK yesterday, I'd spent quite a lot of time trying to complete two main activities, and not really had many opportunities to do anything else, but I'm pretty sure I compensated in a serious way for that today.
I made my usual journey to Ikebukuro this morning although instead of getting straight back on another train to go elsewhere in the city, I actually needed to venture outside of the metro station for a little while in order to locate a couple of shops that I'd seen which were in the area.
How strange that somewhere I've been through every day this week happens to be exactly the location of some things which I'd written down on my 'to-do' list for today.
I knew that both of these wouldn't take very long and that they'd probably end up being photo opportunities and experiences rather than hugely long activities, but as they were on the way then it was only right that I do in search firstly of the 'Kit Kat Store' here in Tokyo.
I have a laundry list of connections with 'Kit-Kats', but it turns out that they are rather popular here in this part of Asia too as when the concession stand known as the 'Chocolatory' opened it sold out of everything in stock within a couple of hours.
It actually didn't take me too long to find, and wasn't as grand as the M&M or Reece's Stores that you see around the place but it did sell a wide variety of luxury kit-kats that I hadn't seen before. I was looking out carefully because I'd seen that they sell a wasabi one, but I guess there wasn't any on the shelf when I went there this morning.
The next shop I was looking for is slightly more nieche and it was something that I had my attention drawn to yesterday when I saw someone with a Mega Pokemon Center bag on the train, and at that point I realised it would clearly be sacreligious to come to Japan and not go to a shop of something that became a cultural phenomenon after being created here.
Although Pokemon isn't perhaps as hugely seen everywhere these days as it was at the turn of the Millenium, let me tell you that it is still definitely a 'thing' over in Japan. I think alongside 'Hello Kitty' it's the soft toy that I see most attached to people's bags - and yes, some of these people are adults.
I can't say I ever got into the whole phase of collection Pokemon cards myself - I think I was a teenager by the time it caught on properly and clearly too cool to do anything like that - but I did possess a copy of the Gameboy Colour game of 'Pokemon Yellow' and I am familiar with the characters. Drawing back into my memory I think I actually spent some time on a plane ride watching the film.
There are lots of Pokemon stores in Japan as you'll not be shocked to hear, and whilst I thought I would go to one perhaps later on in the trip, the only one with 'MEGA' in it's name was the one here in Tokyo, and I did read that it is the largest one in the world, so I thought why not.
In order to get there I had to walk about five or ten minutes from Ikebukuro Station and go to the Sunshine 60 which is a rather large mall with hundreds of shops inside it. I grabbed a map and thankfully on the back there was an advertisement for the Pokemon Store which gave me it's location which was on the second floor.
As I went up the escalator I came right out in front of the Pokemon Store which was quite a large shop filled with pretty much every kind of merchandise you can imagine related to the series:
They had stuffed animals of the most popular characters (or least popular depending on your opinion), and then there was stationary, collectible figures and even household wares:
I was actually quite taken in by the whole thing and enjoyed walking around looking at all the Pokemon related things that you could get. It was quite busy in there with lots of other 'foreigners' clearly having the same idea as me by checking it out - one girl I saw had a completely full basket so she was obviously very into it!
After all the excitement of the Pokemon store I headed back to Ikebukuro for the next stage of my journey which was to go towards another one of the fine lookout points which I mentioned yesterday.
Displacing Tokyo Tower as the tallest structure in Japan back in 2012, Tokyo Skytree was actually built for practical reasons.
With all the highrises in the city, Tokyo Tower was no longer able to provide reception to the whole city, so a decision was made to build Tokyo Skytree which is 634m tall.
Due to it's status as a 'structure' and not a building, I couldn't find it anywhere on the page of tallest buildings in the world, but amongst structures it is the second tallest behind the Burj Khalifa in Dubai which makes it an extremely impressive landmark to go and visit.
I'd thought about going up to the top, particulary with its status and undoubtable ability to give me fantastic views over Tokyo, but I had plenty on my plate for today already and therefore decided that I'd just go and take a few photos of it rather than pay to go up to the top - same premise as with Tokyo Tower yesterday.
I got off the train at a station called Akakusa and it took a while before I could see the building due to all of the tall buildings around me, but as soon as there was a gap in between then it was clearly pointing out over the top. I walked down by the river and then across to it. The great thing about tall buildings is that you can see them from everywhere so you have no danger of getting lost provided you keep your eye on them!
It was even more impressive close up than it was from a distance, and I can only imagine how spectacular the view from the observation deck would be.
There were quite a lot of tourists planning to do just that, but also in the area were a number of restaurants and also an aquarium which looked equally popular:
I had other business to attend to as I headed back in the direction of Akakusa on the opposite side of the river this time and then walked back across. On the map yesterday I'd seen that there were a couple of temples in the grounds behind the station which ranked pretty highly on Trip Advisor so I decided to pay them a visit.
Senso-ji is the name of the main shrine complex which sits about five minutes away from the Akakusa Station and was a very crowded area with a number of different temples surrounding it. It had all the same kinds of things which I'd seen in Kamakura and also at Meiji the other day although the temple itself was much bigger and much more impressive:
Next to it there was a large pagoda which too was impressive:
I walked inside the temple and there were lots of people praying and tossing money into the shrine as is part of their ritual. As always the architecture stood out to me, and just the building it self looked incredible as it stood out having been painted in bright red:
I was back on the move again having spent enough time taking in the sights and sounds of Senso-ji, and I was now walking in the direction of Ueno which is actually a station that I'd visited earlier on my way to the Tokyo Skytree.
In Ueno there are two rather large parks which sit side-by-side - one of which contains a rather large lake which in April is covered in blossoming trees, and the other is a huge open public space which has a zoo, an art gallery and also a museum in it. Sadly the zoo was closed, but I enjoyed walking around the park all the same, and it was quite busy with people on this sunny day:
From there I did some more walking and headed towards the main Tokyo Station. It's strange that considering I've been in the city for four days that this might actually be the first time that I've been past the main station itself. It took me quite a while to walk there, and I managed to navigate it by simply following the train tracks and essentially walking underneath them all the way until I came to the very glamorous looking building that is Tokyo Station.
My visit was for a dual purpose - the second one much more exciting than the first. On Wednesday it will be time to move on from Tokyo and I needed to go to the station itself to buy a train ticket to head to my next destination which thankfully I managed to sort out with relatively few problems.
The main reason I was in the area was to visit the Imperial Palace of Tokyo which is only a few hundred meters away from the station itself.
Unfortunately unlike many palaces I have visited on this trip, you're actually not able to go inside and walk around the palace or even the main grounds, but what you can do from the outside it still see most of the buildings which look beautiful from behind the moat that runs the full size of the area:
I walked around the outside taking pictures of some of the entrances where I could on my way to the Tokyo Dome which is where I was headed to next.
Home to the Yomiuri Giants baseball team, the Tokyo Dome is an impressive looking building which I'd seen out of my window when I first headed through Tokyo on the way to Yokohama.
It opened in 1988 and has played host to many fantastic concerts and events as well as being a home to the capital's baseball team. Although it is an impressive structure I'm not actually sure if it will be used as part of the 2020 Olympics as I believe they are meant to be upgrading the National Olympic Stadium as well as using various other arenas around the city, but if they do decide to hold anything here then it will be an extremely impressive venue indeed.
The area around the Tokyo Dome is equally as entertaining for visitors as their is essentially a theme park with various rides surrounding it.
Theme Parks are one of my favourite things in life, and a great thing about this one was that you could walk around it without paying an entrance fee which gave me plenty of chances to look and take pictures of the rides. The most impressive thing appeared to be a rollercoaster which didn't have many riders, but I guess it picks up at night and on the weekend:
The final part of today's journey was to head back towards Akihabara Station which I'd walked past on my way to Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace.
Although Shibuya is the official home of all neon lights in Tokyo, and maybe even Japan, Akihabara is actually known as 'Electric City' as for a stretch of the road it could almost be brighter than at daytime with all of the buildings lit up in different colours.
One thing that is prominent in Akihabara are the amount of different venues available for entertainment.
A bit like not going to a Pokemon shop, it would be pretty silly of me not to spend some of my time in an arcade whilst here in Japan, and that's what I planned to do last night as I researched three different places which were recommended by other travelers:
Before I even started using my screenshots to be able to find any of these arcades I came across a retro gaming shop which had two tv screens at the front - one showing the titles from the original Legend of Zelda, and the second playing a looping video of the introduction to Street Fighter II, it was almost as if they knew I was coming:
I had a little wander around, amazed by simple differences between Japanese and English versions of games and at all the different old consoles they were selling. The games were so stacked with titles it was almost difficult to be able to look for anything, but I'd imagine if you took pretty much all of the games older than the year 2000 which are on ebay and put them in a shop this is what it would look like:
My little visit had started off well and after using my maps I managed to find the first of my arcades to visit which was called 'Super Potato' - even the name sounded fantastic.
It really wasn't an easy place to find, but from floor three up of the building it also had lots of retro games around the place, including some which you could play:
There was also merchandise for sale as well as games for retro systems a bit like the shop I'd look at across the road:
On the very top floor of the building was an extremely old school collection of games which filled the smoky room:
It was good that as well as it being a shop they'd also blended together elements of an arcade and I was certainly glad I looked up exactly where it was:
The next place I ventured into was Club Sega, which is an arcade that you find in lots of different areas, but this one had more floors that I'd seen in other ones and had a huge variety of different games varying from shooting to driving to fighting.
I had a go on a couple of different arcade cabinets before moving on:
My final stop for the evening was Tatio Hey which was a throwback arcade with old cabinet machines and a number of games I've heard of but never played. It featured a mix of Japanese titles which I don't think were released in the west and then mixed these in with classic games like Tetris and Bust-a-Move that are always fun to play in the arcade:
Each of the three places I went were crammed with machines of different types and I could honestly have stayed in there all night and just soaked in the atmosphere but I don't think I'd have had any money left.
I managed to snag one last picture before going back to the station through an exit known as 'Electric City':
It feels like reading this back through that I might have glossed over a lot of details, but at least you get a flavour that today was a pretty busy day in which I managed to get through lots of different activities. Variety was definitely the name of the game, and with all the walking I've done I can say for sure that I will definitely sleep well tonight!
Electric Avenue
Eddy Grant (1992)
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