15th.
Much like the day before and we can only assume every day that I spend here, I started without any real plan of what I was going to be doing.
“Hey, where’s that giant robot thing?” I asked myself, and then also Google – Google was a lot more helpful when it came to actually answering the question, I figured out what trains I’d need to get and I was off.
The station I ended at was called “Tokyo Teleport Station” – I won’t lie, I was disappointed that there was zero teleporting involved. I arrived at the surface, via old fashioned methods, and looked around. I could see a giant ferris wheel, but no giant robot. I found somewhere to sit down and consulted the map.
The giant robot was about 2 minutes to my right, so I started walking. Now, apparently this robot ‘transforms’, but I didn’t see it do that and I wasn’t waiting around to see it do that – I’ve seen a video online though, it’s pretty cool, but not nearly as impressive as I’d had it in my head, so I’m glad I didn’t wait around.
After taking a couple pictures of the gundam, I rounded the corner and walked toward the water. It’s a really nice area, with views across the city and also a Statue of Liberty. Why? I’m not sure. Why does anywhere other than New York have one – Paris maybe makes sense, as they made New York’s, but… It is what it is and what it is is my third Statue of Liberty. I’ve seen New York’s, Paris’ and now Tokyo’s, it’s a fun little game now.
After taking in the view for a while, I headed to the Sensō-ji temple. Tokyo’s oldest. It’s a massive tourist trap, but that doesn’t take away from how impressive it is. I stuck around there until the sun started to go down (I did that on purpose, because I’m all about that sweet sunset shot).
Feeling tired, I started to head back to the AirBnB. Only to see that one of the stops on the metro line I was on was Shibuya. Though I was tired, I stuck it out on the train until I got to the stop and ventured up to the surface, to see what this crossing was all about.
If I wasn’t as tired as I was at this point, I could have probably sat around in awe at the sheer scale of everything, but I was tired, so I crossed at the crossing and ended up buying some Krispy Kreme, because when you see a Krispy Kreme, you buy some Krispy Kreme, that’s the rule, right? #notspon
With my donuts in hand, I headed back underground to get the train back to good ol’ Ikebukuro station, on the platform, while waiting for the train, a girl stopped me. At first, she spoke Japanese, I heard the name of where she wanted to go, but that was it. I told her I only spoke English and that I was sorry.
She came back with some broken English (although, far better than she claimed). She wanted to know what side of the platform she needed to be on for her train. I kept waiting for it to be a scam of some sort, but maybe I’m just so used to Europe.
It was now rush hour on the trains and they were full and I was squashed (along with everyone else). Every stop, the train would stop. No-one would get off and a normal, sane person would think “There’s no room for me on this carriage…”, not the Japanese! Every stop, you’d get shoved into the carriage some more, to make room. Ikekuburo, my station, is the final stop. So everyone gets off there. Which is handy, as you don’t need to fight to the door.
Once back at the AirBnB, I attempted to have an early night, failed and then ended up watching the first episode of E.R on Netlfix. It totally still holds up, in case you were wondering.