From Here To Tokyo
- Tokyo, Japan
- Apr 19, 2015
- 4 min read
In Holland, you can often hear the saying “Van hier tot Tokio”, which would literally translate into English as “From here to Tokyo”. We say it whenever something’s way out of proportion, like “Er stond een rij van hier tot Tokio” [There was a queue from here to Tokyo], or “Ik moest lopen van hier tot Tokio want het hele parkeerterrein stond vol” [I had to walk from here to Tokyo because the parking lot was full]. You catch my drift. Today, I actually made the journey from here to Tokyo. Luckily I didn’t have to walk!
I woke up pretty excited. Today was the day I would finally see the biggest metropolitan area on Earth, even though I didn’t want to go there before because I was afraid it would disappoint. Hajime-san, my guest father, had given me the phone number of one of his previous guests, who now lived in Tokyo. That meant I would actually have a guide there. Who knew what she would show me?
I took an early Shinkansen from Nagoya Station. The Hikari would bring me to Tokyo in a straight line, and since it only makes a few stops it would take about two hours. The speed, beauty and luxury of the bullet trains will never cease to amaze me! I saw on the map that the railroad would pass the famous Mt. Fuji, so I’ve been on the lookout the entire way. I was not disappointed. A while after we passed the Shizuoka station, the majestic mountain doomed up out of nowhere. I kept staring at it in awe as long as I could: pictures just don’t do its massiveness any justice!
Shortly after, we rolled into Tokyo Central Station. Do you remember the first time you went to Disneyland? Yeah, it felt something like that. I felt like squealing when I saw the Tokyo Tower, but that would’ve been a little weird. I pretty much ran out of the train and quickly found my way to the subway. I was amazed at how organized the place was. Throwing my low expectations aside, I loved Tokyo already!
I would meet Noura, my guide, at Harajuku Station. I was quite early, but I didn’t mind, because for years I had been dying to see that place. Harajuku Station is the birthplace of all the amazing Japanese clothing styles that made me fall in love with Japan in the first place: Decora, Elegant Gothic Lolita, Visual Kei, you name it! So after taking the subway from Tokyo Central Station to Harajuku, I was nearly shaking with excitement. I couldn’t wait to see all the amazing people in the gorgeous outfits and and and… you know what? They don’t come out when it’s raining. And raining it was. Lucky me!
Slightly heartbroken, but not about to let it get me down, I went to see some of the shops. The street was crazily crowded and I quickly got a message from Noura that she was there, so I didn’t get to see the real Harajuku shops I was looking for. Better luck next time – hoping there’d be a next time, of course. When I met up with Noura, she had brought a friend, and the three of us went out to lunch. They knew a good Mexican place for that – a burrito in Tokyo, why the hell not? While her friend was there, Noura seemed very shy and not really talkative, so I was afraid it’d get awkward as soon as her friend left. I didn’t have to worry though, because we quickly found a lot of things to talk about. It was only then that I realized that for the past few weeks, I’d been feeling kind of lonely, and it was great to have someone my own age around who I could just talk to in English. Turns out that after studying in Japan for quite a while, she felt exactly the same, and my day of sightseeing in Tokyo became more like a fun day out with a newfound friend. We just walked around without being headed somewhere, and I didn’t even care. I was having fun!
Of course, Tokyo wouldn’t be a Japanese city if you couldn’t still see some interesting places while aimlessly wandering around. Without really paying attention, we walked straight into Meiji Jingu, one of the most famous Shinto Shrines in Tokyo. It is completely surrounded by trees: one minute you’re walking in a crowded city street, the next you’re in a quiet forest. As soon as we walked out of the forest again, I saw that the weather had cleared up. And when the weather clears up in Tokyo… you guessed it. I finally saw someone dressed in Lolita clothing. He was a bit shy about having his picture taken, but I’ve got it nonetheless. Score!
After that we wandered into Shibuya, home of the Hachikō Station, where the dog Hachikō waited every day for his deceased owner to return. Many statues and images are put up there in the dog’s memory: beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. By the way, have I mentioned that Tokyo is the biggest metropolitan area in the world, therefore also the most crowded one? There’s no better place to witness that than at the Shibuya Crossing. It’s a ginormous pedestrian crossing, and the sea of people that you find yourself in as soon as the lights turn green is just terrifying. Nevertheless, is a hilarious experience and in the end, you don’t really notice that there are actually hundreds of people around you. The real scary part is when you go up into one of the buildings that look out over the crossing and think “Holy cow, did I just survive that?”.
We ended the day with having dinner at an Indian restaurant. I felt really reluctant to leave Noura, but because of my 10 PM curfew I already had to leave at about 7 PM. I headed back to my temporary home in Nagoya, feeling very satisfied, even though I hadn’t seen much of Tokyo. But no matter: I still had 5 days of my JR-Pass left. And a reason to go back to one of the most famous cities in the world.
Bonus video: Always wondered what Tokyo looks like when watching it go by at night from the shinkansen? Now's your chance to find out!
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