neon
did a ton of different things today. my friend shinobu-san took me to nezu shrine, then we had a beer in ueno park. i explored ueno, then went to the skytree and then to golden gai again. i think this might be my record for steps in a day. and i don’t mean just on this trip. i think this might be the most steps i have ever taken in a day. i’m not very fit.
side note - i took a lot of photos today. i kept 123 photos, which takes second place for number of photos in a day so far. there are a lot more than this on the gallery site, but i am posting the best of the best here.
ueno
my friend shinobu took me to nezu shrine, located in tokyo’s bunkyō ward, which is right next to ueno. we walked for a bit in the area around ueno station on the way.
this street is awesome. its line with shops selling all sorts of stuff, tourist knickknacks, food, desserts, clothes, these traditional japanese dolls that allegedly inspired the “mii” characters from nintendo consoles… they had all sorts of stuff. definitely a cool place to check out.
on the walk, we saw a dessert shop and stopped in. i got a slice of cheesecake. it was excellent.
we kept walking and saw a noodle restaurant called “麺処しのぶ”, which i can read half of. google translate tells me the first two characters are “mensho” which means “noodle restaurant”. and the rest says shinobu. of course we had to get ramen at the place called shinobu’s noodles.
it was delicious, but i forgot to take a photo of it. i got shoyu ramen with extra extra green onions. solid 9/10.
nezu shrine
we arrived at nezu shrine after a bit of a walk. i’ve since looked up some info on this shrine, and its really interesting. this is one of the oldest shrines in tokyo, technically dating back to the first century. i say technically because it was moved to its current location in 1705, and there are no remnants of the original. even at 321 years old, it is still one of the oldest in the city.
the shrine is famous for an azalea festival that is currently happening there. hundreds of flowers in bloom make this the ideal time to visit.
shinobu told me that this shrine used to be more of a hidden gem, but it got famous on chinese social media and then spread very quickly, so many tourists know about it now.
this place is very beautiful. and i never would have found it without shinobu’s recommendation.
beer in the park
after the shrine, we wanted to go find a bar or something before shinobu had to go to work. we looked for a bit, but ultimately decided it would be cooler to buy beers at a convenience store and go sit on a bench in ueno park. we sat by a pond where we watched people pedaling swan boats around for a bit. it was nice. the weather was absolutely perfect.
exploring ueno
after parting with shinobu, i decided to keep exploring ueno. i had a ticket for tokyo skytree at 8pm, and it was only 5:00. i left ueno park and just started walking into ueno. people kept walking up to me and asking me to follow them or go to a girls bar nearby. kinda surprising how often it kept happening. ma’am, i am just trying to take some pictures thanks.
after walking around for 2 hours, i headed over to tokyo skytree a bit early. honestly i just got kinda sick of the constant solicitation. spoilers for later, this was nothing compared to what it could have been.
skytree
early on in the trip, when we all tried to go to the skytree, my friend alex bought some really nice cologne at a nearby shop. he asked me to get more of it if i was in the area again, so i did. i got some for myself as well. they had a really cool system where you could pick 3 scents out of 60 and custom make a cologne exactly how you like it. i didn’t do that because i didn’t have the time, but its a cool idea and i am surprised i haven’t seen it somewhere else before.
i am kinda glad we weren’t able to get into the skytree previously, because this gave me the opportunity to go at night, which i have yet to do. this is my 3rd visit to the skytree, so i definitely wanted to see it at night.
there comes a time in every man’s life where he smorks for the last time, and he doesn’t even realize it when it happens. hit every smork like it will be your last.
they were doing an event right outside the entrance to the skytree today, called “skytree taiwan festival”. they had a bunch of stalls selling taiwanese food. it was incredibly crowded. i wanted to get some xiao long bao, which are dumplings filled with soup. i am pretty sure xiao long bao is technically not taiwanese, but they had a stall selling it at this festival. the line was crazy long though, so i didn’t get to go.
it was finally time to head up.
the skytree is doing a collab right now with an anime called blue lock. its about soccer. i have never seen it. but i think its ridiculously popular. i now kind of hate it, because part of the collab is giant obstructive displays with bright lights and audio of anime dudes screaming at the top of their lungs. its extremely loud. and because i am here at night, the bright lights make it really hard to take photos. i took over 300 photos in the skytree, and only kept 49 of them, largely due to the annoying reflections on the glass caused by the stupid anime collab.
that being said, i still managed to get some really good ones. the editing time on these was crazy, because i had to selectively crop around reflections and stuff. but im proud of how a bunch of these came out. really reminds you that tokyo can be a cyberpunk dystopia.
golden gai
this is my last night in tokyo, so i wanted to check out golden gai one more time. i headed over there, and popped in and out of a bunch of little tiny bars.
turns out, there’s a map!
the quantity of bars they are able to fit into one city block is absolutely amazing. theres nearly 300 bars on this map. in one city block. what the hell.
every bar i went into has a sign up that says no photography allowed, so i didn’t get any pictures of the inside. but these places are tiiiiny. smaller than a lot of bathrooms in america. when you are sitting at the bar, your back is touching the wall. they have 5 seats. sometimes less. rarely more. not for the claustrophobic, that’s for sure.
at one point, i was trying to take a picture of one of the alleyways when a (i assume) drunk girl walked out of one of the bars and (as you can see) got photographed. which is funny because i think it ended up being the best photo of the whole day.
no idea who you are, random shinjuku tourist lady, but i got a good picture of you.
there is one issue in this area that i think a lot of tourists will run into. there are “street touts” that will approach all non-asian looking people and ask you if you want to go to a good bar / club / whatever. both times i have been to this area, i have been constantly, like every 5 or 10 minutes, approached by a dude with an accent i don’t recognize asking me to go somewhere. you always say no, but they don’t give up. they keep following you for a while. and they are everywhere. i was in shinjuku for like 3 hours tonight and got approached by 9 different dudes.
doing some googling about this, it seems like its a pretty common issue tourists run into. there is an organized group of nigerian guys that are here every single night doing this. they exclusively target foreigners. they are smart enough to leave japanese locals alone, which is allegedly why it doesn’t get reported to the police or addressed at all. its at least a known-enough problem that there are signs all over shinjuku that say do not follow street touts.
you can really fall down a rabbit hole reading about these guys. lots of people think they have ties to the yakuza, and thats why police leave them alone. and it seems to be almost entirely contained to the kabukicho area. there are lots of stories of people either following these guys and blacking out / waking up the next day with no wallet or phone, or even weirder ones like the guys intentionally bumping into them and “dropping their phone” and then demanding money to fix it.
its so crazy to me that this exists here and hasn’t spread elsewhere. this one small area of tokyo is so wildly different from everywhere else in the city, it doesn’t feel like the same place at all.
today was a crazy day. i leave for sendai tomorrow, so i’m glad i had one last big night out here. when i got back to the apartment, i was at 21,900 steps. so i walked around hatanodai for a while just to get it over the edge. well, technically i was only at 21,779 for april 12, since i got home so late. but i’ve been counting steps as wake up time to sleep time, so even if my steps app says 21.7, i am at 22k.
