Unfortunately, and to cut a long story short, I missed the typhoon experience. It struck Tokyo at around 2:30am on Thursday morning, and while I was told it made quite the racket, I must have slept soundly through it. When I woke up, in fact, it was a beautiful day with nary a cloud to be seen.
Something must have happened, though, because the other news I awoke to was that the entire day's class had been cancelled. "Excellent", I thought to myself, "Now I can go and see another part of Tokyo...".
We (Dave, Anthony and I) decided to go to Asakusa, because it was part of 'downtown' Tokyo that I was yet to see (where I live, Shinjuku, is part of the 'up-town'). It wasn't too long of a train and subway ride before we arrived at our destination, Asakusa.
Asakusa is known firstly and foremostly for it's temple, Senso-ji, which has been in the same position more or less since the seventh century AD. Coming to Asakusa for the first time, it was a must-see for us:
At the temple itself we were able to, for a small fee, recieve a fortune - which, fortunately (hah) was written in English as well. I was blessed with "Good Fortune in Future", but Dave was not so lucky, and somehow recieved double ill-fortune. (This would manifest itself later when every single game store that we visited was sold out of the game he wanted. To this day we have not found it.)
After we had a quick look around the temple, we thought it would be best to lose ourselves in the side-streets of Asakusa, which we promptly did. It did not take long to find ourselves in a world of tiny izakaya (kind of like a Japanese pub), hidden bathouses (supposedly frequented by the yakuza), old amusement parks and, of course, numerous pachinko parlours (which also are supposedly run by yakuza). For me, who had only experienced the likes of futuristic Shinjuku and Shibuya, this little adventure was refreshing. I finally felt like I had arrived in the real Japan!
On the way back, we even stumbled across a restaurant selling fugu, a Japanese delicacy that I do not think I will be sampling during my stay here...
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Fugu is .. pufferfish? according to wikipedia, of course. Have some! Put your trust in the skilled hands of the chef :)
Yes, that's it ;)
The other problem with it is that it costs over $250...>.>
Daniel
did you go into the bathhouses?
Ummm.... no, I did not. And I don't particularly want to, either.
Yeah, I agree Dan $250 is just a little steep.:o