Exploring Tokyo

This is our third day in Japan, and it's still amazing. We have explored the city in two ways in two days. The first day was with the subway/metro second day with bikes!

We got ourselves a day pass for the Tokyo subway which We can recommend to everyone who wants to fill a day exploring the highlights of japan. The subway system is really easy to use, stations are even showed in English and brings you everywhere you'd like. We went to most tourist spots like the fish market. Best sushi ever!! I think I'd bet that the tuna was in my sushi within 24 hours of its catch. The sushi place was great, they make the sushi in front of you and with so much care and joy. Funniest thing was that every time someone new came into the restaurant they would shout and scream as a greeting. Check next picture.

In the evening we went for some drinks in the Giza area in small suburbs close to a station. There, we met an Australian guy and a Japanese guy. They both work and live in Japan and we spoke a lot about customs of the country. The thing that amazed me the most is that everything is about money money and yes money. Showing off their Rolex to girls, walk in a expansive suit while it's 30+ degrees. And they have to they told us. They are colleguas of one another in the headhunting business. They said ' if the applicant is not wearing a good suit with a expansive watch, they would not talk with him'. The Japanese culture is weird. Ohh ye, drinking beer in Japan is not a smart thing to do when you are traveling on a budget! It Cost us a day of our budget hahaha, but we had fun though.

Biking through Tokyo

We spend our last day in Tokyo biking through the city, which is a real adventure when two people who have no orientation at all try to find their way around. But it was great! We saw a lot of great and interesting backstreets, biked along the river and went to one of tokyos islands.

It was a great feeling to bike on those huge streets in between all the skyscrapers. Luckily (and strangely enough), there is not a lot of traffic in the city center so biking there was very easy! We spend so much money yesterday that we decided to eat cheap, so we only ate instant noodles and some chicken balls from the supermarket - so not very special, but very cheap!! 

Tokyo

After a long 14 hour flight we finally arrived in Tokyo at 9 this morning. It took us 3 hours to get to our hostel (complicated metro and train plan with lots of different prices and operators), but we got to see a lot of the Tokyo suburbs which looked very wealthy and modern. Our hotel-room is unfortunately not bigger than one big mattress laying on the floor, cosy.

We spend the rest of the day with a walk around our neighbourhood. First we wanted to try a ramen restaurant but ended up in a small Japanese local restaurant where no one could speak English. So we had to trust the waitress to bring us some delicious food. Tom only know how to say 'thank you' (arigato) in Japanese so maybe she liked us because the food was delicious (pork with ginger and rice!).

After a little more walking we visited some temples at asakusa and unesco park, where we stayed for the rest of the day. On our way back to the hostel we finally found a small ramen restaurant where I could finally have my first real Japanese ramen - yammi!

Our impression of Tokyo so far:

- very, very clean

- Japanese people are very friendly, helpful and love to talk, even if they don't know one word English

- Tokyo is very quiet ( at least the part we saw today! - a little too quiet)

Packing!!

Our packing procedure:

Of course we started packing one day before the actual trip which resulted in to a lot of O! shit! moments. And a few nervous, exciting moments: yeah! Leaving in 24 hours!

Thus overall this was a bigger challenge then expected, quite bigger actually. What to take for eight/nine months with different kinds of weather, attitudes, seasons etc.

The list below indicates the clothes we approximately took with us (without medicines and other miscellaneous such as a toilet stuff, tablet and camera):

• 8 T-shirts
• 6 Underwear
• 3 Shorts
• 2 Swimwear
• 3 Pairs of socks
• 1 long pants
• 1 Zipper hoodie
• 1 Towel
• 1 Beach towel
• 1 Rain jacket
• 1 pair of hiking shoes
• 1 Pair of flip-flops

'exciting' 4 days left

The time is almost here, eight!! months of traveling through Asia and South East Asia. Well that’s the idea. Nina finally received her visa for China, now we can really go and it starts to feel that way as well.

Busy packing the backpack, and emptying it over and over again because I find it to heavy. While Nina seems to be needing more than one backpack and would rather pour it all in mine. It’s all good!

16 days left..

... until we start our journey. Nina is still waiting for her passport to return from the Chinese Embassy in Frankfurt for a 60 day Visa, while Tom got his already accepted in Den Haag. There are still a lot of things that we have to do and organise before leaving (such as insurance, medicine...) but we cannot wait to finally leave and get on the road!