Sunday, March 8, 2009

the last trip before my teenage years are over.

japan, or more specifically TOKYO, was my highlight of 2008. it is ironic because it occurred in 2009, but the whole year of 2008, i was hyped to be going to japan. Started out as a casual conversation with Henry turned out to be a somewhat unreal trip. "Lets go japan someday""yeh for sure""when?""in 2 years"
that 2 years turned out to be sooner than I thought. and FUNDS had to be gathered.
Shit had to be sold, extra shifts at roy morgan was necessary, working as much as possible, spending as little as possible. And i was able to gather almost 9000aud.
As usual the 4 of us were down, which would have been enough, but Duc and Tommy joined us, an extra delight !
Tokyo meant so much to me, because of the culture i loved. Hiroshi Fujiwara.. Hiroki Nakamura.. Visvim.. F.I.L ...TET.. wtaps... neighborhood... headporter.. CDG... and basically japanese brands doing cool japanese things. So to be able to see the shops itself would have meant so much to me.
Which created somekind of fear before the trip, what if everything turned out to be shit, i spent a year dreaming about this kind of stuff, what if the original source sucked, what if tokyo was wack.

So we did end up embarking on this fantastic voyage before we say goodbye to teenagedom, and turn into young adults who are not fucked up.
I'll list my adventure as location-wise, in alphabetical order:

Akihabara: the famous electronic centre of tokyo. went down there twice, the first time to get some audio-technica headphone which was LOST in the transportation process, so i had to buy another pair. fuck there goes 2990 yen. Not much going on, just maids handing out pamphlets to maid cafe. OMG MAID CAFE, NO PHOTO NO GO. Saw nintendo DSi .

Asakusa:
what most people call HOME. Khaosan Annex was where we stayed for 14 days. The station of all stations, situated at the other end of Ginza line. On the opposite end was Shibuya WOOT, 32 minutes by train from asakusa to shibuya. It was a very peaceful and serene place, excellent place to stay i swear. Many memories were forged,
-the Lawson 100 yen store which we ate breakfast everyday. Microwave bread, Instant noodles, 2 litre water, DUMPLING MAKERS, 100yen apple. and the 100 yen was actually 105 yen including tax (LOL).
- baseball: i've always wanted to play the baseball machine (OMG SO DRAMA LIKE SITUATION), and we found one right in asakusa. no doubt many games were played... until we are all baseball champions, smashing on 130km/h (not really). there were 2 arcade machine there, but oh, the night of DRAGON BALL Z. AHAHAHA. I saw the dragonball z 3d machine and was like omg i gotta play this. but then omg 100 yen a game, what if i suck. But lucky it was so easy, and turned out to be a real workout. SIGHMON JUST STRAIGHT OWNED us so bad.. but lost to chi chi in round 3 which was quite the noob lol bls.
- arcade: INITIAL D VERSION 5 WOOT. Simon's struggle to pick up the GUNDAM (woot) doll.
- corner ramen place. 690 yen got you a meal with noodles rice pork and unlimited water. It was a magnificent discovery and we ate there at least 5 times
- the other ramen place. 300yen breakfast was awesome and deifnitely worth waking up for.
-mos burger. small, tasty, lived up to its expectations.
- evening out with duc, talked for quite a while, was a good experience
- the golden shit
- the bridge
- the WHERE THE FUCK IS THE BIN litter x 100 occasions

Aoyoma:
aoyoma was visited on 2 occasions. the first one by a kind introduction of davasawa. Blackflag was up to expectation. The 2nd occasion was with the rest of us, picked up a nice CDG jumper, couldnt find tab device, realised they moved to Cinch. Undercover was awesome, especially the new backpack (considered seriously), japanese vice magazine, and then the best experience at blackflag. I was after the new zine that they had, except they were all gone. after much exchange of words, the employee is like.. wait a sec, and he printed me a copy on the spot. How fucking good is that for customer service. Really made my day, AWESOME.

Ginza.
Ginza was the big store area. Mass tall buildings, malls. The best thing was the UVC i picked up at Uniqlo Ginza. Note: Ginza is the only place that sells UVC in tokyo at the time i went.

Harajuku.
Harajuku was one of the most visited place ever. Harajuku st contained: headporter, headporter plus, Supreme, Neighborhood, A fool's tear, Hare etc.
It also has the best dressed crowd, and 5 mins walk to F.I.L (shibuya). To get to FIL its best to get off at omotesando and walk, it is right behind dior. Dior is massive though ha. Ate Wendys at Harajuku once, Wendys is massive burgers, triple quarterpounder goddamn.

Imperial palace.
Another fun day. But there weren't really much to see. the best was probably the pretending to dive in and suicide photos as well as the Tom Cruise jokes.

Ogikubo.
Home of Px-megastore and px station, ENOUGH SAID

Nihonbashi
Nothing should be said about Nihonbashi. the fun and joy we had there shall remain a secret forever, and we promised noone would say a word about it. But if you haven't been... then you didn't really go to tokyo. to be honest.

Roppongi
Roppongi hills was massive, didn't really spend much time at Roppongi, other than R burger... YUMMM buns instead of bread. They kinda have the same concept as VISVIM on footwear. But its on burgers.

Shibuya
the destination of all destinations. BYE BYE (one drop kat-tun) will always be rememberd. the number of hot chicks found in Shibuya is countless, and ugly ones too. the massive crossing. Tsutaya was awesome, starbucks coffee at crossing is awesome, spend countless hours at Shibuya.

Shinjuku
gay street, hosts, 3 hours of waiting for haircut, walking around shinjuku with 10kg E-cat

Tokyo Tower
Tokyo tower snacks, rainy day

Tsukiji fish market
waking up at 4am, 1 hour looking for train station, JR line, 1600 sashimi, oysters, cars, auction, massive fishes, and SO FUCKING TIRING

Ueno
buy sell ueno, heaps of jeans, outdoor wear,

I'm getting lazier and lazier, but lets just say Tokyo was pretty fucking awesome. Hopefully others will fill you in with better, specific details.

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