OK Tokyo with the Gee’s.

October 18, 2018 /

Japan 2018

Where shall we go ?

We hadn’t had a holiday for a while so first question was where should we go? This is never an easy decision for us as we always say the same thing “do we go to somewhere we have already been and enjoyed or somewhere new?” So, the next question is “do we want a relaxing holiday or an adventure?” Those that know us will understand this, when we visit somewhere we go all out and explore everything we can because my dear husband suffers from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). For us a relaxing holiday is to go where we have been as there is usually nothing we haven’t been to, smelt, heard, touched, experienced or photographed and an adventure, well you have probably guessed by now, it’s a very active holiday and opportunity to do something new.

Having said all that Japan was selected as a the destination as we had both heard so many stories from friends about what a beautiful country it is. So I was prepared for an active holiday however I wasn’t prepared for the total sensory overload that Japan has to offer and the sheer number of people. It is going to be hard to describe this holiday, but I’ll have a crack and hopefully some photos will help along the way. My advice is ‘Go’ and see it for yourself it’s an absolute mind blower of an experience.

The only thing I really knew about Japan was Sushi and Mount Fuji, not much to start with but luckily Robbie likes to plan holidays so he throws himself in to the planning like a man possessed. I don’t have FOMO, I seem to get through life with an ignorance is bliss sort of attitude so if I didn’t have Robbie I am sure there would be many many things that I would never have seen or done.

Tokyo seems like a good place to start.

We managed to find some cheap flights out of Cairns for Narita (Tokyo) so that’s how it all began. Fortunately, we jagged some business class seats at a very reasonable price so that governed how many days we would be gone for. Must say I like sitting in the flash seats and we had 15 days to kill in Japan.

On arriving at Narita Airport we had a bus to catch to Shinjuku where we would be staying, this was deliver to your door service. We were immediately struck by the reality that there were not many vehicles on the road, nothing like we had experienced in Thailand and Vietnam. They turned out a big welcome display of fire works for us along the way which was really nice. Hehehehe, not really we were passing Disneyland just at the right time of the evening.

The bus delivered us to the hotel door and to be honest I thought we were punching above our weight with this hotel… very flash, marble, crystal chandeliers and bell boys in white gloves and those little caps like in the movies.

So in normal Godden fashion we checked out the room, it was enormous and so clean and this mob even gave us a free mobile phone to use while we were there to help us find out way around, although we didn’t need it as ‘Barter Scout Godden’ had planned ahead and had a Pocket Wi-Fi delivered to the hotel so we had access to our own phones and goggle maps the whole 15 days. After checking out the digs we headed straight out to explore and get dinner.

There were many restaurants close to where we were staying within a 5 minute walk, but how the hell to decide where to go and well, not quite that easy as there were too many choices. After a bit of a wander we found one that looked nice and I felt like soup, so we ended up getting ushered down a spiral staircase to a basement kitchen, full of business people eating big bowls of stuff and drinking beer. Only locals in here so we stood out like sore thumbs.

We got given a menu and some ice tea and that’s when the fun began. The menu was in Japanese, did I tell you we can’t read Japanese. LOL anyway we ordered something by pointing to the picture and ended up with big bowls of something with dumplings in it. Was really nice but have no idea what it was. It had a boiled egg thrown in for good measure as well. So we sat there in this very alien environment slurping our soup up and me stabbing the big things with chop sticks to get them to my mouth. I’m sure the other customers would have been very impressed with my chop stick skills…. or perhaps not!