Yesterday, 7th of April, we checked out of our hotel in Kyoto. We moved to the main station to put our luggage in a locker. Before leaving Kyoto to head towards Tokyo we would first check out one last shrine. The popular and famous shrine of Inari. The god of better income.
To this particular shrine a lot of donations were made by a lot of people all over japan. This resulted in a very long path covered with gates. Orange gates. Each gate would cost about 5 to 30 thousand euros, depending on the size and bears the name of the person or family who donated. We could not count them all, we didn’t even see them all. The entire mountain, Inari Mountain, was covered with these gates with a lot of shrines.
After gotten tired of seeing gate after gate we got back to the station, got our luggage and reserved a spot for our superexpress. We got in and got out in Tokyo. Our first hotel in Tokyo would only be for one night. It would be a capsule hotel. We got to the hotel fairly easily and checked in. It was only 17.00 now and so we got out to check out the neighborhood. After heaving dinner and some more walking around, playing games and seeing huge buildings, we got back to the spanish feeling hotel. We climbed in our bedrooms with size 2x1x1 and watched a bit more of the weird Japanese tv-shows (yes a small tv was installed in these capsules to make sure we didn’t have too much space to use).
We slept in, or at least tried to. Apparantly Sybren succeeded at first, because he didn’t feel a thing from the earthquake that hit just before midnight. Marcel however did feel it, he went down with the elevator to ask whether stairs would be available during emergencies. After having sketched the whole thing on paper they understood and answered: “No.” The earthquake stopped and Marcel got back to his box.
As you can imagine, we slept horribly. Tiny boxes in which we had to put our luggage as well as get our rest. The heat was killing unable to bare.
Anyway next morning we checked out again and headed for Akihabara, where our next hotel would be. When we were checking out our location on a map, a man walked up to us and asked whether we would like to ask him about any directions. So we asked him directions for our hotel; Mystays
We got there early and asked if they could take watch on our luggage while we waited until we could check in. During our wait time we didn’t sit idle. We went out to check out our new neighborhood. Since Akihabara is famous for its arcade and electronics shops, we headed out to check out a bit of this. When the time was right, we got back to the hotel and were happy to see our rooms were a lot bigger as our last ones. We took a little rest before heading out once more to get some food, which is quite hard in such an electronics based area. We succeeded and are now in our hotel drinking a beer to yet another story to tell you guys.
TL;DR
Got to Tokyo, survived earthquake, seen a view spots in akihabara. cheap games everywhere. If only the language would be easy to learn.
The wonderful journey continues. How is the weather? Do you meet other travellers?
Does the hotel organise earthquake drills?
Say hello to the 13 milj Tokyoninans / Tokyoites. Must be a piece of cake to picture yourselves together with some 50 of them for your achievement. (Dutch spelling corrector suggests a.o. ‘lavementspuit’ on this last word. Make no mistakes!)
yesterday and the day before yesterday we had rain, just a tiny bit. Today however the sun shined bright.
earthquake 7.2 op de schaal van richter geloof ik.
is jullie hotel proof voor bevingen? veel plezier nog in Tokyo en ik ben benieuwd naar nieuwe ervaringen.geniet er nog van dit laatste weekje? of blijven jullie toch langer?