Orrientation In Tokyo.

 



So on Wednesday the 6th at around about 9am the rest of the volunteers arrived at the airport where Sarah and i met them with Ide-san. There is also 3 volunteers who have came all the way from Toronto! We made our way to Tokyo Central Youth Hostal by bus which took around 90 minutes and on our way we managed to catch a climpse at the recently finished Tokyo Sky Tree which towers above the rest of the skyscrapers. We stayed in Shinjuku near Iidabashi station and had an amazing view of Tokyo. The buildings just seem to go on forever. I shared a room with my two room mates in Nagasaki, Lucy and Sarah and one of the canadian volunteers Evelyn. The whole group went for lunch with Ide-san where i struggled to eat with chopsticks and had to resort to using a fork. At nighttime Sarah and I went to a Hong Kong style restuarant where i ate noodles with a spaghetti like sauce and finally mastered the art of using chopsticks! yay.






That night everyone went straight to sleep as everyone was jet-lagged but even though i was super tired i couldnt get to sleep after trying to read a book and listen to music to make me tired. In the end Evelyn and I ended up staying up all night 'creeping people on facebook' (stalking) watching some videos of 'Honey Boo Boo child' and introducing to her to some British tv and and Scottish slang. The showers opened at 6am and off we went. Here in Japan alot of places have communal bathing where you must wash your self down on stools next to the bath, wash your hair etc and then you are allowed to get into the bath. They only use the baths for bathing, not for washing. Luckily there was private showers to use. Breakfast was served at 7am and it was a strange combination of food. Rice, potato croquettes, lettuce and other strange things. I stuck to toast although the potato croquette style things are really tasty. The group met at 9:30am with Ide-san for a presentation on safety etc and by this point i was struggling to stay awake so whilst everyone went for lunch at 12 i went for a 2 hour nap.
At 2:30pm we all boarded the train and off we went to Harajuku where we visited the Meiji shrine. It was really beautiful and was surrounded by lovely trees and it felt very peaceful there.

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 the girls i shared with in tokyo.

a torii which is the gate found at shrines

 

Afterward we went a walk down the famous street in Harajuku which is populated with strange clothing shops etc. Here you will find many girls who dress extravagantly and are really beautiful.

 

 

As i hadnt had any lunch i was really hungry so we stopped at a shop and saw a yummy looking donught in red packaging so i assumed it was jam and also bought some chewy orange sweets which looked like fruitella style sweets. I opened my donught to discover it was not jam but custard and that my other purchase was not sweets but vitiman c chewy things. Unsuccesful shopping experience, i really need to learn more katakana and hiragana to help me do my shopping.

Overall our time in Tokyo has been really good but i couldnt wait to get to Nagasaki!!