Japan: Day 9 – Shinjuku, Akihabara

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Day 9 highlights:

• Day 9 was for last-minute shopping. It was raining pretty hard so we started at nearby Tokyu Hands. It’s 8 floors of kickass department store, and we got there when it opened. We started by going to the top and working our way down, and we bought something on almost every floor. Check out the photo of the $3500 Darth Vader samurai that we didn’t buy, it was awesome. We were in there almost 3 and half hours before we realized what time it was. We did a quick check at the stores in the other half of the building and grabbed a sushi lunch upstairs.
• Our hotel was a block away and we had to go drop off all of our purchases so we could keep moving. Every time was passed the Krispy Kreme, there was a long line and even in the rain the line was long. Supposedly it’s normal to have a 1 or 2-hour line, and when they opened it was 3 hours. Check the video on Liam Maher’s blog to see how nuts it gets… Just click the post on the right that says "Krispy in Shinjuku."
• We worked our way over to Akihabara, and spent a lot of time at Yodobashi, 9 floors of every electronic device ever made. It’s mind-blowing, no matter what you’re looking for, there are a hundred options.
• The rain kinda sucked and after you’ve seen everything in electronics, there wasn’t much point in looking at the other stores so we headed back to Shinjuku. We went to check out the Isetan department store, which was more mind-blowing retail. There’s a men’s building and a women’s building, and both are like 7 or 8 floors. It’s like Saks on steroids – huge, high end, and there were almost as many staff people ready to help as there were customers. Any department you went into had an army ready to help, and if you like to drop obscene amounts of money on really cool clothes this is the place for you. Either way it’s definitely worth checking out.
• At this point we were too tired to change, so we went straight to dinner in dirtbag mode at the Century Hotel. We started with cocktails at the bar, and then into their restaurant. The views are the reason to be here, it’s all glass and you can see the whole city from here. We were so shot from the day of shopping it was the first day we didn’t go out for late night.

Japan: Day 8 – Asakusa, Ginza, Odaiba, Shibuya

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Day 8 highlights:

• After coming back from the early run to the fish market, everyone took naps to gear up for the full day ahead. Jenna and Evert hooked us up with Miko who used to work at adidas in Tokyo. We’d never met her except for a few quick emails and she took an entire day to show us around other parts of the city we haven’t been to. She was so fun to hang out with, and it was really generous of her to spend a day with people she didn’t know.

• We started by going to Asakusa to check out an old temple. Inside there was a tube full of sticks with numbers, and you pull out a number and go to a drawer. In the drawer is your fortune. Our group spanned the whole range from bad to best, and Miko showed us how you’re supposed to tie your bad fortune to a stand in the temple and leave it behind. Since Asakusa is known for tempura, we went to a really good tempura restaurant before jumping back on the train for Ginza.
• Ginza is an upscale shopping area that we roamed around for a while and then worked our way to a monorail to get to Odaiba, which is a man-made island in Tokyo Bay and what Miko described as modern Japan (after we went to see Old Japan in Asakusa.) We jumped into a huge shopping mall and got some needed coffee, and we also checked out Tokyo Bay and the Rainbow bridge. There’s a mini Statue of Liberty there that was given to them by France.

• I discovered orange Fanta with mushy stuff in it, kinda like Jello. You shake it a bunch of times and open it, and then it’s fizzy with gooey mucous-like stuff – but really good.
• After walking for hours, we wrapped up by going to a really nice supermarket to look for coffee Jello and load up on Japanese candy.
• A quick change at the hotel and we were back in Shibuya to meet Yukari for dinner at a make your own pancake place. This was another restaurant where your table is a grill, and we got a mix of ingredients to cook up.
• After dinner we met up again with Dave and Tiff and roamed around in the rain to find a bar. We jumped into one that looked good and Tara started pounding Sake.
• When everyone was fried from the long day and the batch of drinks, we jumped in a cab back to the hotel since it was late and we weren’t sure if the trains were still running. The cab driver made like he knew what we were saying, but got totally lost. Once the meter hit $30, we handed him $5 and got out to find another cab. This time around, Ramon called the hotel and put them on with the driver for most of the ride and we made it back in with no problems. Cabs are great in Tokyo – the drivers wear suits and they have automatically opening doors for you when you get in. They all have GPS too, which is a mystery how the first driver got lost since we gave him the address of the hotel and then just started telling him to go to one of the biggest train stations in Tokyo.

Japan: Day 8 – Tsujiki Fish Market

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If you look through one set of images, this is the one to check out. This was one of our favorite parts of the trip, going to the Tsujiki Fish Market at 5:15am to see the tuna auction. The tuna was huge, and each fish was lined up in a warehouse-like room with the tails cut off and shoved in their mouths. It was pretty chaotic, with carts driving by in all directions and people bidding on fish. We watched while trying not to get run over. We walked through the rest of the fish market and saw a little bit of everything – things you would never eat to massive scallops and crabs. Watching the resellers cut up the tuna was really interesting, it would take about 3 guys to do, and they would use a 6′ sword with 2 people to cut them into sections.

Once we had checked everything out, we went to find a sushi restaurant for breakfast. We looked at a few, but saw one with a line and figured it must be good. We got in the line, and every few minutes and older Japanese woman would come out and yell at everyone in Japanese, and then grab people and place them exactly where she wanted them to stand and wait. We got lucky and got 4 seats together, because there were only about 12 seats total. The chefs didn’t speak any English, and somehow we ordered a pre-set sushi meal but weren’t really sure what we had done and what it was going to cost. We turned down a few things like raw shrimp, and aside from that the chefs would keep placing more and more sushi in front of us. Anything we questioned, their only English would come out, saying “Try it.” Everything we tried was without question the best sushi we’ve ever had, since it was probably swimming a few hours earlier. We had all sorts of tuna, sea bass, and eel. When it was all done they rung up $140 and we weren’t sure if it was per person, couple, or all 4 of us and luckily it was for all 4 so we paid and worked our way back to the hotel to go to sleep.

If you find yourself in Tokyo, this place should be at the top of your list to check out.

Japan: Day 7 – Harajuku, Shibuya

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The overall weather forecast wasn’t looking too good, but for our first full day in Tokyo we got really lucky with perfect weather. Here’s the highlights from today:

• We went to Harajuku to check out the freakshow that people dress up for on Sundays, but there wasn’t a lot going on so we got right into shopping. Things are generally really expensive, stuff like jeans are almost double the price and not offered in fat American sizes anyway. We hit all the standard stores and then some.
• While we struck out on seeing many of the people dressed up, we found the old guy above dressed as a woman with live goldfish in his earrings. He couldn’t get enough pictures taken of himself, he loved it.
• Kickass tempura lunch
• Evert and Jenna hooked us up with Dave and Tiffany (or Thommo and Tiffo from adidas, the Australian married to the girl from Wisconsin living in Japan.) We went to Gonpachi, the restaurant from Kill Bill. It was a great time hanging out with them, especially since we had never met them before this trip except for a few quick emails back and forth. Every time new customers walked in, all the chefs would yell to them.

Japan: Day 6 – Tokyo

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The morning after the wedding we got up early and left for the airport for Tokyo. Wendy’s mom had bought the tickets for us and luckily they were on United. I was able to get one of our seats updated to economy plus but not the others because they were booked separately, so Tara took her long legs up front. It wasn’t really a big deal since it was only a 2 hour or so flight anyway. The two hour flight ends up being all day of travel though, and we took a bus to our hotel and got there around 5pm. It’s been six years since I was in Japan, and we were really excited for it.

We left for Shibuya to meet Yukari for dinner. Once we hooked up we went into the 109 mall which seemed everything Japanese – total chaos of Japanese girls shopping, competing music from 5 stores at once, hot and stuffy, and tripping over people. It was fun to watch but after 5 floors of it we left and moved on to dinner. The restaurant was made up of small, walled-in booths with blinds at the end. When the waiters would come, they’d pull up the blinds, talk to us, and then pull them back down. They kept bringing different rounds of food, and we chased it was sake bombs. Being in Japan makes you realize how normal the people in Korea are. Besides the obvious Asian side of things, Korea seems a little more Western and a lot fewer crazy trends.

From there we walked around stores in Shibuya. I stopped in front of the Apple store to download email on the iTouch because it’s really hard to find open wireless in Tokyo. In Korea, it was everywhere and really easy to do. The iTouch came in really handy, especially since the iPhone is always looking for a signal and killing the battery. We worked our way over to Roppongi to hit a really smoky bar and then met Yukari’s friends at another bar. By the end of the night the lack of sleep had caught up with me and I was spent.

Korea: Day 5 – The Wedding

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This was the final wedding, and much larger than in the US. Ramon and Wendy had an idea of what to expect, but not much more than that. It took place in two rooms – the ceremony itself was done in a room full of tables with family and closer friends. There was a second larger room with a lot more people that didn’t see the ceremony, but showed up to eat.

Wendy’s high school teacher performed the ceremony. It was almost all in Korean, though Wendy’s cousin translated some of it over a microphone. The rest of the time, Ramon stared at the teacher while he spoke for a long time in Korean. They exchanged rings, bowed to the parents, and then cut a really tall fake cake that nobody ate. Ramon was laughing while doing it, because they gave him a good-sized sword to do the cake, and it had two candles like a birthday cake. Then the smoke machine and bubble machine kicked in, the wedding ended, and everyone went to a really good buffet of typical Korean food and sushi.

After the wedding, we went out to a bar with Wendy’s friends and kept drinking, which at this point has become the norm to get hammered every night. Apparently it’s tradition to do a shochu (Japanese vodka-ish alcohol) shots with the groom, and while Ramon walked around talking to everyone he ended up having to do a bunch of shots. Once we left the bar, he was done.

Korea: Day 5 – Suwon

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Day 5 was the wedding day, so while Wendy and Ramon went to the spa so Ramon could get scrubbed down by hot men, we went to the Korean Folk Village with Ramon’s mom and Justin. It was an area that focused on Korean history and different types of housing and culture and was really interesting. It was packed with school kids and they all wanted to talk to us, so they could practice saying “What is your name?” Wendy’s dad arranged for a friend to pick us up in a cab, and we weren’t sure it was the right guy until he got on the phone and was holding his hand over his head talking about tall people. Even once we were in the car we weren’t sure we were in the right one because he went a totally different way and dropped us off at a restaurant to meet everyone else. He spoke no English, but it all worked out.

Wendy’s dad took us all to his favorite restaurant where we cooked beef on the grills built into the table. It was a perfect lunch to lead into the wedding. The wedding was only a few blocks from their apartment, so we walked over there to chill and get ready for the wedding.

Korea: Day 4 – Suwon, Seoul

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More shopping in Seoul before heading back to Suwon for the afternoon. One of the things you see a lot of is tanks full of the fish / crab / other stuff that is alive until you eat it. Check out the video of the mud fish in the bucket as you walk into the mud fish restaurant, it’s in the slideshow.

We got back for one of Wendy’s mom’s awesome 20-course meals for dinner, which naturally included finishing a bottle of scotch before heading out to a German pub with some of Wendy’s friends. The pub served beers in mugs made out of ice, and when you’re done your beer you throw it at a target to try and win a prize.

Korea: Day 3 – Seoul

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Day 3 was all-day shopping in Seoul. Most of the places we ate in Seoul had some form of grill built into the table where you cook the food yourself. Most restaurants serve one main kind of food everything is very communal. If you like spicy, Korea is the place for you. After 2 days here we learned pretty quickly we’d be screwed without Wendy to translate and show us around, Korea would be really difficult on your own if you’ve never been there.

Day 3 highlights:

• Massive flea market mall
• Toy museum
• Scalding, lawsuit-hot Dunkin Donuts coffee. The coffee is this hot everywhere we went in Asia, I could barely carry a coffee with a sleeve on it because it was so hot. You can get coffee with Bailey’s in it at D&D in Korea.
• Ramon dropping the hammer on the hammer machine, high-fiving drunk Korean dudes beating up a punching bag.
• Staggering drunks at night. We saw this every night, check the videos mixed into the slideshow.
• Family Mart for late night snacks, and then Ramon and Wendy hanging out in our hotel room drinking skunky beer until 3:30am or so.

Korea: Day 2 – Suwon

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After sleeping in, we woke up to Wendy’s mom making a several course breakfast. She stuffed us and then we left to see some of Suwon, their hometown about an hour south of Seoul. The slogan for Suwon is “Happy Suwon” and it’s plastered everywhere. We started by taking a tour of an old emperor’s palace. When we were done there was a long martial arts show, and it was packed with school kids. It seemed like every one of them wanted to say hi and practice some English, because there aren’t too many Americans walking around Suwon. There’s three standard things to speak about: “Hi, my name is ___”, “What is your name?”, and “Where do you live?”

From there we went to a holistic doctor for Ramon. He determined that Ramon was way out of alignment and laid him on his stomach and kicked him in the ass four times really hard, then rolled him over and punched him in the knee a few times which was entertaining to watch. The on to a vegetarian buffet, which had been described as the best vegetarian in Korea. It was the perfect way to get a sense of Korean food because there were so many different dishes, and just about all of them are spicy and get me sweaty.

Then we jumped on a bus to Seoul to stay there for 3 days and kick start the shopping and the drinking. We found a dirty bar named Woodstock with a DJ that takes requests all night. Lots of Sabbath and then pitcher after pitcher came, and we ended up drinking with a Korean news broadcaster and his friends that got pretty rowdy. The bar food here was dried octopus that was really fishy tasting and not so good. Later in the night this really creepy dude looking like a mix between Edward Scissorhands and Jack Sparrow showed up by himself and creeped everyone out. His picture is in the slideshow above.