Jim's Birthday in Tokyo - Japan

James' Birthday.

I was awoken by someone shaking our bunkbeds… or what I thought was someone shaking our bunk beds. But it was an earthquake!  cool!!! It was a small one and nice enough yet scary enough. (I always wondered why Paul had called his first earthquake ‘cool’.
After getting up out of bed an hour earlier than planned (due to us forgetting to put back our phones), we clocked out and dumped our luggage there for a while.

The bum thing about hostels in Japan, is that a lot of them have a curfew – usually midnight or one, while all of them insist on checking in ONLY between the hours of 3pm and perhaps 8 or 9pm. This is a pain in the jiggawhats to be fair and horrible if you’ve just arrived from ze airport. But not of course if you travel with me, because I am the organizing fairy and always have these things sorted.

Anywho, I had booked a genuine old style Japanese Ryokan for Jim & me for Jim’s birthday. But check-in wasn’t until 4pm, so we had plenty of time to kill.
I first of all had to find out where the bloody place was as I can’t read Japanese and the taxi-drivers can’t read English. Luckily the girl in reception called us a taxi and the taxi driver had GPS in his car! WOOHOO. Score..

But before that anywho, we went off to take a look around Asakusa – an old Shitamachi area with lots of old style winding roads and cool temples. It used to be a halfway point between Tokyo and an infamous pleasure district called Yoshiwara . Eventually Asakusa developed into a pleasure area itself. Apparently, after the Meiji period, Asakusa was the first place that reopened cinemas, theatres and music halls. The first western Opera was performed in Asakusa and the striptease was introduced here too.

Nowadays it’s a lot quieter and all the crazy shit happens in Shinjuku.

So we wandered into an information centre where this fantastic old gentleman gave us some top notch advice with a smile. We strolled through these ginormous templey gates and found ourselves in the Ameya-yokocho Arcade – a markety type area full of stalls filled with fans, chopsticks, hello kitty stuff, Japanese sweets, bags, fortune cookies, Japanese dolls, and lots of other trinkets that I wanted! I mind-marked lots of stuff and decided to pack my empty case (after dumping all the stuff at Paul’s – he he ) with lots of stuff to take with me. Tee hee hee.

We treated ourselves to a stick of smoked rice in leaves and wandered down the markets, eyeing up kimonos and geta sandals. (me not Jim)

We walked up to see the Senso Ji Temple. It’s the main attraction of Asakusa and it’s pretty impressive. We took some pics of the five storied Pagoda beside the temple and then followed the crowd like sheep. We followed them into the temple, threw money with them, drank (you’re not supposed to swallow apparently but just rinse with it whoops) the sacred water with them and tried to waft some of the smoke from the burning incense towards us ( I can’t remember why!).

On we went then down to the river where we jumped on a waterbus and went on a guided trip down the Sumidagawa river where we saw lots of buildings that were very nice. And some bridges.. and some more boats. One looked like a rocket, it was cool.
Then we chatted to a very nice crazy Japanese woman. I reckon she seeked us out to try out her English on us. She was gas and absolutely lovely. Her husband ran away from us and her to take some pictures the minute we started talking. Well I wouldn’t call it talking. She was fond of saying “What is your favourite Japanese…. Something? I tried to tell her that we only just arrived but she was on a mission. Then she proceeded to tell us where in Europe she’d been. “Have you been to French?” etc.. it was brilliant.  When she disembarked the boat at Hanodin Pier, she waved at us for about ten minutes as she ran off down the road after her husband.  We stayed on the boat (without paying – oooohhhhhh) having a rice beer as we headed back to the riverboat station.

After collecting our bags from the hostel, we were dropped off at the Japanese Ryokan by our taxi driver with GPS. Woohoo. The ryokan looked fantastic, very old stylee. I asked James did he recognise it as to my misfortune, it had featured on the Tokyo documentary that we had seen on the airplane!! I was like.. DOH! He said that it looked familiar and remembered it from the programme. He he

We trekked in with all our stuff and were greeted by some lovely ladies in Yukata’s. (A cotton Japanese robe that is worn in the summer). They also had some cool geta sandals on and I wanted a pair (surprise surprise). They led us up to our room which had a little porchy type area with black wood, then a small bathroom and a small toilet room with a flashy toilet that could probably sing the blues if you asked it to.

I slid back our paper screen door (thankfully I had seen that episode of the Simpsons where they all went to Japan, and had seen Homer make the faux pas of walking through the screen door so I knew it was a slidy door) There was Tatami mats as the flooring and this gorgeous little very short black table in the middle of the room. There was a little teapot on the table and our lady sat us down (Jimbob nearly fell backwards) and poured us some delicious green tea. She went through some of the fire escape guidelines and then she hit the road.

I was chuffed and James seemed quite impressed so all was well. Seeing as how I had spent my birthday in the jungle and it was so amazing, I wanted to make sure Jim’s birthday was different and special too. So I phoo phood the clubbing in Tokyo option for the genuine Japanese Ryokan experience. We read all about Ryokans and decided to pop on our robes and go for a dip in the public baths upstairs. Not before we took plenty of pics of us with our geta sandals and robes on. Then off we went to the nudey baths. They are segregated by sex though so there was no boys allowed in the girly bath and vice versa. The baths were fab. The ladies one was all slate stone and the water was spilling over the edge. You had to sit down on a small wooden stool and do a scrub a dub dub first before getting in. The water was roasting though and I only lasted about 20 mins before I could barely breathe and had to jump out.
So after much mooching about our fantastic new room, off we went for our kaisekei feast which we were to have upstairs. I thought we would be in a big dining area, but we were given another whole room just to eat our dinner in. Our hostess took the cover off the 12 little bowls of stuff on our table and motioned to us how to eat and prepare the things. It looked gorgeous. All the food is meant to represent mountains, the sea and other parts of nature. There was prawns with their heads on, lots of different pieces of sushi, a giant shell with some scallop in ginger inside, rice of course, noodles that we mixed all around with some other stuff, pickles, some weird egg shaped yoke that tasted sweet (that we both avoided) and I’m sure lots of other stuff, all washed down with a beer. Yumitee yum yum.

After the feast we checked some stuff on the net for a while, then retired to our room where our futons had been laid out for us. Woohoo. Then it was birthday present time for Jim and we had some sake and beer. I’m confess to mixing my sake with orange crush because it tasted way too strong. But I have since drank it on its’ own and liked it so I reckon all is forgiven.

The next morning we had requested breakfast for 8.30 and as my alarm went off, I did not want to get up – particularly not to eat rice, pickled fish and raw eggs (as is the customary ryokan breakkie).. However in for a penny in for a pound so we dragged ourselves up and headed to the big dining area where another feast lay waiting for us.
I was tres impressed, it was delicious. The rice was warm, the egg was nicely cooked and the fish tasted like smoked salmon. It was great. )

So we bid them adieu (I wanted to rob the sandals in the gaff but no!) and mosied off on our merry way to get the SUPER DUPER FAST EXPRESS SHINKANSEN TRAIN TO KYOTO. Which was cool! The chairs were comfy, roomy and it smelt nice. woohoo...
They are nicknamed bullet trains. James was obsessed and took some photos below..