odaiiiiiba.
so in the morning we decided that we would take the special direct boat to odaiba from asakusa… only to be surprised by the long line-up and the tickets actually being sold out anyways – -; so we went up into the department store complex thingy to find food. we ended up on a floor that was giving out samples and stuff, pretty interesting and tasty 😀
we then proceeded to subway to shimbashi station, to connect to the yorikomone line, that would lead us to odaiba. since there are several train companies in tokyo, they aren’t really that convenient… but whatever i guess… the ticket system is pretty cool though. you find your station, u get a price, it depends on how far it is, within a number of stations, its a certain price as so on. you put your ticket through a slot, walk through, and the ticket comes back to u! and when u get off at your stop, you put the ticket in and you are allowed through. it will close by sensors if you are at the wrong station or screw around with it, it’s amazing.
we first stopped at tokyo big sight which looks cool from the outside but turned out to be a place of large conference areas, and nothing interesting was happening. one weird thing was a ‘comic city’ event that attracted mainly females… we didn’t go into that. headed towards palette town and deckss tokyo beach instead. this area was full of shops, games, food, leon described it as a souped up ontario place. although not in those exact words 😛 it had a lot of candy shops, a sega ‘joypolis’, old old old arcade games, and a game that you shoot your prizes to win them, it was like a shooting gallery, pretty cool. and deckss’ logo was just like the docks – -; in palette town, we went to a huge toyota car show thing. exhibiting the latest cars and futuristic ones, if i gave a damn about cars, it wouldve been cooler 😛 they also had a small place for new designs for robots, and other random items like pens and stuff. there was a lot of kid stores and souvenir shops of food… and a miniature statue of liberty.
we walked around a bit to find somewhere to eat, and we ended up in a quieter building with a couple restaurants. it was an udon and tempura place. ordering food is always so challenging 🙁 lol… there was no english on the menus so we were like… can we show u outside? because several stores have plastic replicas in the front windows… so we all got up and went outside. apparently they were going to close soon, not accepting any more new customers after we got in there. haah. i chose, but there was no beef left in the shop – -;… so had to choose something else. owell. our waiter knew some, random english, and asked if we speaked anything else. when leon said cantonese, he looked blankly and laughed, sorry sorry. hahah… and when he came back to confirm our orders, he had a menu with pictures – -; aiya. next time we walk into a place with no english menu, no picture menu, we’re gonna randomly choose :@!
anyyyways. our last stop for the day was the oedo onsen place that ashley recommended. we go in, and it was pretty busy. throw our shoes into a locker, line up to pay. choose a yukata style, change, and meet up on the main street. under the yukata u wear nothing but your underwear and tie the yukata around you. as we walk into the main street, its like a small market full of souvenir shops, food, drinks, games, it was amazing! when we paid, we were given a tag that had our locker keys attached to it. we use that to buy stuff too, no cash needed, we would just pay when we checked out of the onsen. they even had the system within the vending machines, pretty elaborate.
the first onsen stop was the foot bathing area, where we could all go together. the main path for the foot bathing was walking on several rocks in a path of hot water, it was very relaxing and massaging. since this was outdoors, it was a cooler weather filled with a beautiful atmosphere of wooden buildings, lights, bridges, trees, and rocks. (i put my camera in my bag, in a locker outside. only michelle has pictures…) either way, it was really nice. there were other foot baths, the best one was a… marble pit type thing… u stepped into the bath and there were millions of small balls at the bottom that would get between your toes and you could sink your feet in and massage them, that was niiice.
we then decided to breakoff with michelle and go to the main onsens. i think this was pretty awkward for canadians like us, when japanese are apparently more comfortable with nudity. in the change room you grab a small towel, and even a toothbrush that magically has toothpaste when you wet it, and razors if you wanted them. it’s basically a public bath. at this point, you are given another locker to put your yukata and underwear in as you walk around naked, that was a lot of naked males… i guess you get used to it after a while, they don’t seem to give a damn, y should i, sorta thing. it was also pretty common that people covered themselves with the small towel that they provide, so… yea. haha
the interior of the baths was also very nice, rows of cleaning areas on the side, where you sit and they provide soap, shaving cream, body wash, and hot water. they had one shampoo that was like… menthol-ized, that was pretty refreshing 😛 there were also saunas, and other baths at different temperatures. but they were pretty hot, the japanese seem to be accustomed to hotter climates than us so the sauna almost killed me, i could barely breathe in there, had to leave after a minute or so. there was also an outdoor area where you are cooled with the weather and heated with the water, nice and relaxing but a bit awkward when the only thing you can look at are other people or… up into the sky. awkward for me anyways. they really arent embarrassed at all, it was an interesting experience. i think i got to know leon way too well, hahahaha… nah not really.
anyways. when we came out after an hour or so, (none of us had watched to know the time we went in or out…) but we found michelle already outside. apparently she was rejected because of her small tattoo :S… i felt so bad for her. hope that other places aren’t as strict on her. she walked around a lot, and took a lot of pictures. according to her there were several massages you could pay for, sand areas, ‘relaxation’ areas where you would just go in and sleep. and… we left not too long afterwards. although we didnt really want to. leon went to check the time, i sorta lost track of him but michelle apparently thought he walked back into the changerooms, cause she was blindly, -blindly-, following him into the male changeroom – -;… lol but leon didnt go in there, and michelle went out to hers, so we were a bit forced to leave 🙁 although that turned out to be good because our day pass was about to expire at midnight, we had to run to the station to catch the train!
when we got back to shimbashi station, to transfer back to ueno, the smaller subway lines were already closed, it was around 1220/30. but the JR was still available luckily. but then we had to walk from ueno back to our place which takes about 25-30 minutes. what a waste of the onsen relaxation 😛 haha… although tokyo is a very clean city, there are several homeless people sleeping on the streets at night with cardboard houses and tarps, they disappear during the day and setup camp at night, some look like they have jobs and stuff, but they end up sleeping outside… a bit creepy.
a futuristic car, reminds me of something from chuck
our day-pass that would expire at midnight…
i just realized several of my pictures are blurry up close. but i hate using flash. o well. next stop, mt fuji and hakone area!
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