Sushi, sukiyaki and a delicious metropole :)

We are currently in Kathmandu (Nepal) and found a few minuted to post this story about Tokyo, before we are heading off to Langtang (Tamang heritage trail and Tsergo Ri viewpoint on the schedule!) for a 12 day trek, starting tomorrow morning (the 27th)....it will be a bit silent, we will come back the 9th of december. Enjoy reading about Tokyo until then! ----- 5 minutes on Shanghai airport and we already miss Japan desperately! The loudness, chewing, honking, staring... we had almost forgotten about it! No wifi (no chinese telephone number to register with as ours expired...), no shopping area ("a new retail experience will come soon.."), but a few, relatively hard benches: Terminal 2 of Shanghai Hongqiao airport. This will be our home for the night.

Tokyo was so nice! Again, we have been surprised about the kindness of people for others that they have not even seen before! Benigna and So took us in their home as if we were long lost friends! Thanks! 

As some of you have seen, we updated some of the blogs and our photos, was about time to sort everything out, as we don't want to come home with thousands of pictures to go through! It is already 12000!!! cleaned-up photos we uploaded in total to flickr as a backup for our harddrive! It's somewhat difficult no to have our own pc, so that we can synchronize things in the night... Anyway, you probably don't want to read about that. It's just that the pictures are worth so much to us! Looking through them, some of the countries we visited feel so far away, and so long ago! It's one the one hand making us feel so priviledged to have all these experiences; on the other it makes us sad that you forget so many nice things so fast! And it is the same thing with thinking about back home! 111 days went by in no time. So in case you haven't already done so, we love hearing news from home and seeing photos. We might not always answer immediately, but we do love it!! Hint...hint...

Anyway, before getting all sentimental :) here are some stories about Tokyo!

We arrived around 19:00 with the ferry from Shikine-Jima, passing Nijima and Toshima on the way. The weather was rough and the waves were breaking hard in the harbour when we arrived in Nijima. It turned out to be the right choice to go the 30 min further to Shikine-jima. Marijn, a Dutch guy we met on the way to the islands(and now on the way back again!) spent two days on the other island, with a nice but less idyllic experience; the island Nijima is simply too big and too inhabited! We felt blessed that we picked the other island! 
As soon as we passed Toshima, the waves became calmer, and the ride turned out quite nice, like a little cruise! Not a lying/floor area, but chairs this time. Sad, but it didn't matter. We read, slept and made some drawings. Marijn tried the 24-hr self sevice junkfood vending machine; not a success but it made us laugh! We simply love this way of slow travelling!! (Sitting at the airport now totally confirms that!)

The arrival in Tokyo was beautiful, with view on the skyline from the water. We walked one station to spare another metroline, and then headed off to find our friend Benigna. 

The story of finding her place is long, but it is funny and we were sooooo lucky! That is why we'll tell it. Just skip it if you're not interested, it just made us feel like being in a movie. 
We had sent Benigna an sms, but didn't hear anything back :S, so wendecided to just get on the subway and hope to find the place. (it turned out we tried to sms on the landline, which she of course never received, smart!) As Japanese addresses are not so self explanatory, and googlemaps (the English version) doesn't display the exact address (only the area!), we didn't really know where to go. We had only half an hour on the slow computer in the library in Skikinejima to check before getting on to the boat (we had forgotten to check the day before when we did have time., stupid...). We knew the area, we picked a near looking station and crossed our fingers that we picked the right one.

After 10 minutes trying to get the free wifi working at Starbucks (which only works if you register on a device that already has internet connection...:S!! Who invents these kind of things!!?), we decided to just give up trying to confirm the address, simply buy a ticket and head there. We spent 10 minutes to try find the right line at Shiodome station; but once there, a really friendly Japanese service man helped us buy a ticket, and explained the connections. Sadly enough, the Japanese have so many private train and subway lines that are not always connected: it is hard for foreigners to find their way without spending too much money. We transferred in Shinjuku, a huge station where daily more than 3,5 million commuters change lines. We just managed to get out of the wrong line (oops this is an express train!) before it departed :) but the finally found the right platform. What seemed as "loads of time!" appeared to be less and less as it was getting close to 21:30. Still not having reached Benigna, we didn't know where to go nor whether they were there! The fact that we only knew on short notice when we were arriving (eh... The ferry doesn't go on Friday? Oh, we have to leave a day earlier?!) didn't make things easier. 

The 7 Eleven convenient store was our rescue. The 3 lost-in-translation looking young people behind the counter got help from another Japanese guy who (we believe) just ended his shift. He knew the area and offered to walk us there!! Together we searched for the right building, we knew there was a key hidden for us, we only needed to get inside the main entrance, which shouldn't be hard as there were construction works on the building ongoing and the door always open......during daytime of course! In the meantime it was almost22:00!! So with the door closed, and no one answering the doorbell, we asked the superfriendly guy to call Benigna...he embarassedly replied: "left it...at the store...you...wait here." and ran off! 7 minutes later, a girl from the 4th floor arrives! Yes! Just at that moment the guy comes back, on a bike, with 2 hot cafe lattes!! So sweet!! Now having passed another hurdle, the building we search for the key.....Aaaargh! It is not there! I finally dig up another phonenumber of Benigna, and we manage to get her on the line. The sweet explanation of the Japanese guy ("hi, this is 7 eleven and there are two foreigners here...one from Poland and one from Holland..") got her a bit confused first :) but we now had the security of a place to stay, as soon as she would return from work. And while we are still debating, So comes home, thinking: "hey that is funny, more foreigners in our building...at the same time that we will have some here too!....oh!! You must be our guests!!"
In the end we managed on our own ;) almost at least!, we had another encounter with super kind japanese people, and warm coffee as well. What do we need more??

We had 2 folding bikes at our disposal, which totally rocked! Cruising through the city is so much easier than standint in a too full subway and still needing to walk! We jumped on the bikes the first day/evening to get a feel for the city. We actually got further than we wanted, cycling too fast! :D!! Strolled around Harajuku for a while in some lively shopping streets watching the girls look like Asian Barbies, and checked out Shibuya crossing, where 100.000 people cross every hour! 
I think any city by night is nice as it makes everything much more cosy. Tokyo is huge, but it felt smaller in the dark. We ended up cycling 20 km and only seeing a mini-bit of town.

The (rainy) weekend we spent mostly with Benigna, So, and their friend Margot. We had a wonderful time! Stayed up late, at good food and slept long! A little bit sad as it turns dark already at 16:00, but it was necessary to catch up some sleep. Benigna is German, lived in Japan for 10 years, and I can't describe how nice it sometimes is to speak in a familiar language, learning about a culture from someome with the same/a similar cultural background! Time flew by and before we knew it, it was 3 o'clock in the night :)

And the food we had... It was, again, amazing! One night we made Te Maki sushi. Hand-rolled sushi like the Japanese would do. We went shopping together, which probably took us 2 hours as we inspected every package :) From 30? different types of fish-eggs, to anything made out of soy-beans and rice :). So prepared Sukiyaki for us, with japanese-black-skin-beef. The Japanese like their meat with fat; not like the Mongolians with heaps of it, but with the fat woven through the meat like a net with mazes :) it melts on your tongue. Margot has the cutest-ever little French patisserie around the corner (called Le Petit Poisson) so we were never short on nice sweet stuff for desert like chestnut-pie or green tea cake :)

We talked a lot about the tsunami, how it was and how it feels now. Tokyo was not the center, but also heavily hit. (I found it hard to remember to close doors and cupboards, as earthquakes are so common and things can of course fall out!) Benigna and So volunteered to help in the north last year after the tsunami, and we've seen pictures you can't believe. I know it was huge in the news with us as well, still it remains such a far-from-my-bed-show (to use a really bad translated Dutch expression). Somehow being in the country  where it happended made us look at it with different eyes. The Japanese seem so calm about it... but they also know that so much information is not being told to the people, that the government makes money with the energy companies, or the fish industry... We didn't want to think about it too much. 

Talking about fish: on a crazy day we went to the famous Tsukiji fishmarket :) As they allow only 2 groups of 60 people in, and reigstration starts from 05:00 (04:30 when it is a long queue!), we had to get up early. No trains ride at that time, Benigna and So live about 16 km away, so it was an early bike-ride!!!we left at 03:00 :D, and even at that time, the streets are not empty. Empty enough to bike on the bigger streets, but a helmet is still recommendable! We got there,04:29 sharp, and managed to get a spot at nr. 58 and 59 :). A huge line already forming after us 10 minutes later (out on the street, all the way around the corner! The auction itself is a fun thing to do, with many ice-cold dead big tuna lying on the floor, with salesmen inspecting them and shouting their prices. It is one of those must-have-seen things; but without any Japanese translator it is hard to understand what is really happening. We wished that instead of having 6 guys with a Do Not Enter sign pinned to their chest we would have had 1 with a little bit information & explanation. 

So with an early start, we managed to drive through most of  Tokyo in one day. From Tsukiji to downtownTokyo and the station that looks like the one in Amsterdam, to the gardens of the Imperial palace, the Jimbocho second hand bookstore area, Akihabara "electric city" and Roppongi on the way back; a little tour of about 40 km. With only 2 hours of sleep quite an accomplishment :)

Akihabara was cool, full of game centers, computer stores (we tried to buy one but decided against the prices :D) and mangas. Famous tv mangas, children mangas, black-and-white mangas an tons of 5 cm thick porn mangas. Maiden-cafes (Yes, girls dressed like a maid serve you here!!) on the 6th floors (not open in the morning though) and loud cyberspace advertisments, as early as 10 am when the stores open. We didn't find a computer though, so we are still blogging via the iphone or borrowed computers from friends. 

We slept 10 minutes on a bench in the East garden of the Imperial Palace. No one knows why you need a token to get in (free admittance ticket) which you hand in when you go out again. It's just a shame that the gardens in Japan, like we've seen before here in Asia, are mostly beautifully created landscapes for viewing, with asphalt roads to walk through. No lying on the grass, no frisbee playing! (Last time we played was Estonia near the beach!) Just a lot of official looking uniformed guys telling you what not to do. One of them tried to explain: "No bike in park!".... We looked a bit dazzled still when he left... on his bike!

We cycled through Roppongi, which is dull at daytime, but full of awkward people by night trying to lure you into their club. We didn't manage to see the youngsters dressed up in costumes (only seen the stores), but there is always something you have to skip. When you travel as long as we do, your mind is full at some point, and you need some moments to relax!!! 

And then... 4,5 days were gone, and we had to catch a flight! It was hard saying goodbye, it always is :( We hope that someday we can return the kindness people around the world have shown us!!!