Hey everyone! I arrived in Tokyo this afternoon and my brother picked me up at the airport (thank goodness because I would have inevitably gotten lost and probably cried). The city is very crowded and confusing. I did learn and identified a few kanji characters: "stop", "exit", and "yen". Joey's Japanese is better than he says. He was able to ask directions, buy tickets and talk to people. We went to Starbucks in Narita Airport where I tried out my Japanese for the first time. I predictably ordered my chocolate milk over ice and the barista understood me! That was pretty exciting.
After dropping our bags at the Sakura youth hostel, we headed out to explore this lively and
very overwhelming city. (Above is a picture I took a little ways outside our hostel. Look at the tree: there is a prayer pinned to the trunk.) It is very crowded but clean. The streets are colorful with advertisements and neon lighting that illuminates buildings. Everything is smushed together. There are pagoda style homes that are about a foot apart. The people are overly accomodating. When asking where places were, people would actually walk us to our destination.
Joey took me to Shibuya for a little while...Wow! Above is a picture of an arcade in Shibuya.I'm exhausted so I will wrap this up. Japan is awesome. Enough said.
5/7/07
Emily writes again:
I'm really tired so I will make this quick: Joey and I are at a hostel near the base of Mt. Fuji with our new best friend, Gail. She was staying at the Sakura hostel the same time we were and she will be traveling to Kyoto with us as well. We had to take our shoes off before entering the hostel :-D and they have Japanese toilets! (I'm not gonna lie, there was a bit of an incident lol). More on everything later...night night! Love yall!
P.S. To Amy, I will try to find a charm for you.
Since today is a school day, we saw a bunch of kids in uniforms around town and on the subway. They were adorable!
More photos to come...
