Ian made a great choice, booking our place to stay in Asakusa. I was really looking forward to visiting Tokyo for the first time, but expected after a few days I’ve feel overwhelmed by the bustle and bright lights.
I think partly because we stayed in the more chilled-out, old part of town, and partly because we’d come from near London, rather than straight from Australia, I was underwhelmed, in a good way.
It was not as crazy as I expected. (Ian even deemed one of my outfits put together especially for Japan to be ‘too crazy for Tokyo’).
It was not as foreign-feeling as I had expected (Vietnam was much more exotic to me).
It wasn’t as big as I expected (but the one thing I didn’t do that my friend had recommended was go somewhere to see the city-scapes that blew her mind every time).
It wasn’t as busy as I expected – even at peak hour I think the Tokyo metro is more dignified than the London tube.
Not to say it isn’t any of these things – just not as intensely so as I expected. There were plenty of crazy outfits to admire (though unfortunately people in exceptional outfits hide from cameras – damn you trendspotters for ruining my happy snaps!). The coffee was certainly exotic – in a bad, expensive way. The awesome ramen and tempura well made up for that though. It was certainly big – in our week of sightseeing I think we covered about 20% of the city. It was certainly busy – we had to balance our overflowing luggage and stand up for the first half a dozen stops on our way back to the airport on the metro. But after a week I was not sick of it, as I’d expected – I would have quite happily spend another month in Japan, at least. Maybe more.
