I’m slowly getting more in line with the Japanese sleep schedule, though I feel by the time I do, we’ll be on our way to Thailand. Regardless, I got 1 more hour of sleep this morning, making it to 6am. After a hotel coffee and 7-11 wrap, we decided to make our way over to a café for another round of coffee. Since this was our last full day in Tokyo, we decided we might as well do laundry at the hotel’s facilities before we check out. We dropped off our clothes in the washing / drying hybrid machine and watched their progress from a TV in our room. While I’m not sure why the TV gives you the ability to monitor laundry, it did come in handy.
Today would be the first time we try to tackle one of largest subway systems in the world, with a destination of Sibuya, one of the busiest stations in the world, only behind our next destination after, Shinjuku, which currently holds that record. For those who have had their dreams haunted by the image of the Tokyo subway line map, such as myself, it may come as a surprise to find that it was actually relatively painless to navigate to the correct track and catch our train over to Shibuya.
After a brief ride over, we navigate to the Shibuya crossing, a large 6-way intersection, which holds the record for the busiest crossing. A quick side note about the Shibuya crossing and it’s relation to video games: There is a popular video game amongst my friends and over here in Japan called Persona 5, which takes place on the Shibuya area. However, the game actually has an exact replica of the layout for Shibuya (at least, the area around Shibuya station). Because of this, my first time here at Shibuya when I was in college, I was actually able to navigate the area despite never having seen the area in person before.
We made our way further into the network of alleyways before stopping for some food at a Ramen restaurant. The portions were huge, and the food was delicious, remaining as one of the least expensive meals proportionate to the food you get (with my meal costing just under 900 yen, or $9 CDN).
After eating, we decided to take a slight detour on our way over to Shinjuku through the iconic fashion alley, Harajuku. Passing by the stadium for the 2020 Olympics, we found ourselves in the very lively and crowded street of Harajuku. Fashion stores lining the street, broken up by confectionary stores, every single one of which having a long lines out the door. The crowd far too dense to easily navigate through, we queued up to get through the street, passing by people dressed in almost every fashion style I can think of.
Finally, through the dense crowd, we continue our walk to Shinjuku, stopping at a Starbucks along the way for a quick drink. After arriving at Shinjuku, one of the first thoughts going through my head, which would only be reinforced as we saw more of the city, was how similar it felt to Toronto. The layout of the buildings, the distance from the roads to the entrances, the size of the towers and even the striking similarity of the underground path there, all made it feel somewhat familiar, albeit, still having some differences.
We walked through some open pedestrian walkways with large electronic display covered buildings surrounding the area until we decided to find our way to the massive complex that is the Shinjuku station and its connected underground paths. While it was admittedly more difficult to find our train back to Ginza than it was to get to Shibuya, we eventually managed to do so and made our way back to our hotel.
After briefly resting at the hotel, we went over to a popular area for dinner and drinking. The archways underneath the railroad tracks have been turned into places to grab a drink and some food at, each archway being its own restaurant or bar. We picked one and made our way inside. The interior looked like very traditional, and after ordering some drinks and meat skewers, we sat down to go over the events of the day. Originally, we had planned to go to 2 different izakayas again, but settled for grabbing a couple of drinks at a small brewery / bar just across the street from the hotel. We got a flight of beers, and I even managed to hold a conversation in Japanese with the bartender about our plans for the remainder of the trip. After finishing our drinks, we crossed the street back to our hotel and got some sleep.
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