Well here I am, finally in Tokyo. Its been a real adventure getting to this hostel in asakusa. We decided to take the night bus because it is less then half the cost of the shinkansen. We had to board the bus at 11:30 so we met up at Umeda station at 10 and tried to find it, according to the map I was sure it was just over one way pretty close but thankfully we have some girls in our group who are able to ask for directions, I can say all of the japanese words its just a guy thing. So we found out it was best to take the train until the next stop and go from there. So we get on the Osaka loop and we ask a guy working there if that train stopped where we needed it to and he said yes but when we got on it, it passed our station! So then we got off on the next one it stopped and walked to the other side, but we couldn't figure out which train would stop there because JR doesn't put big signs on the trains saying limited express or local it just has diffrent colored trains, which are diffrent from what Hankyu uses. At this point we all started to get a little anxious about getting there on time and some how we got to the station we needed to get to and just started walking down this random street in downtown Osaka. We finally find the bus, it wasn't a station it was just the bus parked there. We didn't have much time left but we tried to find a bathroom. Of course everything was closed but the only things around that area were really fancy car dealerships and hotels. Erin ended up asking a restaurant to use their bathroom and they were apparently nice about it. So we ran back to the bus.
The ride on the bus was not so good. Like the seats were pretty comfortable and you had a decent amount of space but I just can not sleep in a situation like that. I don't know if I actually slept or not. All night I was kind of concious but my mind was going all over the place and I could move if I wanted to but my body felt heavy. Anyways it just didn't refresh me enough because when we finally arrived in Shinjiku I felt like crap. We spent a good amount of time walking around Shinjiku just trying to get our barrings. The government office section of shinjiku had some amazing buildings, the architecture is really out there. Emily and Pak got the special edition dissida PSP system at bic camera, and its a really cool. I feel so special being able to get a final fantasy game right as it comes out in Japan.
We planned to get to the hostel at 3 so that we could all just take a well deserved nap. I figured out the infamous tokyo subway line even though its really something else. In Osaka all of the stations are within each other so if you buy a ticket that you have to transfer somewhere you never go outside. Here we had to leave the station and walk a block to transfer. Also I've noticed that on the escilator in Osaka people stand on the right but in Tokyo people stand on the left. Its intersting that there are these little differences between Kansai and Kanto regions.
The hostel is actually pretty nice. For starters it was only 7200 yen for 4 nights and they have a big area downstairs for showers, TV, computers, or just general haning out. The room is a basic dormitory set up with 3 bunkbeds. There are 4 of us, one girl that we saw and someone's backpack that was sitting ontop of one of the beds but we never saw whos it was. The bed has a really nice memory foam pillow but the matress is really painful. Anyways when we got there I passed out and at around 8 we went to a ramen restraunt and talked slightly about what we were going to do today.
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