tokyo

TOKYO and Kamikura!!!!

With my first weekend to do overnight travel, i instantly jumped on the train and made my

way off base and into Japan. My first stop was in kamikura where all the other camp adventure staff from all around japan met to take a huge group photo in front of the giant Buddha. The Buddha itself was my first cultural experience in japan to witness and marvel at the ancient cultures of Japan, and for 2 yen I was able to make my way inside of the Buddha itself, which wasn't really anything eye shocking but you get to see the inside of it and can see how they built it. It was composed of 30 different slabs which they meshed together like building blocks. After the big Buddha we went down the main street of kamikura and got some lunch at a local butcher shop where they made fresh deep fried foods, unfortunately we couldn't read any of the menus so we all were just blindly picking frozen patties of something that deep fried. Surprisingly i got something very good, a sort of deep fried potato pancake with beef in it. We also made a quick stop at the 7-11 there and picked up some octopus in a bag, unlike the deep fried food we ate the octopus reeked of vinegar and i can personally say that octopus tastes better raw than it does pre-packaged.

Once we finished sight seeing in kamikura we hopped back on the train and made our way to Shibuya, Tokyo. This train ride was also my first experience with rush hour train rides where you are literally packed into the train like sardines in a can and they have hired personnel at the train station whose jobs are literally to push all the riders in just enough so the door can quickly slide shut to a lock. We got to shibuya in hopes of findinga hotel but every hotel we walked into was either a love hotel which rented by the hour, or a capsule hotel that didn't allow girls to stay the night so our group wouldn't have been able to get rooms. So instead we got back on the train and went to shinjuku, an area of Tokyo littered with hotels and more touristy places. We were able to find the Shinjuku Washington hotel where we got a twin bedroom with two twin size beds that we crammed people into. U literally walked into the room and there were two beds a small space between the beds, a tv, a small fridge and little bathroom right next to the door. Once we got settled into the hotel we went out on the town, found a couple bars and then went looking for the clubs. Shinjuku not really known for its night life was kind of dull so we got back on the train and went back to shibuya and found some night life. we spent a lot of time around unfamiliar with the area and we met some locals who took us with them to this club. But this club would not allow beach sandals and some people in our group had sandals on so we were back on the hunt for something to do. Fortunately one of the locals we were with was to drunk to get admittance in so he led us a to another club that was up two flights of stairs and you thought you were walking into the closet and there was the hidden little club that could fit maybe 50 people max, but it was still a lot of fun. We partied the night away at the little club and when 3:00 am swung around we waived ourselves a taxi and got a ride back to our hotel, for not to expensive.

We checked out of our hotel at 11:00 am and made our way straight to herejuku the fashion capital of Tokyo. You get off the train and you are literally one block away from the central herejuku shopping street. So we walked down checked out all the shops and got some nice little souvenirs. I found myself a H&M where i snagged myself a pair of white linen pants (Jesus pants). After we checked out all the shops we went to this huge park in the middle of Tokyo where we just rested for couple hours, did some people watching, saw some samurais, and some dancers who resembled the cast of Grease. Then we jumped back on the train and tried to make our way to Yokosuka, until a couple stops down the way and we realized the train we were on would make 43 more stops till where we needed to go because we were on the local train like that stops at every station, so we made a relatively easy transfer and got on the quick train back to yokosuka.