Japan Day 1 & 2

It's been a while, but I'm finally traveling someplace new and interesting and figured I should write about it. I'm in Japan! I'm currently in Tokyo with my boyfriend, but my brother will be joining us tomorrow and traveling with us for the rest of the trip. I'll try to update semi-regularly while we explore the country.

 Tommy and I got into Narita Airport around 4pm JST, which was around 11pm back in San Diego. We decided to force ourselves to stay awake until it was a reasonable time to sleep in this time zone (though we had been awake for a loooong time), so we had a few hours to kill in Tokyo before turning in.

We arrived in Shinjuku around rush hour, which was pretty hectic- it's the busiest train station in the world! We managed to get fairly lost and left the massive train station from the wrong exit, which resulted in lots of wandering and hauling our luggage up and down flights of stairs. Eventually we made it to the hotel and set out to explore a bit and find food. Our hotel is on the east side of Shinjuku and is close to lots of food and bars, though we discovered that very, very few of them have any English menu or English speakers. I took Japanese many years ago, but I don't remember enough to navigate a zero-English environment very well. Nonetheless, our neighborhood is really cool and a great place to wander around:

We managed to stumble upon a night market thing (signs implied that it happened every few weeks) with lots of yummy-looking and cheap food. It was also insanely crowded- I wish we could have taken more pictures, but it was nearly impossible to stay still in any location without being pushed along by a wave of people. We were able to grab some pretty great food though- takoyaki, which are pan-fried balls of octopus and random veggies, and okonomiyaki, which is a pancake-like food consisting of a lot of random ingredients and generous portions of sauce and mayonnaise.

After scarfing down some food we decided to finally call it a night and get plenty of rest before exploring the city. We started off Saturday morning with a breakfast of random items from a nearby convenience store (Lawson, which is great and has delicious pre-made food) and a stroll through Shinjuku Gyoen, a beautiful and large park similar to NYC's Central Park. Unfortunately this area is still 1-2 weeks away from perfect autumn colors, but things were beautiful nonetheless.

For lunch we met up with a friend of mine from college who has been living in Tokyo for the last two years. He brought us to an amazing tempura restaurant:

Afterwards, we wandered back towards our neighborhood and discovered a jazz festival. There were musicians on nearly every corner:

In the evening we took the subway a few stops down to Shibuya, a very lively area that has the largest pedestrian crossing the in the world. Everything was very bright and Times Square-like: 

We spent a lot of time at an excellent craft beer bar that had a selection of American and Japanese beers on tap. Four of the six American beers were from San Diego from breweries that we frequent, so I guess we live in a world-famous beer city. I had some interesting local beers, including a sour plum ale and an earl grey tea beer. 

While we were there, we had a very noticeable earthquake, which was a bit scary. The Japanese patrons didn't seem at all phased (foreigners certainly were), so I suppose it's fairly common. After a bit more wandering, we went back up to Shinjuku to get some rest after a busy day.

I'm already a day behind, but I'll try to update consistently! We have a few more days in Tokyo, then we're off to Kyoto and Fukuoka, so there will be plenty to write about.