We woke up and made our way back to Hakata Station to catch a high speed bullet train to Tokyo. We found the right track and train pretty easily and were soon soaring along at nearly 200 mph. The trains look like they are from the future and have a long nose at the front and end. They look more like an airplane without any wings instead of a train.
The train ride was roughly 5 hours long with one transfer near Osaka. There were a lot of white tourists on the train with huge luggage bags banging into all the seats and everyone sitting in them. I wasn’t sure what could possibly be in them and why someone needed so many things.
We arrived at Tokyo station around 3 and found ourselves in the middle of the largest urban center in the world. Tokyo has nearly 13 million residents, an astounding number and is 3 million more than Seoul. We headed out of the station and walked to the CITAN hostel which was about a mile and a half away.
The first thing I noticed about Tokyo was just how clean it was. There was literally no trash anywhere. The streets were spotless and it was amazing considering how many people were walking along. We passed trough mostly a business district and some new construction before arriving at the hostel.
We checked in and unloaded our things and set out to do some laundry. One of the negatives of packing really light is that you really only have one outfit. We haven’t been able to do laundry really because nobody in Korea has a dryer. This doesn’t work well when you have only one outfit, so we were thrilled to find out the hostel had a dryer and washer on site.
Once our chores were done we headed out into the city. We stopped and had dinner at a sushi restaurant where the sushi comes on plates around a conveyor belt. Once you see something you like you just take the plate. At the end, they tally your plates and charge you accordingly. Each plate is the same price so it’s pretty easy.
We walked around the glowing streets for a little while after dinner. Tokyo is a neon world and lit up beyond belief. There are pachinko parlors on every corner which are Japanese slot machines. You can hear them from the street clammoring and dinging away, and you can see all the people hunched over trying to strike it rich.
It isn’t much different from the states. Everyone wants to win the lottery and if you don’t play you can’t win.
We turned in around 10 and called it a day. We were tired from the long train ride amd sushi and bed was calling.
