Spelunking + Scavenging

So I woke up early today once again. It’s what happens when you hit bed at like 8 am.

I rode a bike to the station and parked it at the local bike parking garage. It was sweet.

The train ride was initially the boring one that I expected. But then I got to a station called Ueno, and switched to the famous Yamanote line.

And I guess half of fucking Tokyo wanted to join in the ride. Because there were thousands of people at that station. Not hundreds. Thousands. And hundreds of people were getting on each train. The station actually employs people to pack passengers into the train. When a wave comes in and they need to close the door, this man pushes people in until they can be closed. I have never felt so sardine-like as the packer shoved 10 more people into the train than there should’ve been.

All those people are getting on that train


What a sardine looks like inside the can.


Slightly squashed, I got to campus and was put in a group for the scavenger hunt.

Campus


Scavenger hunt = free all day train ticket for Tokyo + the biggest fucking playground ever

So we wandered around to the Imperial Palace, to Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku. Admired the cherry blossoms, admired the view from TMG (Tokyo Metropolitan Government) buildings, ate some crepes, stood in awe and watched thousands of people mill around Shibuya (don’t these Japanese people work or anything?)

Cherry Blossoms around campus



Shibuya milling


After the hunt was over, some cats and I wandered over to Akihabara electric town. Steph, using her wonderful mastery of the Japanese language arranged for us to buy cellphones with plans and everything. We even chose sexy phones with English language menus. And then came the most important part. Paying 3 yen for the cellphones. I decided to be nice and treat Ruben and Steph to cellphones. Yes, I bought my friends phones. I’m nice aren’t I?

The ride home was slightly less squashed. Being tired from the day spelunking around Tokyo didn’t help either. But what was coming up was worse.

On my bike-ride through the near pitch-black streets of my town I ran into 3 policemen who asked me for my passport. Being the smartass that I am I left my passport at the house. So I showed them my drivers license and ID and started talking in Japanese. Maybe they liked the fact that this gaikokujin knew how to put two sentences in Japanese together, or they liked me, but I got off with a warning: I need to turn on my front light when riding at night.

Tomorrow we set off to Nikko for the overnight trip. As a certain Evan Miller would say, it will be sugoi.

I leave you with an interesting image.



Yes that's a bicycle. And yes, that's an ashtray attached to the bicycle. Crazy Japanese.