Tokyo: otaku culture, shrines and karaoke

one of the first things that one notices here: life in Tokyo is soooooo much more busy and time consuming than my nice, cute pacific island life! Partially this is due to the fact that whatever I want to do in Tokyo I need to calculate a good 1,5hrs travel time oneway into Tokyo downtown from my host families' place. If you wonder why - well have a look at the Metro map:














But it is also way more diverse and interesting. Thanks to couchsurfing.org I immediately found contact to some open Japanese who are keen to meet foreign people, show them around their area and brush up their English:

With Keiko and her friends we went for an evening in the crazy Shibuyah district, had in a hidden restaurant great chinese food for around 5 EUR per person including drinks and went after that to Karaoke! there is not much more Japanese you can do I guess!

Rie took me for a clubbing night out in Roppongi, the Party district on a saturday night and the following day we met in Shinjuku, where she took me to a famous cake shop and her favourite shopping place. We had a typical Japanese girls sunday afternoon - one goes to different department stores and tries out make-up and other things. And Japanese are mad about cake and chocolate. No idea how they keep in shape with this...

Kyoko asked me to join her for a Couchsurfing house party hosted by a Japanese-American guy and it was a nice mix of Japnese and "gaijins" present.

With Mizuki I spent an afternoon in Akihabara, the centre of technic things and Anime-Otaku culture. Its the idolization of comic girls, which materializes in little dolls, manga-porn and even maido caffes, where you can meet with a girl who is dresses as your favourite Anime figure. It was great to go there with a Japanese - he took me to little shops where I would have NEVER dared to go in myself. I also tried some famous Udon-Noodles.

Saeko and Hideki invited me to an afternoon with her friend Raymond from Ghana and Mariona from Barcelona. Raymond had just returned from Ghana and cooked some very interesting food for us. It was a fantastic day where I learned a lot about that country and we had some great discussions.

I visited Marga, a Romanian girl who lives in Yokohama since 10 years for a walk and a drink in the well known Sakuragichou Area. We had met at the Couchsurfing-house Party two weeks before.

The cultural Part was covered by Masao-san, my host family dad. We went together to the Akasake Mikusa shrine and Museum, which was frequented by Japanese nationalists on that day.

Everyday life

I have Japanese class every day from 1-5 pm and usually I learn in the mornings another 2 hours, as I can not keep up with the speed of the class. My host family is very nice, we come along perfectly well and Fumiko-san, the mother is a great conversation partner.

And she also looks faboulous! I hope we manage to go out together one evening!!