So, I’ve been to Japan twice before this trip, but both were fleeting glimpses. The first one was when I was 16, I was with my family, and it was essentially a stopover. The second was a few days longer, but I shot off to my friend’s house in the suburbs pretty much as soon as I got there.

This time, I was travelling with my girlfriend Annie, and we wanted to make the most of our time there. We had 10 days all up, which meant that I had to make certain sacrifices (no street racing meet-ups, drifting, car museums and what not but, hey, there’s always next time). We were both super looking forward to it, and so we spent a bit of time planning it. We were arriving pretty much just as soon as the cherry blossom season ended, which was fine (we have them down the road here as well) but it did mean that things like Sumo Wrestling and Baseball games needed to be booked in advance.

We flew into Tokyo from Perth and arrived at dickhead o’clock (somewhere around 7am). After leaving our luggage at our hotel and using the reception area to deodorise ourselves whilst exposing our western underpants to the other patiently waiting guests, we got ourselves prepped to watch a Sumo tournament.

Note that this wasn’t a proper tournament (they’re held every couple of months, and not while we were there) but there are demonstrations, which are still proper matches, which we were lucky enough to catch. It was the perfect way to be entertained and eat a delicious bento box while we recovered from our flight. Sumo is both simultaneously super enthralling and boring to watch (coming from a kickboxer). The BJJ part in me appreciates the strategy used to win. Mad respect to these guys, they commit their entire lives to it, living in special communes and adhering to strict rules, including drinking lots of beer to gain weight.

After that we navigated our way back through the 5 story metro system, checked in, recharged and went out to Shinjuku. This place is a madhouse to begin with but we arrived when they were renovating the metro station so it took us around 30 minutes to get to where we wanted to be, which was an old district, neighboured by even more madness. It was here that we ate our only bad meal of the trip (actually, we didn’t eat it, I spat it out as the chicken was raw). Other than that, we were stoked to get our first glimpse of Japanese nightlife.

It was all quite touristy, but we were having so much fun. The chaos, the extremity of everything in Japan is simply awesome. If I could have stayed awake for the entire time we were there, I would have. After drinking a glass or two of absinth to try and kill any bacteria from the place we kind of ate at and spending a good amount of money at the claw toy machines and mini-toy dispensers, we went home, hit the sack and began day two. It was time for food, Boss coffee, food, random cocktail bars, food, and food.

We began by hitting up the fish market, with a breakfast of hearty oysters, dessert and barbecued shrimp. After that we progressed to Ramen for lunch, before heading to Shimokitazawa for some pancake sort of omelette that we only figured out just before we left. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

What we did do every night is find a super cool cocktail bar, or a vinyl bar, that was usually on the 3rd or 4th story. You can smoke inside and if it’s a vinyl bar, the owner often has a collection of tens of thousands of records, and can make a drink to boot.

Lastly, day three. By this time it felt like we’d been there for a week already, spending probably a hundred euros on toy vending machines, doing all the things.. but, we had a big third day planned. It was time to visit Shibuya, and then head to a baseball game. Fuck yeah!

Honestly, Shibuya crossing was disappointing. It was a lot of people standing in the middle of the road taking selfies and shots for the gram, and it looked like the crossing at Amsterdam Centraal. That is, until the emergency services had to get through because a building was burning down. So we got to see that.

The game was great to watch, even though the Giants lost.
Also, the metro here is far cleaner and more steadily operating than my own bathroom. Unbelievable.

And that was it for Tokyo! That night we went out to a very secret gin bar which was a lot of fun, but we’ll keep it secret. Next up is Kyoto, stay tuned!