Japan, Tokyo

We arrived to Tokyo, just to drop bags in the hotel and head for the main event – final day of Tokyo Grand Sumo tournament. This is something that was planned well in advance. We tried to book tickets moments after they have been released (they sell as fast as the U2 in Dublin) only to get a sold out response. Lucky, tragedy was averted – we found an agency that still had few tickets. And they came with the guide. To be honest, we just thought it was a money making scam, but in the end it was brilliant to watch a tournament with a local lady who is an avid fan. And could speak good English!

And even with seats far back and almost touching the clouds we could see well – the guys really are that big. With nine out of ten top sumo wrestlers over 160kg this ancient sport requires a healthy appetite. To top it all, we saw Hakuho (one of the best ever, if not The Best) regain his mojo with clean sweep victory. Still have goose bumps thinking about it... What a day!!!

What does one do in Tokyo? Well, we were there to see modern, contemporary Japan. And that is exactly what we did. We climbed skyscraper after skyscraper and had glorious view of Tokyo skyline. And as luck would have it, on the last day we even had a good view of Mt Fuji! Talking about luck. We walked modern districts and checked out Tokyo sub-culture. Young people here are similar to everywhere in the world, but still a bit different. And that is the correct term to use – they accept and embrace their individuality and have special style. Best place to see is Akihabara. Shop after shop with glaring techno music selling everything. Definitely a sight to see and then move on to a slightly quieter area, as we did.

One of the things we will definitely remember was Tokyo river cruise on futuristic boat (apparently it was designed by a known Japanese manga artist) that looked like Millennium Falcon to us (for non-initiated this is a name of a star ship from Han Solo and Chewbacca in Star Wars series – the good ones). To be honest, the boat was even better than the views. And those were pretty spectacular as well, especially of the Rainbow Bridge. So we ended up on the artificial island and took a driverless monorail back to town. It was a really neat experience, whizzing by tall glass buildings. Felt like being in the future already. And that was even before we tangoed with the cutest robots ever!

After hefty considerations, we went to Tsukiji market as well. Not to the fish section as some of us (Nives mainly) cannot stand the sight of dead manta rays (it is bleeding hard to see live ones, trust us!) and both of us have tears in the eyes when we see shark-fins. We are still not sure how exactly we would react to dead dolphins or whales. So, we strolled a bit on the outside part of it (nothing special really) and then settled in and had a pretty good sushi (damn good one, to be honest!). Definitely a thing to do in Tokyo – east sushi here, that is.

But we will remember Tokyo the most by Shibuya crossing. Basically it is giant road crossing that sees 1000 people crossing the street at the same time at peak hours. Trick is that when traffic lights turn red, they do it in unison – all of them. Traffic completely stops and people just surge on the road. We joined this wave of humanity and kept crossing it time after time. To be honest, it did not get boring!

And then it was time to start packing again. Time to start going back home…

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