It has been just over a month since I landed in Tokyo, and I havent really been to a lot of places yet. And past few weeks have been busy with apartment viewings, contract signing, but yayyy!! I am finally going to move to my new house, haven, hearth ...home. It's this sweet warm flat with huge french windows and sliding doors made of paper and shiny wooden flooring. The bedroom floors are actually made of tatami mats - how cool is that?! But there is no internet connection yet, but that should be done soon and then I will be all nicely settled down.
So, you can imagine that the weekends were booked, what with all the purchases and moving half of my stuff.
I have still managed to check out a couple of places in and around though.
The first weekend, that is, the day after I landed, I went to Kasai-Rinkai Koen. It is a park and basically consists of a couple of man-made islands. It's also got a giant ferris wheel nearby, which proved to be a little dissapointing as it goes much-much slower than our Indian-mela-style giant wheels, but you get a great view of the city from high up so it was pretty good.
There was also an area with lots of slot-machines for games - the Japanese are very much into these games - pachinko and what nots - so you kinda find them everywhere around here.
My friends and I decided to try our hands at making our own cotton candy - you insert coins into this cotton candy machine and it spurs into action and then you just try to grab as many wisps of the sugary cotton as you can with a stick. It was lots of fun and I ended up with a lopsided white fuzzy shapeless mess in my hands. Of course, I insisted on sharing it - I have a big heart. Tee hee hee. We ended that evening by having awesome Mexican food at the -El Torito - and I must say the fajitas were yummy.
The second trip that we had was a real fun trip. We decided to hire a car and since the guys have been here for quite a long while now, they have seen almost all of the 'nice' places around Tokyo. We finally googled up some Tokyo German Village near Chiba and headed towards it. We had an early start so we stopped over to pick up some breakfast. The cars go at amazing speeds in Tokyo and my friend's driving skills actually deserve more than just a mention. He manoeuvred the turns at full speeds and we were all thrown around in the car like rag-dolls despite wearing seat belts!! It was just one heck of a roller-coaster experience but wot-the-heck - it was fun nevertheless.
The village itself is just a landscaped turf mainly, with flowers and a few timbered houses serving German food and playing German folk songs and Das Deutschlandlied from speakers so that you can hear them everywhere you go. But then, there were these tulip gardens which look and feel great even though you have seen them before - with rows and rows of these pretty flowers in deep red, pink, yellow and white. There was also a tiny 'zoo' section with mountain goats (they actually looked german to me), sheep, dog-like-hybrids, guinea pigs. And then, the hi-light of this village are the games. We tried our hand at archery and I nearly lost an eye! - well okay, that was exaggerated. We had never tried it before and the guy at the stalls, fitted me with this gear and taught me the 'technique' and I actually hit the target-board with my first arrow - yayyyy!!! Sooo, I got pretty excited and you see, the wire which you actually pull to launch the arrow is extremely taut and you need a lot of force to pull it back. I forgot to keep my eye out of my hands way - I was aiming for the bull's eye (as if!!) and BAM! the hand recoiled and hit me in the eye and I swear I saw candles swimming around me. It actually seems quite funny now, but boy, it hurts to get a black-eye ...and I got a red blood clot in my cornea as well. Eventually, I used up the rest of my arrows and this time none of them were remotely near the bulls eye - I was busy protecting my 'good' eye.
Then there was this sliding game which was truly mindblowing. All we could see from a distance was a huge, steep, grassy-looking slope with people coming down it. Obviously, we were intrigued into trying it out. It was this plasticky green turf with small ridges in it that was spread thoughout the slope. We picked up these small plastic trays and hand gloves and trudged up the steps on the side till we reached right up to the top. Then, you just have to sit on these trayswith curled up knees and push urself until you reach the edge and then down you go...wheeeeeeee.....bumping all the way over the small ridges and slide to a stop at the bottom. It was hilarious and we kept coming back loads of times. I was the only one screaming all the way down apparently - but that's what made it so much fun!
I almost knocked down a tiny kid who was so shocked when I whizzed past barely missing him by nano-meteres that he stared open-mouthed for full 3 minutes...haha.
Then we wrapped up from there and moved on to this Kamogawa Seaworld where they had Dolphin, killer whales and sea-lion shows....it was really amazing.
It sounds ridiculous even as I now write it, but I actually kinda almost teared up during the killer whale show. It is really amazing how man and these huge sea -mammals can connect so beautifully. The whale visible loved that girl who was doing all those tricks and the chemistry actually reminded you of 'Free Willy'.
It wasnt really much, but it was a good start.
Last week was actually a long holiday week - Golden Week. We had Mon, Tue and Wed off and it was nice and relaxing and I shifted most of the stuffs to my new home. And I visited Tokyo Disneyland on Monday. It was as usual a hap-hap-happy day - Walt Disney deserves a place in heaven for spreading so much happiness. The rides I enjoyed most was the splash mountain... it is this boat kinda coaster which goes inside an artificial mountain which is beautiful from inside - it's supposed to be Brer Rabbit's home with lots of frogs and bears and foxes singing along with small drops and rizes along the way and then at the end you have this humongous vertical drop where every one screams their lungs out as you can actualy feel you insides dropping and all you can see below is a huge bed of artificial thorns designed to hide the actual tunnel opening. It's thrilling and happy - a great combination for a ride.
Then we had a jungle ride, space mountain, star wars, the usual stuff. It really makes me think just how much money would have gone into creating this huge space with such beautiful artwork complete and perfect to the last details, and all working like clockwork without any hitches.
Anyhow, I bought a pair of Minnie ears and wore them throughout looking all cute and minnie-mousey :) and a disney tumbler full of caramel popcorns and smoked turkey legs and all mickey shaped chicken nuggets, ice-cream sandwich, ice lollies. Sigh, sigh...I wish every single day could be a repitition of this. Okay - I don't really want that. I just wrote it as it sounds poetic...or whatever.
Not a single plan for this weekend, except that I am starting a new 'healthy- resolution'. I am gonna go on a diet and eat only caloriemates(ugghh) and run for at least a mile and a half every evening. I keep eating and sitting at my desk all day and I can feel that I have put on quite a lot of weight and ergo the above resolution.
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