Introduction and Day 1

Mike's trip to Japan

I recently took a trip to Japan and I have had so many people ask me about my trip that I have decided to put my thoughts down in blog format.

Here was the itinerary:

Wednesday, Sept 10-Saturday, Sept 13 - Tokyo

Saturday, September 13 - Wednesday, September 17 - Kyoto (with day trip to Hiroshima)

Wednesday, September 17-Friday, September 19 - Nara

Friday, September 19 - Sunday, September 21 - Back to Tokyo


Throughout the entire trip I traveled with two people

Eli (a.k.a. EKO)

Eli is a friend of mine from law school. Eli basically was the brains behind the whole operation as he was the one who planned the trip. It was great to travel with Eli as he is a very experienced traveler and has a great eye for picking up on unusual or interesting things. He has a willingness to go anywhere or do anything and have a great time while he does it.

Kennon (a.k.a. KP3)

Kennon is a friend of Eli's and, like Eli and myself, also is an attorney. Although Eli provided the basic outline for the trip, Kennon probably did the most research and planned most of our day to day activities in addition to being the primary tour guide/map reader. It was also great to travel with Kennon as he is easy to get along with and has a great sense of humor. Overall the three of us got along really well and we had an absolute blast in Japan.

Japan was just the first stop on a five week tour of Asia for Eli and Kennon, who are continuing on to Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia, but Japan was the only spot on my itinerary.

I caught a direct flight from Atlanta to Tokyo, which took about 14 hours. It sounds worse than it was - I actually didn't mind the flight at all. I signed up for an exit row seat and had plenty of room. That is until a 6'8" guy who plays for the JBL came and sat down right next to me, completely occupying my leg and armrest space. For those who are unfamiliar, which I'm guessing is everyone, the JBL is the Japanese Basketball League, which, apparently, exists. Anyway, I chatted it up with this guy for quite a while. Apparently he played for the Toyama Grousers, which is one of eight or ten teams in the JBL. Some things that I remember from the conversation were that there were typically a few thousand people at each game (he described it as a popular high school game), with numbers increasing in the playoffs, foreign players (mostly US) accounted for about 60% of the players on any given team, and that basketball was a young sport in Japan but that it was definitely getting more popular (the league started with 6 teams, then had 8, 10 and finally up to 12 teams).

Upon arriving in Tokyo I met up with Eli and Kennon at the hotel. It was quite an ordeal finding the hotel as I didn't have a cell phone and neither did Eli or Kennon, I didn't have anything but a printout of directions to the hotel from a Japanese girl who didn't really speak English very well, and I could't read or speak a lick of Japanese. Eventually I found them, mostly through a lot of pointing and motioning directions from locals, and we met up at our hotel in the Shiodome area of Tokyo near Tokyo Bay, the Park Hotel.

Shortly after arriving we headed out on the town, meeting up with a few of Eli's friends.

Chris Jones

Chris is a friend of Eli's from Northwestern. Chris is from Nashville, TN but is living in Tokyo teaching English. He recently got engaged to a Japanese girl named Miwa and they are deciding where to set up shop once they are married. We hung out with Chris quite a bit - he is a really cool guy and did a great job of showing us around Tokyo, getting us tickets to a Sumo wrestling tournament as well as a Japanese professional baseball game.

Chris Brennan

Chris is a friend of a friend of Eli's. He is a native Australian who lives and works in Tokyo. Chris showed us around and showed us a lot of the off-book bars and night clubs. When I say "off-book" I simply mean things that were not mentioned in any of the tourguide books that we brought with us on the trip.

First night out - Shibuya

Shibuya is one of the many wards/neighborhoods in Tokyo. It is a popular nightlife section for younger people and it was very close to our hotel so we decided to head there for our first night.
Chris Brennan took us to a cool little restaurant in Shibuya that is owned by one of his friends. Brennan took care of the ordering and before we knew what happened we had a few rounds of beer (or beeru), some sake, and ended up eating some sashimi that was supposedly a type of goldfish as well as something that looked like bacon, tasted a lot like bacon, but ended up being horse. Disgusting.

We then went out to a lounge called Insomnia. We didn't stick around long as we had an early morning planned and I was a little jet lagged.

What we did see, which I found pretty interesting, was the Japanese "love hotels", which are hotels that you can rent out for a few hours to....sleep in. I suppose they are not much different than places we have in the US (motels, etc.), but if I'm not mistaken it is a little more socially acceptable in Japan. It could be in part because the public transportation system in Tokyo, which just about everyone uses, stops running at midnight and doesn't start again until around 6:00 a.m. Thus, instead of taking an expensive cab to the distant suburbs, people can just hole up for a few hours and catch the early morning train home.


We checked in pretty early as we had a full day planned for Friday and wanted to catch some sleep.