Tokyo JSPS Orientation - part 2

On the second day of the orientation, after the closing of the official event, we had an evening tour of Tokyo.  The tours were organized by this travel agency and we had an awesome Japanese tour guide who spoke very good english and was vey talkative about everything.  Thus, we had an opportunity to learn a lot!

We started with a tour of the Imperial Palace.  Well, in reality, we only went up to the main gate of the imperial palace but it was quite nice.  The whole area is a huge park and is very impressive.

 The trees that were planted in the park are amazing looking.

 One of the two bridges to the imperial palace.

 We just happened upon the changing of the guard at the main gates - the stone bridge:

 There is the second bridge - the iron bridge.

 Large moat surrounds the palace grounds.

 After the Imperial Palace, we went up the Tokyo Tower.  The view of the city was quite nice.

 That group of tall buildings in the distance is Shinjiku, another famous district of Tokyo.

 After the tower, we went for dinner to this interesting mall in a newly developed area of Tokyo on an island.  The mall was quite interesting since it was in the style of european city streets.  Also has a Barbie store! hehehe.

 The restaurant we went to was an all you can eat italian style place.  Food was pretty good.

 The mall comes with its own sky!

Who remembers this cat? :P

 After we got back to the hotel, I decided to go visit Akihabara, another famous place in Tokyo for its electronics, computers, and anime/manga shops.  Otherwise, it is an area of brightly lit neon signs!

 If you want to see AKB48 live, this is the place to go (unfortunately it's a bit complicated since they now use a lottery ticket system).

 Akiba has a large number of maid cafes, so there were girls dressed up in maid outfits standing on the sidewalk and walking around to advertise and give out ads.  Sadly I didn't take direct pictures of them but here are 3 of them walking.

 So much anime!

 The akihabara train station.

 This is one anime shop, basically the sign says that floors 3 and up are 18+.

 Pillar at the corner of the AKB48 theatre building showing some of the girls.

 Here are some adversing for the maid cafes.

 Coming back to the hotel, I found this interesting ad in the subway.  Akiba education institution??

Tokyo JSPS Orientation - part 1

The last three days I went to Tokyo for an orientation from my funding organization - JSPS.  The trip was a great success and I am quite happy and thankful to JSPS for organizing it.  The three days were split between actual work (listening to talks, discussing things, and doing a short language lesson) and sight seeing of Tokyo attractions.

To get there, I took the bullet train (shinkansen) from Nagoya Station to Tokyo Station.  I bought the ticket the day before because I was a bit worried about how busy it can be.  It turned out that the trains go about every 10 minutes in the mornings and mine was roughly 70% full.  The price of the ticket is around 11,000 yen (one way) - roughly $135.  A bit expensive but it covers the around 350km in less than 1.5hr travelling at roughly 275km/h and only stopping at 2 stations right before Tokyo.  Here are some pictures from the Nagoya shinkansen platform.

 My train was the Nozomi 6 (Nozomi is the newest shinkansen train type).

 Here you can see the twin towers of the train station buildings.

 And the train came...

The ride was so smooth and quiet - much better than airplane!  The seats were also very comfortable with lots of leg room and easily accessible overhead storage.  I tried to take pictures from the window but not much was visible and things moved very quickly.  We must have gone through about 30 or so tunnels along the way!  I had a window seat on the ocean side so unfortunately I missed seeing Mt. Fuji.

 That is a cemetery on the hill side: 

 This is already Tokyo I think.

 When travelling by train in Japan, you just have to try the o-bento!  I've seen shows on TV where people go travel throughout Japan just for the sake of eating the different bento.  The one that I got (for lunch) at the shinkansen platform in Nagoya had the 400 years of Nagoya theme going.  There was a selection of about 20 different types of them.  I just chose something randomly.

 It turned out to be pretty tasty with an assortment of different little items.

From the train station, I took the subway to get to the venue/hotel.  The subway was slightly different but worked pretty much the same as in Nagoya so I didn't have any problems finding my way around.  Easy, isn't it?

One station had gates before you enter the train (I guess to prevent people from killing themselves or something).

The venue and hotel were the Hotel Hanzomon Monterey:

The room was quite standard.

After the welcoming reception ended finishing the first day of the orientation, a group of us decided to go out for drinks to Shibuya.  Shibuya is a famous night life and shopping district of Tokyo.  The place is incredible, when I left at around 11pm, it was still swarming with people!

 This is the famous huge crosswalk intersection in Shibuya - tons of people using it!

 We looked around for a place to drink.

 and finally ended up at this awesome all you can drink place on the 4th floor of a thin building.

 After 2 hours of drinking, some people were a little bit drunk :).