Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo. Not only did you live up to my much anticipated expectations, you surpassed them in every way imaginable, and I love you for it.

10 days in Tokyo is all we had, mainly because it’s all our already blown-out budget could afford. So we squeezed ourselves into a miniscule room only big enough for a bunk bed with a 2 inch mattress and our obese backpacks which took up any floor space there was on offer.

We covered a lot of ground in 10 days and even retraced our steps a few times to revisit the places that we loved. Shibuya was one of these places. Shibuya which is right next to Harajuku embodies a lot of the kookiness that Harajuku is famous for and combines this with awesome bars and some of the best shopping on offer. It also has the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world. The best vantage point is the Starbucks which overlooks the street. But beware, getting a seat by the window here involves a big committment in hovering over people until they feel uncomfortable and then elbowing other contenders out of the way. Not an easy task. We even had our umbrella stolen in one of these encounters.

Right near Shibuya is Yoyogi Park; a massive area of land that has been beautifully designed allowing you to laze around for hours watching an array of entertainers including buskers, drum circles and comedians (yelling is funny in any language?). We were lucky enough to be in Tokyo for two Sundays and we spent them both here. It is a great place to lay around in the sun with some beers and food and people-watch for the entire day. Our highlight here were the “T-Bird” style dancers that set up shop on the weekends. Two different groups, dressed in all out leathers with their shoes pointed and hair coiffed, have dance offs to music from the 50s, with moves to match. Danny Zuko eat your heart out.

It was at this park that Tim was approached and asked to be a male model. (Pause for effect). Unfortunately, we were flying out the next day which didn’t fit in with the timing of the gig. According to the casting guy, this was “most regrettable”. We think so too.

Akihabara is a district in Tokyo known for being the “Electric City” (“They call it Scranton. / What?! / The Electric City!”). It is filled with tech shops crammed full of every little gadget you could possibly need, along with game and anime cartoon stores, toy arcades and more technological wizardry. However, the most well known feature of Akihabara are the maid cafes. Now, we couldn’t afford to go to a maid cafe (and weren’t entirely sure that we wanted to) but it turns out that you don’t need to, as there are maids dressed up on every corner. In full maid French maid outfits. Tim, as you can imagine, is in some sort of comatose heaven. These maids would giggle and wave at him when we passed but instead of responding, he would have some sort of fit where he would bare his teeth instead of smiling and shake his arm at some bizarre attempt at a wave. As soon as we had passed the now confused maid, I exclaimed, “What the hell was that?!” to which he replied, “I don’t know…I don’t know…I panicked. There was too much cuteness.”

So let’s just get this embarrassing admission out of the way….we went to a Cat Cafe. For those of you not familiar (I mean who is?!), Cat Cafes are cafes filled with 10 or so cats that you can play with, feed and just generally observe for a small fee. These places cropped up because of the general lack of space in homes in Japan, leaving no room for pets. So, people can come here for a little while and lavish all their love on these spoiled balls of fur.

Ok, it was weird.

Firstly, the cats don’t enjoy the whole “patting” thing and would deliberately change direction to avoid your outstretched hand. They would duck, weave and even hyper extend their backs just so any sort of affection wouldn’t be exchanged. So, even though Tim and I are pretty cat, dog, any-sort-of-animal (except for monkeys) crazy, it was just awkward. We sat there for an hour (yes, because we paid for 60 mins worth) sitting there watching cats, sipping coffee and occasionally glancing at each other with pained expressions on our faces. What are we doing here?

To our surprise, we were told that baseball is the most popular sport in Japan. Setting aside the fact that neither of us had ever been to a baseball game before or knew any of the rules (nothing that Wikipedia couldn’t fix), we took ourselves off to a game.

This was a lot of fun. I mean a lot of fun.

In Australia, by the end of a footy or cricket game, there are beer snakes slithering through the crowd, beach balls causing havoc for the security guards and of course, one or two fights. In Japan, the crowds are having the time of their lives but in an orderly fashion.

Unknowingly, we had bought tickets in the “Away” team’s section, which luckily turned out to be the best choice. We were accepted with open arms and every time a home run was scored (which happened frequently because our team was awesome), everyone turned around and hi-fived us. I’m pretty sure I had the biggest grin on my face the entire time and not just because I mastered the choreographed dance moves of the crowd. Nailed it.

Ok food, here we go.

Unfortunately, I feel that my limited writing skills don’t do justice to the food in Japan. Everywhere we went; fancy places, cheap places, takeaway food, it was all INCREDIBLE. We were lucky enough on our first night in Tokyo to have my old work colleague take us out to dinner and order us the most amazing food that we otherwise wouldn’t have dared order.

Among the many culinary delights that we experienced during our flying visit were pork ramen, udon, sea grapes, dozens of gyoza, katsudon (fried pork cutlet with rice) and soba noodles, which are almost certainly the greatest noodles known to man.

As I am on the verge of gushing, I should just say that Japanese is probably our favourite cuisine and we were not disappointed with anything. Delicious, delicious, delicious.

Our 10 days ended way too soon and once again we were back at the airport. However, I can say with certainty that we will be back to Japan very soon, it’s just too amazeballs.

Next stop, Cambodia!

Staying: Khaosan Tokyo Ninja. Great, clean backpacker’s hotel in a good location with amazingly helpful staff, who love Timtams.

Getting there: AirAsia flight from Tokyo with surprisingly delicious on-board Japanese cuisine.

Tip of the trip: Head to Yoyogi Park on a Sunday. Definitely not to be missed.

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