30 October 2019
All the neon in all the places
Ueno to Akihabara to Kanda for Sichuan style ramen
Just a short outing tonight, all on foot. I set off through Ueno, passed through Akihabara and then ended up where I was originally booked to stay at Kanda for a bowl of Sichan style ramen, which was delicious.
Allow me to explain why I am not staying in Kanda briefly.
I book my accommodation through booking.com, because you can cancel it at any point. Useful in case I feel like changing my plans. About 2 weeks before I came on this trip I somehow saw an ad for one of the hotels I was booked to stay in, and it was now cheaper than when I had booked. So I went to booking.com and re booked most of the same rooms for the same dates at a cheaper rate. It even asks you if you want to cancel the original booking and replace it with the new one.
So there is a top tip, you can re book cheaper closer to the date, but book a year in advance to assure you get a room. One of my locations is actually much much more expensive now with very few rooms available, so in that location I kept the original booking.
Actually I did not yet explain the initial point. Most of the rooms I kept the same, but for the first part of my trip when I went to rebook the same room, I saw the one where I am currently staying in Ueno for very cheap. When I originally booked a year ago it was very expensive. That was long winded.
Tomorrow is Halloween. I wont go hiking so that I can go to Shibuya in the evening and participate in the mass gropings and flipping over of trucks that occurred last year. I did go there last year after a long day of hiking, but I was very tired and got there too late. There really was a lot of trouble last year, tear gas even!
One last thing, as I type this senior citizens on the tv are demonstrating how after a few weeks of taking ground up dolphin fin powder they are able to leap at least 30cm further when performing a standing broad jump, like dolphins leaping out of the ocean!
Ueno has many many streets of Neon, heres just one of them, a less popular one.
Here in Akihabara there are people in huge groups on their phones. All of them are hopeless addicts playing Pokemon Go. The game makes you go to specific spots and meet up with other people to do battle. No one ever talks, so its not the great social thing you might think. Many people have multiple phones on the go. This particular spot is very popular because it allows your dinosaur super turtle to collect a slightly different colored limited edition version of his body armor. Really!
Since I was passing Akihabara, time for another Neon photo.
Kanda does not seem to get much love when people are talking about busy districts of Tokyo, but it is really quite large and colorful.
I especially like all the under the train line mini restaurants.
My dinner was good. Sichuan style Ramen. Basically Dan Dan mian mashed up with Ramen. From the ticket machine you can choose how numbing and spicy you want, I chose high on the scale for both, but still after I handed over my ticket the chef sent his young daughter out to check thats what I really wanted. A Japanese woman next to me took one mouthful and had a non stop coughing fit, but seemed to be greatly enjoying her coughing fit, I saw her add more chilli oil mid fit.
Strange last photo of the night. Here in Sichuan fusion ramen shop, they have kindly provided hair ties so that you dont dissolve your hair in the spicy broth.