Day 20 & 21 - Confused at the train station and our holiday apartment dump

Day 20: Departure/arrival on September 10th, 2023

Hello everyone. We're glad you still seem to be interested in our trip. The twentieth day of our Japan tour was once again a moving day. It went from Fujiyoshida to Tokyo, the capital of Japan. As soon as we got up, we packed our bags and left our beautiful hostel room. Before we could continue, however, we had to kill some time. So we explored some more Fujiyoshida and enjoyed an early lunch. Afterwards we strolled around a bit and visited a local furniture store that had some pretty cool chairs. When our time had almost come, we waited a bit in the hostel and soon made our way to the bus stop, as we were supposed to continue with the highway bus today.

When we got to the stop, we waited for a while right next to the expressway. When we got to our bus, we noticed that the other passengers were holding tickets in their hands, which could only mean that we couldn't ride it. After a short conversation with someone who apparently had more knowledge than us, we decided that we would rather take the train instead of waiting 3 hours for the next available bus. When we arrived at the train station after another 12 minutes of walking, the next problem revealed itself. People often tell you how progressive the country of Japan is. The train station, which was admittedly in a rural area, made me doubt this. The reason for this was that you had to buy a physical ticket as well as pay with the digital card. All of this left us very confused. But well, in the end we got the train. Just like on the outward journey, we changed trains in Otsuki. From this place we traveled directly to Tokyo, but not before a train attendant pointed out to us during the journey that we needed another ticket in addition to the ticket we had already purchased. Overall, the trip by train probably cost twice as much as it did by bus. And I (Moritz) have never burned through ¥20,000 as quickly as I did in the last three days. Even though the trip was a bit frustrating at times, the mood was (still) cheerful.

Luckily we soon arrived in Tokyo. Namely at Shijuku train station. Jule had already informed me in advance that it would probably be more difficult to find your way around. Luckily we quickly found our track so what could go wrong? As it turned out, a lot. Originally we thought that we would first have to go out through the gate with our ticket and then come back in with our digital ticket or buy a new one (we had different ideas). However, when we inserted the ticket into the machine, we couldn't get it back. So we stood there lost. Jule quickly asked an employee whether we could get back into the station with our electronic payment cards. He made it clear to her that this was probably possible and let us through the gate into the station. But none of that made any sense at all because we had to log in from the outside but we were already in there. So we had to pass him again into the outside area of the train station. The whole thing then went back and forth again because we were never sure on each side how to proceed. After leaving the station for the third time and a few misunderstandings, the train employee deducted ten euros from our card out of nowhere. As if the nerves weren't already frayed enough, now this was added. So I went back and tried to explain to him that he had just mistakenly debited us money. He then came out and wanted to buy us another card from the machine. When it finally dawned on me that he didn't understand any English at all, I pulled out my translation app and we communicated that way. We probably should have done that from the start as he now understood our situation, gave us our tickets back and put our money back on our cards. After half an hour of nerve-wracking, we finally made it and got our final train to our destination (the next day it turned out that the guy and I were right after all and we were able to pay with our electronic cards).

When we arrived at our destination station, we first picked up our large suitcases. It all worked uncomplicated and problem-free. After a quarter of an hour of walking and another quarter of an hour of searching, we finally found our holiday apartment. Completely sweaty, we basically fought over who could shower first. The first impression of the holiday apartment was a bit poor, to put it that way. I don't want to give too much away here, as the next post will probably cover it enough. Will we stay here for a long time (foreshadowing?)?

After resting for a while, we planned what we wanted to do tomorrow. Afterwards we picked up something for dinner at the local supermarket, which included the usual and, because we miss home so much, bread, butter and cheese. We both really enjoyed that. This evening we should go to the arcade/arcade again. That was a lot of fun and we were able to spend a lot of time there (please don't ask us how much money we left there). There were even one or two prizes that we won. After we had gambled away enough money, we went back to the holiday apartment and soon went to bed.

September 11, 2023 - Monday

Hello you,

Today is our first day in Tokyo and therefore the first day on which Moritz takes the lead. I've been criticized for my tight schedule and all the running, so now it's his turn. I think we can all be very excited!

The day started with us sleeping in and then eating the remaining bread with butter and cheese for breakfast.

You honestly can't imagine how good that felt! We really miss that. Today we planned to go to the Miraikan Museum, a museum about science and research. Since the journey took a good hour, we didn't set off until around 12:00 and were there at 1:00 p.m.

Exactly fitting, because we had tickets that included a film that started at 1:20 p.m.

When we arrived at the cinema, it turned out that the cinema was a 3D dome cinema and the film was called “Birthday”.

That was really very beautiful and impressive. There were even English translations.

In short, it was about the creation of the earth, moon and sun and the entire relationship of the universe. Above all, the sentence that we are all made of the same material that has been around for thousands of years has really stuck with me.

But I don't want to lie, the great atmosphere, the songs and the darkness made me fall asleep more than once... Oops.

That's why we had coffee afterwards.

After the film we explored the museum for about 2 1/2 hours, which was really very interesting. There were robots on display, you could try out for yourself how the internet works, there was a scientific art exhibition and also several smaller exhibits. In one you could feel a texture-changing object, which really impressed us both! First it was rough and the next second the surface was completely smooth, it almost felt like water.

There was also a game where you could continue playing the future of the earth, which Moritz especially liked. He plays a game in Erfurt that is based on a similar basis.

We definitely had a great time here and there was a lot to see.

Afterwards we wanted to eat something so we went to a ramen shop in one go. We've just had enough of convenience stores for now...

There was a large, delicious bowl of ramen for me and “dipping ramen” for Moritz, i.e. a bowl of noodles, then a bowl of extra broth and a few other things that go with ramen (egg, nori sheets, etc.) . There were also fries and two drinks, which you could buy for €1.80 and refill endlessly.

It was all really delicious and exactly what we needed.

We actually wanted to go to Shibuya, a very well-known and popular district of Japan.

But on the way to the subway station we discovered a large shopping mall, which then invited us to go inside. Moritz was also looking for T-shirts, which made the whole thing a great idea.

As always, the time was very huge, there were a lot of shops that both Moritz and I liked. I found a few chopsticks with characters from an anime, Moritz found two t-shirts for himself. I also discovered an arcade where we wasted our time and money for another 30 minutes. Of course we didn't win that much, but at least we won a few things and that's all that matters, right? This time we spent another two and a half hours and then went back to the subway station sometime around 8:30 p.m.

When we arrived back at our holiday apartment around 9:30 p.m., Moritz made a not-so-nice discovery. He discovered dark liquid dripping from the air conditioner onto his bed. This was the final straw for both of us, as until now the bedroom had been the only place where we felt comfortable. But here too you just have the feeling that everything was untidy and unkempt. The bathroom looked completely yellow, dirty and swollen, the kitchen was crusty and sticky. It wasn't cleaned properly and we found it very difficult to feel at home here.

The more we thought about it, the more uneasy we became. So we made short work of booking a new hotel room because we didn't want to let something like that ruin our stay in Tokyo.

Luckily we also found another holiday apartment that we can move into tomorrow. We immediately wrote to the landlord and booking.com and just hoped for the best. Today we have to go to bed a little earlier because we want to be at a museum by 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, which means we have to get up at seven at the latest. As always, Moritz isn't very enthusiastic about it, but what do you want to do?

So tomorrow, as I said, we're going to a very special museum and we plan to just explore the region a bit. Thank you so much for reading, we appreciate everyone still following our blog.

Kind regards from Moritz and Jule and see you next time :)