Tokyo: Part 1

I just arrived back from Tokyo, after spending the last four days in that remarkable city - It was a great trip, marred with only a couple of hiccups. Unfortunately, the first one occured just as we got there.

The main International airport to Tokyo is called Narita. It's over an hour away from the city, and while there are multiple means of transportation, most are not well-explained in English. We decided to take the train-system, for which we purchased a (quite expensive) ticket.

We were told to simply go down a tunnel and get in the train. With no clear signage, though, we got on the wrong one. Two very long hours later, riding along who-knows-where, we somehow made it to the city, and were momentarily relieved.

But then came the Subway.

This is the Tokyo Subway map. You might recognize the random colored-lines as something that you drew when you were three years old. For someone to properly read it, they almost need a PhD (this picture is only a partial Subway map).
Long story short, it took:
-Some friendly people
-A lot of head-scratching and
-A ton of luck

...but we finally made it to the Hotel in one piece, roughly 4 hours after landing in Japan. Whee.

We stayed in an area named Ikebukuro, in a neighborhood called 'Sunshine City'. After our trek to find the hotel, we decided to only explore the nearby area, but were pleasantly surprised.

I might be a geek, but Japan is the land of geeks. Very near to us was a vibrant pedestrian-mall, where there were (among other geeky things) several 'Game' buildings - gigantic buildings that are essentially just huge arcades. When I say huge?

They each had at least 8 floors. Fourty to fifty machines per floor.

Geek heaven!

Each floor is dedicated to some type of gaming - The first floor in this building (which was owned by Sega) was only crane-games. There were floors for token-games (where you could win tickets), floors for racing games, floors for card games, and even game-floors that were women-only.

Men could go in only if accompanied by a woman - The sign at the entrance said that if a man was caught without a woman, he would be asked to 'prove' that he was a woman.

I don't quite want to know what they mean by that!

That arcade-floor wasn't the only thing that was Women-only. This picture is from the Subway - the first car, between 7:30 and 9:00am is Women Only.

It's a tough world we live in.

I'll update you on the rest of the trip a little later - Stay tuned!