Japan diaries 1: Asakusa

Hello, World!

This is my first blog post from Japan, where I am going to spend the next two months. I want to chronicle my travels and share my experiences with you people through this channel, any comments, suggestions and ideas are very welcome in the comment section.

A bit about the project: My friend, Lui, and I are karate buddies and have traveled from Denmark to Japan to stay all July and all August in order to experience something completely out of the ordinary. Japan has been a dream for us for years, and now this dream finally comes to fruition. We’ve heard a lot about the country both in mainstream media, from friends and family and through karate associates, history litterature and much more. Words cannot describe how excited we were for this adventure. That it is finally happening is still a mystery to us both. To introduce the team:

Lui, my travel companion:

Per, myself:

Both just arrived at Ueno station in Tokyo, on our way to our first hostel, Asakusa Smile. At this point we had zip idea of how to get there, so we walked around asking our way with people who spoke abysmally little English. The trusty tourist information did however point us in the right direction, and we soon arrived on Asakusa station with with Tokyo metro. The plan was to stay in Asakusa for a few days while getting some first impressions of the legendary Tokyo, visit some nearby temples and train in a kyokushin dojo near Shibuya, before traveling further on to Kawaguchiko(a village near Fuji-San, the tallest mountain in Japan)

A bit about Asakusa
Asakusa is a district in Tokyo mostly known for the availability of the finer arts (theater, temple sites and the like), secondly known for it’s cheap hostels and last but not least its rundown facades:

Asakusa also have a large golden statue that looks a lot like a carrot. Now I’ve been told by a Canadian I met in Kyoto later on that the statue has something to do with… beer. I’m going to have to do some more research on that.

Lodging
Our hostel in Asakusa was called Asakusa Smile, situated a few hundred meters from aforementioned statue in the most desolate street you can possibly imagine. The hostel itself was alright, but the reception was closed from 12 to 15 o’clock, so we had to wait in the smothering heat(it was at least 30 degrees celcius) and with insane jetlag from the 13 hour plane trip. The staff was kind enough to let us store our luggage inside the locked reception so we could go explore until they opened. When they finally opened we got our room, an 8-bed dorm on the fourth floor (in Japan the ground floor is the 1st floor).

All in all Asakusa was a nice place to stay, and you slept well on their beds, and the atmosphere was cozy, but the desolate location was a dealbreaker for future lodgings. We’re not returning there when we return to Tokyo, that’s for sure.

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