To Tokyo and Beyond!

Thanks to the generosity of my boss here (Rich) I got a day off yesterday, which I planned to spend in Tokyo. I decided against turning on my alarm clock since after all this was my day off and promptly missed my first bus. Well I actually made it to the bus station on time, but I forgot my ID. I ran to the dorm, and made it back just on time to see the bus to Tokyo buzz right by the bus stop: Bummer. In the two hours of laziness that ensued. I had a chat with Jeff (those of you from SJC know him) and he advised me to look for a camera in a shop called ... damn I don't have the shee tiwht the name writtenon in here ... yodobashi?

This time I made sure I had everything and showed up to the bus stop an entire 15 minutes early. At the bus stop I met two other grad students who had been working at KEK. A guy from Taiwan (I don't think he ever gave me his name) who was heading into Tokyo to explore the place (he had been to Akihabara before so he did not want to join me), and a girl (I remember her name to be Nishiki, but I may be totally of target there) heading home to Nara. Her English was definitely better than my Japanese, but I was able to introduce myself and stutter off a few sentences in Japanese. I blame the stuttering on not being able to speak the language, but the reason may have been that I was dumbsruck by the shyness factor. She seemed to feel quite bad about not being able to communicate all to well, to which I could only replay with a: Daiyobu-desu, wakarimashita (That's ok, I understand). I wanted to go on about how I sucked at speaking Japanese, but ironically could not figure out to how to get that part of my tongue.

Then we entered Tokyo, meaning only another hour or so on the bus to get to Tokyo Station (close to the city center). Tokyo is very impressive. I was not unsure whether I should be scared or excited, and decided that feeling unsure about the whole thing was good enough. I think Tokyo is smaller then Toronto in terms of geographical magnitude, but somehow the entire population of Canada fits into this city (according to my Travel guide there currently are about 34 million people living in Tokyo, I don't know if I should believe it, but there it is).
The girl from gave me a little bus schedule that I could use to find my way back to KEK and they both pointed me in the right direction to make it to the Yamamote line and henceforth Akihabara. After a heartfelt goodbye and thank you the three of us parted ways.

If either of my travel companions read this (I doubt it, but it would be nice) please put up a reply, tell me off for my inability to remember names, and well don't be mad ... Akihabara was such a shock it wiped my memory clear.

So in my next post I shall talk about Akihabara, and what should be every geek's wet dream. I will also have to talk about the mass transit system in Tokyo, it rox.