TOKYO

After 11h hours of flight from Auckland, I finally arrived in Tokyo, the main city of Japan.
Many many things to see in Tokyo. First of all, it is a very big city.


Secondly, it is Japan, which means that the people there are very respectful of everything, for example nobody would cross the road when the trafic light is red (even if there are absolutely no cars and it is 02:00 am..), absolutely no garbage laying on the floor, and even smoking is hardly tolerated in the streets...

Thanks to Cedric Vuilleumier (bientot papa...), a friend of mine in Switzerland, I had one contact in Tokyo, as Yoko (it is her name), a japanese girl from Tokyo, knew Cedric and therefore we get in touch together slightly before my visit. We had one on the first evening a typical japanese meal, called "Shabu-Shabu", which is very similar to what we call in Switzerland "Chinese Fondue", but without all these (delicious and) very fat and heavy sauces...and it was "a gogo" and costed less than 16 CHF, so NO, Japan is not that expensive !!! It was really a good meal...mmmmmmmmmmmh ! Thanks Yoko !

In Tokyo, there is no ONE famous things to do, or a must-seen place, or a huge monument or so, there are plenty of small to medium things to do and visit, which is very nice. One of these things is a visit in the early morning of the Tsujuki Fish Market. It a very big (for me at least) fish market where everybodu runs from one side to another, carrying big fishes, killing them, sawing them, buying them, well, it s...a fish market ! but very lively, new and interesting for me !


One day at the beggining, with Yoko, we went a bit out of Tokyo, to Kamakura, where there is this impressive Buddha, very famous in Japan.

I was suprised to learn that in Tokyo, there is a TV tower, very similar to the Eiffel tower, which is located among building in the Center of Tokyo and that is HIGHER than the Eiffel tower (333 m for Tokyo Tower vs 320 for Eiffel tower). From this tower, it was possible to see all tokyo, and even, during perfect weather, the Mont Fuji (90 km from Tokyo) could be seen, but that day it was unfortunately a bit cloudy...

There was also a place near my youth hostel where there are some nice temples, and a lot of japanese people go there. I visited them on the Week-end, as this was the Hangover programme...


Two days before I left, I was a bit fed up of visiting and walking everwhere in the city, and, as i already visited lots of big cities in my trip, we agreed with Yoko to go to Disneysea. In Tokyo, there are two Disney Parks: Disneypark and Disneysea, the latter being located just...near the sea ! So It was one day in the city of Minnie and Mickey and it was nice and also very funny to notice that lots of japanese adults like very much (much more than in Europa) to remember that they were all children some years ago...they even dress like children there !


We leave the magic of Disneysea to return in Tokyo. In a kind of "alternative" park, called Harajuku, lots of people out of the perfect japanese style could be met. From ravers to Elvis Presley rockers or teenage bands, there was also some young (especially girls...I guess !?) who dressed in such a way that they remember us our childhood with the japanese manga cartoons...Honnestly, it was not only in Harajuku, but a bit everywhere in Tokyo that I had some souvenirs (! c'est juste souvenir ?) of the mangas I watched when I was young..


My last day I woke up very early in order to follow the training of very famous sumotori. They trained for an important tournament schedulded in the begining of May...Look at these big babies ! I believe that's why japanese people like them so much, as they look like big babies...!


I know I am a bit late with the blog...I arrived one week ago in New Delhi, and tomorrow, I'll go for one week to Nepal.

J'espere trouver un peu de fraicheur au Nepal, parce qu'ici, c'est la fournaise...!

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