Day Five: Shi-BOOOYA!

Wowser: What a day. It all went pear shaped! The fun news or the bad news first? Let’s start with the fun new.

Banksy? Pffft - Give me Gingksy.

Mission accomplished: I’ve got a friend back in Welly that is well in to the stenciling game and I promised I would pop up one of his stencils – a slice of Welly-boh in Tokyo. 

Ben Wadsworth Worldwide; Mr Cobra there.

JR Rail Pass... FAIL!: Yes it all went a little pear shaped today. Paying $900 (each)  in NZD$ you can get a JR Rail pass that gives you 21 days worth unlimited rail travel. Unfortunately there was a break down in communication and planning between my self and our lovely again (sincerely she is lovely) and we were left today looking down the barrel of 21 days of traveling around Japan with no way to travel (without selling a kidney to fund it) as you can't use the ;assif you have a Working Holiday Visa. Thank you AGAIN to out friend Izumi for helping us sort out this with the travel agents here in Tokyo – it was Muzukashi (difficult to sort). The up shot? Well we have a hundred thousand yen worth of train travel that is absolutely useless to us and instead of traveling to:

Tokyo > Takayama > Kyoto > Beppu > Aso San > Nagasaki > Hiroshima > Matsue > Tottori > Osaka > Tokyo

We are now only traveling:

Tokyo > Takayama > Kyoto > Osaka > Tokyo

This is a big bummer but hey you live you learn. We had to pay a bit for those train tickets too. Oh and we had to cancel a lot of bookings too…

SHIBOOOYA!: In the evening after sorting a galaxy of tidbits and details about the trip Hannah and I decided to head out to famed Shibuya crossing. This place is on the Yamanote line of Tokyo (the main line). It was great to be a gawping tourist at this one. Thousands of people pour across the road every couple of minutes – bathed from above in the light of a million or so lights and advertisments. Impressive stuff. We slid into a tiny place call Boya and had a couple of beers and some prawns in a bucket. Taste bud assault. Use of Japanese: 5/10.

Gaijin in love

Welly-Jin’ers: It was awesome to meet up with fellow New Zealanders, Anna-Mariea Hammond and Jared French for some Raman and a bit of hang time. Nice to catch up, share stories and get some tips (jumbo sized you reckon Jared?) Jared’s Nihon-go is very good. Good luck you two.

We’re both really looking forward to Takayama tomorrow. We’re staying here. Nestled in the mountains it should be an amazing experience and a welcome juxtapostion to the infinity of people, food and lights of Tokyo. P.P.s Takayama has a population of 7000 so internet may be limited?

Thank you for reading our blog – arigato gozaimasu.

P.s. I have an interview at Berlitz on the 28^th of March. Booya.