*low whisper* perrrrrfect

Buildings for Daaaays!

Cue the angelic singing...

I miss you too! house vines!

I stupidly didn't get a photo so photo cred to @The Travel Junkie.

photo cred @tokyobestburgers

Shibuya at night is beautiful!

This lady decided to scurry across, right in front of the picture T_T

On the road to the Shrine, well technically, it's a bridge.

My Mum in front of the Shrine. Such a wonder, and the temple is pretty too I guess.

The View of the Summit from the temple.

I don't remember the exact name for these plaques, but you pay 500Y to write your wish/prayer for the world and/or for yourself. Now I'm not a religious person by any means but it was cool to experience a different culture and belief. I might have even written one myself but you have to wait for that post.

Such detail.

Here is the cute little village stores at the 5th Station.

Tekkotsu Bancho, it is 50 meters tall and the swings attached to it spin up and down the tower.....I am getting sweaty looking at it.

At least if you die, you do it in style with Mt Fuji as a backdrop. #Nope

Example of a Tiny boxy car.

The cableway station up the Mountain.

The cableway terminal

Map of the little village on Lake Ashi

Hello there, stud muffins! Now my plan was to blog every night in Japan but I was so exhausted every night from walking 20,000 steps (I know that thanks to my trusty fitbit charge HR). That I just could not even fathom typing out a play by play. So instead here I am almost a week after my trip. And I've got to say, I am so sad that I am not still there. Everything about Japan is just amazing. Let's start from the beginning.

So, the 1st of May we flew from Cairns, Aus. direct to Tokyo. And boy that's a long flight (7hours & 30mins). What sucked was that it was a day flight and we were delayed, so I passed the time making sure my flight anxiety didn't go full swing. I'm not terrified of flying or anything, it's just the first time I ever had my big overseas flight to the U.S when I was 12, I got food poisoning....Twice. It was terrible and the worst experience ever. So much so that when ever I flew after that, any food smells on the plane, even brewed coffee would make me gag and faint.

Fast forward many years and I am fine on short distance flights, but long ones are a little iffy because my anxiety and brain (thanks a lot guys) likes to link my mind up to that terrible experience. But I sucked it up and was okay on the flight until it hit the 7th hour. Where I was getting hot flushes. Backing up to where I said it was a day flight, So we were supposed to leave at 12:10pm but because of a delay we ended getting into the air at around 1:30pm. I passed the time with watching Fairy Tail on my laptop and when that died, I caved and purchased in flight entertainment. We flew Jetstar where you basically even have to pay to choose your own seats, so buying inflight entertainment was a big thing for me. I couldn't sleep as Japan is an hour behind so I didn't want to have any weird jetlag. I watched Brooklyn, which made me cry my eyes out due to my life similarities, Victor Frankenstein, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, New Girl and we finally reached our destination, feeling not all that great.


When we disembarked which took forever as we were only exiting through one door, Narita Intl Airport welcomed us with it's stark white, bare immigration section. But it was all breezy and finally got out into the brisk Tokyo air.

Now, we arrived in Terminal 3 which doesn't have a direct train line, so we had to walk to Terminal 2 which was about 770m. Not a big deal and it let us adjust and take in the fact we were in Japan. Still feeling a bit gross and vommy. We found ourselves reaching the train station in terminal 2 where we got our NEX tickets which are 4000 Yen return, then headed for the platform. The train transport system in Japan is incredible. Everything's on time, efficient, multiple trains so little wait time. Plus the Japanese themselves are orderly and efficient when transporting. They line up for everything so well, you line up for the carriage, if people are leaving you move along to the side allowing all of them to leave before neatly filing inside. In Australia, it's like the hunger games, everyone shoving on as if the train can only take one person.

The NEX is a beauty. Reclining chairs, reserved seats (which can be a bitch, will go into detail in a different post) and smooth running. From Narita to Shibuya where we were staying for the week, it took about 1 hour and 15 mins. Once we reached Shibuya Station, that's where things didn't go as smoothly because I freaked out abit as there are multiple exits and taking the wrong one can add 10 mins onto your walking time. Thankfully we were walking the right way and managed to exit close to where we needed to go. Thankfully there was also a huge map at that exit and I quickly found our hotel and navigated towards it. I had a moment of panic when we were in station when I decided to ask a ticket officer if he knew, and that's when I realised I should have learned a lot more japanese before I came as most people only know a little english.

A funny story though, as I was walking up to the tickets officer a girl walked in front of me and seemed to be having a tiff with the guy she was with. She was probably in her twenties and was trying to go through the ticket gates with her SUICA card. Something was obviously wrong but not understanding any Japanese I didn't know what she was having a tantrum about. Because it's exactly what it looked like. About a minute went by and I'm still standing there trying to talk to the officer but she was in the way having her little tanty. Finally they walked away and I could ask the man. He ended up pointing me in the right direction and as we were leaving that same girl (I don't know if I could call her a woman because only children would act like this) But she was so upset with something, she just jumped down to lie on the station floor, full on lying down. And that same man trying to talk to her and calm her down.

Needless to say, it was a weird time. Finally reaching our hotel at 10:30pm Tokyo Time I was so ready for bed. We found out that our Hotel (Dormy Inn Premium Shibuya Jingumae) had free late night ramen, so that was a plus.

But I was so tired, sick and just feeling nasty so we got to our hotel room and got ready for bed. Something to keep in mind when travelling to Tokyo is that, the hotel rooms are small. Land prices are ridiculously expensive so does haven't massive hotel rooms. But the room was extremely clean, well set out and cozy, plus we got free buffet breakfast every morning.

So this was day 1 of travelling. Day two is where the fun begins.