Tōkyō (東京) 2

A note about going to sleep last night, going to bed and turning off the lights was all nice and easy. What was slightly weird was how bright the room was afterwards. And we had a clear view from our window, without any billboards shiny directly into our window. We weren't even in Shinjuku. Just the city being incredibly bright as a whole.

Tokyo Tower is based on the Eiffel tower, with the main difference being that Tokyo Tower listened to the aviation guys and therefore had to paint the tower orange and white. What shocked me more though was that it's 15 m taller than the Eiffel tower. When you see how magnificently the Eiffel Tower stands in Paris, and how cute Tokyo tower looks between all the skyscrapers, it looks far smaller than the Eiffel Tower. Btw, this became an issue as Tokyo tower used to be a TV transmission station, but the skyscrapers started getting in the way. Which led to the Tokyo Sky Tree, the world's second largest artificial structure being built.

We also went to the toy adoption place where we probably found Washinoko all those years ago. Since then, it would appear that Washinoko's siblings have gotten bigger, and slightly less cute. After not recognising any of them, he hid in my bag again before we could shoot a family reunion picture.

At basically all train stations, you get a little jingle before the train leaves, as a slightly nicer pre-warning. And for most stations you also simply get the standard jingle, but some station masters appear to have decided that their stations get slightly more custom jingles, partly being custom per line, and sometimes even per direction. The Yamanote line (a circular line through Tokyo transporting a mediocre 3.7 million people per day) is a nice example of this, and it's fun going around and listening to all the different jingles just before the doors close. For those of you curious enough, the Yamanote line even has their jingles accessible online.

Tip of the day, when picking between restaurants in Japan, you generally go for the one with the long queue in front. It's kind of embarrassing to go into a completely deserted restaurant while there's obviously a great one right outside which people are even willing to wait for.