Went to Ueno, and ate the sweetest and hugest strawberries ever. Damn shiok, I swear it brought this immediate jolt of happiness to a very frozen and windblown me. Went to Ginza, and stepped into the most wacky Abercrombie & Fitch store ever – bouncers at the door, eleven floors of blasting club music, strobe lighting, uber-hot & impossibly toned/skinny salespeople gyrating around you. Totally changed my impression of the A&F t-shirts you get from those factory outlet stores, although it beats me who the hell would want to pay 50 bucks for a plain singlet. Spent almost 100 bucks on Uniqlo and H&M after 2 days of controlled abstinence, and am now left with 1/6 of the cash I brought to Tokyo, much to my horror.The prices of everything here make me feel faint, and I have images of me surviving on 7-11 onigiri and my emergency bottle of sambal belachan for the rest of my days, heavens help me.
And I swear the wind here is biting. We must have looked so darn miserable, me limping in my not-yet-broken-into boots after hours and hours of walking, us looking stoned, forlorn and half-frozen to death. This old man at the metro turned around when we were grumbling something about being “left with 100 yen” and talked to us in Japanese, which we roughly deciphered as some words of encouragement about tomorrow being a better day.
Tokyo makes me shuttle between different emotions. One moment I can be staring at something in fascination i.e. Ginza’s city lights at night, crazily-dressed people, random cute Japanese kid or teacup dog. The next moment, I feel that this huge city makes me feel isolated and i still cannot believe this is where i'll be for the next 5 months. It makes me not feel touristy, and i'm often too sian to take many pictures. Oh well, it's only day 3, i guess i need more time to adapt to somewhere i've never been to before.
