Tokyo – Two Nights Only
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A couple of years ago, my generous boss offered me two return tickets to any destination from London with Virgin Atlantic.
My Irish flatmate and I decided on a weekend in Tokyo, we knew a couple of ex-pats from work, so we wouldn’t be alone.
When we arrived, our apartment was amazing – huge compared to our London digs and massive by Tokyo standards.
In the beginning, I didn’t do too well food-wise. For our first lunch, we ventured to a local eatery and with neither of us speaking Japanese it was a matter of pointing to a picture and hoping for the best.
My travelling companion’s food smelt great and mine looked amazing.
Unfortunately, the raw egg on top of the cold noodles did not quite gel with my stomach. Out of politeness, I tried as best I could to finish the dish.
The slippery egg coated noodles did not showcase my chopstick skills and I left hungry covered in wisps of cold eggy broth.
The lads from the Tokyo office took us to a restaurant where the walls were fish tanks – it was amazing.
So was the Saki…
The next day we ventured to the Imperial Palace via the subway. We were taken aback by the helpfulness of the general public guiding us on to the right platforms and trains – folk went out of their way to help us and it was very much appreciated.
Did I mention we were (Saki) hungover? By the time we got to the Imperial Palace we were very quiet and a little grumpy. We arrived at the gates to learn that the Palace was closed.
Closed.
It had taken us 2 hours to get there, it was shut and it started to rain.
Instead of getting cranky we fell onto a park bench and laughed so hard it hurt – manic wonderful, aching laughter.
For our second and last night in Tokyo and the ex-pats took us to an Irish Pub (why!) from there we went to a cocktail party at a luxurious apartment and to many, many clubs in Rappongi.
At around 3.00 am we headed back to the apartment, on the way, we encountered a man walking a monkey on a lead. The monkey was dressed in Chanel and seemed very happy. No one batted an eyelid.
Expats party hard and after 2 nights in Tokyo, we were glad to get back to our little London flat.
Was it raining… we hadn’t noticed.