Ever wondered how big Tokyo actually is? How many people live here? How busy is it? Take a look at these maps and statistics, it will literally blow your mind. http://www.buzzfeed.com/simoncrerar/tokyo-is-a-mega-city?utm_term=.umgxYBYqd#.gdD3QPQV5
Every time I've told people you need at least 2 weeks just to explore Tokyo if you went there for a holiday nobody believes me, but fuck me, go there and you realise. Not only is it big, but there's so fucking much crammed in to a small space. We was there for about a week, was getting up about 6am and going to bed about 2am, pretty much exploring non stop, never left Tokyo, only went to TAS for half a day, the rest was in the city, and barely scratched the surface. And most of all, there just SO much interesting shit, everywhere you go, every shop, you spent time at, as it's nuts.
Fantastic, if you like drinking in one of the best places in the world for nightlife, you like cars, youre into drifting, tuning, car shows, mountain roads, motorsports, motorcycles, beautiful gals. Public transport is second to none, personal safety is great as far as no scum to beat you up and rob you, theft and burglaries are rare. Great food. Cool People, what else would you need. Many of the social issues other countries are facing specially Europe right now are absent in Japan. I fuckin love it mate.
Theres 24 hour curry places you can get a full Katsu and a beer for sub £5, Hostels you can live in for free as long as you clean for a couple hours a day. So it can be as cheap or expensive as you make it but I got to know alot of guys living there, for cheap just to learn Japanese etc. It was like little communities but it was rare id meet a bag packer who knew much about cars or drifting lol.
You can live reasonably cheap if you wan to, convenience stores have cheap food, and a 350ml can of beer is a couple of hundred yen, bottle of water 100yen. If you know where to shop and where to go its ok, but on the other hand you can lash it up big time you have enough tin.
All to easy to walk into a Up Garage and come out with a few wheels and seats and several hundred £££ lighter lmao. Its also easy to get addicted to the arcades and end up spending hours and hours.. trying to populate little boxes on the initial D gamer card. What you do find doing this though, is that some people have spent their entire income, just on one certain arcade game as we got beat by a 50 year dude with a completed ID card.... Its also one place where you can go on a packed train, and there will be dudes looking at cartoon porn (hentai) without giving much of a dam.
It was years ago, but I found it mega cheap. I do wonder how touristy and stupid the people were who've been and said it's expensive. I don't do shit like hostels, we stayed in a flashy as fuck hotel, but it wasn't much for a flashy hotel, prob half what it would be here for somewhere like that. Food from most places was cheap as hell, esp from normal convenience stores, stuff like Maccies etc etc is normal money, as was booze unless you got suckered in to going in to some tourist trap place. The quality of everything just seemed so much higher than here, so could go in to their equivalent of Poundland and buy shitloads of stuff that would cost easily 5 times as much. Clothes and trainers and cool shit was mega cheap, so much so I spent about 650quid on it lol. And if you actually wanted to live there long term, as nobody buys houses unlike in the UK, it's all renting, renting is cheap as hell. Remember looking in estate agent windows at the adverts, and while it costs 1000s to rent a 1 room crack den in central london, a nice tidy bedsit type place slap bang in the centre of Tokyo was less rent than it would be for a top floor council flat in some abandoned Welsh mining town.
Those pictures look sweet! and thanks for the thoughts guys, I'd love to get there, I really need to just get on and save/plan it! better to do it while im young I guess
Jesus! I knew it was big but placing it on the English map just puts the whole lot into perspective. That is crazy.
When's the best time to visit? Finally talked the missus round to going there rather than sitting in the sun next year.
Mitch depends on what you are coming for, if you want the cherry blossoms come in end of march, if you want Tokyo auto salon come in january if you want D1 check the schedule for that, there is good times all year but summer july august is crazy hot, 40 degree heat and 95% humidity, winter dec to feb is cold, like right now we have minus 5 over night and warming up to 4 or 6 during the day if we are lucky, party is all year round though .
Thanks. I'd like to go to TAS, but not at the expense of freezing our arses off for the rest of the time. Likewise, roasting in the summer isn't ideal either so I guess around May would be best. Which D1 venues are nearby, so I know what to look for?