pt.1 touring tokyo pt.2 welcome to thailand!

hello! we are alive and well and loving it here in asia. today we are in thailand - our first day in chiang mai - but i wasn't able to get on here to write about tokyo. so here goes.

TOKYO - MAR.31 - APR.3

tokyo is a humongous city like no other. the streets are impeccably clean and the people are amazingly friendly and accomodating. they have no problem offering to escort you to where you're going, even if it requires them going 10 minutes out of their way and they expect nothing in return. not as many english speaking people as we'd thought there would be, but the language barrier was only a small hurdle which was overcome most of the time t hrough gestures and other forms of communication. we were only able to visit a few districts while in tokyo and probalby only saw a small fraction of them - made it to harajuku and while there weren't as many outrageous looking kids as i'd hoped, it was still wild and felt like another world. found the 100 yen store and had a blast - it's like a department store where everything is a dollar. shibuya is insane with 6 way intersections and people yelling in japanese outside of stores to attract shoppers. the noise poullution is a huge factor, but you tune it out after a while. found the ikea equivalent in shibuya - a store called loft - six stories of furniture, art, homeware, stationary, bikes, gifts...you name it, they had it. it was crazy and tempting to blow our budget right then and there. shinjuku was another trip - pachinko slots and gambling outlets EVERYWHERE! our main reason for visiting shinjuku though was for the cherry blossom park. little did we realize that the day we visited was a holiday to celebrate the begning of cherry blossom season. have never been in a larger crowd in my life and was a litlte overwhelmed, but nobody is pushy which makes it nice. the park was crowded (not the quiet retreat from the hustle and bustle of the busy street as we'd hoped), full of people having picnics, bbq's and DRINKING! their liquor laws are a lot more lax than ours and everyone was just poundin'...awesome! another day we also managed to visit a temple in th emiddle of what seemed like the finanical/business district. in amongst the huge skyscraping towers was a park area, with dozens of red tori gates at the entrance. very cool. once inside, people seemed to be making offerings and saying prayers at the main temple. this place was very quiet and almost deserted - a total 180 from everywhere else we went.
we managed in teh short time we were there to master the subway system. in fact, it was quite simple and we didnt' get lost on it once. it's very efficient and user friendly so tha twas a pleasant surprise. a not so pleasent surprise was the lack of vegetarian food while we were there. it was almost impossible to find places that served strictly vegetarian food and in fact the only place we did find a decent veg meal was at an indian restaurant! go figure.... no sign of edamame, tempura or veg sushi though anywhere. not like japanese food at home. needless to say, we consumed a lot of ramen noodles....MSG'd!!! definitely done with those for a while.

THAILAND - APR.4

now we are in thailand - chiang mai to be exact. we arrived early this morning after a brutal 12 hour train ride on the "sleeper" train. sleeper my ass. i barely got a wink in which is frustrating because i was just begininnign to adjust to the time change and get over my jet lag. now, it's noon and i'm ready to crash for the night. boo! gotta get my energyu though as tomororw morning we head out on our trek - 3 days in the hills, hiking through tribes, riding elephants, going rafting and swimmiing in waterfalls. bring it on! the heat has been a warm welcome (no pun intended!) as tokyo was chilly and we had very littel warm clothing.
the food situation has greatly improved with an abundance of vegetarian restaurants clearly marked on every busy street. the guest house w'ere at even has a nightly vegetarian buffet which we're going to sample tonight. just had our first real meal here and it was delicious. pad se ew with pineapple shakes! two dishes and two shakes came to 110 baht ... less than 3 dollars. i think i could eat until i explode here. so much for losing weight on this trip.
so far so good here on this side of the world. can't wait to continue exploring....