Citadines Shinjuku

... out on the patio and taught the Japanese a few card games, dealing with drinking of course (it sounds like we drink a lot, but we are on vacation, so no judging!). Afterwards, a few of us took off and wandered aimlessly for an hour. We didn't really see anything too interesting, but it was still fun. Afterwards, we came back and watched Knocked Up. Lots of laughs and then to bed.

Having experience many a Japanese tourist on my travels I was looking forward to seeing these people in their home environment. In honesty I had come to Tokyo to look at the people as you would got to a circus. If 30 odd tourists can swarm around you like ants pushing out of the way what would 10million odd of them be like in their metroplis of Tokyo. I was serioulsy looking froward to elbowing people out of the way as thats what they do there is it not?! Be rude not to really!! After just ...

... en la que la parada de metro Sinjuku tiene hasta 60 salidas a puntos diferentes de la zona.... Una megopolis, mejor dicho, en la que los centros comerciales y grandes almacenes se cuentas por docenas de marcas y tantas sucursales de cada una de ellas... una ciudad en la que esta lo mas de lo mejor y en abundancia: todos los grandes reposteros franceses, todos los modistos italianos, todo el lujo mundial....T-O-D-O.... todo, y todo bueno, y nuestro Zara, Lladro y nuestra unica ...

... and impatient husbands don't actually allow for that, so we headed home. That night, our last in Tokyo, we ended up in an Indian restaurant, and once again it was fabulous, korma to die for! It also helped my stuffy nose a bit - Rachel's cold has spread itself nicely round the family! Mike: Al has given the blow by blow version, runny noses and all!!.. so I will keep mine to very brief observations and ...

... interesting merchandise of all types. We had fun walking around there, and ended up eating tapas at a Spanish restaurant. They had menus in Spanish, English, and Japanese. We had fun trying to speak Spanish with the wait staff ... Gambas con ajillo? Hai! Domo arigato! Monday was another nice day. We took a river cruise to the Hama-rikyu detached garden, a former Tokugawa estate. Afterwards we walked through Tsukiji fish market ... an ...

... a sardine can for as many people as possible. It was at this time I started realizing how rare it was to find a westerner and by that I am including any europeans. In the subway and as far as I had seen all day, we were all alone except at the hostel. It was quite a reality check. In shibuya as soon as we made it to the surface all we could here was Japaneese marketing screaming from loudspeakers everywhere. There were also billions of Pachinko Game locations. For those of ...

... and BALANCE written in English, so you select them on the touch screen. Next it comes up with a screen entirely written in Hiragana, and a button saying "Confirm". Well of course I had NO idea what I was confirming, so waited till it beeped and came up with a CANCEL button, got my card and left (after working out how to open the door, with the help of the security guard :P). I stood outside of the bank for a few minutes, realised ...

... who take on another culture so whole heartedly, but only at the weekend! Monday to Friday's are suit days! A few calls around and I'd mustered enough people to go for a drink. We had some time before meeting folk so as Roy and Ian had won a "Lost in Translation" competition before coming to Japan we headed off to Shinjuku to find The Tokyo Grand Hyatt and have a look at their future plush ...

Sumo The number one thing on our Japan list was going to a Sumo Match, as you don't get much more Japanese then that. Luckily for us the Tokyo Tournament started the day before we arrived in Japan and felt confident we could get tickets this early in the tournament. Like most things while traveling buying tickets became on adventure in itself as we were directed to various places to buy tickets before we decided we would just go to the ticket office closer to the start and see ...

... and hobby shops there were many stalls also selling western toys, fighting robots, guns, model cars, and figurines of buxom and provocative Japanese school girls. For the fan who has grown up out of Baseball cards, on another floor there was a purveyor of Japanese porn starlet trading cards. The third storey was home to 'K-Books', an emporium of pornographic comics. 10,000 square feet of ...