Crazy Tokyo
Trip Start
Unknown
1
19
Trip End
Ongoing
Tokyo,
Kanto,
Japan
Thursday, July 10, 2008
The following day Nekobukuro. A place where you can play with cats. Unfortunately, most of the cats were taking their naps. Afterwards we headed to the Sumo stadium. There weren't any fights going on that day but we thought we'd check it out anyways. The sumo museum was shut too so we headed to the Edo-Tokyo museum next door. It was interesting for a while but I quickly became bored. I was asked by the ticket office if I was a student. "I wish" I replied. The lady said I looked really young, that's a good compliment coming from a fellow oriental.
Jim wanted to go geek-hunting so the next stop was Akihabara. I came here years ago to buy my camera which I still use. Didn't really see many geeks though.
For dinner we headed to the Golden Gai. We found ourselves in a cute sushi bar. When the food arrived, we couldn't see any wasabi so we asked the guy and he just pointed to our sushi. Hmmm, we thought he didn't understand us. So I was repeating the word "wasabi" at various speeds. Eventually he got one of the chefs to listen to us and then we were given a huge slab of wasabi. When we ate it with our sushi, I experienced a big zing through my nose. It turned out that the wasabi was already placed between the fish and rice.
Throughout the day I had been trying to get through to Anusha and Satsuki. Satsuki's my good friend from university who lives in Tokyo and Anusha's my best friend from schooldays. Anusha was out in Tokyo teaching some rich kids. I decided to try and phone Satsuki again, this time I was successful, yeh!
Where shall we meet? I suggested the Golden Gai, she just bursted out in laughter. We agreed to meet at one of the stations and then we headed together to Ikebukuro for some drinks. I quite liked Ikebukuro as there's plenty of restaurants, bars and the transportation line is good.
On Saturday we were moving into Anusha's place in Roppongi for our last 2 nights. She arranged for us to go on a boat party around Tokyo Bay. It was great to see her again. The boat party was pretty crazy. You pay 15 pounds and then for 2 hours you can drink as much as you can. The people Anusha had arranged this through were coach surfers. A worldwide network where you let people stay on your sofa and they let you stay on theirs when you're in their part of the world. They were really nice. Jim got chatted up by many Japanese men. Must be the ginger hair.
Afterwards, we headed to a bar and then a club called Muse in Roppongi Hills. With Anusha living in Roppongi, it meant it was nice and easy getting home.
The next day Anusha had work so Jim and I went to meet Satsuki at Harajuku. En-route to Meiji-Jingju we saw lots of Harajuku girls. Little bo-peep was really cute so I got Jim to have his picture taken with her. The trees in Meiji-Jingu kept us cool from the strong heat. Later we went to Yoyogi park next door. That was one interesting park. There were a group of middle-aged guys dressed up as teddy boys prancing around; guys doing trick on their bikes; some people doing caipoiera and further down the park there were outdoor parties. What a cool park!
We walked to Shibuya and met Anusha for dinner. We had such a fantastic time in Tokyo. It was so much fun having friends out there. Having the weekend there was really great.
So that was the last day of our extended honeymoon but I was ready to go home. Now we have a new adventure to look forward to - moving to Shanghai.
