Day Four

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Thursday was lonely because I went off on my own to do everything I wanted to do. The first thing on my list was to go back to Asakusa and the Senso-ji area. There I did some "major" shopping. I was supposed to meet up with Shivali at 11am at Yasukuni Shrine, but when I got to Asakusa, it was already around 10:45. So I decided to stay there and shop around. I got a whole bunch of cell phone charms, a little bag, some snacks for my mom, and various other random items.

After that I had to go to the Tokyo Dome to find the "Mother Garden" store. They were closed... and only for this week!! Oh the agony!! So then I left the area dejected and went to Shinjuku. Shinjuku was horrid!! Besides getting extremely lost and extremely confused inside the train station, I was in pain (from walking so much) and walked in circles until I found what I was looking for: KINOKUNIYA! Kinokuniya is an amazingly LARGE bookstore of many floors filled with so many different kinds of books. So many more than I've ever seen in the states. There I got a bilingual book on Japanese culture ~ which I thought would be a good read on the plane.

After this, and not eating since 9am, I went to Shibuya to begin my research. I got to the Starbucks across from the Shibuya station and with a good view of the scramble crossing or "Center Gai." I was there for about two hours and spent a lot of it looking at the advertisements and different people handing out things (flyers, kleenex packets, etc) on the street. Then I noticed this group of guys (4-5 of them) who were down below. After watching them for awhile, it was obvious what they were up to. They were picking up girls!! In Japan, it's called "nanpa." For these guys, what they would do is, wait for the red lights and the cross signal and cross halfway with the crowd. Then in the street they'd look for a single woman (of their liking) and then chase after her trying to get her to go on a date with them!!! This was going on for more than two hours!

Halfway through, a sleezy looking salaryman joined them. It was so ridiculous!!! This salaryman was obviously an amateur because he'd just go after any semi-good looking girl... and he looked so ridiculous in the process of chasing after them.

While further looking up some research on nanpa, I came across this sleazy site about picking up girls in Roppongi. I would totally beware of these sleazy men... some guy in Roppongi asked me if I'd take 5000 Yen (or was it only 500 Yen!?!?!?). EW.

Anyway, after watching these guys, I went downstairs and went into Shibuya to check out Tokyu Hands. This was the most amazing store I've been in to! They had tons of stationary, do-it yourself items, household stuff, bags, pens, just everything that I like!! I ended up buying a ton of stuff and not being able to finish looking through the store. So I had to leave and meet up at the hotel to go to dinner. Unfortunately, Shivali, Heidi and Suma had already left so I waited for 8pm to go to dinner with Bryan, Brian, James, Ariela, and Kris. We walked to Roppongi to some crappy izakaya. Afterwards we walked around Roppongi ~ first to Gaspanic to see if it was any good. (Gaspanic has a policy where you must be holding a drink at all times to stay inside!!!) The guy at the door said that there was no one inside, but there would be later. So then they all wanted to go to a club sort of far down the street pass the Roppongi Hills buildings.

So walking there, there were all these sleazy men on the streets trying to "take us out for a good time." They especially kept asking if Ariela and I were with Bryan and Brian. Of course, Bryan, being the big "joker" that he is, said no and then they started talking to us. Talk about a gross sleazy feeling. So we got to this bar and the cover was 1500 yen. I decided to skip out and I took the subway back to the hotel. Suma, Shivali and Heidi came back and I just went to sleep.

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thought Joannie at 7:16 PM||0 things said

Day Two

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Today I woke up incredibly sore. My ankles are really sore from all the walking that we've been doing. I'm glad that I'm forcing myself to walk, but now I have blisters on my feet and my knee is starting to give out. This is the sign of aging!!!

Anyway, I woke up around 6:30am because Suma had to go to the doctor to get her stitches removed. She came back because the ER was... closed... weirdly enough. So we had breakfast ~ and I had the best... THREE ... croissants ever! There was other really good food too (like the fish and rice!)

At 9:30, we met up in the lobby and left to go to Ueno Park. At Ueno we walked in and it was just such a beautiful place. Some of the trees had blooming sakura blossoms. Apparently they were a differend breed than the ones that normally bloom in late March. At the park there were tons of people and their little dogs. There was one guy with a stroller and three dachshunds sitting in the stroller... There was also 3 dachshunds dressed up and barking... They had a cart to sit in as well. Anyway, we went up to the Museum of Western Art and then all went back to go into the Tokyo National Museum to enter into the Horyuji Homotsukan. Unfortunately the exhibit was closed, but we saw the building and it was really nice and soothing.

After that we went into the Honkan and looked at all the old Japanese art. It was really interesting to look at all the art, but I was so sore that it was tough to enjoy it. I really liked the Ukiyo-E though. My favorite is definitely the famous tsunami wave.

After the museum we met up with some other people (we had split off) and went to Ameyoko Street. There I got distracted by the UFO claw game. So then 5 of us got split up and we ended up at another ramen shop. We ordered ramen and then went on a walk through Ueno again. At Ueno, Heidi wanted to play with these stray cats that this old man had. The old man kept trying to give us the cat.... After that we went to a Shinto shrine and I got a cool charm for good health. After that we went to meet up with everyone again.

We then went to Asakusa to see Senso-ji. The street in front of Senso-ji was amazing~! There was tons of food to eat include monjyu and kibi-dango! Soo yummy :) We went up to the temple and got fortunes as well. I got a "half" fortune! That is not good and not bad -____-". I left it at the temple tied to the fortune bar (whatever it's called, I'll look it up later).

Afterwards we walked down the street to senso-ji again and I got kibi-dango and a manekineko (beckoning cat). Then we took a ferry from the Asakusa docks and went down the Sumida River to Odaiba.

Odaiba is an awful place. Ok, I guess it was kind of cool to see, but it was really depressing. Basically it's a bunch of gigantic buildings that they thought would be popular, but turned out to just suck in general. There was a sort of nice nature-y part and good views of Tokyo from across the bay. There was also a mini version of the Statue of Liberty. We went to the Fuji-TV Building and rode up to the round sphere observatory. There wasn't much up there except the view of the city and some cardboard cut-outs of different Fuji-TV stars.

Afterwards we rode the shuttle/train back to Shiodome and changed trains to get back to Akasaka, where our hotel is. Unfortunately we lost Ariela and Dragana in the shuffle and they never showed up to ride the train back with us.

Later we went to Shibuya and ate at Kyomaru restuarant. We had yakitori, Korean pancakes, gyoza, and some other random stuff. After dinner we went to wait for Ariela and Dragona, but they didn't show up again! So we left again and went to Karaoke at Big Echo. There Bryan showed us all up on his mad karaoke skills. Then we went to a bar that was a hole in the wall -- called Shot Place (or something like that). Of course EVERYONE had to buy a drink, so there was me in the corner drinking a 400 yen coke.

Afterwards we were going to go to another bar, but we were exhausted, so we got into taxis and came back to the hotel. More updates and pictures to come!!!

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thought Joannie at 1:42 AM||0 things said