Partytown

Just an advance warning - there are going to be a lot of pictures in this post. So let's start with where we were. Thursday, we decided to hop across Tokyo Bay to Odaiba because it sounded like the thing to do at the time.

Everybody wants to go to a manmade island, right?

We got there around 3-ish, so obviously this picture is from much later in the day. However, it illustrates where we were, so that's why it's first.

Yep, we were at a place called Palette Town! We went to a big shopping area called Venusfort, which is designed to look like an Italian village or something. Very interesting.

You can't see from this picture, but the building's ceiling is designed to look like the sky and the lighting on it changes colors so that every hour, on the hour, it looks like the sun is setting. There were a lot of tourists here, mostly Chinese it seemed. Lots of families.

So after shopping for a while, we went across the way toward Mega Web so we could ride the world's 8th tallest ferris wheel, the Odaiba Great Sky Wheel. It cost about $9 to ride, but one rotation takes nearly 20 minutes, and the view is fantastic, so it was worth it. (And just so you can get a feel for how tall this thing was, you board it from the 3rd floor). Here's some pictures of it from the ground.

This is actually from outside of the Palette Town area - basically one of the first things you see when you exit the Tokyo Teleport station.

This picture (one of my favorites, actually) is from right by the ticket gates for the ferris wheel. Very tall (115 meters, to be exact)!

Now on to the pictures from inside~

This lovely picture accurately depicts our reactions to being on the ferris wheel, heading to the top. It was a little scary at first, since neither of us had been on a ferris wheel in at least 5 years.

Here's a view looking back across the bay toward Tokyo proper. Everything's starting to look teeny tiny.

Here you can see Tokyo Tower (again). It's unfortunate it looks so hazy, but that's what happens when it's hot out.

Random shot of me (looking awful) with the Fuji TV building just to my left.

Jugochi Wharf - very exciting, yes? But all the big boats look pretty small from this high.

Now a shot of Cinnamon with the wharf behind her. She looks pretty happy!

The building that looks like a cluster of upside down pyramids is Tokyo Big Site which is a big exhibition center. It is also where I'd be going to Comiket if it didn't start two days after we leave. Bummer.

And that concludes the view from the ferris wheel. We actually took a ton more pictures, but most of them are essentially the same things - various buildings in and around Tokyo.

On the way back, we wandered through the Toyota Mega Web to check out all the crazy cars they make over here.

Of course, they've got the Prius here, too, only their steering wheels are all on the right. It feels weird when you're sitting in it.

Here's the Toyota Crown. I think it's the biggest sedan Toyota makes here. Most all of the taxis around Tokyo are older models of this car. What do you think, mom? Big enough for you?

Here's a picture of the interior of the Crown. I think all Japanese cars come with a navigation system or else no one would ever figure out where they're supposed to be going. It is seriously extremely confusing. And this fancy little package will only set you back about $55,000. Luxury (and hybrids) don't come cheap!

Next to their little corral of hybrid cars, they had a bunch of displays on being "green" and eco-friendly, so we wandered through there for a while.

This guy wants you to reduce your CO2 emissions. I just thought the picture was funny.

So after that thrilling experience, we decided to go catch a bite to eat and ended up back in Venusfort at a quaint little establishment called Fish Dance. Naturally, it's an Italian restaurant. (You didn't see that one coming?) Cinnamon and I both had pizza and salad and dessert (otherwise known as the "Fish Dance set")

Cinnamon helping herself to our delicious Caesar salad.

My pizza, the "margherita", and Cinnamon's 4 cheese pizza. The thing she's holding (if you can't tell) is honey, which the waitress told us was the "best match" for cheese pizza. Cinnamon agreed it was very good.

Here's my (slightly blurry) dessert - the square choco cake (that's what the menu read). The presentation was very pretty and the cake was delicious.

Cinnamon's dessert, the Oreo cheesecake. She said it could've used more Oreo flavor, but she liked the treble clef of chocolate syrup.

Looks like we're sitting outside, doesn't it? We're not. That's the beauty of Venusfort. We even felt like we were outside, sometimes.

When we left, it was dark out, so you know what that means - lights! And they were very cool.

I highly recommend you look at this picture full size, because the colors look a lot better.

We walked across the highway and over to Aqua City, which seemed to be another smaller shopping complex (not of the Italian variety), but most of the places were closing up. So we walked through and came out to a spectacular view of the Tokyo skyline. And you better believe I took plenty of pictures (though most of them could've used the aid of a tripod).

Oh, did I forget to mention Tokyo has its very own (miniature) Statue of Liberty? Because it does. You an also see the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo Tower. You can never have too many pictures of Tokyo Tower, apparently.

Here's a closer up picture without Lady Liberty. You can even see some of the boats on the bay all lit up. I'm pretty sure they were dinner cruises or some sort of tour boats. One of them sounded like a bunch of people having a good time, listening to music and cheering.

Tokyo as taken with the actual "night mode" of my camera. What a difference that makes! I had to set the camera down on the step, so you end up getting the underside of the walkway above us and part of the step it was sitting on, but I think it really frames the skyline nicely. Definitely one of my favorite pictures.

Since it was getting late and everything was closing up, we just walked down by Decks Tokyo Beach (which is actually a "beach" of sorts, but you can't swim there), passed the Fuji TV building, though all my pictures of it came out pretty blurry, and then headed back home. All in all, a very full day! We plan on going back one more time so we can ride the ferris wheel at night and get an even more spectacular view of Tokyo from the air.

Friday, we headed to Kameido to go to a little place called Sun Street. It turned out to be mostly geared toward kids, but had a few shops and quite a few little eateries - including a Sizzler!

We never did figure out just what a "rambling market" was. (For those curious, Tsutaya is a store that sells DVDs, CDs and books).

Here's the inside of Sun Street (and the Sizzler). As you can see, quite a few kids around. The place had a Toys R Us, two arcades and a variety of stores selling children's clothing. However, Cinnamon and I both walked away with some new shirts from a store called Honeys. Surprisingly affordable, too!

Next up, you'll get to see all the pictures (together, we took a total of 200) we snapped at Koishikawa Korakuen Garden. I'm sure you're all excited.

Tourists, Tourists Everywhere

I suppose I've been slacking off here, huh? And I'm sure you've all been wondering what exciting things we've been up to. Well wonder no longer!
 
Friday, we headed to Roppongi, which is known for being a district with a lot of clubs and is somewhat of a red light area. But we went during the day to the fancy, upscale Roppongi Hills complex, so we stayed out of trouble.

This is the inside of the building - which is laid out in a very strange, confusing manner. Still pretty, though.

Outside the building, there was this really neat walkway that had a mist it sprayed down, which was nice because it was super hot that day (like in the low 90s when it had just been in the low 80s the day before). Also, on the right side of the walkway is a wall of cascading water. It looked really cool.

...So we took our picture in front of it. (We thought you were probably all sick of us making the same cheesy smiling faces in every picture, so we changed it up). Looking good, right?

This is Maman - a gigantic spider sculpture just on the other side of that walkway. Its purpose... I don't really know. Looks kind of creepy.

To the right of Maman is the 54-story Mori Tower. That's the building the shopping center is in, and it also houses the Mori Museum, a bunch of offices, and an observatory up top. ...But we went to none of those things, because they are expensive.

Roppongi is very close to Tokyo Tower, so we got some good shots of it from where we were. As you can see from the size of the skyscrapers around it, it's really tall (even taller than the Eiffel Tower).

Between the Hollywood Plaza/Metro Hat building and TV Asahi's headquarters lies the Mohri Garden. I assure you hat patch of grass on the right is not actually a golf course.

And here is Cinnamon on the path in the Mohri Garden. It was very pretty there, but also pretty small. And it was getting later in the evening, so it was starting to get too dark to go without using my camera's flash.

Saturday, we went to Shinjuku because Cinnamon wanted to buy some books, so we picked those up from the 8 floor Kinokuniya bookstore and... started walking. We walked and walked and walked, through Sendagaya and Yotsuya, through the Meiji Jingu-mae Park where we saw a race going on (though Cinnamon wasn't wearing her running shoes), and a ton of high school baseball players. Also, we saw this:

How can "casual frozen foods" be part of the "hot menu"? You can get all sorts of things from this vending machine though - french fries, yaki-onigiri, yakisoba - even hot dogs! ...Needless to say, we didn't try it out. Instead, we went to a nearby vending machine and got ice cream~

Then we continued our walk through Aoyama, past Omotesando Hills and eventually to Shibuya. (And if it's any indication of how much we walked that day, from Aoyama to Shibuya alone is 3km).

Sunday, we didn't do a whole lot. We walked to Shibuya from where we're staying (saving a total of 150 yen in train fare!) and it turns out it only takes us about an hour and a half. ...But somehow, I don't see us walking that far very often. Also, we had some more crepes from a different vendor this time! We're both sorely going to miss crepes when we get back home.

Monday, we wandered more around Ikebukuro, since we had always just gone to the Sunshine City area. Turns out there's not a whole lot else that interests us there, but we did find another Sanrio store to go into!

Tuesday, we went to Asakusa and the Sensoji Temple there. I've never seen so many foreign tourists in one place in Japan than there were on Nakamise Dori (the street full of shops leading up to the temple)! They nearly outnumbered the Japanese people! But I know you guys are most interested in the pictures, so here they are~

Kaminarimon Gate (that's the Thunder God) marks the beginning of Nakamise Dori. As you can see, it's huge (even bigger than Gigantor!)

Here's a closeup of the statue to the left of the gate. His eyes look like they're glowing, don't they?

And here's Mr. Thunder God on the right. I think they're both kinda scary, actually.

At the end of the street, on the left is this huge, 5-story pagoda. But you're not allowed into it. As you can see, it's also huge, and was very difficult for me to get a good picture of the whole building.

But the main attraction, right in front of you, is the Sensoji Temple.

Before you get to that, you pass through another big torii gate, and on the backside of it are these giant waraji sandals. (If you're wondering what they're for, there's an interesting article on it here.) William, we think this one's about your size. What do you think?

We went into the temple and paid 100 yen to get our fortunes from this little can of sticks. You shake it up and out pours a stick with a number on it. You match the number on the stick to the corresponding one on a row of little drawers, and inside is a paper with your fortune on it. Cinnamon got "bad fortune" and I got "regular fortune." Guess there's no good luck for us in the near future!

Outside of the temple there were some pretty gardens, like this one with the little waterfall.

On the other side, there were koi! Fascinating, right? After wandering around the temple grounds for a while, we headed back up the other side of Nakamise Dori, poking around at all the traditional gifts and goods before leaving the area.

Aside from the temple, there's not much around Asakusa, so we ended up back in Ikebukuro, where we had dinner. Cinnamon wanted to kidnap her waiter because he spoke very good English. Alas, she did not, because that would've made for an interesting story!  And then we got more crepes from a place called "Crazy Crepes." We like the places in Harajuku best, because the crepes are bigger, so you get more for your money. The one in Shibuya was good, but you didn't get a whole lot of fillings.

Yesterday, we spend the day bumming around in the Aoyama/Omotesando/Harajuku area, checking out places we hadn't gone to yet. A lot of the time, when we get there, it's late and most of the stores are closed, since just about every store in Tokyo seems to close at 8pm. And when they want you to get out, all the stores play what I call "the get out music" - Auld Lang Syne. At first, we just thought they didn't realize that's a seasonal song, but eventually we figured it out.

No idea what we're doing today. I guess we'll cross that bridge when Cinnamon wakes up from her nap. ...Which is apparently right now (I have good timing~) Until then~!

Back to Reality

Okay, looks like you guys weren't all that impressed by my attempt at making our trip seem more exciting, so it's back to our much less interesting adventures.

Sunday, we met up with the girls (Courtney, Sara and Katie) again at 7:30 way out in the middle of nowhere (or rather, Hachioji - about 45 minutes outside of Tokyo) for yakiniku! And getting there was an experience in itself. Almost as soon as we had left the station and Courtney declared "At least it's not raining," - you guessed it - it started raining. And it turns out we had gone in the wrong direction from the station, so what should've been a 2 minute walk turned into a 45 minute walk.

But we finally got there! It was a much bigger restaurant than I had been expecting, and even had its own parking lot! (Yes, in Tokyo, this is uncommon. Usually if places have parking, it's in a parking garage). So here we are at Den Yakiniku.

As you may have guessed, it is the kind of establishment where you have to take your shoes off upon entering. It definitely feels weird to be eating out at a restaurant with no shoes on. We had to wait a while to get a table (what with Meat Day being so popular and all), but finally it was time for food! Good thing too, since it was already nearly 9pm.

Here's Courtney showing us how it's done. Basically, your table has this little grill in the middle, already fired up and ready to go. All you have to do is push some buttons on a little electronic screen and a waiter will come and bring you whatever kind of meat (or side dishes) you request! You only have to get up to get your drink. And there are tons of different types of meat you can choose from - pork, roast beef, chicken thigh, sausage, sirloin, even chicken hearts and cow tongue! We stayed away from those.

The little tray on the right has dipping sauces in it: original, sweet, and ponzu. I liked the original and sweet best, as the ponzu was a little sour/tart.

Cinnamon and Courtney are both helping out with the grill, and you can see the little electronic screen there between them.

By about 10:30, we decided we had had enough meat (and there's a 90 minute time limit), so we figured we had better head back to the station so we could be sure to catch the last train. Of course, it was still raining, and someone had taken Courtney's umbrella, so she was forced to make due with a smaller one. But we took the proper way back to the station this time, so it only took a few minutes.

The next night, Monday, we had a party! We went shopping in Ikebukuro in the afternoon (the two of us, plus the other 3 girls), and then all convened at Coco Ichiban-ya in Shibuya at about 6:30.

It's a curry restaurant! And they serve up some super, super delicious curry. I got a half portion of hirekatsu curry, which is breaded, fried pork tenderloin, in case you were wondering.

Susa joined us for this occasion, and we all 6 crammed into one booth in this tiny little restaurant. But it was worth it - and very cheap, too! You get a lot of food for about $7.

Afterward, we headed upstairs for 3 hours of karaoke!

In Japan, you get your own little box in which to sing, so there's less embarrassment than the American type where you're forced to sing in front of a bunch of strangers.

Yes, they even supply you with tambourines! And there are a ton of songs to choose from (as you can see by the phone book-sized catalog of songs there under the little electronic song-choosing device. ...It's under Susa's arm.) They had both Japanese and English songs, but the majority were in Japanese.

And this is precisely why Cinnamon has no idea what's going on. And here I told her to learn at least one song in Japanese in preparation for this, too. But doesn't she look stylish in her new fedora? Also, I don't know what I'm looking at. Probably Courtney, who was holding the other mic.

But after three hours of this, it was getting late, so we all headed back home for the night.

Only to meet up again Tuesday evening for HapiPani 7! If you're wondering what that is, it's the abbreviation for "Happy *pnish* Birthday 7th." It's a one-time-only event *pnish* has every year on July 1st in commemoration of the day the group was formed. I'll spare you all the details, but it was absolutely spectacular and I wish I could see it again right now.

You can see how excited Cinnamon (aka Gigantor) is about her very cool new *pnish* tote bag. It is filled with awesome things, and I also have one... filled with even more awesome things. After the show and demachi, we all parted ways at about 11pm, though Cinnamon and I didn't turn in until much, much later since we were so wired after such an awesome performance. (Yes, you heard that correctly. Cinnamon willingly stayed up until 3am!)

Courtney headed back to Hikone in the morning, since she had to go to work, but we decided to meet up with Katie to help her shop for souvenirs, as it was her last day in Japan. So we took her to one of the big 100 yen shops we had been to, and she went to town~ Then we took the train back to Akihabara, Tokyo's "Electric Town", to look for a few other things.

Then we got hungry, so it was down to Gotanda to Coco Ichi's again for more delicious curry. And to top it off, we hit up Harajuku and had crepes!

Katie and I had "ice cream, chocolate and whipped cream" and Cinnamon had "banana, caramel and whipped cream." They were super good, super filling and also pretty cheap. I will definitely be eating those again.

The picture's pretty self-explanatory, I think. Mmm... crepes. Also in Harajuku, I bought a cute new pair of sandals for about $30, and they're working out so far! I was sick of wearing tennis shoes. They don't go well with skirts and dresses.

Around the corner from Harajuku, near Aoyama, we walked down by Omotesando Hills. I'm pretty sure I mentioned it before, but it's basically a very upscale shopping mall. Looked pretty neat all lit up, though.

Sadly, it was getting late, so we said our goodbyes to Katie and headed home. Today we took it easy, only going to the grocery store and to Shinjuku to pay rent. Also, we got a leg up on the pile in our room, since it was getting pretty messy. Looks much nicer now. Tomorrow, we're off to visit Roppongi Hills!

You'll Never Believe What Happened!

So yesterday, since we weren't meeting up with our friends until 7, we decided to go down to Shinagawa because Cinnamon was in a running mood. She thought it would be a good day to try to race the shinkansen! We got down there pretty early so there wouldn't be too big a crowd, and she jumped down onto the train tracks when the next train pulled up. Naturally, I jumped down there too, to try to talk her out of it, because seriously, those trains go 180mph! There's no way she could outrun one of those!

Unfortunately, the train conductor saw us and pushed the "Emergency Ninja" button that all shinkansen trains in Japan are equipped with. And suddenly, a ninja appeared out of nowhere (because ninjas can do that - they're ninjas) and we engaged in combat. Too bad for us we had left our shurikens and our nunchaku at home that day. It was a pretty unfair fight, and the ninja captured us and handed us over to the station police.

Apparently, the police don't look too kindly on foreigners who jump onto the train tracks, so they booked us into the jail. While we were there, we had tea with a very nice man in the cell next to us who looked like Buddha. He gave us his business card so we can keep in touch with him. After a few hours, a guard came by and told us we had two options. Either we could pay a hefty bail or we could take our chances in a one on one sumo match with the emperor.

Naturally, since we aren't the millionaire foreigners the old guy at the palace assumed we were, we decided it would be best to fight. We played "rock paper scissors" to see who would get to be the lucky sumo wrestler, and Cinnamon won, so I was the unlucky loser and they took me to an arena to prepare for my impending fight. It was quite an ordeal there. First they made me bathe, so I wouldn't bring any dirt into the arena, then I had to change into a loincloth (because it's tradition, after all), and some guy who I guess was supposed to be my coach came and yelled at me for about half an hour. I didn't catch much of what he said, but I'm pretty sure he called me foreign scum and told me not to disgrace the emperor.

Then I was brought out to the arena and lo and behold, Cinnamon and Mr. Buddha were in the audience! Everybody was booing me, but I had a lot of fighting spirit after that yelling session earlier. The emperor was a surprisingly tiny guy, so I figured I could beat him pretty easily, especially since after eating all that fast food since I've been here, I've really bulked up (I'm a good 250lbs now).

The match was over surprisingly quickly, with me easily overtaking Emperor Scrawny McWimpPants. Afterward, he came over and congratulated me on a job well done. He said he was so impressed with my fighting style that he would allow both me and Cinnamon to go free. I thanked him for his generosity and once I had changed back into my street clothes, we were set free.

Later, we met up with the girls and had delicious meat for dinner.

Today, we called up Mr. Buddha and he said that he would be working in Shibuya in the evening, giving out free hugs near the Hachiko Exit of the station, so we should drop by. So we did. It turns out that he's actually a pretty important guy in the San-X corporation and he offered the both of us jobs at the Hello Kitty factory in Yokohama. Naturally, we both jumped on the chance to work for such a wonderful company. Needless to say, we won't be coming back to America or Barnes & Noble. Sorry, guys. You're just no match for a cute, white cat with no mouth.

Catch you all on the flipside.