My friend from Fukuoka.

This weekend, a friend from Fukuoka came into town. This person is very dear to me, and I had a great time with her, despite the fact that I didn't get to spend as much time with her as I would have liked.

After meeting up, she wanted to go to Asakusa. I was just there 2 weeks ago, but I liked it, and besides, it was her vacation, not mine, so we went. Instead of going straight there, we took a different train exit and had to walk a while. The whole neighborhood seemed to be filled with little arts and crafts stores. It was really nice.

There was this one building that caught my eye:

I'm sure it's not what it means in the US, but it was still odd to see.

There was this other interesting looking building I saw on the way there.

Close up on the top:

And a close up on the cows:

I don't know what it was, but it looked nice.

I already talked about Asakusa. It was pretty much the same this time, but the weather was much better, so I wanted to share these pictures.









After this, we went to Shinjuku to meet up with her friend (and my friend too), and had some dinner. We parted ways afterwards, and planned to meet up in Yokohama the next morning along with her friend.

On Sunday, I woke up and went straight to Chinatown. If anyone's been to Chinatown in San Francisco or Boston (and apparently New York too, but I haven't been there), you would get the idea that Chinatown = dirty, crowded, and cheap.

For starters, Chinatown in Yokohama is the largest in Japan and one of the largest in the world. It's been there for almost 150 years, and is absolutely huge. As far as land mass goes, I'm sure it's just a little bit bigger than San Francisco's Chinatown, but as far as density goes, there is a LOT more there.

The presumption of Chinatown being crowded sure was true, but it was anything from dirty and cheap.


In fact, it was absolutely gorgeous.

I took a bunch of pictures, but several didn't turn outs so well. Well, it doesn't matter. They wouldn't do this place justice. The sights, sounds, and smells were amazing.


There were hundreds of restaurants and food stalls. Unlike other Chinatowns I've seen, food here was not exactly cheap. It ranged from decent to exorbitantly expensive. Beyond that, the food looked amazing.

And sometimes, quite dangerous.

You know those little red peppers you pick out of some Chinese dishes? Well, from the looks of it, that was the main ingredient here. Looks tasty, but painful.

We stopped at a stall and I got a pork bun and my friends got shrimp buns. I would like to note that both of the people I was with have been in China for an extended period, and my friend from Fukuoka speaks fluent Chinese. When they say 'Let's get food here', I'm more than willing to listen.

So, here was my lunch:

First off, it was the first black pork bun I've seen in my life. Secondly, when this picture was taken, it had been sitting in a bag for a while, and kind of shriveled a bit, which was fine because it came straight out of the steamer and was stupid hot at first.

It doesn't look like much, in fact it looks down right repulsive, but holy crap was it good. Easily the best I've ever had. Apparently the shrimp buns were of similar quality.

I was surprised to see this fellow in Chinatown.

I don't know what he was doing there.

So, after a bit of wandering, my new Yokohama friend showed us this crowded food place of some type. I'd say it was a restaurant, but you couldn't really sit down, and it was nicer than most food stalls. It was odd.

Apparently it's quite famous. I can tell why. I got a mini pork sausage bun, and it was damned tasty.

After that, we went to Yokohama downtown. It was a lovely day, and downtown is really picturesque.

I think this is "Downtown". Again, the concept of downtown isn't the same in Japan as America, but when I think of Yokohama, this is the place that popped into my head.

That big guy right there is the Landmark tower. It's apparently the tallest building in Japan. I sadly only know this building as that meeting place on Hard Gay. You know, where the college student goes to meet that girl? Yeah, it was that place.

The rest of the area was also really lovely.

I wasn't the only person who found it interesting.

We went to the amusement area and rode the log ride.

It was a nice place, but it definitely had a very early-to-mid 90's feel to it. It seems like it was built, or at least started before the economic bubble burst. It was quite a nice area, though.

And it was busy, but not crowded.

We went to a mall near by, and I saw something that caught me quite off guard.

This tiny shop was selling, among other things, Batman and Superman jewelry. It was quite nice, and I would actually wear some of that stuff. I would also like to point out this perfect example of what I mean when I say the shops have no walls. You can see the different colored floor is the only difference between in the shop and in the aisles. This is quite common here, and very often, two stores are connected this way and it's hard to know which store you're in.

So, we went to grab a snack, and I ate what was possibly the most un-authentic taco of my life.


It looked okay, and it didn't taste terrible, but it sure wasn't made by a Mexican. Also, I ordered a pink lemonade, and it was carbonated. I was actually pretty shocked.

After Yokohama, it was on to Akihabara. My friend had never been here, and since it was her trip, we went.

She wanted to go to a maid cafe, but all the ones we saw were filled, so that didn't end up happening.

Much like everywhere else in Tokyo, Sunday is the day when the most interesting people come out.

Yeah. That girl has quite a big Adam's apple for a lady.

So, after we left Akihabara, we parted ways. I was kind of upset because I assumed we would be hanging out all night, but it looks like people had different plans. I was feeling upset, so I was on my way home, and in Gotanda where I switched trains, I got out and walked around a bit.

I was quite plesantly surprised to find a random festival.

I don't understand these random festivals, because they seem to happen all the time and they're all a bit different. But, I don't really care. I really like them, and this one in particular really lifted my spirits.

You can see the train that I normally board in the background.

This neighborhood is not the best of neighborhoods. It's not bad by any means, but it's not an exciting place. so, I was a bit surprised to see this festival there.

So, my friend was having a party in Odaiba. I had never been out there before, and I highly recommend that everyone who can, at least take a ride out there. The nighttime scenery was amazing and quite breathtaking.

The party was actually quite entertaining. I met a lot of new people and had a nice time. It was a real international affair. There were people representing several countries including Sweden, France, India, China, Japan of course, and a few people from Vietnam. This one Vietnamese girl was quite hilarious, and I hope to see her again.

There was another fellow who gave me some of his drink.

I'm not sure where this guy was from, maybe Cambodia, but he was a pleasure to talk to as well. The drink, however was quite awful. It said 'serve chilled' and it was downright hot, so maybe that would have made a difference.

On the way back, I saw these 3 punk people on the train. I don't know why, but they put a big smile on my face. I was just happy to see them.

The guy with the kilt dropped his train ticket when he fell asleep and I was almost positive he would have left it on the train and would have been hassled, so I made sure to hand it to his friends on the way out, for which they thanked me in English and even did a little bow, which was quite interesting to see someone with a mohawk bowing.


This morning, I sadly went to the airport to see my friend off. I really wish she lived in Tokyo, but I'm glad she at least came to visit, even though it was short.

On a much less touching matter, I went to use the restroom, and I saw this sign:

Did that say "The sound of running water will begin"? They weren't kidding. There was an audio loop of running water. Quite strange.

Today was a day of relaxation. It was cloudy and rainy, so it was a good day to just unwind and catch up on my sleep.

Tomorrow, I have the day off. I SHOULD stay home and study, but I'm not sure if that's the plan. I guess I'll just have to see what adventures the next day holds.

Last weekend

Last weekend was a complete blast. I had fun pretty much nonstop from Friday night until Monday night, as it was a holiday.

On Friday night, I met up with my friend's sister. She doesn't speak English well and my Japanese skill is low, so it was a bit challenging to talk to her, but it was a lot of fun! I truly had a great time with her, and I hope to see her soon.

We both met up with a friend of a friend of mine. He is someone who I've never met, but I've talked to a lot. He used to go to school in my hometown and became good friends with a friend of mine, and he's a super cool person. He also had 2 friends with him, so the 5 of us were having a great time all night.

Saturday was the Polysics show and I already wrote about that. The video I shot didn't seem to get used on the website, which is probably a good thing.


On Sunday my good friend from Osaka came into town. That's when the real exploration began. I showed my friend my dorm room and then we went off to Harajuku because there was somewhere she wanted to go, so off we went.

After exploring the main drag and seeing the interesting people, we decided to stop off for a crepe. There are a ton of crepe shops in Harajuku. They just love them here. And they are so good too.
The crepes we got were served to us by the happiest employees I've ever seen.

This picture doesn't show it well, but they were all smiles. They were laughing with eachother and the customers, making jokes, and it seemed they were genuinely enjoying themselves.

After we ate our delicious crepes, we kept walking and on the main street, we saw another random festival.

It seems like there are a lot of these here. Maybe it's just my imagination. Anyways, that's not what we came here to see.


We walked down this street and saw some really interesting stuff, but then we got to this one main street called Omotosando Street that went from bizarre to ritzy really fast. After walking up this hill, we saw this mall called, appropriately enough, Omotosando Hills. It was quite fancy.

There was this giant rotating speaker that made bird chirping and water running sounds, so at any point, if you closed your eyes you'd think you were outdoors. Also, it had no real floors, and just casually sloped down around the mall. It was apparently designed by some famous architect. It was really quite classy.

Near the exit, I saw a girl doing a photo shoot in front of a car.

You can't really see it in the picture, but there's a guy with a professional camera and a girl with a giant silver thing to reflect light. There was also a guy with a video camera and what looked like a security guy. It was pretty random.

So, after we were done, we saw the crazy dressed Harajuku people and went to Shibuya. Shibuya and Harajuku are about a 10 minute walk from eachother. I pretty much new the way, but I decided to take a different route. I'm glad I did.

I had heard about these Japanese rockers who dressed all 50's like and just kind of danced in a park, and now I found them.

About a 2 minute walk from the Harajuku people, they were just hanging out strutting their stuff. This one guy had the highest hair I'd ever seen.

But, he was talking to some people and wasn't anxious to turn around, and since I have better things to do than wait for a guy with crazy hair to turn around, we walked over a pedestrian bridge and were greeted with...

A Laos festival? That's kind of random. There were also a bunch of high school aged girls selling clothes and accessories. It was quite strange.

So, after acquiring some Laos food, I heard this sound come from a nearby stage.

Huh? Power rangers? Well, that's odd. Wait... No... THAT is odd:

Well, it was just some live action thing for the kiddies I assume. I didn't stick around to watch it, but the evil witch was hot.

I don't know what any of this had to do with Laos, but whatever.

So, we kept walking to Shinjuku. The architecture is great around there.

Once we got to Shinjuku, I saw yet another random festival. This time it was just setting up right in front of the Louis Vuitton store.

We went and had a good time in Shibuya. Afterwards we went to Shinjuku and had some fun walking and talking. It was quite a lovely day.



After a nice night of resting, it was back to exploration on Monday. The first place we went was Asakusa.

Asakusa is most noted for a giant shrine with these giant red lanterns. There were like 3 or 4 of them, one of which was under repair. Asakusa is also a very historic district of Tokyo. It was nice to see the history, as most of Tokyo is quite modern.
There was this one major shopping street that dates back to, I don't know, but it's not new by any measure.

It was mostly souvenir shops, but there was some regular stuff too. If you wanted a samurai sword or a lantern cell phone charm, this is where you could get it. There were also all sorts of different traditional snacks and sweets.

At the end of the street, you could see the temple proper.

That smoke is incense, and apparently if you waft it around yourself, it's supposed to make you clever. It's quite popular with the school children.

The sheer size of this temple was really impressive. It was just amazing to see.

The gates with the lanterns were guarded by these people:



Asakusa also had the largest slipper I had ever seen.

It was quite an amazing place.

So, we wandered around away from the main street. It was quite crowded, and it seems that it's usually this crowded on the weekends.
But what's that in the distance?

A little tiny amusement park? That's odd.

But, that's the case. It was this tiny, old amusement park. I think it dates back to shortly after World War II.

There was also the second largest Pagoda in Japan.

The largest was in Kyoto and I saw that earlier, so I was a tad underwhelmed, but it was still really nice.

The side streets were filled with old shops and were targeted towards the older audiences. Kind of the anti-Harajuku. There was this one antique shop selling a full WWII uniform. That made me a little uncomfortable.

We went back to the main gate for a few more pictures. It sure is the popular place to take pictures.

And I saw this guy there too. He was just a tourist like everyone else, I think.


After some historic fun, we hopped a train to Ginza. I also made some phone calls and some of my friends met me there. Ginza is the super super super ritzy area in Tokyo. It was quite amazing to see.

It's the little things that make Ginza different. Like all over Tokyo you have "Doutor coffee", but in Ginza, you have "Le Cafe Doutor", because regular Doutor isn't classy enough.

Of course in Ginza you also have Louis Vuitton, Coach, Burberry, Rolex, and so many other fancy brand name shops. I'm not rich enough to shop in Ginza, but it sure was nice to visit.

We went to the Sony building, which it seems, is their world headquarters store. They had a lot of products that weren't available yet, and other Sony products that aren't normally sold in stores.

Upon walking in, they asked us to film a little cheer for the Japan National Soccer team.

It was quite fun and unexpected. Then, which was even less expected, they had a mini soccer game where we had to kick the ball into 3 goals. The first 2 were easy, but the third, you had to pop it up into the goal.

I have to give props to my Osaka friend for trying this with high heels on. I actually did worse than she did. Oops.


Anyways, we left Ginza, to go to Shinjuku where we had dinner and my Osaka friend caught a bus. It was sad to see her go, but I was quite happy that she came to visit.

It was quite a tiring weekend, but quite rewarding too. I saw lots of great things and had a great time.