Watch for the distance legend: Japan is small. things are almost always closer together than they look on the map.

Find north: North is rarely UP on a map you pick up in japan.

Subway maps are subway maps: Subway/railway maps are designed to fit all of the destinations onto one map using the simplest representation of the line possible. They are not an accurate representation of the city. Just because it looks like it’s across the whole damned city on a subway map. Could actually mean that the line travels for 20 kilometers before it loops back to that station, even though that station is only 200 meters away from your current location. and just because it’s the next stop, which looks no further than the last stop, it could be the difference between an hour’s ride and a minute’s ride.

Walk right stand left: this is more true in tokyo than out west. But they drive on the left. So take the common knowledge for North American escalators and flip it. Same with the streets. Osaka area seems more like what we’re used to where everyone just sorta goes everywhere on the sidewalk, but tokyo is definitely more ordered into lanes

The store you’re looking for is probably above you: If you go somewhere looking for a specific store, and you think you’re in the right place, but it looks like the wrong store. Be sure to wander into every corner that you don’t think you should be in. It likely holds a hidden staircase that it looks like you shouldn’t be using, but holds the entrance to 4 other stores that are directly above the one you are currently standing in.

Today we decided that if you can use street fighter sound effects in place of japanese words, the opposite must be true.
“SHINKANSEN!” Gregg exclaims making a Dragon punch motion.
“HOKKAIDO!” I reply making a fireball motion.
The other people on the train don’t share our enthusiasm.
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They are going out before we even get out of bed. “We’ll meet you back here at 5″
“screw that. That means we have to come all the way back here just to go halfway across the city again. I’ll meet you at a landmark. Where are you going?”
“tokyo tower.”
“I’d say that’s a good landmark to meet at in and of itself. Ok, Lemme pull up google street view. I will meet you here, at the south east corner, because there are benches to sit and an awning in case it rains.”
“sounds good.”
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Our goal for the day is to buy a wide-angle lens for the camera because that’s what we’ve been needing for the entire trip. I am interested in the Nikon 10.5mm and the sigma 8mm specifically. But we also need to exchange the JR exchange order for our JR Pass.
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First we grab the rail pass, rather than lens first. even though the JR pass office is further down the yamanote line, because it will save us money doing it this way. Goes off without a hitch. We can now ride Japan Rail trains anywhere in the country for as long and as far as we want. hot damn.

Now we have to walk past an attendant and flash our pass. Not nearly as much fun as the suica card. Fret not I’m planning on riding the monorail at least once. that’s a Suica Card thing.
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Back one station to find the Used Nikon store we read about. hop off the train and… Oh… BIC Camera. might as well check that out.
ooooh right. Camera stores=Massive department stores. Well we find both of the lenses I was looking for, but the prices are like Regular MSRP almost. I buy that wire I needed, as well as a tripod strap. Steph wants to check some other stuff out so i look around a bit. I take a peek through one of the hundred telescopes/spotting scopes/$10,000binocular telescopes they have there. and lo-and behold, I see a nikon logo through the viewfinder. cool, wait, that’s not the camera department, what is that? I realize it’s a price sign, but for what? I scroll down… oh… of course… an industrial grade microscope. Why didn’t I know they sold those here. duh. I walk steph over to see my discovery. I realize the sign I saw was actually a tiny little price sticker and the industrial microscope was actually a children’s microscope, well that makes more sense. Then I look down. Oh no… wait… yeah… yeah… there are the big ones, bottom shelf. oh ye of little faith.
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We head straight for the used nikon store. (google maps rock.) Walk in the door. and… oh… what the hell? there’s like… no store. Oh… the curved window out front IS the entire store. This is just a desk to buy the stuff. that’s actually kindof awesome. We go back out, There’s the Nikon lens. oh man… it’s a really good deal. But i kindof had my heart set on the Sigma because it’s a 185 degree viewing angle. We decide to go back inside to ask if we can try it out. Aw man… “back in 20 minutes.” Must be lunch time. We’ll do that.
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We have “Cram soup” (waiter’s exact words, not my “I think that kindof ethnic stereotype joke is funny” voice talking.) once again… best thing I’ve ever eaten. Nice to get back on track.
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Over lunch we do some calculations and decide the nikon is too good of a deal to pass up, so we head back to buy it. I check it out to see if there’s something wrong with it, for the price to be so good.
“Do you have your passport?” “we do, here you go” Ok… Price is ¥56,000. (sticker price was ¥58,810) I guess taxes are included in the price here. Even BETTER deal. Rock on to the max.
We walk outside to take some crazy curvilinear photos of buildings. (oh did I mention it’s fisheye lens?) and laugh when we realize that most of the buildings in the area were architected in such a way as to make them look like they were shot with a fisheye lens in real life. So we’ll have to wait to make it really useful.
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Well, we only have a couple hours until we have to meet those guys, I guess we won’t go back to akihabara as we planned. We’ll just walk over to rappongi it’s not that far. but it’ll give us some time if we get turned around.
Here’s where things go awry. and here’s where I stop for today… It’s like 5:30am I just realized. more tomorrow. Hey… at least I’m catching up.

What do you say if a japanese person greets you in the morning?
According to Gregg, the answer is “hadoken”
Gregg has been making “hadoken” jokes all trip. They are always hilarious. For those who don’t know (mom) “hadoken” is the word Ken and Ryu from Street Fighter yell when they throw a fireball. Gregg has been using it as a catch-all phrase, with different intonation for the occasion. Gregg, George and Anita are only staying here one more night before they ride the “hadoken” off to Kyoto.

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First thing in the morning we went to Shinagawa to try to find the used camera store. Steph took a picture of the google map with her camera and I just referred to that whenever we needed to figure out where we were. I’m going to use that trick for the rest of the trip, it works slick. Zoom, pan… all that basic google map stuff, it’s all built-in to the camera photo viewer.
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Shinagawa is sortof exactly how I expected most of tokyo to look, and exactly the opposite of how I expected the people density to be. Basically, it’s a business district, so it’s all super tall buildings and concrete. The thing I noticed most about it, however was how absolutely deserted the streets were. We walked for 15-20 minutes and saw about 4 people. Unnerving. Everyone was busy working I guess…
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Gregg needed to take out money so we were on the lookout for banks and convenience stores.
“I tried but it spit my card right back out.”
So we stopped into a convenience store.
“it won’t even take my card in…”
uhm… ok.
(I buy more road soba mmmm.)
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We walk down the road. “I think it might be in that bulding there…” we look at the picture of the google map which has a picture of the building Steph says actually it’s the building right in front of us with no signs at all on it.
Oh… Seriously? how the hell do we get in? We walk around the building. there is an entrance, but it looks like it’s an apartment building entrance. Everyone is sortof standing around going “uhh….” I decide to take a peek in the entrance. Sure enough, there’s a little 2 inch by 10 inch plackard that says “5th floor”.
So we hop in the elevator and ride up, making jokes about how “it’s probably a mail order place and they’re going to be all “what the heck are you doing here?” the door opens, There are milk crates full of lenses all over the floor. and the walls are industrial metal shelves full of camera stuff.
“well… this is the place. but maybe we were right about the mail-order only thing?”
no… no they don’t seem to be confused about us barging in. oh, everything has price stickers… I guess it is a store.

Decent prices, but not phenomenally better than back home.
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Walking back to the station we spotted a 7-eleven. Where steph and I knew for certain you could take money out, because that’s what we’d read online, plus, it had the Cirrus logo on the machine (which means it’s part of the banking network that lets you do this sort of stuff.)
Gregg tried again… no go.
George: “that was fast. how did you even try all the ways you could put your card in?”
Gregg: “I only tried once.”
Dean: “Seriously? Get back there. there are 4 possible orientations. return when you have tried them all twice”
George (watching him): “that’s not even the right way for our machines back home… have you ever even used an ATM before?”

Anyway, woohoo. Money for Gregg.
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Shinagawa station is one of the transfer points from regular JRline to Shinkansen (bullet train) So just the sheer size of the place and amount of track was remarkable.
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Can’t really explain Akihabara with words. It’s probably my favorite place on planet earth. I’m going to go buy a cable and I’ll upload some video. It’s called “electric town” and it’s where all the geek stuff is. Anime/manga/videogames/new electronics/old electronics/electronic parts to make your own electronics.

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I walk into a “department store” which is really a long hallway, with sixfoot wide kiosk type storefronts all along the walls. The first shop sells tools for doing precise electronic work. (Soldering tools, oscilloscopes, magnifying glasses, that sort of thing.) The next shop sells nothing but thousands upon thousands of resistors. The next shop sells turn-of the century Phonographs. The next shop sells Vaccuum tubes. Go up the stairs, People are playing Collectable Card games (yugioh, Pokemon). Go down the stairs, There is a massive (for akihabara) place crammed floor to ceiling with pornographic comics featuring pre-pubescent girls (and crammed wall-to-wall with customers). go around the corner, there is a store that blinds you with all of the various lightbulbs that it sells, all on demo. All pointed at your face. bizzare and wonderful.
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On the streets of akihabara are many many girls dressed in maid costumes soliciting you to come to their “maid cafes”. (Sounds dirtier than it is.) Steph was adamant that we go… Though some of us were a bit less-than enthused at the idea. I suggested going to the one with the non-japanese looking girl, because chances are that someone there speaks english, and that’s probably what they’re trying to convey, even if it’s not her. We head up, I take the seat that’s facing away from the action, and I’m fine with that. The girl who serves us speaks english fairly well. Nothing on the menu is Japanese food. bummer. I order the special just to keep it simple. I think part of the “charm” is supposed to be that they’re kind of bumbling. It’s role-playing dinner.

In addition to serving food, they also take instamatic photos with you and draw on them (additional charge for the photo natch) Or let you record an anime DVD with you and your friends as the voice actors… Which would have been fun to just make up some words (because it was all in japanese.) But some folks were doing it while we were eating and the anime was really lame. not even “so bad it’s good” just boring. so we didn’t bother.

Worst and most expensive meal in japan thus far… of course.

As we are hopping on the elevator to leave a couple come in and ask if they can just look around to see what it’s all about. The maids all make high-pitched japanese sounds (which I assume are language) as the couple do a loop around the small (for us, big for them) restaurant and hop back on the elevator with us. the door closes and I can see the “wow… what was that?” look on the girl’s face.
“yeah… it’s about like that.” I respond.
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The rest of the group doesn’t seem as enthused as I am to continue fawning over every vintage oscilloscope I see. They’re going to meet steph and I later by the naked-girl figurine vending machines.
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I’m on a mission to buy a specific set of Headphones. I come close, but no cigar. They had the A500s, 700s, and a ton of portables, but no 900s. Gregg says when they split off from us they saw a ton of stores that had headphones. I’m glad we’re planning on heading back to akihabara.
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We found a store that deals in retro videogames. The first floor is for the most part entirely Nintendo. stacks and stacks of famicom. Famicom disk system. a strange Combo device i didn’t know about made by like toshiba or something that plays both famicom and disk system games in one box. A famicom retail cartridge demo unit (the things that used to have 30 games in them that you could select and try out.) wall to wall games. nintendo toys.

the second floor is all the other old consoles. There are piles of megadrives and saturns.

The third floor is a retro arcade. There is a larger than life-sized super mario. and a life sized solid snake (peeking around a corner at you.) It’s full of people (mostly smoking teenagers) Playing games that were made before i hit puberty. I buy a bottle of coke (in a glass bottle) and sit down in a chair. The chair in question… is actually a throne… and it’s not so much a throne, as it is, a likeness of a throne comprised entirely of Famicom games. Coolest thing ever.
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The numerous arcades are all incredible. They all follow roughly this layout. 6 floors. first floor-Claw games. second floor Photo sticker machines, 2-3 floors of regular videogames. and the remaining floors are either only-in-japan Fantasy adventure games (basically online RPGS in an arcade) or gambling/pachinko games.
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I use the grossest smelling bathroom I’ve ever been in. It features one of those Japanese squat toilets but I think they just hosed the place out or something because everything is wet. At least I hope that’s why it’s wet… though that incredible volume of urine could explain the smell.
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The rest of the evening I pretty much just spent playing UFO catchers (claw games) until we met up with the crew again. I won a bunch of crap that I’m going to have to mail home if i still want it or something cause I don’t really feel like lugging it around japan.
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We met up and ate some tempura. (ordered by vending machine/ticket combo again.) It was pretty good. Gregg says he’s not a big fan of shrimp. I don’t think he’s tried prawns ever so i try to cut off a chunk with my chopstick for him (not the easiest thing to do). I succeed. Just as I do so the waitress drops a fork in front of me (obviously she’s misinterpreted this to mean I can’t eat with chopsticks. I ignore it and proceed to wolf down my food as quickly and efficiently as any veteran japanese dude (you know the sort of quick finicky motions moving condiments into the bowl that you can only pick up if you’ve been using them for years). I kinda peek out of the corner of my eye to get a reaction. The whole kitchen staff is staring at me in a “no way!” way. funny. I forgot to hand them my ticket when I came in because I was bagged and I just wanted to sit more than anything. So when she came over and asked for it, I was confused at first. So it probably helped that they were no-doubt making snide comments to each other about the dumb gai-jin.
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The Rest of them go back to the hotel. Steph and I stay to close-out akihabara. I play some more claw games, but it becomes evident that everything seems to be shutting down. Weird. Oh wait… it’s monday (their equivalent of sunday.) So everything closes a bit early. nuts.

Hotel. (Which, if I haven’t mentioned is the Westin Tokyo. Steph’s bro got us the family discount. It’s 5-star all the way.) bed.

Yesterday’s more fresh in my mind. So I’ll Do day 2 before Day 1.
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Woke up. Got some funny looks when I said I’d rather hang out at the hotel and make a blog post. They’re off to a flea market, which I’m not interested in. Meeting the rest of them in Harajuku (youth culture area… where all the gothloli stuff is.) We’re going to meet on the bridge where all the cosplayers come out to pose on sunday, apparently. But we’re not 100% sure which bridge it is. Making a point to bring up google street view so I can say “i’ll meet you here. Take a good look. I don’t quite think it’s the cosplay bridge, but I’m not sure at all, at least we all know what the meeting place looks like.”
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Get nervous that I’m going to be late meeting them. Leave early.
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Arrive at harajuku 10 minutes later. Crap. Now I have an hour.
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Wander into the big park nearby. First thing I see are the rockabilly Pompadour dudes I was hoping to stumble onto, sweet.

Go. go. Johnny B. Good

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Wandering a little further in, I stumble into the japanese equivalent of hawrylak park. There are a few people just sortof doing the usual park stuff. Frisbee etc. But for the most part it’s groups of people. Possibly school clubs or something. Doing whatever special interest group thing they’re into. Some people are working out their parapara routines.

Some people are just lazing about in matching dresses… guys included. there’s a group of schoolkids… also in their own matching outfits (this time it’s an elementary school uniform though). There’s someone playing the bagpipes. George and the rest of them saw the cops come and break up a drumming session because apparently the park is not for public performances…

I’d better not get too far into this place, lest I end up not making it back on time.
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Find the bridge we’re supposed to meet on (Not the cosplay bridge of course, but that’s nearby). Glance at my clock. apparently I still have a ton of time. Head down a random alley into a random street. People dressed as anime characters. Store called “Condomania” that sells exactly what you’d think. Make my way back to meeting spot to take a peek. Nope. Seem to be a lot of people in gothic/sweet lolita outfits and anime costumes coming from a certain direction. I head that way.
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It seems to be some sort of festival. Maybe this is the flea market they were talking about?
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Whoa! A japanese guy with dreds. nice. Whoa… more than one black man. Something’s odd here. Why is everyone wearing jamaican hats?
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Oh I see. it’s like heritage days… only…. it’s Jamaican heritage days… with every booth being jamaican themed. Who knows. Don’t see the others here (though it would be easy to miss them… It’s packed just like everywhere else.) but I do see a bunch of Cartoon characters that I don’t recognize at all. (clearly I don’t watch enough Anime.) neat.
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Back to the bridge. Don’t feel like standing exactly where we said we’d meet because there’s really nothing to look at over there. I hang out on a nearby Pedestrian over-street bridge.
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Just found this. Would have been handy. See the little skinny bridge south of the actual cosplay bridge? that’s where we were supposed to meet. You can probably click the map and bring up street view and see for yourself.

View Larger Map
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George finds me because he remembered the street view. Anita, Gregg and Steph are on the other overhead pedestrian crossing (which overlooks the cosplayers.)
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There are only a few cosplayers on the bridge so I take them back to the jamaican thing because I saw more there. Of course none are there when we arrive. We find a street photography exhibit. The photos are terrible. I’m thinking it must have been children’s pictures. Though there are a few meticulously lit studio photographs… so who knows.
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Steph wants to go to a dollshow and shop for Gothloli stuff. I figure the rest of the gang wouldn’t be too into that so I offer to split up and take her to do that. We’ll meet back at the hotel at 7 and figure out dinner.
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I convince steph to go the long way around because I haven’t been that way before. We pass the NHK building and the area where street performers are supposed to be. There is a dude playing a 12-string guitar. But not like a regular doubled-up 12-string. where it’s really just a six string guitar that plays chords of notes and octave apart. This thing actually has 12 distinct strings. He’s playing his own bassline. it’s amazing.
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We find our way over to the mall where the dollshow is. We dont’ find it immediately. I suggest we just forget it because admission is ¥700 and I don’t really care. Steph seems alright with this plan. We check out the mall. The basement floor is entirely devoted to gothic lolita stuff. I let steph shop I find a bench and boy do I ever people watch for like an hour. Steph keeps coming back to check on me. no… no… i’m really really content.

I could stay here all week.
“See if you can figure out where the dollshow is.”
“I guess…”
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I take steph to the dollshow. Which turns out to be on the top floor. I don’t want to waste $10 so I opt to sit out. Feeling weird about going back downstairs to gawk at straight-banged girls in petticoats. I sit out front and doodle while she’s there. I still manage to get an eyeful of ruffled skirts… because of course they’re all going to the dollshow.
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Steph’s done. Decides to buy a doll for her doll-collecting brother Stanley. Isn’t sure if she should spend the $80 they’re asking. I tell her to go for it. Least we can do. He did get us the cheap room. Steph goes to pay. it takes a long time for some reason. she comes back sans doll… “I missed the 1 in front of the price.”
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We head out to do the gothic lolita circuit and hit a bunch of the stores. Steph blows most of the money she was planning on spending this trip. But she seems happy, and plans to blow the rest of her dough when we return to tokyo at the end if she doesn’t find something unexpectedly cool along the way.
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I see a store with a bunch of rocker looking clothes and a picture of sid vicious and head down. The lady down there speaks broken english. I think she’s chinese not japanese though. She informs me she is the designer to the rockstars. She has a wall covered in pictures of japanese rockers. (X-Japan too if you’re reading this Cathy.) “you see those, this not picture shop, those all my designs.”

“You like black? then why you no wearing black?”
“are you kidding? it’s 30 Degrees outside.”
“hmm… that not matter so much.”
“Does to me, I’m from Canada, i’ll take every cooling advantage I can get right at this moment.”
“hmm… Your style (meaning my clothes) seems very laid-back casual.”
“It would appear that way wouldn’t it? But how can you tell what a traveller wears at home?”
“hmmm…”
“maybe you can fix me up with some style. Looks like you know what you’re doing.”
“Oh no, I have nothing in your large size. (translated I think to:beat it fatty foreigner.) but it could have simply been “ask me about a custom fitting”

Steph arrives at this point. We head out.
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The next store is playing techno remixes of Winney the Pooh and Beauty and the Beast. Steph thinks it’s from the Konami Disney DDR thing but we’re not sure.
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I’m a little disappointed having gone to harajuku. It was amazing, but a lot of the mystery of “where do the japanese buy all of these incredible outfits” is gone now. I think everyone in tokyo shops for clothes in harajuku. Pick a random woman on the street and I’ll probably be able to tell you exactly which little shops she picked the bits her outfit up from.
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We head back to the hotel. 20 minutes late, but no one seems too upset… or energetic. Eventually we decide to wander out and find some food. This sounds good to me because the only food places I saw in harajuku were the ubiquitous crepe shops. So I didn’t eat all day… which runs contrary to my plan of eating non-stop.
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We settle on some random upstairs place that looks like it’ll probably have sushi. (Which is harder to find than you’d think. It’s mostly noodle shops.) This place is no exception, but george spots a big raw egg on top of the dish and says “I’m in!” I see Soba on the menu so I’m in too. They were out of soba so i just close my eyes and pick something random from the menu again. It arrives and at first I think I’ve ordered Tripe soup. but then when I taste it I realize that it’s bacon that’s been boiled instead of fried. and the soup is onion broth and it is again one of the best things i’ve ever tasted.
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We start walking home and pop into a grocery store on the way there. I convince the gang to share a box of interesting looking ice-cream sandwiches with me… “Because 6 is too much for one person and we have no freezer.”
Secretly I would have eaten the whole thing myself.
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I was planning on going to shibuya again, this time armed with a tripod, to get some night shots and panoramics. No one has any energy to go with me. I decide this is a good night to just chill and sleep. George and anita are going to the fish market tomorrow. “i’m in! SUSHI!”
Steph informs me they’re going at five am. “I’m out! SLEEP!” though I consider staying up all night and sleeping all day after sushi… but that would put a cramp in my blow-all-my-money-in-Akihabara plans for tomorrow.
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We go to sleep.
Steph wakes me up at 4 am with coughing. She’s sick now. She’s gone back to sleep, but I opt not to try because george and anita are coming home at 8. and it takes me a couple hours to fall asleep, so by the time I’m out, I’ll have to be up. So here you go. 7AM and i wrote this blog post. I think I might just tell everyone to take a hike tomorrow and sleep all day/wander all night.

Apologies for not updating everyday. I have been running around until I passed out for the past two days. George, Anita and Steph just went out for breakfast (which I usually skip.) So I’ll try to catch up here.
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Total awake time by the end of the first day. 70+hours.
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Spent the 9-10 hour plane ride finishing off Hulk/Wolverine flats for dave, Successfully managed to get them done despite cramped airline seats.
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Greeted upon our arrival in japan by people in hazmat suits. A bunch of people looking like every mad japanese cartoon scientist you’ve ever seen came onto the aircraft before we were allowed to deplane. They scanned us with what looked like large format cameras, but were apparently thermal cameras checking for people with fever. I filled out a survey. got a “quarantine passed” certificate despite my nagging sore throat and continued on my way an hour later… Provided we would wear surgical masks, or else they wouldn’t let us off the plane.
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Had our fingerprints and pictures taken. Japanese customs dude suspiciously eyed me, past the line of people in front of me, for the entire time I was there. He went through my bag. Seemed surprised when I said I was ultimately heading out towards fukuoka/mount aso (guess foreigners generally just do the little Tokyo/kyoto hop). and let me continue on my way.
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Surgical mask off.
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Saw a place that rented phones to foreigners at the airport. Thought, nah… I’ll just buy one. I’m in love with japanese phones anyway. Turns out you can’t even buy a pre-paid plan without proof of japanese residency due to some anti-grey market law. So I should have grabbed one then.
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Reason I should have grabbed one, is it’s a $25-30 half-hour to one and a half-hour (depending on which train is there when you’re ready to hop on) train ride into tokyo from the airport. Thankfully I only have to pay that once, I’ll have a JR pass starting in a few days that will cover it on the way back.
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Spoke too soon. Steph somehow managed to leave her suitcase on the platform. “I was busy watching to make sure YOU had YOUR stuff.” This will be fun. Talked to train guy. Did my best to japanese at him. Communicated the problem. He called the station and said “ok they’ve got your bag” but then I had no idea what the next instructions were. I couldn’t tell if they wanted me to come back to the airport, or if they were going to ship the thing up to us. Kindly bi-lingual guy figured out what was going on and came and helped out. yeah… of course someone has to go back. Steph’s got the magic name/credit card number that gets us into the hotel but I’m the only person who is confident he knows exactly where the hotel is. “well… the three of you combined can find it. Here’s a map and directions. Guess it’s me riding back. ”
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Hour later. Arrive at tokyo station. Bi-lingual dude (james) who was born in japan but lives in LA and is back visiting or something to that effect. Figures he’d better come sort things out with me. Takes a good 15 minutes for the train office guy to finally decide he needs to do what james said right off, and call the airport station. another 10 minutes later I have a little piece of paper that says “I’m a dumbass who lost my luggage, take me to the security office” or something to that effect. “Hurry! you have 3 minutes to catch the next train back! I have left them special instructions so that you can pay on the train and don’t need a pass.”
“See you guys! good luck finding the hotel!”
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Current: they have returned from breakfast. I have not finished my blog post. I will meet them later, I want to get this done, people are asking and I haven’t showered yet.
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Run down 4 flights of escalators to get on train with seconds to spare. phew… wait… I am literally about to pee myself because I have been doing the pee-pee dance for the past hour and if I get on this train I’m not going to be able to hold it for the hour it takes to get there and then we’ll have another embarrassing phrase to learn in japanese. Off the train I go again. Up a flight or two of escalators. ahhhhhh.
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OK. Time to figure out how to buy tickets for the next train back. (previous tickets to get to this point were special foreigner discount tickets that you picked up at a special english speaking place.) Walk up to manned ticket window because I figure the machine won’t give me any breaks and this dude might. Explain situation as best I can. Nope no deal. ¥2900 to get back. Won’t be leaving for an hour. I suppose it’s time to explore tokyo station.
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You can pay for pretty much everything within the subway line, (and a lot of things outside of the subway line) With your suica/passmo card. We purchased suica cards to make our way around the tokyo area for the next few days before our JR pass kicks in (we bought a 2-week pass but we’re in nippon for 18 days). Suica is an RFID system so it’s basically like magic, you wave your card in front of the reader and it deducts the amount from your account. George calls this method of receiving goods and services “Karate Chopping”. He demonstrates why he calls it this, by walking up to a vending machine, Selecting his beverage of choice, Shouting “HAIYA!” and proceeds to knifehand strike the reader with card in-hand. Out pops a beverage.

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I get on the next Limited Express (non-express=Every stop, Express=no stops between here and there, Limited Express=a couple stops) back to the airport. It is stopping in different places than the one on the way out. but it’s definitely going to the airport. This time the ride takes an hour and a half. I should mention at this point, I’d been awake (not counting an hour when I passed out on the plane) for about 68 or so hours. Just so you can get a feeling for my energy level.
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Off the train. Give paper to a guy, who points me in a direction. Give paper to security guy. Who seems to know exactly what it is. Must be who they called. I have to walk through a little security gauntlet, passport in hand. and end up back where I started but now I’m approved to go into the office apparently. Here is your bag. Let me copy your passport. sign this. Arigato gozaimasu.
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Ticket counter “no, sorry. you missed the last train back to tokyo.” But try that other train company over there, theirs leaves in 4 minutes.
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Run. buy. run. Phew. Heading back. that was efficient. This train looks like it’s about to fall apart compared to the other one, which looked like a spacecraft from the future. However… 20 minutes later. I’m back in tokyo. though on the other side of the city from where I want to be.
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So onto another train (yamanote line). Headed for either Ebisu or megume (hotel is halfway between them). Ride for 20 minutes. Decide to hop off at ebisu (first station), because the train got packed right full (not cram-packed like it gets… but full-enough for me) when we went through shibuya (fashion-phile shopping district). Start walking in roughly the direction I think I’m supposed to go. Manage to somehow walk in a straight line directly to the hotel.
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I convince desk clerk that this sweaty gaijin is supposed to be here. (it is hot. and I was wearing a rubber raincoat the whole time.) Tiny japanese lady, half my size takes my luggage and hauls it up to my room while showing me the way… I just thank her, because it’s apparently impossible to stop them and apparently insulting to tip them…
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“Hey guys. Getting worried about me yet?” I ask. Considering it’s been about 4 hours since I last saw them, all told. I lay down on the floor. (Gregg looked to be napping on the couch, George and anita went to get food, and steph is working on polishing off the very last page of Hulk/Wolverine.) “yeah… I was starting to a little, thought you might have missed the last train out here from the airport.”
“I did.”

George returns with ramen. Food smells so good that even though I am now laying on the floor barely conscious. I decide to get up and find a convenience store on my own. (would order room service, but I want to purchase about 8Litres worth of beverages because I’m so thirsty.) Gregg, George and Anita go to sleep. Steph and Dean head out.
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There are 7-elevens everywhere here, but we try the AMPM because it is closer. I purchase the japanese equivalent of a 7-eleven burger. Cold Soba. Steph buys some instant ramen. I also grab a ton of drinks. and some chips. total purchase comes to about $15. And people say japan is expensive. an equivalent amount of snacks at Sev’ in Veg’ would have been about $25.

The soba (though obtained from a convenience store refrigerator) Is the best I’ve ever had in my life. I think I’m going to like this place.
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Home again. Shower. Sleep.
End travel day.

))))))))
Current: It is 8:46pm your time. and 11:48am my time.
I still haven’t showered for this morning. Going to do that. I don’t think I’ll have time to recap yesterday before I head out for the day.
Next Post.

-dean

It’s now 5:30 in the morning… and I’m nearly packed. We leave in a half hour.

Wish me luck.
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So, I also just cleaned the birdcage using environmentally friendly non-chlorine bleach. ( A.K.A. Hydrogen Peroxide.) Something tells me that the reason I always get “randomly selected” for additional searches might have something to do with coming into the airport reeking of a key ingredient in household bombs.
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I miss my birds already and I haven’t even left. Take good care of them Emily.
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At the airport now. Somehow I made it through security unscathed. Actually it was the easiest time I’ve ever had going through. No hassle whatsoever. Funny. I realized there was bird poop on the lid of my laptop, so if they swabbed it, it would have tested positive for trace amounts of Hydrogen Peroxide AND Ammonia. And that would have certainly spelled good times.