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Location | Tokyo

Today was my final day in Tokyo. I was so sad that I wanted to run away from the group and not fly back.

Well in the morning, after breakfast, I headed out to the Tokyo Dome for the opening of Mother Garden at 11am. I had to get back to the hotel at 11:45pm, so I had to move as quickly as possible. I got there at 10:30 and had to wait 30 minutes for the mall to open. As soon as it opened I ran in and got into the store and explained to the sales people that I was American, so my Japanese sucks and that I need them to help me find these things for my friend. They came running to help me and I got a whole bunch of stuff.

When they rang up my bill… it was 9400 yen!!!!! That’s about US$85!!!!! Oops!!! Thank goodness it wasn’t all for me. Nikki wanted some of the stuff too… whew!!

Then I rushed back to the hotel, but managed to get lost in the subway station which I took the time to memorize!! I don’t even KNOW how I managed to get lost… it made no sense!! Anyway, after finding my way out, I ran back to the hotel and just in time made it downstairs. Suma and Shivali hadn’t even made it back to the hotel yet. Then we had to drag all our luggage on a trek to the subway station… that was such a struggle to get our luggage down stairs then up stairs. SO HEAVY!!!

Then we rode the train to Ueno and had 10 minutes to run to the skyliner train to go back to the airport. We got there just in time.

At the airport, poor Dragana had to be interviewed because she wasn’t a US or Japanese citizen. It was such as hassle. Then we got to the gate, and went to get food to eat. Unfortunately, all we could find was McDonalds, so we had that.

Then it was back into the airplane and now I’m back in the US!!!

TAKE ME BACK TO JAPAN!

[This entry was taken from my old blog, Building Tokyo. Formatting may have changed when moved to Explore!]

Location | Tokyo

It was another lonely day. I went to Tokyo Tower, which was a really good view of the city (compared to Odaiba‘s Fuji TV Building anyway). There are a lot of temples surrounding the tower, so I also got to walk in a quiet alleyway as well. When I got to the tower, there weren’t that many people. I went and bought my ticket to see both the main observatory and the special observatory (which is higher up).

Tokyo Tower

The elevator going up to the main observatory was ok, though a little scary because you could see outside. Once in the main observatory, it was really interesting to see all the different views around Tokyo. It just seems like it’s a never-ending city of buildings!

View from Tokyo Tower

The weather wasn’t that great so I couldn’t see Mt. Fuji, but I could see Shinjuku, the Meiji-Jingu Park, and various other monuments around Tokyo. I was up there for awhile, just looking at the buildings, especially the strange buddhist temple that looks like a spaceship landed on a top of a bunch of residences (talk about being out of place!).

After checking out the main observatory, I went up to the special observatory. Now that ride was EXTREMELY SCARY. It kept going higher and higher and I really didn’t think I had a fear of heights, but for some reason I got kind of scared. It was probably mainly because I was the only one in the elevator (besides the guy controlling it) and it was a box suspended in the air by cables…

Anyway, after that I went down to the bottom and checked out all the little shops. After Tokyo Tower, I went to the Shiodome area to check out the Tokyo Advertising Museum. The museum was small, but still had some interesting things to look at. A guide/employee came up to me to give me a brochure… but then realized I wasn’t Japanese and gave me an English brochure . I also got chided for taking pictures in the museum… apparently that is a big no-no. Oops!

I left the museum to go back to Shibuya. At Shibuya I encountered a television crew — of which I couldn’t tell if they were speaking English or not. I was sitting on the train station side of the museum to observe the advertising space, but then these busses arrived and these groups of people come out and they were wearing red, blue and white hats. Apparently they were having some sort of game-show or something there. It was so strange because it threw people off.

Shibuya

I also spent time observing another group of guys trying to pick up girls. It was really ridiculous because one of the guy reminded me of Bruce and I kept watching him trying to pick up girls and eventually get rejected. It was really strange… I wonder how these guys get all this time to do this!! It’s like they have nothing better to do than observe girls and try to pick them up.

So after awhile, I left to go do some shopping. I was trying to find Loft, but I ended up going in the wrong direction and ended up in a little alleyway with a bunch of cute little shops. I got a top for 1500 yen. I’d say that’s a good deal. Then I went to Tokyu Hands again, but didn’t buy anything. I came out and went to Picnic on Picnic, a cute stationary store. After that, I found my way to Loft and that store was great!! There was a Muji there too.

After all of this, I went to Omotesando to meet up with Suma and Shivali. Unfortnately, Shivali didn’t show up, so Suma and I went to eat because we were starving. We ate at a small udon shop and then headed to Harajuku. Harajuku’s Takeshita Dori was a really great shopping area. The stores seemed more affordable than the other side of Harajuku.

There I got a grey top that gives the feeling of being layered and a black jacket type deal. There were both 1900 yen, so pretty cheap (for Japan anyway!). We got some crepes after this and walked back to the Laforet Department store. After all of this, we went back to the hotel to wait for everyone to go to dinner.

We had a simple dinner at a izakaya close by the hotel. We then decided we wanted crepes, so we ran to Harajuku, but everything was closed down already (boo!). We ended up in Takeshita Dori again and there was this crowd of people near a 7-11. Apparently some Akihabara idols were there and a bunch of nerdy looking guys were hanging around them.

After leaving Harajuku we went back to the hotel and I began to pack.

[This entry was taken from my old blog, Building Tokyo. Formatting may have changed when moved to Explore!]

Location | Tokyo

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.

[This entry was taken from my old blog, Building Tokyo. Formatting may have changed when moved to Explore!]