The Night That Won't Die (Day 13)

I was sad to get up today. I have to leave my little Tokyo home (I've stayed here the majority of my time – 8 nights total.) After breakfast, some last minute shopping in Tachikawa (I found out they had a Vivienne Westwood store at Granduo!), I packed up my shit and checked out, only to say "irashai masen" to the girl when leaving (it means "Welcome Here".) D'oh. I also decided that this business across the street was amusing:


Everytime we saw one of those over-tanned guys, we joked that they have been spending too much time at Blacky. I also saw one later that was called 'Browny'.

Heading to the station to meet Jean at noon, I had to say goodbye to Tachikawa.



Once we arrived at Shinjuku, Jeaner went to go pick up her day pass and I observed how Tokyoians spend the majority of their days – on the train.






When Japanese people get on the train, they do one of two things – flip open their cell phone and begin emailing or sleep. This picture shows the creatures in their natural habitat.





After hauling our (my) loads of crap from one train to the next and then on an uphill, 15-minute walk to the ryokan (by this time Jean had heard more than her share of my potty-mouth), we then hauled our cookies off to Odaiba, the seaside town of Tokyo.



We took the subway until we could connect with the only train that went all the way to Odaiba, the Monorail. And I sang the monorail song by the Simpsons not only on the way there, but on the way back too.


This is the infamous 'Rainbow Bridge'. Our monorail went right through it. No big deal.




This is the Fuji television building at Odaiba. I know my key to superstardom is within the confines of that building in the Mezanyu footage. Sigh. So close yet so far away.


Yes, it's the same thing. No, it's smaller than the real one.


Tokyo across the bay from Odaiba.



I was so jazzed to go on the World's Largest Ferris Wheel! It goes around once every 16 minutes, and at a cost of $9.00 for the ride, it was SO worth the $.56 per minute.






Jean her suitcase that she bought that came along with us everywhere we went that day. Best. I named it 'the Kid'. I probably could have come up with something a little bit more clever. The Japanese people operating the ride were really thrown off by the fact that we had this suitcase coming along with us. At least we didn't have to pay for an extra ticket.






This is Tokyo Big Sight – Tokyo's convention centre.



After the ferris wheel, we headed into the Toyota showroom…sugoi!









They had these little hybrid self-driving cars that you can take for a spin on the track for $2.00 per person - oh you know we were all about that business!


I got to "drive".




They also had lots of weird crap painted on the sides of these cars. This was ours zipping by. We left 'the Kid' off this one – no room for the little shyster. It was so fun! And kind of freaky.

They had all kinds of cool/fun stuff to do here for the big kids.



We were running out of time, so we decided to head to the mall to check out a night in Venice…






Yeaaah, basically the neat-o-gang-iest mall I've ever been in.

We then jammed back over to the monorail (…monoraaaail!.....monoraaaaail!) and went back to our ryokan to jam down some goods and primp for our big night out, hitting the clubs in Roppongi.


(More about the ryokan tomorrow.)


So healthy! (Not pictured: Giant box of cookies.)

We dressed in our fun-yet-entirely-covering clothing and headed over to Shinjuku for 9:00 PM to meet up with Keren and the gang. They weren't at the "usual" spot, so we hiked over to the Studio Alta building to see if they were there. It was raining and the lady at the ryokan had lent us some sturdy-but-large umbrellas, so we were prepared. When I passed people, I would try to not smack them with my umbrella. Upon passing this one man, I believe he was unaware I was as far left as I could go as I was against a wall and I ended but stabbing him in the ear with the edge of my umbrella. He screamed and held his ear. Poor guy.  After not finding Keren and the crew (which included this nice Japanese girl who said I looked like someone "who listens to heavy rock music and drinks a lot") for an hour, we finally stumbled upon them back at the "usual" spot…they were just really late. Nice. And off we trekked to Roppongi.

After getting to Roppongi, we were lost. Since I was going with a crew of locals, I'd assumed they would know their way. Nope. We wandered for about half an hour, finally showing up at a club called "Vanilla" around 11:30. The name should have been an indicator for us that it would be stacked full of mostly white people. The music was crap, the dance floor was crap and there was smoking and grossy white army boys everywhere you looked. The trains stopped at midnight and we should've/would've left if the cover hadn't been $20. Fast forward to 2:30 AM – Jean and I are hovering in the "Ladies Only" section, trying to avoid this guy who keeps hitting on Jean and napping a bit. We finally decide we've gotten all we wanted to get out of our money's worth and take it to the streets until the trains start up again at 5:15 AM. As we leave, we see a line-up outside. Why?!?! Why!?!? Anyways…

We head over to the nearest Lawson's (a convenience store) and pick up some steam buns, a tonkatsu sandwich, and some chocolate biscuits and we gorge. That took all of 5 minutes…now what? A couple shops down from the Lawsons we find a restaurant…that is open until 5AM! Whoo hoo! Now stuffed with food, we decide that more food is the answer to all of our problems. We sat in half-sleep mode and munched on some soup, fries, etc, listening to this clearly drunk couple from the club (the clubbies kept trickling in as the night wore on) where the white guy was trying to convince the Japanese girl to sleep with him. The guy was pulling out every sorry line in the book. Kill me. Or take me home to bed. Either or. Finally the clock got closer to 5 and we stumbled to the train. Moving from train to train since no rapids run that early, we finally reached the ryokan by 6:45 AM and daylight.

Tomorrow: seeing my boyfriend in 'Akumu Tantei', being a princess, and hitting the streets of Ginza.
I'm out.