Red-Light District (Day 11)

Before dawn cracked, I was up. I had gathered my crap together the night before, so it was just getting my butt to Kyoto station by 8:00 that I was worried about. I was at Misasagi by 7:15, Yamashina by 7:25, and Kyoto by 7:35. I wandered among all the salarymen waiting to catch their train back too. Nope, no one here like me.


Mine's the Hikari. Nozomi is the fastest bullet train and is not covered by my rail pass.


At my best.


My ship coming into port!

I rove the shinkansen. So speedy, quiet, and clean. This time I had requested a window seat, so I ate some shrimp rice crackers and listened to my lectures while zipping through the countryside. I would occasionally giggle at the thought I was in Japan, on a bullet train infested with salarymen sleeping.



After getting back into Shin-Yokohama, I booked it back over to my turf in Tachikawa and checked back into my lovely little hotel. Then it was off to the station to meet Jean and hit up Minato for the Studio Ghibli museum.











The Ghibli Museum is home to a lot of Japanese animated movies such as "Spirited Away", "Castle in the Sky", and "Howl's Moving Castle". It's also the home of Wallace and Gromit! The museum is really popular, so we had to purchase the tickets in advance, while still in Canada for a specific day. Since we aren't allowed to pictures inside the museum, here's a few I've found on the internet:












The entrance ticket


Me and Jean had both seen this picture on the internet beforehand and were trying to find this DVD player in the gift shop, but they didn't carry them anymore. Boo!

The museum was really neat, but crammed with children and their parents. I could take pictures outside, so I did.













Upon leaving (after trying to ignore this pasty white emo guy on the exit stairs) we got lost trying to make it back to Kichijoji to go for a ride on the swan boats!



They were closed that day. Boo! I think the lady said the swans were taking a nap, actually. Unless I dreamt that. I can't remember.

We bopped our way back to the shopping arcades from last Friday as Jean wanted to pick up some more souvenirs and ended up deciding on shabu-shabu for dinner. We were starving at 4:15 and the place opened at five, so we sat outside and waited and chatted. Once the doors opened, we were there, ready to cram our faces – and so we did.





Shabu-shabu is a giant pot of broth and you go grab a bowl full of veggies and noodles and dump them in, let them simmer, and then grab some beef or pork and swirl it around in the broth with your chopsticks until it is cooked. It's 90 minutes and all you can eat! And so began our night of indulgence.

Since Wednesday is ladies' night at the theatres in Japan, we were going to go see Akumu Tantei (Nightmare Detective) if we could find it. We decided that Shinjuku was maybe our best bet, so we headed there and began to wander the streets, along with the millions of others. We found many theatres, but none were playing the movie, so we decided to adventure down into the red-light district, kabukicho – what an idea, hey? Jean had been here previously (only to stare at everyone else down there, by the way.) We had NO plans to do anything unsavory, just so you know. We made plenty of jokes about the love hotels, the gentlemens' clubs, the escort bars, etc and gawked at the male pin-ups outside said places (until the door opened and some of what looked the said pin-ups emerged – awkward!) We decided that as white girls, we could probably make at least enough money after a week (hopefully less, but we don't the skills down pat) to buy a Louis Vuitton bag. Er..yeah.

We wandered Shinjuku for a while after leaving kabukicho to keep looking for a theatre and/or a crepe, since I still hadn't had one of these insanely-delicious smelling concoctions yet.


This says karaoke.

I soon concluded that our night wouldn't be complete without an insane sugar-rush, so I suggested that we go to the Sweets Paradise place we discovered last Wednesday in Shibuya which allows you eat as much dessert as possible in 90 minutes. We gave up on the theatre and jumped on the next Yamanote train to Shibuya.















Blah…I get some phantom sickness just looking at these pictures.

Not to be put off by a little bit of sickness, we decided that we would cap off our adventure with some karaoke. Oh…besty McBest.





We then booted it back out of the karaoke place by 11:45 to hop one of the last trains out. Phew. I was a-buzz with adrenaline. Sugar + karaoke = holy crap fun.

EDIT!!: I can't believe I forgot to post our purikura for that night! My apologies for making you miss out on our retarded fun.



Tomorrow: Giant Buddha! More buffet! Last night in Tachikawa…sniff sniff.