(Day 6) Sparkling City

Thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol consumed by some members of my party, food was in high demand this AM. We headed over to Ebisu Garden Place as it offered the most wonderful assortment of activities for the day. Usually we just go there to look at the stone sculpture thing…but today we’ll see a few more things.




My my…what have we stumbled on here? No really…can anyone read that? This dude was just flexing up a storm and the cameras were flashing.

We made our way into the hungry Ginza Lion restaurant and ordered the largest bowls of carbs on the menu while hundreds of blue Santas partied in the private room behind us.





After lunch we headed to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Kind of best museum of my life. Not because I’m part of the scores of people I know obsessed with anything and everything photography – it was because it was simply just a delicious display of completely moving photographs. I nearly both laughed and cried. It was wonderful. When we finally emerged, we had already hit evening. It doesn’t take long here, especially when you sleep in because of late-night shenanigans.



The square was still filled with people, but this time it was for not a large, muscular man, but for a gigantic sparkling chandelier. This is how the Japanese celebrate Christmas lights.




It has its own little glass room to protect the likely very expensive equipment from the elements. There were many seats in the square, just for patrons to sit and watch it twinkle.







It’s Christmas Eve-Eve y’all. The city is sparkling. For dinner, we headed over to Shibuya and Janelle convinced me that we should eat shabu shabu again. You know…it’s been like, two days, or whatever.





We did some shopping and wreaked a bit of havoc on poor little Shibuya. It’s no thang.




Yes…gentlmen. It’s easy to forget an “e” here and ther_.

We capped off our night with a bevy from Excelsior Café. Best hot chocolate ever.





You know what I love about Japan? They appear to be really concerned with citizen safety around construction sites. They go so far as to have a man whose sole job is to wave a baton for hours on end just to alert passersby. Mind you, they have a similar practice at the police station near our hotel – there’s a man who just stands outside the station near the gate on the road 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I love it, kind of. But it kind of also seems like an ineffective use of resources…



We were still pretty wiped out from last night so we crashed. Janelle crashed a little sooner than I did though…she’s buried in here somewhere:



Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve! Yippee skippie! We have a big day planned for tomorrow! We are going to the coolest Christmas concert on earth – TAO – followed by a LEX session. Three-letter words – EVE, TAO, LEX. Let’s make it rok!