TOKYO BABY
Thursday

After taking the overnight bus leaving Sanjo @ 11:30, I finally arrived to Tokyo @ 4:30 in the morning in Ikebukuro. Taking a train and a taxi to Shinjuku where our hotel was turned out to be not-so-bad and I got to our hotel at 5ish. I had to wait for Terren until 7 so I decided to take a lil nap: apparently a hotel lobby is the only place that you aren’t allowed to sleep in Japan because just as I was drifting off in dreamland, the hotel manager came and woke me up and told me that I couldn’t sleep there, so what did I do? Pretended not to understand him (even though he was speaking in English) and went back to sleep. Terren finally got there and we took off bright and early to go the Tsukiji fish market which is the biggest one in the world. The best times are from 5:30 am-8 and since I wasn’t planning on being up that early for the rest of the trip, we figured that this would be the day! Apparently restaurants don’t buy fish on holidays because the fish market was closed because of Thanksgiving. Only a wasted ½ hour train ride! So we decided to walk around Tsukiji for a minute then head back to the shopping district of Shibuya, then to Harajuku. After an exhausting day, we decided finally to head back to the hotel to check in and take a lil nap before dinner.

We met up with Terren’s boyfriend’s friends for dinner since they live in Tokyo and told us they would show us some good dinner spots. Since Tokyo is known for their themed restaurants we decided on one that was called “Lock Up.”

RING III...watch out now~

Tokyo has even the really really preverse ones. Makiko told me about one called Nopans Shabu Shabu where the guests sit on the floor tatami style an the waitresses are wearing skirts with no underwear underneath so people not only get dinner, but they also get a show. These extreme themed restaraunts are being outlawed as we speak and so if you are in the mood to try one of these quirky restaraunts, you should get on it quik because they may not be around for long.

For us more conservative:

The tables were in cubicles designed to look like cute little jail cells, you eat, enjoy your time… or so we thought! 1^st the restaurant is underground, so you have to walk down into a cave looking thing where it is completely dark. On both sides of the walk way there are cages filled with prisoners who jump out at you and sensors that set off the scariest machines as you walk by. There was one that was a guy getting electrocuted going crazy and spitting blood. It took us a ½ hour to finally get to the entrance of the restaurant after finally winding our way through the haunted house maze of an entrance, I guess it didn’t help that every few steps sent us screaming and running backwards up toward daylight! Anyways we get to the front, and Terren tells the waitress its my bday, so I get handcuffed and led around the restaurant! NOT COOL! We were then showed to our table which was a jail cell barely big enough to fit our table and we were LOCKED in. 2 minutes later the lights die, we hear screaming and the guard comes over the loud speaker and says that some prisoners have escaped! These masked demon characters pop up everywhere and scare the shit out of us. I didn’t see much more after the first 30 seconds because my eyes were closed and I was cussing and screaming more than my mom. The “show” lasted for about 15 minutes, we ate and had to leave through another haunted house type maze! A cool experience that I would rather not go through again! I had to go to the bathroom the entire time but didn’t because I was too afraid of what was lurking behind various corners!

After dinner, we went out to see what Tokyo nightlife had to offer.

Hachikō

The most common meeting place in Shibuya:

sometimes known in Japanese as 忠犬ハチ公 (chūken hachikō, lit. 'faithful dog Hachiko'), was an Akita dog born in November 1923 in the city of Odate, Akita Prefecture. In 1924 he was brought to Tokyo by his owner, Eisaburo Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at the University of Tokyo. During his owner's life, Hachiko saw him off from the front door and greeted him at the end of the day at the nearby Shibuya Station. Even after Ueno's death in May 1925, Hachiko returned every day to the station to wait for him, and did so for the next 11 years.

In April 1934, a bronze statue in his likeness was erected at Shibuya Station, and Hachiko himself was present at its unveiling.