Lack of content

Okay folks, so I am REALLY behind in updating this thing, but that is due to the fact that I have been oh so busy over the last few weeks. I went to Iga, an old ninja village. The next weekend I was back in Tokyo, and found out Indian curry+me=puking the next morning. This past weekend was four days and I spent them on vacation with my host family in Okinawa, which was awesome. I will put up pictures and more extended details about these three outings relatively soon. Hopefully this weekend! we shall see...anyway, I need to get back home in time for dinner.

The conclusion

So we got a late start Sunday morning. Molly wanted to get some studying done in the morning, Alaina showed me around her neighborhood...more specifically she took me to one of the best bakeries I have ever been to. I had this extremely delicious sugared donut, that, instead of being filled with jelly, was filled with sweet red bean paste. One of the best donuts in existence. There were also a bunch of other yummy goodies I picked up, since we were going to be heading to Molly's host family's house for lunch. When I bought the bread, etc, I realized the store's secret. There was what appeared to be a Frenchman working the stove. A little bit of Europe right in Tokyo. Then we headed to Molly's place and picked up some veggies to put in the tomato sauce. (We were having spaghetti.) After chilling out there for awhile, we made our way to Akihabara, the electronics district of Tokyo. Like I said, we got to a late start, so our time was limited and I didn't get to look at the game shops too much. However, outside one of the arcade there was a crowd of about 50 people all watching this one guy play Taiko Drum Master, a rhythm/music based game. More impressive/scary than the crowd was the fact that this guy had a group of about 4-5 of his friends doing motions and cheering him on as he played. Ahh, how I miss the days when arcades existed in America. Upon leaving the sensory assault that is Akihabara, we prepped to leave. We went back to Molly's place to pick up my stuff, and we headed to Shinkjuku to find my bus...which sounds much easier than it turned out to be. Luckily, Molly and I figured we might get a little turned, plus we wanted to grab dinner before I left, so we arrived in Shinjuku really early. After walking up and down the same street a couple times, we consulted a map (other than the microscopically tiny one the bus company gave me...) on the street. We found one of the buildings marked on our tiny map, so we thought we we're in good shape. Only problem is, it wasn't where the map seemed to say it would be. We decide to stop at the nearest convenience store and ask the clerk. It seemed promising, until I handed him the tiny map I had, at which point he furrowed his brow and said "Wow, this map is hard to understand. It isn't labelled very well." On top of his less than confident response, neither Molly nor I could understand him much through his dialect/accent. So...we wandered around some more. Everytime we'd find a building on the map and get our hopes up, the fact that the building didn't seem to be where it was supposed to left us even more confused. Next we asked a friendly looking cop who was watching over the crowd huddled around a Playstation 3 kiosk. He was extremely nice, and a bit easier to understand. We followed his directions, but it lead us to the Keio company bus terminal...not the company I was going with. So then we asked a guy near the station who had a police-looking uniform on, but he was rather rude to rejected me right away. I chalk it up to the fact that he was a old curmudgeon, and probably wanted to go back to talking to his buddy rather than working...oh well. None of that mattered, though, because we were soon saved by a random Korean guy. He and a couple of his friends not only offered to help (without us asking them) but they walked with us as we tried to figure it out. After another 10-15minutes of wandering around with these guys, we find the supposed spot, and we thank them profusely. Molly, being the nice friend that she is, decided to stay and wait until I got on the bus. Another 15 mintues pass, and the Korean guy comes back, saying he checked with a few other bus drivers and that this is for sure the right place. The level of kindness is incredible. Anyway, that's about the end of the Tokyo story.

Tokyo a go go

Okay, so I went to Tokyo for the first time...and it was pretty spiffy. But first, before I forget, I would like to raise an example of why my host mom is awesome. Especially now that winter is approaching and my room upstairs becomes a frickin icebox, I generally do my homework down in the huge living room. After my host mom puts the kids to sleep, she often comes back downstairs and makes tea for the two of us. This often leads to fun conversation in lieu of homework...let's be honest, what's more important? Anyway, to get to the point, what did we talk about last night? Star Trek. I was trying to explain the term science fiction, and as a long shot threw out Star Trek as an example. I've never been to much of a fan of the show until this summer, but I was shocked that not only she knew of it, but she used to what it with her dad and loved it. She also thinks Patrick Stewart is the shit, which he is. Then we spent awhile trying to recall Counsellor Troy's name and reminiscing about Data's various antics. Crazy. Now, onto Tokyo...
So, I decided to take the overnight bus from Nagoya to Tokyo and back, which I knew knew would be unpleasant, but we also arrived at Shinagawa station 1hr. 15min. earlier than scheduled. Thus, I was left waiting for awhile before Molly and Alaina would be there to pick me up. They are two of my friends who are studying abroad at Sophia University in Tokyo. So I wandered around for a bit and stumbled onto some amusing posters. ( I will post pics....eventually...) Once they arrived, we wandered around Shinagawa some more, but eventually decided there wasn't a whole lot going on, and we left for Shibuya. There we grabbed a bite to eat at a random cafe and then found ourselves a game center (i.e. an arcade). We coaxed Molly into playing DDR, and it was good fun. Then we went to Harajuku, which has a bunch of crazy little shops and is home to a more alternative, quirky culture. We scoped out this one T-shirt shop, and there were a few shirts I was tempted to purchase, but I held out assuming I would return to Harajuku before the weekend was over. That was not the case. One of the T-shirt I was looking at was a cartoony chicken, with the most dejected, defeated look on his face, sitting at a dinner table with a plate of eggs in front of it. We also stopped at this excellent store chain called Book Off, which sells used manga, CDs, video games, DVDs, etc. I felt like I should buy something, so I picked the first four manga in the 鋼の錬金術師 series, which transliterates to 'The Steel Alchemist,' but some of you likely know it by the English title Full Metal Alchemist. So I am looking forward to picking up the entire series. It'll actually make reading fun! Woo hoo!
Alaina was feeling sick at lacked the energy to walk any further, so she went home and Molly and I went to next door Yoyogi Park, once of the rare occasions in which you can see a decent amount of green in Tokyo. There were some folks out drumming, so I got a little taste of Madison in Japan. Since Alaina was sick, we decided to call it an early night. We picked up some sushi for dinner and headed back to Alaina's place to watch House on DVD. If you haven't seen House, do so immediately, it is dripping with sarcasm, and it rocks.
The next morning we went to Sophia's university festival in part to cheer on Maria, Alaina's Russian next door neighbor, who was participating in a Japanese speech contest. After the contest, we wandered the campus a bit, partaking in the various festival foods prepared by student clubs, the most interesting of which was the Frankfurter of Terror. The club went all out with a Halloween theme, despite the fact that it was a just a plain hot dog on a stick, but we had fun with the name. After that we headed to Tokyo station to see the nearby Imperial Palace. That was pretty darn cool. Of course, we couldn't make it inside due to tight security, but we walked the grounds, snapped some photos, and commented on how the air quality in Tokyo was noticeably poor. Granted, it was cloudy that day, but there seemed to be a general low-hanging haze. Alaina again returned for the night, but Molly and I went back to Shibuya and met up with Min, a friend of ours from Japanese class in Madison. She is not only studying abroad at Sophia, but interning with some marketing company...crazy Koreans. Anyway we ate at some place called Miami Garden, which apparently attempted to put a Miami twist on Italian cuisine, whatever that means. It was pretty standard pasta and pizza, nothing special. We then hit up a cafe for dessert. Along the way, though, we stopped at this store called Jeans Mate, and found some horribly bad engrish shirts. If it weren't for the style being a little too 'fashionable' for my taste, I would've bought one. Okay, this is getting longer than I anticipated, and class time has arrived, so I'm breaking Tokyo into two parts. Next up, Akihabara and getting lost in Shinjuku...