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.