Tokyo Nights

It was our first extended weekend vacation and we'd been thinking about what to do for several days in advance. My roommate Delia knew for fact that she was going to Tokyo to meet up with some of her friends from Ireland and I decided that it was a good opportunity for me to see the city lights and nights that were so infamous in Tokyo. So that Friday after our test we packed up our stuff and got ready for a four day vacation to what would soon become the biggest adventure of our lives. We grabbed a train ticket to Tokyo after explaining several times that we just wanted the rapid and not the bullet train to Tokyo since we didn't want to pay over $100 to get there. After we boarded our first train, then our second, then our third, and fourth and so on we soon realized we may not have been finding the rapids. Instead we had ridden the local access trains all the way to Tokyo. What should've only taken 5 odd hours or so to get there took us more around 12 hours instead. As we arrived sometime around midnight we tried to find our hostel which was located in the Asakusa prefecture, or no man's land Tokyo as I liked to refer to it. After walking in the wrong direction for a good 15 minutes our weakened bodies and minds decided it best to dish out an extra $12 and take a taxi to our destination. We grabbed our free welcome drink and chatted up with the locals hanging out at the bar in our hostel before using the computer to notify everyone that we'd arrived and going off to bed.

The next day consisted of a trip to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Local access is pretty much blocked off so we got a distant view of the place but an up close and personal with the gardens located around it. After watching Delia's Irish friend offend the Japanese people in some of the worst possible ways (Ie: walking in the little water streams with out his shoes on in a place that strictly forbids it) we decided to leave the Imperial palace and make our way over to Akihabara electronics capital of the world. Now for those who know a little about Japan and Akihabara you know it's infamous for a strip that contains nothing but an anime lovers, manga readers, gamers fantasy. A street designated to everything that is anime, manga, and gaming. We checked out the giant 9 level sega play house awed by the employees cosplay choices (of which we were not aloud to take pictures of) But to give you an image picture school girl uniform and blue hair (for some this may sound like the familiar vocaloid miku, you'd be correct) another with bright pink hair and a maid's costume on. In the gaming world this is acceptable just as it is accepted in the district of Harajuku (a place known for the people that come to dress up and hang out on a bridge, also known for it's incredible shopping, just ask Gwen Stefani, she rather liked it). As the night grew nearer we knew that we had wanted to go to a club in Japan, and not just any club, a club that had been rated in a magazine for it's infamy some time before according to Delia's friend Eoghen. So before we did that we met up with an old Japanese friend of Delia's that had studied abroad in Michigan during her high school years. We sat, ate and drank with Miri and her parents who had hosted Delia during a stay in Japan prior to this. We met the infamous bar owner Masta and ate some of the most delicious and wonderful Japanese food we'd ever tried before.None of it did we pay for as the Japanese way to be awesome hosts is to treat the guest so Miri's mother and Father fit the bill and we continued on with the night with the idea of going to Karaoke in mind. As we got to the Karaoke bar we were checking out prices when all of a sudden several of us were pulled into a room with a bunch of random strange Japanese people. All of which were pretty wasted out of their minds and blasting out notes to an unknown Japanese song. They passed around a giant bottle of sake and after about ten minutes or so we left because the karaoke bar people were getting agitated and wanted us to pay for our own room but we didn't want to spend several hours in a karaoke room since the others really wanted to go to a club. So we hopped on a train to Shibuya where we ran into an extremely unpleasant drunken Japanese man. After taking our friend Miri's can of Sapporo beer the boys stepped in to her aid and began ticking the man off. He spoke no English but that didn't stop Fionne from talking his ear off in his thick Irish accent. After several pictures with the man in which at one point he'd taken my camera and began snapping photos of me and my friends before he finally departed the train at his stop.

We arrived at Shibuya and went to what was once called Club Pure, and what was once one of the most popular places in Shibuya, but no more as bigger better things had moved in to take it's place and Pure changed over to what it is now, but the sign for Pure still remains so the new name escapes me. We drank, we danced, and we stayed out until 5 in the morning as the trains stopped running at midnight and didn't start back up until that time. It was around that point that our group had gotten separated with Delia and I taking care of her drunken friend Fionne who was stationed outside the bar at one point asleep on some metallic stairs with a flow of drool coming from his mouth. The adventures ensued as we brought Fionne back to the hostel, one of the other Irish guys was aided by an Englishman to what the Engllishman thought was Asakusa, but was really Akasuka instead, the third Irish friend making it back with his seemingly impeccable skills of navigating the train but only while in a drunken state, our other friend from the JCMU program that we'd brought with us Taylor took Miri home and fell asleep on the train only to be awoken by the police telling him that the train goes no further and he has to get off all the while he'd somehow obtained my purse. So each of us had a story to tell from that night, Taylor's possibly being the most interesting of them all. I was thankful to have my purse back even though it contained nothing of value aside from a few bucks and my sunglasses since I had managed to take the camera and wallet out of there at some point during the night. Thus ending our Saturday night shenanigans.

Sunday rolled around and we woke up to spend the day in Harajuku where we shopped until we dropped. Literally. My feet were so sore from woken around the amazing Harajuku stores that I dropped to my seat on the train when we finally left. We saw costumes, music, clothing, Engrish and t-shirts galore as we looked through the back streets and alleyways of the Harajuku district. We took a few pictures with some people in costumes, watched some groups performing in the park some strange greaser themed dances as well as a group of 50's themed outfits and their choreography. We then headed back to the hostel to nap to prepare for another late night as we had planned to go to the original and best Irish pub in all of Tokyo to watch an Irish football game.

After a nap we headed over to the train station to meet Miri for some dinner and a drink or two. After several hours spent in a local Japanese joint we said our goodbye to Miri and made our way to Roppongi to watch the football match. As the match started at 11:30 we had once again to stay out until 5 in the morning. So we found a club in which we had the whole place all to ourselves and enjoyed spending the night their dancing away the morning. We left around the time the stations opened as we had scheduled an 8 am return bus to go back to Hikone and end our Tokyo Times. Once again we somehow got separated though because as Taylor and I had lead the way to the train station we'd bought and our tickets and as we'd turned around the rest of the group (of 4 people) had all somehow disappeared. One of the Irish guys made it back to the hostel shortly after Taylor and I and said the others were right behind him and should've been there any moment. So we packed up Taylors stuff and headed over to the girls hostel in hopes that Delia would be waiting there with the bus tickets and our luggage so that we could head back. As we got there it turns out no one was there and I was locked out of the room as Delia had the key and our roommate was asleep so Taylor and I sat out in the hall for a while waiting for Delia's arrival. After what was an hour or so of waiting our lack of sleep got to us and we fell asleep on the floor of the hostel hallway using the others shoulder as a pillow. We were woken up when Delia came back around 7:45 apologizing and saying they had gotten on the wrong train going the wrong way and wound up 30 minutes away from where they were supposed to be. As it was 15 minutes till our bus left we decided to go back to sleep in the beds and wait for the next bus around 11. As we got to the bus station we learned that the bus had been sold out until the night bus that evening and with the concern of time on our hands with class the next day at 8:50 we decided it best to just take the shinkansen or the bullet train back to JCMU and get there with plenty of time to nap/study and prepare ourselves for the school week ahead. Thus ending our adventures in Tokyo!