Tokyo Drifters

Tokyo is a crazy place.  Now, we’ve been to a lot of really crazy cities - huge crowds, gridlocked honking traffic, major air pollution, stray animals, burning garbage.  Tokyo is crazy in a whole different way.  Organized crazy.  Efficient crazy.  12 million people going about their daily business at the same time and the same place, and it’s like a well-oiled machine. Nobody bumps into one another, nobody jay-walks, nobody spills their latte.  Any problem or hardship ever faced by any human at any time in the history of man has been thought about and dealt with by the Japanese.

Lost?  Just look around, you’ll find a map on every corner.

Can’t read the Japanese menu?  That’s okay, there are pictures.

No time/space for a pet?  Just rent one.

Run out of toilet paper? The toilet will give you a little freshening spritz and a blow-dry and a song.

Your shihtzu getting mangled by the great dane at the dog park?  The dog park is separated into weight classes.

Miss the last train home to the suburbs? Stay in the city and sleep in a drawer for cheap.

Don’t like beer (like me)? Drink sake!!!!!!

And the list goes on.  And everyone is so well-dressed and formal.  Even the taxi drivers wear a shirt and tie and white gloves.

Seeing as these are our last days of travelling, we felt the need to get the most out of them as possible.  So we hit the town hard.  We saw temples, shrines, trains, noodles, rice, electronics, parks, vending machines, neon lights, harajuku girls, and of course sushi.  We did weird stuff like visiting a cat café – we thought that we could rent a cat by the hour for a one-on-one cuddle session, but it turned out that a cat café is just a room full of bored lazy cats and coffee.  We woke up early to go see the famous fish market, but ended up just stuffing ourselves with breakfast sushi and completely missing the market.  We (along with half the tourists in Tokyo) videotaped a cycle of the Shibuya Crossing (supposedly the busiest intersection in the world).  We went to Tokyo’s version of Central Park and watched warring factions of Japanese ‘50s greasers (think Danny & Sandy) have a dance-off.  This city is GREAT!  We’re only just getting warmed up, and now we have to go….

-E

Smoking and walking - not okay

The king of concrete jungles

Luring the kitties with food morsels

Gully tries to tempt the kitty into cuddling

Waiting for the train

Does this place look familiar?  Look closely... this restaurant is the inspiration for the setting of the big massacre scene in Kill Bill

Shibuya Crossing - everyone is out for a Sunday stroll

Go Greased Lightening, you're burning up the quarter-mile.....

We come all the way to Japan for authentic sushi:  hamburger nigiri

Sake!

Luxury: $8 per piece

Not so luxury:  Our not so spacious accommodations

After eleven months on the road and on our way home, you can imagine that we're pretty anxious about what the future holds for us.  Thankfully, our Japanese fortune really cleared things up for us:

We're doomed