tokyo day 3

So we have been home for about 1.5 weeks and I am finally getting back to updating the blog. I wanted to post a few times while traveling, but most nights we ended up back to our hotel pretty late. My goal is to post a blog per day of our trip because we truly did a lot.

So, as I said in the last post, day 3 of Tokyo was spent in Harajuku and Shinjuku. First thing in the morning we headed to Harajuku. For anybody familiar with Japanese fashion craziness, you certainly know about Harajuku. There is a little street of shops filled with tons of teenagers dressed in everything from punk anime style clothes to porcelain doll to house maid uniforms. It really is something to be experienced.

Another great thing about seeing Harajuku is that beyond the highschool wild fashions lies a district of top notch fashion stores. The contrast from skateboards and bicycles to Porsches and Ferraris in just a matter of steps is pretty awesome. Of course Melissa and I aren’t at a place where we can spend that kind of money on clothes, we were able to find a pizza place(thanks Cravak) that had a buffet of American style pizza. This was an instant victory.

Later that afternoon we headed to Shinjuku which is famously known for it’s red light district Kabukicho. Some of you may think this sounds a bit strange or shady, but we wanted to see the area because it truly is party capital in Tokyo. In fact, there are literally thousands of bars in just the Kabukicho district alone.

Before nightfall Melissa and I walked around and noticed a large amount of bars that could house no more than 4 people at the bar. These tiny little bars were really cool to me because I could only imagine how expensive it is to rent space there yet they find a way to stay open. That thought alone was enough to scare me from entering(50 dollar cover charge anyone?).

Once night broke the streets were flooded with people pouring out to bars and shady red lightesque things. We really enjoyed just people watching and eventually found a cat cafe. What is a cat cafe you might ask? Well it is basically a coffee joint that you pay a premium on but while you are drinking coffee you are joined by a host of extremely clean cats(customers are required to wash their hands). Only in Japan… Anyways, we considered doing the cat cafe but opted to get a drink at a Scottish pub instead.

Some of you probably think it is strange to drink at a Scottish pub, but after living in Aomori for so long and being unable to find import beers it seemed like the correct choice. I was VERY pleased with my choice of drink. I had a couple Belhaven St. Andrews Scottish Ales. I seriously hope that I can find more of that beer back in America because it was extremely delightful. Japan is quite devoid of creamy ales unfortunately.

Full on fish and chips and tasty drinks, it was time to say goodbye to Tokyo. The next morning we would be flying from Tokyo to Hiroshima.

Adam