Day 3:

OK this is late. I've been busy all week long as the movers were in packing up my house.

So here it is. I must have been still drunk when I got up around 7:30am. I had to wake up Jonah, the new edition to the guys sleeping in the basement room. He had to be at a synagogue at somewhere in Hiroo. So got him up much to his protest of wanting to sleep in a little more. Showed him how to use our weird ofuro shower so that he wouldn't set the water temp too high or anything dangerous.

I spent the rest of the morning uploading and editing some of the pictures I had taken of the band the night before. A lot of them were blurred due the small maximum aperture of only f3.5. Canon skimping on the kit lens that comes with the rebel. Not all were bad and happened to get a few cool ones. There was one Annica really liked of the female lead singer holding a whiskey glass but silhouetted by the bright stage lights.

The plan was to get out of the house around 10 or 11 to go to Takeshita Dori in Harajuku. (I call this part of Tokyo crazy town.) Didn't really go according to plan as the guys were still asleep. Eventually after a filling breakfast which was either home cooked or kombinie can't remember. We wound up leaving at noon. Got to Harajuku and then stuck in the most jam packed crowd I've ever been in walking towards Takeshita Dori.

We eventualy hit Takeshita Dori and decided to split up with the girls so that they could shop while the rest of us could walk through the street. The guys and I walked 3/4 the the way through the street and met up with some other students from JCMU who just happened to be there too. Unfortunately the two other guys were stuck because the two girls who were with them were stuck in a store buying stuff. Very typical. Kudos to Cameron for suggesting that we split up. We found a neat t-shirt shop that sold stuff written in amusing Japanese. One in particular was "I only believe in Yaki-niku" the great tasting, stir fried beef on top of rice from places like Yoshinoya. Then we turned around and headed back to the other side to the Starbucks to meet the girls again.

After a short while of standing in front of Starbucks and missing every opportunity to snap a picture of the doll girls walking by because we were too preoccupied talking about other things, the girls showed up and asked for another couple of hours shopping.

We decided that we would walk all the way through Takeshita Dori and come out in front of Omotesando station. The walk took over an hour as we got stuck in a human log jam. I've never seen as a congested crowd as this one. People trying to go in opposite directions against each other, push and shoving until the coefficient of friction was broken and then the log jam became a river. We made it out the other end and walked up to the entrance of the Meiji Shrine where more people in ridiculous get ups were posing for photographs. People dressed as animie characters, goths, emos, and just plain weird. There was one guy who was dancing to his i-home sweating profusely and he continued to dance the rest of the afternoon. He was a terrible dancer but at least he was enjoying himself, or maybe he was on speed or x.

We had to head back to meet the girls at Takeshita dori across the street from the Omotesando eki. That took forever, they were stuck in the people jam. Jonah called and needed directions to find us. We settled on meeting in front of the really horrible street dancer. All of us met up in front of the entrance to the Meiji Shrine and decided to go in and take a look. I think I've visited the meiji shrine at least 4-5 times now so I won't go into detail, it's a shrine.

After the shrine, we were back in Shimo and had dinner at the place called "Mother's." Very intricate mosaic design out front with a rustic interior, tables and chairs made out of tree trunks. Nice place, slow service and you had to buy at least one drink. I had the most expensive bottle of ginger ale and plate of Nasi Goreng ever. All our meals came one at a time. Nice hostess/bar tender/cook who was from Lithuania.

The rest of the evening was spent wandering around shimo trying to decide on a karaoke place or bar after which we decided bother were too overpriced and instead settled on a kombinie crawl instead. The Kombine crawl is like a pub crawl but instead you go to convenience stores. The rules are two things must be bought by each person at each convenience store, one of which has to be a drink. We didn't really go far but had a good time and that was the end of day 3.