Day 65 - I would say that this ranked as my 65th best night's sleep since leaving England.
Having extended my stay in the cafe by 6 hours, and moved to a larger, comfier seat, I watched about a week of neighbours, chatted on MSN and read back issues of B3ta. Due to my inability to resist the lure of the Internet, I got to sleep about 5 am, and was turfed out at 6 - in total I got about half an hour's sleep. As I was up anyway, I decided to head to Tsukiji fish market which is the largest fish market in the world. I net a bloke there called Al who was a post-doc in Electronics at Imperial, and was in Tokyo for a conference. We met in a Sushi place, where I had some of the nicest, freshest sushi I've ever had. Presumably all the fish is straight from the market to the plate, and it was worth the somewhat higher than usual prices as a result - I also had the fatty belly of tuna, which was 400 yen per piece, and worth it. It was almost buttery in texture, and melted in your mouth. After a long browse in the lonely planet I decided to head off to Roppongi via Ebisu, to look at the fancy architecture there. However, I fell asleep on the subway and decide it was probably best to find a capsule and have a nap. I found one just around the corner from the station and booked in for an hour (ended up staying 2) for 500 yen. I made a few observations about Japanese TV while I was in there - there was a channel showing someone playing Pachinko, and nothing else. There was a quasi-titillating show involving girls in bikinis, seemingly in an office meeting room, blindfolding each other and trying different types of noodles, then celebrating getting it right by bouncing around. There was a channel, at noon, showing weird porn, but all genitals were so pixellated that when the camera zoomed in it just looked like someone was juggling Rubik's Cubes with only two colours.
Refreshed and showered, I walked to Shibuya, to the big crossroads you always see on TV shows about Tokyo. It was impressive, a huge surging mass of people for the entire time I was there. I found an internet cafe and rang a couple of Hostels, both of which said they were fully booked. I emailed Sakura hostel in Asakusa, who auto-replied saying that they would check and I should wait for a reply, which I did. For an hour. Just as my time was up, I got a reply saying that I had a room, and no longer had to sleep in another 'net cafe/capsule, which was a massive relief. I headed to Harajuku to go to the park and marvel at the people who supposedly would be thronging the streets with their weirdness, but due to the fact that it was (a) cold, (b) 4pm and getting dark, and (c) Saturday, there was noone about really apart from a few skaters. There' s a chance I went to the wrong park as well, but that's not important. I got to the hostel at about half 6 last night, having lugged my bag, which now somehow weighs about 25 kg, through the streets. I met some cool Aussies here, (Kate, Jay, Murph, Dr Ew and another one) and a Canadian guy called Jason, who lives in Seoul and seems keen to meet Leo etc. There were also a load of Argentinians here to support Boca Juniors in the club world cup here, who were singing loud football songs, clapping and shouting. At one point they got out an enormous (20m +) flag and started waving it around - the guy behind the desk objected and tried to roll it up, and when he wouldn't let go one of the Argentinians punched his arm to try and release the flag - there was a small ruckus, but nothing too unpleasant. We drank and chatted for a while, and they weren't really too up for going out, until Jay and Dr Ew got talking to a couple of Swedish girls who were going out for Karaoke, Easily swayed, we all ended up going - it was a shaky start (bad songs were chosen, noone knew enough words) but pretty soon, partly due to the choice of Last Christmas as a singalong and partly due to the 2 hr all-you-can-drink deal we had going on, we were all singing our hearts out. We got in about 3 this morning, and I ended up watching The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift purely because I recognised bits of it. Sort of like justifying watching all of Rush Hour 2 because you've been there - in retrospect, an error.
Day 56 - Somehow I managed to get up and into Yokohama for 1 today, where I met Hana - we had a great time, just walked around the (future harbour) area for hours, had a wicked meal, encountered an all Japanese gospel choir singing Christmas songs, swapped stories from the last few years and saw quite a lot of the city. But mainly, we walked, almost non-stop, for 3 1/2 hours - I reckon we covered about 10 miles in all, which is why (in conjunction with the shedload of free cocktails and the lack of decent sleep for a couple of days) right now I am absolutely exhausted. Just by where we had lunch there was a trio of female violinists in gold dresses playing Christmas songs, which overwhelmed me a bit due to my fragile state - I suddenly felt all festive and warm, much as I did when we saw the gospel choir as well. Yokohama seems pretty nice, has a manageable feeling about it, probably due to the comparatively few towering buildings they have there.
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