Tokyo - the Land of the weird and the wonderful and the even weirder

Hello faithful readers, so here we are!

It's Sunday morning in Tokyo, just waiting for my sidekicks to wake up, so I finally have some time to scribble here. Hopefully you've seen the pictures on Facebook.

Where to begin? Hmmm . . .

Got up about half 6 on Wednesday, having only slept three hours (which kinda sucked). Then off to the airport and off to Heathrow, which is just ridiculously big. Seriously - what's up with that. I had to get two buses to get to my gate. BUSES!!!!

Anyway, it all went without a hitch, so I shouldn't complain. The flight to Tokyo was very long, though totally fine, and I couldn't sleep, so I was fucked by the time I got to Tokyo. And then I'd to wait two hours for Neena to arrive. On the plane I watched Iron Man 2 and Cemetery Junction, both of which were great, especially Cemetery Junction because I'd never seen it. The girl was pretty alright too. Also read a fuck load of Clive Barker's Imajica, which I'm really loving.

Neena arrived and we got the bus to the hotel, which took an hour or so, and since we were wrecked it really did feel like we'd flown the Ryanair route, but once the bus dropped us off, literally outside the fucking hotel's main door we felt WAY better!

The hotel, provided by my wonderful mammy, was the Courtyard Hotel Ginza and was totally awesome. I should probably have taken more (read: some) photos. It had free internets in the lobby but much MUCH more importantly, it had showers and it had beds!!!!

However, endevouring to defeat the jet-lag monster, we decided we'd stay up til 7 or 8 and thus showered, changed and went out for a walk. By half three I was nearly dead on my feet. We had a burger and chips and more or less headed straight back to the room, where I fell asleep by 6.

We learned little or nothing about Japan this particular day, but there are two things I'll tell you about.

1) Japanese toilets - there are two types, the traditional one (squatting over (sometimes quite a fancy) hole) which I have yet to use, and the bidet toilet which is actually from the future, where it's made by faeries.

[Oh sweet fucking baby Jesus, for a second there I thought I'd accidently deleted this whole page!!! Dear reader that coulda been a disaster!]

Anyway, yes, this toilet is literally made of awesome, some will even make a noise while your on it so no one can hear you going!

2) Japanese police cars: The sirens on these literally sound like the end of the world. We heard one and genuinely thought Godzilla was coming to destroy us all, or that the Americans were dropping another nuke. They're so loud you can hear them blocks away. They're not sirens, they're klaxons!

3) oh yeah, the other thing is the traffic lights. Almost no one crosses the road without the little green man. Quite seriously, the entire road could be devoid of anything resembling an automotive vehicle and still they wait for the man. We're getting into the habit, but it's still very amusing!

Day 2 - Friday 10th

You can probably see from the pictures that day 2 was both more productive and more amusing. First thing we did was get breakfast in Denny's, where I had the world's most amazing French toast - which is humorous and ironic because last Monday I was in town and went out of my way to get French Toast from Lemon on the basis that it'd be ages before I'd gt it again. Shane = 0, Japan = 1

Then we went on the Tokyo metro to a building with 7 or 8 floors of electronics stuff, including a huge section of toys and figures, where I shockingly bought nothing, but could easily have spent a couple of thousand (not hyperbole). I was lucky enough in that they didn't actually have two things I would have bought, except in the display case.

I did buy a sweet 14 megapixel camera though (you may have noticed). This is also where we first came across Japanese girls dressed up as (sexy) french maids, standing every few metres, handing out flyers and other things.

Neena has some better pictures, mostly because its just less weird for her to take them, if you know what I mean? What do you mean, you don't, please explain more Shane . . .

Well, Neena looks like a tourist when she does it, I look like a perv, see?

Also, same deal with the Japanese schoolgirls. I always just assumed that was just overly played up by western tv and stuff but I've come to realise, if anything, it's downplayed!

Also, we were in this one shop, that sold little anime knicknack stuff, until you just walked down one aisle and it was a porn-shop. Not anime porn (hentai), just regular naked Japanese girls smiling innocently off hundreds of DVD covers, out of fucking nowhere!!!!

So after a bit we jumped back on the metro (by far the best public transport network I've ever come across) and headed for Shinjuku, which is more downtowny, taller buildings and more neon. We walked past the Dubliner's pub and said we'd come back later for food.

Then we went looking for an internet cafe that the Good Book swore blindly was just right there, right there, but it wasn't. So we went into the building, looked on all the floors, walked up and down the street, swore blindly at the book, gave up and walked on, until Shane (that's me) stopped to point at a green frog face that looked like kermit, like one we'd seen the day before, and then we realised - clearly - that was exactly the place we were looking for, and so we were happy and booked a place to stay for the following night. Yay!!!

We then went back to the Dubliner's bar where I paid a tenner nearly, for a fucking bottle of Magners! Which is the second most I've ever paid for cider anywhere in the world. We did get some good chicken though, and really awesome chips!

Afterwards, we headed to Tower Records, but we didn't really plan on buying anything, because we'd already noticed earlier that Japanese DVDs are NOT cheap! We just wanted to see it. I'll skip over most of it, but there is one thing that requires a mention. Please look at the picture below.

I said LOOK AT IT!!!

I swear to god, if you're reading this and you didn't look at the picture, I'm gonna bitchslap you back to now when I get home. Those NINE [reasonably attractive] girls are ONE band. And before you ask, no, we really don't think they play instruments. They all just seem to dance. It's kinda like if Girls Aloud and the Sugababes joined forces and formed a band the likes of which has never been seen . . . Honestly, nine, what do they do? Do the fans even know all their names? . . . Maybe pop band member numbers are directly proportionate to home country population or something, who knows?

We also knocked into a guitar shop so Neena could oogle cool stuff that meant nothing to me.

Eventually, we moseyed home for the night, where Neena watched some QI, I read and then we went to bed because Sinead was arriving at 6 the next morning.

And because I'm so behind, I'm now writing this at night and Sinead has left for Odai again. But we'll see her on Thursday again.

I'll hopefully get time to catch up tomorrow, plenty to tell ye still, including hilarious Engrish and about Harajuku, and more, so tune in next time . . . whenever that might be!