With our time in Japan drawing to a close, Colleen and I
packed up our stuff and headed into the heart of Tokyo one more time where we
had to plans to meet up with Kiel and Peter.
Seeing as how our flight to Bangkok wasn't scheduled to depart until
around midnight that night, we had lots of time to kill. The first order of business was trying to
find somewhere to store our luggage for
the day, which turned out to be anything but an easy feat at Tokyo's central
transit hub during the chaos of the holiday season. Despite the fact that there were hundreds of
lockers in the train station, they were all in use and it took a good half an
hour of lingering around and waiting for the perfect opportunity to swoop in on
someone opening their locker and quickly claiming it as our own. Side
note: Anyone looking for a new and profitable business opportunity may want to
look into opening a "Japanese train station locker company".
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| Shit, Colleen just realized she is going to have to be living out of a backpack for the next two months. |
The day with my brother (Kiel) and surrogate brother (Peter)
started oddly enough when we went to a restaurant for lunch and had a middle-aged
white chick as our waitress. Not exactly
something you see every day in Japan (or ever for that matter!). After filling our stomachs we again attempted
to head over to the Imperial Gardens for the third or fourth time since arriving
in Tokyo. Not surprisingly, they were
still closed and we were forced yet again to take pictures from the outside and
resign ourselves to the fact that we were not going to see Tokyo's number one
tourist sight on this vacation.
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| Peter, Kiel, and Colleen looking suave outside the Imperial Gardens. |
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| Tokyo Tower and that weird sperm-shaped thing is the Asahi Beer Hall. |
Since the gardens were a no go, the four of us headed over
to the part of the city where Kiel and Peter had spent the previous night.
We strolled around for a bit amongst the hordes
of tourists and took some pictures of
Tokyo Tower and the oddly shaped
Asahi Beer Hall.
The real highlight of the neighborhood
was our pursuit of a small storefront featuring some seemingly crazy dude who
called himself "Inventor Man".
Peter had apparently stumbled
across the store the day before and wanted to show it off to us.
Eventually we found the small store front
that wasn't much bigger than a walk-in closet.
Outside we were greeted by some freaky mannequins, while inside we were
welcomed by an overly enthusiastic man who was eager for us to play some of his
games with him.
While there was a
definite language barrier between us and "inventor man", this was
easily made up by his love of beating the crap out of us at puzzles and
intellect based games. A super-friendly guy who was genuinely nice: it just
seems to be the way of the Japanese people!
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| Peter with his friends outside "Inventor Shop". |
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| Inventor Man schooling Kiel and I in the art of puzzles. |
Since "Inventor Man" made me feel like my brain
was not up to par, we decided to head back out onto the traditional tourist
trail and just do as the masses were doing.
We made our way over to the Senso-ji Temple, another of Tokyo's famous
landmarks. Leading up to the temple from
the subway station were tightly packed rows of vendors selling all sorts of
useless crap (see: cyclops glasses that would be awesome for driving in) and an
assortment of food (see: chocolate bananas aka orgasm in Brent's mouth). Not surprisingly, just like every other
temple we had encountered over the last week, this one was super packed and we
were just not that eager to wait in line to get in. So I did this next big thing...try to find
the most ridiculous looking dog possible.
Mission accomplished! Yes, I
found a dog stylishly decked out in denim pants. Fuckin' classic!
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| Nice shades. |
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Are those really chocolate bananas Colleen?!
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| The insane sea of humanity outside the Senso-ji Temple and surrounding area. |
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With the daylight hours starting to wind down, the four of
us headed across the city as Kiel and Peter were about to do something they had
not stopped talking about for the last week: make an Asian bukkake video check in to a capsule hotel. For those not in the know, capsule hotels are
basically cheap hotels where a person doesn't have a room, but instead sleeps
in a capsule or pod. Many of them only
allow men, and are apparently quite popular in Japan with suburban business men
who do not want to go home to their wives for the evening after a hard night of
boozing. Just type in the words
"capsule hotel" into Google and prepare to laugh your ass off. Unfortunately, the capsule hotel where they
were staying did not allow females inside, so Colleen and I could only watch
from the entrance way as Kiel and Peter checked in to their new digs. Once they were settled in, the four of us
headed on one final excursion to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, where we had
plans to take the elevator to the top and get one final breath-taking view of
Tokyo. Naturally, this was a complete
fail, as the lineup was excessively long and we did not have the time nor want
to wait that long. So, we just chalked it up as another FAIL during our week
over the New Year holiday season in Tokyo.
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| The dog is more fashionable than me. Not like that's an accomplishment or anything. |
Having just wasted a couple of hours making our way to the
Tokyo Metropolitan Building and seeing nothing, it seemed as good note as any
to leave Japan on. Colleen and I said
our goodbyes to Peter and Kiel, who would be staying in Japan for a couple more
days before making their way to Seoul, South Korea. For us, it was time to start thinking about
new locales; namely Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong! With that in mind, we doubled back to the
train station to pick up our luggage and enjoyed one final train ride and
monorail ride out to Haneda Airport where we would be catching a flight to
Kuala Lumpur before connecting on to Bangkok in the morning. Time to get tropical!
~Brentski~
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