Posted by Justin

The Shinkansen is a beast! Think of Apex Twin’s video ‘Window licker’ The limo just goes on and on… well replace that with a train and multiply the length by a million billion squillion…. Well that’s what it seemed.
We purchased ‘unreserved tickets’ so finding the right carriage was quite a mission.

Reached home around 8ish and after a nice shower and MSNing - met up with the team in Shinjuku. Ben found out that CODE closed at 1am – (I’m glad cause hard house sucks). We were very hungry but Blanco demanded western food! As I was too tired to disagree, we made our way to Roppongi’s Hard Rock Cafe and went for a good old typical american steak (jap style). This may seem suprising, especially to my singaporean and malaysian friends but this was the first Hard Rock Cafe experience but I’m glad to say an enjoyable one.

We left the restaurant around 1am and faced the dilema of where to go. As Roponggi is Seiko’s home town, she knew best and we did a bit of bar hopping but I knew where we would eventually end up - the Lex Club argh.

The Lexington Club is purely aimed at westerners, the previous experience was great as the club was packed with sexy european models letting down after a hard days work of shooting. I was warned about going on weekends and so it was not suprising that on occasion we weren’t so lucky. Replace the models with meat head american marines - not nice!

It didn’t matter - we were with good company, good friends…
Except that everyone was too tired and too drunk. The night was one to remember due to a variety of incidents.

1/To start off the night Tdo fell asleep.

2/I was hungry and went off to find some snacks.

3/There’s always at least one old man at a club isn’t there. On this day there happened to be some old japanese business geezer, he was dancing like mad! He was definately making an impression with the ladies including a bit of pole dancing. There were a few situations where we thought he was going to have a heart attack. (Check the gallery)
The second old man was British, he had a pony tail and Ben and Chiacky decided to point and laugh at him. Turned out he was the owner of the club! Check Ben’s journal entry cause at this moment in time, I was eating away at a noodle bar and snacking at Lawsons. When I came back I saw Ben sitting outside looking miserable - ‘I got thretened of being kicked out and i’m not allowed to go near Chiacky for the rest of the night’, I couldn’t help laughing as it was quite a funny story.

4/When I returned around 3am I couldn’t find Seiko or Rie. Called, but either their phone was off or no reception - just heard the sound of an automated japanese woman. I was hoping to depart for the fish market at 5am but everyone’s stuff was locked up and seiko had the key.
4.30am - Rie came back to the club and told me Seiko was over drunk. Thats what happens with an open bar. Made our way to another club just around the corner on the 3rd floor of some skyscraper. We made our way though the fire exit where we saw a very paralytic Seiko. Poor girl, I think she wanted to vomit but couldn’t. Wasn’t long until she did on her trousers, her shoe, my hand. Oh well…

The owner suggested we’d take her down the spiral death trap stairs but no the lift was a must. Eventually made it outside where the fresh air did her a lot of good.
6am - Dropped seiko back home and made our way to the station.
@ Yoyogi station had a Curry Katsu at the noodle bar and went to sleep around 9am after a bit of gossiping.

Where were we last…. Ah yes, in the internet café about to go to out in Osaka. Well we did, but there were only very sinister (well I thought so) Hip Hop clubs, so instead we spent a good few hours in a restaurant instead.

If there’s one thing bad we have done with this holiday, its use the nights to their full potential. But I am not too impressed with the nightlife here, it seems to be nightclub or nothing. Would love to just go to a local pub and sit with a drink, rather than be hustled into some expensive (for here) bar.

So yeah, we went back to the capsule hotel (and found it! Go us!) by about 3 I think, to get some much needed sleep for our 9:30am wakeup.

It was so nice and peaceful, nothing to bother us… however in the next capsule, Justin had decided he wanted to look through the photos of the day… So beep, beep, beep, beep (every photo change, argh!) – this didn’t go on for too long though, and it went silent again….. until he decided to read his new books, which were all in bags wrapped in cellophane….. lol… I didn’t want to say anything, so just tried to sleep… and eventually I did

Until about 4am that is, when the guys from Leeds came back.. (mum you may want to skip this next part…)

They had obviously had a good night as they wouldn’t shut up about it, and made no attempt whatsoever to be quiet. Not even the stupid drunken whispers, just full on shouting across the capsules. This went on for about 20 minutes until they decided they wanted to watch some porn… but couldn’t get it working, so one of the monkeys was sent downstairs to get the keycard, which he did and proclaimed this to the whole hotel that it only cost him 1000yen… woopie fucking do! Ok, so not thinking it can get much worse… when they start to discuss how much they want a wank…. Eek! No nononononononononono…. This is shouted loudly across the bay, until they work out how the stupid key card thing works and finally get the TV on. Silence again (kinda, tv quiet) then one of them turns it up… so now we got loud porn blaring across the room….. before finally…. the noises start…. I will say nothing more, however I am now traumatised and never ever want to speak of the matter again. Case Closed

Decided against showers the next day, figuring we could have them at night, so got up about 9:40 to be out the hotel and to go shopping in Osaka (in the massive mall, where Justin was sure to be wanting some clothes!) Cue many hours of shopping and walking around, including however a trip to the Sony Showroom Centre where we got to try out all the new gadgets, including the robot dog thing, which is imho a much better replacement for the real thing.

Had to get back to meet Chiakiy and Tdu, so made sure we caught the Bullet back from Shin-Osaka at around 5:30, getting us back to Tokyo for 8pm, just enough time to head home for a shower, clean up and back out to meet everyone (including Seiko) at Shinjuku station to go to Code (supposedly one of the greatest Tokyo clubs, playing hard house and trance) – however when we got there, we found it closed at 1am (wtf?!?) and no one except me was willing to pay 3000yen for 3 hours.

This meant a trek back to the train station to head to the good old favourite Roppongi, to find something to do.. First eat though, where we went to the Tokyo Hard Rock Café (which had a live band playing at the time, and very good they were too!) and I was finally able to order large quantities of meat They had rather unfortunately run out of ribs, but could still do me a nice big chicken… hurrah!

Left there about 1, and went to a nearby bar. However Justin and crew weren’t too happy with it (and it was 1000yen a drink!!!) so we left shortly after entering to return to (and to J’s dismay) the Lex Club around the corner for all you can drink for only 2500.

It was really packed, a lot more than normally, especially with all the American Marines about, so not as much fun. We spent a lot of it sitting down in the sofa area by the dance floor, meaning we could get up and dance if we wanted to. We kept laughing at this old white haired guy who was going around checking everyone out, like dirty old man, until he came up to us and proclaimed that he was the owner of the club and if we didn’t stay away from Chiakiy, he would have her thrown out and call the police!!!

The jist of it was he would not believe she was not a young prositute!! (lol.. I guess that’s really rude, but quite funny when you look back) Something about too many marines here and it would all kick off… wtf?!?! Kinda put a dampener on the evening, until we sneaked away to the opposite side of the club where he didn’t seem to go. Phew.

If you look through the photos, you will see a really old guy… Haha that guy was funny, he must have been about 50 or so, but was properly drunk and really getting into the music, even trying his luck with some of the ladies. He took a liking to Chiakiy (who was horrified) so we spent 30 minutes or so dancing with him. He was properly mad, getting up on the stage and waving his arms about … hahahaha….

By this time, we had lost Seiko ages ago, and as we had to leave to get to the fish market, we needed to find her. However she was no-where to be found, and her friend was gone too. To make matters worse, all of Chiakiys stuff was in her locker, so we could not leave either until Seiko was found. We waited around for ages until her friend came back and asked us to come with her. I’ll leave that for Justin to tell, as I don’t know the full story…..

Home, sleep then oversleep and sleep some more (J had gone out sightseeing with Seiko by now, me stupid, just stay in bed) until I had to meet up with everyone later on in Roppongi to go to another club called Yellow. We paid our 3000 to get in before remembering we were supposed to have brought in some alcohol with us as its very expensive… a large sign on the door said no re-entry… so we thought we pretty much mucked that one up.

Luckily however, I was in my cunning plan mode, and taking Chiakiys phone, I stood next to the doorman, pretending I was on it, talking to my ‘friend’ who I still had his key for, and that I had to meet him at the station. This worked, so I was able to run to the Lawsons up the road to purchase some 300yen bottles of whiskey. On the way back, I got lost and had to ask directions. Not only did they 2 guys walk me back, one of them then gave me his demo cd!! I like the people here

Back inside the club, gave the whiskey to Justin who knocked it back in about 5 minutes… hahahaha…. We then had Chiakiy falling over saying she had drunk too much of it. After asking Justin why she was so drunk, he wasn’t sure as she had only had a tiny bit… lol… funny, she kept falling everywhere

I left the club early to go home, just not feeling right and then basically slept through until about 7 or so Sunday. Went with Chaikiy and Seiko (Justin stayed at home to revise) to go to a 24 hour family restaurant called Dennys (http://www.dennys.co.jp) where I had a lovely steak with the nicest bread roll you can ever have J I think Justin is glad he didn’t go as he would have been so disappointed!

This left me with nothing to do for a while, so I went into the arcades, managed to nab a Taito ashtray (cool!) and play my favourite game Final Fight For the first time ever I finished it, yay! I have photos to prove it and yes, I am the B in first place. I didn’t have time to put in my full name, but that B is me!!

Had to wake up early to go shopping this morning (Monday) so went to bed at a relatively good time……

Tired now, there is still Monday to write, but I am hoping J will fill everything in there, I’ll try to add a bit more tomorrow

Sayonara!

Blimey! Its been so long since I made an entry, everyday i wake up i feel all ‘out of it’, not sure why, i think i am oversleeping a bit too much!!!

Anyway, it seems justin has filled in the most block parts of the day (good boy!) so i will just fill in the blanks… btw, excuse my bad typing, the spacebar on the laptop broke, so we bought an external usb keyboard… but japanese… so the keys in different places!!! lol…

We seem to have been doing quite a lot in the evenings, but the days are always spent in bed sleeping (i guess cause of the tiredness factor from staying out all night…)

Making decisions seems to cause quite a few conflicts at times, as we both want to do different things, and i think this holiday is really testing our friendship, but it seems to be holding up, hurrah! Justin seems to be quite unhappy i dont; like japanese food… sorry japanese people, but your food sux!! All the types I do like, are apparently ‘western’ anyway, so don’t count…. don’t get me wrong, i would love to like it (its so cheap!) but its just nasty… cooked in, ummm, soya bean (i think misu) which reakes and is very offputting

Ok, hmmmm… where left off… well i think i had just bought the canon iXY 500, but the photos were so white it was unbelievable… just not good quality at all so i was determined to change it. Luckily the sales people seem pretty nice, and managed to swap it for a Casio Exlim exz40 (not out in uk yet) - good camera if you dont mind shed loads of noise wanted to take it back… but its so small and cute that i will keep it.. only £200 so no big loss… it will do until a better model is released (nothing else any good either) when i will get chiakiy to send it over

Thursday night we met Seiko for first time in Roppongi… she speaks so little english it was really, really awkward, but luckily after the drink had set in from Gas Panic (see j;s post) we started to get on a lot better… still not so good english, but can talk the language of smiles

Which incidently reminds me, since i have been here, i have had to dumb down my english (cut out a lot of words that are pointless) that i am worried i will not get it back when i get home!! lol… all the people we are meeting are female, so i am copying them… i sound like a frickin japanese chick! lol… when me and justin speak, so start with we talk slow, until we realise we are both english hahahahahahahahaha….

Erm anyway, yeah, so Thurday night was to celebrate justins start of birthday, so Gas Panic and then a club called the Lexington Queen… depending on the entry price, you either got 2/3/5 or 6 free drinks. There was only a 500 yen difference between 3 and 5 (currently 190 yen to the pound) so we went for the 5 drinks…. quite why i dunno as we were blatted after just the 2… lol… very good fun night, all range of music inc 2 or 3 trance tracks,. yay!

Oh, that reminds me… cost… Quite why everyone say Japan most expensive place ion the world i dont understand… its cheap as chips I guess somethings must cost a lot, but so far, most of my money going on Arcardes!!! Clubs cheaper than UK, drinks cheaper than London Central prices (Gas panic was only £2 per drink!), food cheaper, mcdonaldcheaper transport cheaper…. i love this place… You can have a bonza night out for so little… then the trains start a 5:30 (hell yeah!) so you can get home cheap after a night out, then get some food (read whole meal) in the local noodle bar for about £2!!!!

Hehe, I’m jumping about here… really can’t remember what order… its now 2/3am or something and i am parched! lol…. erm…. oh yeah, dont buy porn mags from the convenience stores. Japanese law prohibits showing of genitalia, so porn mag = naked woman all fuzzed out.. lol… it would be more attractive if she were dressed - if you want ‘proper’ stuff, head to shibuya or shinjuku… i can’t confirm this, but word on the street says there is no censorship in the more seedy shops…..

Shibuya is a wicked place… massive tv screens on highrise buildings and many many lights (admittedly daytime it doesn’t look so good, but at night its awesome… very very pretty) - its the #teencapital# of tokyo (or one of them, the other one is apparently harajuku) and many can be seen wandering the streets with their millions of shopping bags. You get the dodgy looking ‘Ganguru Girls’ here too… they look like sh*t, with really really tanned brown faces and really bright makeup… i don’t understand… the kogal’s (just lots of brightmakeup, short skirts, loose socks etc…)
however are a lot more appealing to the eye….

Right, so now we are up to Friday… i have a feeling i was asleep all day until late… but knwoing justin we probably went shopping at some point… i have managed to aquire about 10 Kanji t-shirts, so am quite happy, but there is a shop in Harajuku with some Kanji Style jeans!!! Well gow you always wanted to get me in jeans, maybe now you will… if they can get my size in i will buy there

Ahhhh… which reminds me… kanji clothing… so hard to come across… The japanese love english charatcers, so everything in flipping english… grrr… its funny though, justin bought a tshirt which makes heck all sense… it does go on about having sex with little children though?!?!!? and mudmud! wtf!!

Harajuku is our local walking distance shopping place.. its quite nice, big screens again and right next to Yoyogi park, which is very beautiful and houses a japanese temple (well its not going to be american now is it?!?! haha) There is a place called ‘KiddyWorld’ there… just a huge 5 floor toyshop.. but its awesome! any money i have left over at the end of this holiday will be spent there.. they have a lifesize (human size) Doromon (sp?) which costs over £200!!!! I have bought a fwe things so far, but will definately return…

Friday night for Justins birthday, we went out to Chiakiys house in Arakawoki (in Ibaraki) where her mother took us to a traditional japanese restaurant. Was very nice (see i do like some of the food!) but i dont want to imagine the cost… Chiakiys mother has been so kind to us this holiday, i am trying to think of something really nice to do for her… maybe something in Kyoto, or take her out or something… Afterwards, we went to a 24hour karaoke bar (so different to how i imagines, you get your own room rather than sing to otherr people, good in a way, but it would be nice to have an audience) - so if you see the photos, its me and j, Chiakiy (the non japanese looking girl ;)), Michiko (Micha) Chaikiys best friend and Tdu (works at Burtons, (snow board shop) with Chiakiy)

That ended at about 5:30 or something, when we had to go get the train back to Tokyo, to sleep ready for the big saturday night out in Shibuya… Unfortuntely, we also had to get up a 3pm to go get Chiakiy from the station, so it wasn’t all bed of roses… Didn’t do too badly though and was up by 2 to pick her up… didn’t show until 3:30… doh!

Chiakiy had not been Tokyo before, so we figured it would be a good time to go for a bit of a sightsee.. Decided on Tokyo Central as it sounded important… but not really anything there… Did walk to the Imperial Park though, there should be some photos… very beautiful and some cool trees which you dont get here.. Walked around it for a bit then followed the road to Ginza, the most expensive part of tokyo. Kinda same thing, big buildings lots of lights, but very nice all the same. Bought the new GunsnRoses cd from HMV for only £9 (see, japan cheeeeep!) though was pissed when the sales guy took the Kanji bit out to put in another one… grrrrrrrrrr….

For night out, decided on Club Pure in Shibuya as it was only 2500 yen (£13) with all you can drink… wicked idea, wicked club.. worked very well. We had been warned off the place, but inside it was so nice, loads of sofas, films on big screens for if you get tired (with english subtitles, oh yes!) and of course the free drink policy… ya ta!

That finished at about 5am, when we went to the arcades and then to a noodle bar to get some breakfast (noodles with fried beef… yummy!) then home to bed.

Sunday was really boring as it just rained all day, and did absolutely nothing… so no photos… nothing to write…

Today, hurrah! I can’t believe it, i’ve only been writing 45 minutes and i am up to now… yip!

Woke up so late, but didn’t want to get up… Justin left to go (suprise suprise) harajuku, went and met him later on at about 5pm… soooo sleeeppy!

Decided to meet up with Seiko again, which is cool… its good to have friends here to go and play pool. Went to some pool hall, which charged per hour not per game.. Cool, except Chiakiy and Seiko never played before, so we didn;t excatly get the most for our money. Especially when only after 2 hours and 1 drink each the bill came to over £35!!!! feck! Not worth it, stupid place! Should have gone bowling like i wanted to! ha! Which reminds me, Chiakiy and Sekio now becoming friends. This is good as C not know anyone in Tokyo, but S say she can come and stay at her house awww… teamtokyo bring people together! nice one !

Chiakiy had to go home for work tomorrow, so took her back to station and went out for some dinner .., lovely, chicken curry with burger, sausage, prawns and scrambled eggs for only £4!! i LOVE japanese food, hahaha, i’m sure justin will have something to say about that…

Now then, just back home writing this, when i should be sleeping as we need to be up early tomorrow to catch the BulletTrain to Kyoto… gonna be about £150 return, so only gonna make the trip once. But staying over 1 or maybe 2 nights to get the most out of the place. Credit cards can be useful after all (even if the fricking payments take one month to process!!!!)

re the Sakurs house rules… seems everyone just says ‘f*ck it’ so its not as strict and crap as we thought it would be.. MSN and ICQ work (though I have so far had anough will power not to log on) and the FTP to put the pictures up works great…

One shocking thing.. we think our 1 meg broadband is fast (or 2 meg if you really push it) here in Japan you get for 4500 yen (22ish pounds) 100meg broadband.. yes… thats right, you did read that correctly.. i will try and scan in the advert to prove it… would love it at home, though the upstream is not so good, but then i guess you can#t have everything….!!!

People are really nice and friendly, no trouble seen yet (unless you count the 60 person fight / double mafia murder outside gas panic… but that was Yakuza related, so doesn’t really count) - Chiakiy even dropped her purse in an arcade, abd someone came running out to give it back… i wonder in england if the same thing would have happened.

A lot of the people in our block are here for a year teaching english. It seems like such a simple thing to do, maybe I would like to do it when I finish Uni…. i will see… but definately something i will think about… Everyone have so much fun and you only work 4 hours a day, not bad considering you get to take home about £1000 a month…

Phew… well now I am knackered, if i think of anything more, i will write,,, but probably not for a few days unless we net cafe in Kyoto or something. I need to pack my clothes now, though Justin is sparko, so will need to get it done in the morning.

Bai Bai!

Posted by Justin

Decided to look at the Sakura since it was such a warm sunny day. Decided to go to Yoyogi Park which is about 10 minutes from our apartment. George(Guy from Norwich who lives upstairs) told us that there’s a Sakura ‘rave’ in the park on Sunday. should be interesting. Unfortunately, we have double booked with terrence on that day - supposed to go to a car show in Odabai.

Walked past Harajuko, excellent place to shop! went to kiddy land which is the a the place my girlfriend becky dreams about. five floors full of hello kitty, doraemon, gundam, dragon ball, argh you name it… so cool these jap kids are so lucky. Soft toys everywhere!!! damn cute I must ship some back.

Yoyogi park is just at the end of harajuko, don’t know why it’s called yoyogi as it’s in harajuko… The park is beautiful, cherry blossom, traditional japanese trees, shrines, temples, so peaceful.

>>> I can’t believe i’m writting this now… just been singing karoke all night >>>and can only sleep for 3 hours as we’re meeting chaiki at the station at 3pm

Well anyway.. after that, went to electric city - ben wanted to return his digital camera (ixy 500) fussy boy…haha the japanese sales people were so helpful, they all crowded round to help ben out - trying to figure out the white balence or something, in the end he exchanged ti to a casio exilim.

Had to rush back as I had to meet Seiko at 8pm at roppongi station… turned out we arrived around 10sih.

Roppongi is such a western part of tokyo. I hardly seen any policemen on the streets but in roppongi, there are plenty - I wasn’t suprised. You get bouncers trying to force you into their clubs, hading you so called drink tokens haha. pissing off, they targetted ben the most due to his striking blond hair.

Well met Seiko infront of the mitsubishi bank and proceeded to the ‘911′ bar. Drinks seems to be over 5 quid everywhere you go…but luckily she showed us ‘Gas Panic’ 400Yen a drink. Slowly all of us got very… very… pissed.

Eventually ended up at a club called ‘LEX’ 3000 yen with 5 drinks.

–I’ll fill in the details later–

The club finised at 5am, shops were still open at this time and it was daylight. I guess it’s why Japan’s called the land of the rising sun???

Got the train at 5:29am back to yoyogi station. Ate at the local restaurant bar - rice with kimchee and some other stuff thrown in.

A nice start to my birthday