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.

Ok, we have done a lot since the last entry, travelled miles across Japan Am now sitting in an internet cafe in Osaka, but more about that later,

Despite getting up late on Wednesday, we were determined to get to Kyoto, so went off to Tokyo Central to get the Shinkansen (sp?) which is the Bullet Train to your normal people. Shock horror, it cost us 70quid each, one way, but we wanted to try it so coughed up

The train was so clean and smooth, i don’t know what a Eurostar is like, so can’t compare, but to normal British trains it woops their asses! Whole journey took just over 2 hours with no problems, we even managed to get off at the right stop.

When we got there though, we wondered why we had bothered, it was exactly the same as Tokyo, just a lot more cheap looking… to say we were upset is a bit of an understatement, we were distraught that it had cost so much, but were determined to make the most of it. To save ourselves some extra money, we decided not to bother with a hotel but to rough it instead, meaning we could go straight out.

Walked around for quite a bit until we decided we would catch a train to a station which looked like it was near some shops. Now, something you should be aware of here… there is JR Rail which is the overground and Subway (which is obviously underground) however the ticket machines look (sorta) similair so of course we bought the wrong one. We only realised this after we had then gone onto the JR platform, so headed back to the ticket office where we were actually given a refund!! (lets see that in england!) and told which ticket to buy.

Dont ask why, but we again bought (the same!!) JR ticket but this time went down to the subway. It of course didn’t work, and we were sent back up to get another refund (boy did we feel stupid!) before we could finally get our tickets! lol…

Sanjo was a lot different from the city part of Kyoto, with more bars and nice scenery (though still pretty city based) however it did make us feel a lot better. Went to an all you can drink for 1500yen and tried to make the most of it, but got turfed at 12 as everything shut!!?!?!

This of course left us with nothing to do but wander the streets and try to find somewhere to sleep. No mean feat when its freezing cold and pouring with rain! doh! After trying to sleep on a step to the metro, justin got fed up and insisted we had to move on….

Only place left open was a Karaoke bar, so we proceeded to sing the rest of the night away (and cheekily sit in the foyer for the final hour when we ran out of money :)) - Left there at about 5:30 to walk down the canal for about 6 miles and watched the sunrise

Wasn’t sure what else to do, so went back to the main Kyoto station to look around. Its a massive building, but we weren’t actually sure why… We saw an escalator, so got on it… then at the top was another one… and another… and another… it just kept goind up and up until we were on the roof. We don’t have a clue what the designer was on when he thought up this place, but boy did he have a good idea… The place is amazing, the most amazing piece of architechture you will ever see! I hope the photos will come out as it really is awesome to look at… if ever you go to japan, you MUST go to Kyoto just for the station if nothing else!!

We were absolutely knackered by now, but stil thought we must find the cultural but of Kyoto, as there must be more than just city… We jumped on a train to Higashiyama.. and there we found it… The most beautiful part of Japan we have seen yet. Amazing, and hopefully captured in all the photos. There were shrines and temples and everything just looked… WOW!

There was even a Zoo, which we went into to have a look at the animals. I think it was good, but can’t really remember as when i sat down to have a rest… i just fell asleep. Justin can to find me, sat down, and fell asleep too!! lol… we realised now it was time to head to Osaka (if anyone tells you they are far apart, they’re lying… they’re only a 2.50 train ride from each other) - justin caught up with some sleep on the train whilst i had to stay on guard to make sure we didn’t miss our stop.

You think the buildings in Tokyo are impressive, head to Osaka. They are even more so (well the few we have seen so far) massive clean structures, that really give the place a futuristic feel. Even a huge ferris wheel that goes around one of them! - mission one was to find somewhere to sleep (boy did we need it) so headed to tourist information where they directed us to a local capsule hotel (Capsule Inn).

Findind the stupid place though was more than easy, even with the help of 2 maps and countless locals (one who even very kindly walked us around the whole area to find it!) it still took a good 30 minutes to get to it!!

If you don’t know what a capsule hotel is, imagine basically a load of pods, the length of a person, and high enough to sit up in stacked one on top of the other. You are allocated one of these, we you basically just go to sleep. Single sex only so no bring backs,. though the leeds people who rudely woke me up by shouting outside (they have no doors, just a blind) claimed he would be able to get someone back. I hope not as the sound proofing is pretty bad…

Slept there for a few hours, then headed out after a shower and teeth brush to find some nightlife. After walking about 5 minutes from our hotel, we hit THE shopping centre. This is pretty much underscribable to put the whole picture.. but basically it spans over 3 and a half miles!!!!!!!! There are arcades EVERYWHERE and anything you could ever want clothing related. Its called the Ebisubashi Shopping Street (which becomes Shinsaibashi Shopping Street further down) - but if you just head to that you will find the rest… believe me!

Eating wasn’t a problem, but finding a club proved hard. So hard in fact that we had to log in here to look them up That done, and this entry filled in, means we can finally leave and go get wasted in Osaka

Can’t do too much though as have to be out hotel by 10am tomorrow, and then sightseeing, before heading back to Tokyo to go a HardHouse/Trance night at Club Code in Shinjuku - HURRAH!