Day Twenty-One: Tokyo (It's not so bad once it's in your mouth)

Again we were up at 9am, but this time with purpose - our Tokyo Free Guide, was meeting us in the flower shop of the Keio Plaza at 10. We managed to get there just before she arrived. We had worked out a vague itinerary through email, so she immediately took us to our first destination - Shinjuku Central Park - which of course is located in western Shinjuku.

Despite being late winter, thus no cherry blossoms were out, it was a very beautiful place - testimony to this was the large amounts of people with impressive cameras, lenses and tripods, patrolling around and taking photos.

We eventually moved on, headed for Shinjuku station, via a few stores, including a vast food court full of expensive sweets (causing Ali to remark "I can't wait to come back to Japan when I'm rich"), as well as a rather Ikea like store that also sold food and clothes - where we got some apple crisps, and these delecious mini dried fish with peanuts;

Eventually we got to Shibuya from Shinjuku station, and caught a bus to Daikanyama - a district which was new to us. It was filled with trendy clothes stores, as well as some kooky little places that sold all manner of bizzare things - including a replica of the Terminator's head from Terminator 2, rabbit fur hats, and thankfully - Cherry Cola! We found a store selling amazing (and expensive) t-shirts, unfortunately, my gaijin dimensions got the better of me, as their sizes did not accomedate my lankyness.

We returned to Shibuya by train, and after an excellent ramen lunch, started to walk towards Harajuku. We looked into the small, interesting shops along the way - these were places we never would have found without Yuko - previously we had been rather dissapointed and jaded with Harajuku. We ended up at Harajuku station, and went up to the bridge nearby to see the strangely dressed girls who come out of the wood work on Sundays. We were quite late, so most of them were gone, but we did see a few, including a pack of girls dressed in pink, squatting and feeding each other;

From Shibuya, we headed to Akihabara - passing the usual rabble of people handing out pamphlets, and creepy maids. We ended up in a small, multi storey shopping centre, much like the one we went to on our first trip to Akihabara with Nik. After passing through a few floors of strange, we stumbled across a performance by a wanna-be J-Idol, singing to her fans (mostly creepy dudes) from a small stage. As with all things in Akihabara, it was an odd experience.

We eventually parted ways with Yuko at Akihabara station, where she presented us with some of her favourite snacks she had bought earlier on, we felt quite guilty about having nothing for her, but we thanked her heartily for what was a great day around Tokyo.

After relaxing for a bit at Keio Plaza, we headed to Ebisu, to find a Katsu restaurant I had read about online. We managed to find it with ease - it had a line of seats outside due to its popularity meaning people usually have to cue for a while. Thankfully it was about 9:30pm by the time we got there, so we got a table immedietly, and sat down to an awesome dinner of Tonkatsu (Pork katsu). The meal was expensive, but worth it, being our last in Japan for this trip. Afterwards we picked up some celebratory pastries at a bakery that was closing down for the night, and devoured them, to complete a night of culinary bliss.

-Dan