still excited about successfully sneaking into the hyatt, we came back to the hotel and changed into more casual clothes and headed out into askuasa. we stopped into mcdonalds and tried teriyaki mcburgers. the small here might be smaller than child sized in america. Then we went to the 82 ale house, which was actually a hub branch - the same place as tuesday. we tried some of the house beers and cider and watched soccer. back at the hotel there was nothing on tv as good as monkey man, so we went to bed [View Full Entry]

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One of our goals for this trip has been to have a drink in the bar from Lost in Translation. This morning, while at the cyber café, we did a little research and found that it was in the Park Hyatt Hotel in Shinjuku. After getting back from Tokyo Tower, we changed into suits and had a glass of scotch before heading out. The Park Hyatt was about a kilometer from the subway, but unlike American hotels, there were no glowing signs outside to indicate which building it was. After a few strolls through the lobby of the building it was [View Full Entry]

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the tokyo tower has two levels - the special and the normal observatory. the special costs a bit extra, but its at 250m while the normal is only at 150m. guided by advice from dan budny, we decided that we had to go for the special observatory. we got there right about dusk. the elevator made a cracking noise on the way up, but it was only a safety device. its hard to describe how the skyscrape of tokyo looks. tokyo is big; really big. you cant see beyond tokyo. d and i took a lot of pictures and we [View Full Entry]

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After our walk through the Imperial Gardens, one of the oldest and most traditional sites in the city, we headed over to Akihabara which houses the city’s electric district. Every store we passed had bright neon signs exploded with appliances, computer accessories, cameras, stereos and anything else with a power source imaginable. At one store there was a floor dedicated to televisions, the largest of which was a 103 inch LCD screen, much larger then anything I have seen in the United States. Sitting in front of it I could see no reason for anyone to have a TV so [View Full Entry]

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Later in the afternoon, having temporarily giving up in our search for ‘Lush’ and the Melt Banana, we decided to head over the Imperial Palace and gardens in the center of the city. After exiting the subway we first walked through Hibiya Park, which is just outside of the Palace walls. It was a very calm and well kept park, with the mood broken by speeches being heard over loudspeakers in an open air stadium in one corner of the park. We headed over to the stadium to see what was going on, and observed a protest of some kind. [View Full Entry]

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after breakfast the same toast set breakfast in asukasa we headed to the Internet cafe to post on this thing. we looked up the location of the melt banana show and i checked where to find bikkembergs in japan. both were in shinjuku. using a mix of map-following and random direction picking we found barneys - no bikkembergs, but they had trovata. we wandered around trying to find LUSH using the same method- this time it didn't work. we stopped in a guitar shop and a japanese guy was playing far beyond the sun. he even looked a bit like yngwie [View Full Entry]

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We had dinner in an upstairs lounge with table-mounted grills and firepits in Asakasa. The food was very cheap and quite good, and the style of the place reminded me of the New Orleans restaurant in Easy Rider. I finally got that Gin and Tonic I was looking for. When we left it was pouring rain, so I dashed through the streets to the nearest convience store and grabbed some clear plastic umbrellas for us (I shouldn’t have bought three - I doubt we will have to use them at all for the rest of the trip, the weather forecast is [View Full Entry]

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The Ginza line to Shibuya was a little more crowded than the subways we had ridden thus far, but we still havent experienced the massive crowding Tokyo’s subway system is famous for. We then headed for the world’s busiest intersection in the heart of the Shibya. Across the street was a record store (the second floor of which is the starbucks from Lost in Translation). We listened to some Japanese music, even found a couple of bands we like (note to self: checkout Wolf & Cub), and tried to get some good pictures from the view at the starbucks, but it [View Full Entry]

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Everyone woke up around 7 today, feeling refreshed. We hung around our rooms for a few hours then went outside to view the Hotel’s Japanese Garden. The Garden was absolutely massive, and so well isolated that you forget you are in Tokyo for a while. We found a café in Akasaka with a very reasonable breakfast menu - about 5 bucks for European style coffee, salad, bread and an egg. Skies were a bit overcast at this point and we were worried about rain, so we checked shops for umbrellas. By the time we found some the skies had cleared up [View Full Entry]

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we came back to the hotel to get cleaned up and empty out pictures. we stopped in b's room for a while and watched the city. the red lights fading on and off. tokyo is dense. the elevator to the lobby has an lcd screen which shows soothing images. all buttons are capacitive sensors. we went back out to ropangiii- to gaspanic first. a man stopped us in the street and tried to get us to go to his club. we tried to tell him no, but he kept insisting. we got past him and into gaspanic. it was cool. they [View Full Entry]

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