last full day in tokyo…sigh. we started it off with a trip to the tsukiji fish market. yea…not at 5 am or anything. sorry…i dont do that. it was more like 10am. chika had offered to take dano and i around the fish market, since she was familiar with the market, having shopped there numerous times before as a chef. the fish (and various aquatic species) area was still pretty busy, even at 10 am. when we werent dodging giant fish heads on the floor, we were dodging the carts that darted up and down the aisles. and it all surprisingly didnt smell fishy!

we headed back to the hotel to rest and eat lunch, and then i headed back out to akihabara for some last minute perusing. friday was the release date for the new dvd of the evangelion reboot…so i went looking for it. well it wasnt that hard to find…the shit was all over akihabara. but when i finally did check out the special edition dvd, i found out that it didnt have any english subtitles. fuck! argh…suckage. so i decided not to pick it up. *sigh* i continued roaming around some more, then roamed shibuya for dvds and music. i rejoined g+r at g’s house in shibuya for some home cooking with her family…yum! nice way to cap a vacation.

we wandered around ginza the next morning before heading back to our hotel to catch the shuttle to narita. and then we landed in newark airport, i fucked around doing nothing for a week, and now here i am…back home and not in tokyo. *sigh* <3 tokyo.

REMAINDERS
and now to tack on what i did since getting back. i met up with steph and jj er…last week…at oh taisho. then i had ippudo with jess sometime last week…whatever day…cant remember at this point. friday was mario karting at sean and annas. i visited my sister and my niece sunday, since i had a ton of toys from japan and i hadnt seen my niece since before heading off to amsterdam. and yesterday i had din with di and her friend sara in fort greene (brookyln! omfg!) at ici, which was yum.

*full set already up on flickr eh.

coming down to the last two days of the trip…pooters. thursday was started with haircuts for g and dano. g needed a trim, and dano wanted a super-japanese haircut. some of the styles he was looking at in his hair style magazine were pretty frightening…ranging from glay, to emo anime character, to jesus hair. yea, curly jesus hair. he picked out one of the better (ie: normal) styles…pointed to the picture, and away they snipped. me and r headed off to wile away the time why they got their hair snipped. in the span of half an hour wandering shibuya, i managed to blow $300+…fuck! after hitting the $300 mark, we scurried back to the salon so i couldnt do any more damage. shit shit shit i was doing so good til now.

after g and dano finished their swishy hair stylin’, we caught a nice japanese lunch, then went sneaker shopping in daikanyama. after everybody (literally) got a pair (or two), g+r and dano decided to go rest up back at g’s house in shibuya, and i decided to continue roaming daikanyama (one of my favorite neighborhoods). it started raining tho…so yea, that was the suck. i roamed a bit, checked out the various stores (while hiding my cc), then grabbed a late afternoon snack at the mermaid cafe before hustling over to shinjuku to meet up with the crew again. chika found me at the station, and we waited for the rest of the crew to get there before wandering into the golden gai area for dinner reservations at cha-cha (name…? guess so). which was swishy. after din, we roamed shinjuku and hung out at advocates bar, which for anyone who does their homework, does NOT in any way, happen to support your theories. ;p

*full set already up on flickr eh.

wednesday was our long-awaited onsen roadtrip out of tokyo. g booked us a relaxing day at the amagi-so onsen three hours outside of tokyo. so we headed oot in the morning out of the dense cityscape into the countryside. we had a huge kaiseki lunch when we got there…sashimi, boar meat, grilled fish, the list goes on…yum yum. we rested a bit after lunch before going to get changed and head out to the outdoor springs. amagi-so is a unisex onsen that also lets you wear swimsuits, for those of us that are a bit prude…or just want to hang out with our friends of the opposite sex. we went thru the range of temperatures, from lukewarm to omfg. the omfg didnt actually feel too bad since we had been hopping from spring to spring. but after relaxing next to the waterfall for a bit, then going back in for a dip, the actual temperature became apparent. holy shit hot. we rested a bit after our dip, then started our three hour ride back to tokyo. we made a pitstop at a wasabi center…that was interesting. but then we got back to tokyo! yea!

we dropped our stuff off at g’s parents place before heading out for an italian dinner at capricciosa nearby…where we ordered like a pizza, three pasta bowls, and a bunch of other dishes we probably shouldnt have. ugh…stuffed. we continued on afterwards for an end-of-the-night drinks at an izakaya in omote-sando. wew!

*full set already up on flickr eh.

tuesday was jane’s last day with us, so we got an early start to akihabara, since neither jane nor dano had been before. we roamed thru the arcades and electronics shops, and ended up going thru the 8 flrs of the akihabara mandarake. woot geek. jane left us at tokyo station in the afternoon to catch the shink back to ishinomaki…*sniff*, bye jane! we soldiered on and met up with g+r in ebisu to take a day-trip to yokohama…woot! yokohama was a short ride south, and we visited the yokohama docks first, called the osanbashi and designed by foreign office architects. very nice. we then roamed up and down the disturbingly clean streets of yokohama chinatown. for those that haven’t ever been, imagine your typical chinatown. now take away all the filth and garbage on the streets and the smell of fish in the air. yea, thats yokohama chinatown…a surreal super-clean version of the chinatowns you’re used to. we had a nice big chinese dinner (i even had shark fin soup…yum), then hopped back in the car to head back to tokyo. on the way back, we stopped by odaiba to scope out the rockin’ night views of tokyo. we made our way thru the various shopping decks including a whole section made to look like vintage 1960’s tokyo, then hopped back in the car and went home. whew!

*full set already up on flickr eh.

monday was a free day, so jane, dano, and i took the yamanote north to roam ginza and the tokyo forums. as much we grabbed ramen at jangara, then wandered aimlessly thru ura-hara. after getting pooted out from all the walking, we took a break back at the hotel before meeting up with g+r in nakano for dinner. we headed to one of g’s favorite spots that we just referred to as master’s (the head honcho’s master…never even got the name of his restaurant). anyhoo, he served us every kind of chicken dish possible, roasted, sashimi, etc. it was all yum. we even tried out his custom shochu drinks. the first batch…mixed with coffee…was pretty good. he ran out of that tho, so we switched over to his other shochu batch, which put me to sleep. like seriously, not trashed…just sleeeepy. *gurgle* the rest of the nites sorta blurry…

*full set already up on flickr eh.

we started our second day in tokyo with a nice foot massage in shibuya. this was both a nice treat and problematic, since it promptly put everybody to sleep by the end of it. after slapping ourselves awake, we did some shopping around shibuya. a few of us picked up new glasses from zoff in mark city…cant say no to cheap glasses. we headed to freshness burger for some lunch while we waited for our glasses to be made, then roamed some more around the neighborhood. we all met up again later at night for some home-cooking at gina’s friend miki’s place in ryogoku…yum yum.

*full set already up on flickr eh.

argh why is it always so painful to come home from tokyo? does nyc suck that much compared to tokyo? *sigh*…the answer (for me anyway) is yes. <3 tokyo…waaaay too much.

so while this was my third trip to tokyo, this was “technically” my first time there for vacation. my first trip in 1999 was for “studies” (heavy emphasis on the bunny-ears) and my 2006 trip was work-related. and while each trip rocked much and for their own reasons, this was probably the best one yet. the first trip was my first time there, so of course it will rock. the second trip, while technically for work, still rocked alot because we lived it up like rockstars (park hyatt ftw!), ate stupidly well, and i got to wander around tokyo alot on my own. this time around, not only was the trip with a fun crew of friends, but i got to see jane (whos teaching english in japan) who i hadnt seen in years. yay!

dano and i landed in tokyo late afternoon on saturday. jane was already waiting at our hotel, the villa fontaine shiodome, when we finally got to tokyo in the evening. during my last trip, we passed by the shiodome complex everyday on our way to the tokyo big site along the yurikamome…and i thought it looked pretty swishy. so i looked up the hotel online and found that not only was it highly rated, but was relatively cheap when compared to other hotels of the same quality…woot! glad i checked it out, because the hotel turned out to be pretty nice and definitely worth its price (and more). after checking in and dropping our luggage off, we met up with the rest of the crew (g+r had been in japan for a week already) for kushiyaki in ebisu. yum food and free-flowing sake made for a potentially bad first morning…but hmm, didnt seem to feel a thing. weird. shit, in that case, it’s a good first morning! day two tomorrow…

*full set already up on flickr eh.