We wake up at 5:20 PM. I don’t think I’ve ever woken up this late before. I guess I was more tired from the night before than I thought. The guys were apparently just as tired too. In the time we were sleeping, Charlene had left (I’m sad and sorry that I missed saying goodbye) and the cleaning ladies had tried to come and left twice and given up for the day. Charlene left early that morning for home and by now is happily (maybe?) back in Irvine again. Thank you for spending time with us and sharing some wonderful times Charlene. We went out to get some food and was a bit surprised at how empty the city was. In Japan New Years takes on a different significance than it does in the states and other countries. For Japan, Christmas is for spending with friends and New Years with family and spent at traditional temples. So we found the city of Tokyo practically empty. Well not empty, but empty compared to what it usually is. The moral of the story is…
New Years in Japan is inconvenient.
I was out of money. Michael was out of money. Owen had about $200 left. And all the banks were closed for the weekend (the next 3 days). How were we supposed to live on $200 between the three of us in Tokyo for three days? We had no idea. But the most immediate problem was that there were no open restaurants. We ended up eating dinner at McDonalds and we found the whole restaurant (so strange to describe McDonald’s as a restaurant) filled with people. We had to wait to get seats and Owen and Mike got to try some Only-in-Japan burgers like the Mc-Pork.
We found nothing else open and really nothing to do after we finished dinner. But we had just woken up after a small coma and it seemed ridiculous to immediately go back to our cramped hotel room so we just wandered the streets of Shinjuku aimlessly. Moving through the small streets felt so bizarre because for many of the smaller streets we were literally the only souls on the street. These were the same streets that we had to fight for space to breathe on most normal days, but not today. We passed by a place advertising pool and decided to play a game since we had no other ideas anyways. I missed a good game of pool and was quite happy with the idea of a game anyways. We called Jess and Will and they seemed to be trying to get back on a normal rhythm of sleep because they both had early engagements the next morning so we figured we would just hang out on our own for the night. We ended up paying about $20 each for playing for an hour and a half. That’s extremely expensive but considering we didn’t really understand the pricing and the club was pretty nice, we kind of understood. Afterwards we walked back towards our hotel and stopped off at Yoshinoya. Yes it’s the same Yoshinoya that we have in the States but the quality is much better in Japan. Here, Yoshinoya is ubiquitous and is the Japanese equivalent of McDonalds, an easy cheap fast and (sometimes) satisfying meal. Owen was happy with the food and we had a late second dinner. We went back to the hotel afterwards and slept at a relatively reasonable hour. The lazy day was a little frustrating but restful.
*Note no photos because nothing extraordinary happened. Sorry*
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