Tokyo Imperial Palace has its garden grounds open to the public year round, but only two times a year does it open the gates to the palace and allows visitors to come and wave to the emperor. The emperor of Japan doesn’t hold any real political power anymore, but he’s mostly a public figurehead and one of his main responsibilities is waiving to the public on Dec. 23rd and Jan. 2nd. So I took Owen and Mike to the Imperial Palace on the 2nd and since I arrived too late on the 23rd to get in, I was excited to see the inside of the Palace too. But of course, as you guessed it, a story like this can’t go off without an ironic hitch and we’re late, and for the 2nd time, I miss going inside the palace. But it’s alright because Mike and Owen were pretty impressed with the Palace grounds itself and took a few nice pictures from the outside.
We had no plans afterwards until we had to meet Jess and Will to go clubbing later that night so we decided to try to walk to Tokyo Tower. Things are always farther than they appear and after a mile or so, we decided we either needed to find a bus or give up. Luckily we found a subway station and it took us right to the station of Tokyo Tower. When we came out of the station we decided to stop off at a 7-11 to try their ATM to see if I could withdraw out of my Fukuoka Bank account. Note that I’ve tried dozens of other ATMs at this point and had no success withdrawing money. Apparently Fukuoka Bank is the equivalent of getting some random bank nobody’s heard of. But luckily for us, this time it worked and we rejoiced in having money again. We jumped around 7-11 yelling “we’re saved!”
Tokyo Tower
Tokyo Tower is strange because some of you (like I) might mistake it for the Eiffel Tower because of its similar structure. Tokyo Tower is in fact inspired by the Eiffel Tower and is 13 meters or 42 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower. (Way to go Japan for the douche move.) This is the third of four total observation decks I went to on my trip and actually in hindsight the least impressive. If I had to make a recommendation, I would say skip Tokyo Tower, it’s mostly a tourist trap, as you probably would have already guessed. But we went only to the first observation tower which is only half way up the tower because there’s another separate additional fee to go to the second point which is almost twice as high up. But by the time we got to the first observation deck we had lost the motivation to go any higher. We mostly enjoyed the night views of Tokyo and could see as far out as Odaiba and Rainbow Bridge (as shown in my grainy not very good quality picture). The best part may have been the glass bottomed floor on the observation deck, but it wasn’t anything great and was too scratched to really see anything or get the feeling like you were flying anyway. So what’s the point?
We then made our way towards Omote-sando Dori to try some of the street food we saw the last time we were there. We got off on Shibuya because I screwed up and didn’t know how far Shibuya was from Omote-sando. We walked and found a kaiten (rotating) sushi joint that Owen was hankering for and picked up a quick bite to eat. Owen nearly burned himself working the green tea tap (twice) after I showed him how to use it and then we were off again. Eventually we arrived at Omote-sando, we saw a few interesting food stands (though a lot were closed by the time we arrived) including: spiraled potato chips, fried potatoes, and the usual takoyaki and okinomiyaki. I ordered an okinomiyaki but sort of regretted it when I saw the guy take my money and add food with the same hand but by then it was too late.
The whole time we were in Tokyo, we kept running into people who asked us if we had gone to Roppongi to club yet. It had been so built up in our minds as an awesome clubbing Mecca that it was a bit unrealistic. Either way, we were excited to finally see for ourselves what this legendary Roppongi was all about. We met up with Jess and Will in Hub in Shinjuku, had drinks with her two girlfriends, and Will’s roommate who reminds me a bit of Jason from first year. He was a 35 year old student who liked talking to me and telling me things I didn’t really want to know. I got a weird feeling about him the first time I met him and afterwards when I spent a little more time with him, realized my instincts were correct. He told me he only came to study his English teaching degree to pick of girls. He was totally serious, with no hint of sarcasm or irony. He then proceeded to tell me that all the Japanese he knew he learned from his girlfriend or while watching pornography. Needless to say, he was a character. When we left to catch the last train to Roppongi Will was reluctant to go because he had work early in the morning. He argued with Jessica for a while and took a quick chance to dodge the argument by leaving without saying goodbye to Jess and the group. This infuriated Jess who was left holding his backpack and she called him, exchanged some angry words, threatened to leave his backpack in the middle of a busy center, and ranted for a while when he refused to come get it. She ended up locking it up in a locker in Shinjuku Station and we ran to catch the last train. But now by the time we got to a station, we learned we had gone to the wrong station and had already missed the last train. This only served to piss Jess off more and she apologized that we had to take a cab. We arrived in Roppongi and we met up with more friends, Aki and Robby, who were best friends from the Bay Area. They were chill guys and are here in Tokyo working as signed artists doing hip hop music, respect.
Feria
The club called Feria had 3 levels to dance. We only stayed on the first floor because we forgot about the rest. That night was 2 clubs for the price of one and though it was very expensive (3500 Yen) it was apparently a very good deal in Tokyo standards. The music in Tokyo clubs I would say is just a few decibels louder than those in Fukuoka and other clubs. The club was beautiful, packed and all that I was expecting. We danced a bit with the group and had a few drinks. I went with Michael to be his wingman to a group of Japanese girls and watched him tell them they were “kawaii” (cute). I had dared him to say that to every cute girl he saw that night and he was more than willing to live up to the challenge. After a while, we lost the girls in the group, and Michael, Owen, Aki, Robby and I went to the other club which was supposed to be a short walk away. We got there and was very disappointed at the turnout since this was a much more chill and less crowded bar. We decided we would make this trip worth it and got our two free drinks that came with our admission fee and just chilled in a side booth. Apparently Robby went to UCI and was familiar with many of the same frats and people that Michael and Owen knew and they had a good chat. After we finished our drinks, we had no reason to stay and moved back to Feria. The club had thinned out by the time we got back and it was much easier to find the girls again. We danced the rest of the night with them. Jessica over drank and at one point kind of just wobbled around, tipped over and fell asleep. We took care of her, the girls took her to the hospital to wash her face and she was fine in about an hour. You don’t need to worry about Jess, she’s Korean, she can handle herself and her alcohol, generally speaking.
We caught the first train back and split off from the group who was getting ramen to sober up. We decided against it and just went back to sleep off the alcohol and fun of the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment