06/03/11 - Friday

We woke up late (around 11am) exhausted from the previous day. It finally stopped raining and there were several morning earthquakes. Unfortunately for us, check-out time was 10am so we had to pay for the extra hour (worth it). We gathered our luggage and tried to find our way back to the car. We got turned around several times, but eventually we found it (note of interest: the hundreds of identical cars had all disappeared!) We did get to enjoy some pretty fancy architecture though (note size of buildings compared to size of people!):

We then drove to Tokyo's Shinjuku district to find our next hotel: Shinjuku Park Hotel. We saw some sights on the way.

Drove around the gardens of the Emperor's Palace:

Saw a 4-door Mazda RX-8 (trust me, it's weird):

Saw some scary building which I think was a police station (note its massiveness):

By the way, these are what traffic lights look like in Japan (what would you do here?):

Saw policemen transporting prisoners:

The buildings changing between Ginza district and Shinjuku district were pretty obvious. Here we are arriving in Shinjuku:

We also arrived at our hotel, and they gave us a room but check-in wasn't until 3pm, and it was only 1pm. So we gathered our essential items, left our luggage at the hotel, and parked the car at the hotel. They only allowed us to do that for one day, and we planned to stay for 2, so they gave us a pass to park across the street. In the meantime, they let us drive the Every onto a spinner which turned the car around for us!

We parked (aw how cute). See the wall above the van? The attendant wanted our front end to meet the edge exactly. Michael had pulled a bit forward, so he undid the parking brake and pushed it into place. This blew the attendant's MIND!

Like I said, we had some time so we explored Shinjuku a little bit. We rounded the corner and saw a motorcycle with a windshield and a roof:

Also note that that is an alleyway. See how perfectly clean it is in a humungo city? I love Japan. We also ate at McDonald's to see what it was like. 1) It was still gross 2) it was slightly higher quality than USA's food 3) it was very clean and fast (they apologized that my burger would take 3 minutes), 4) that scene in Pulp Fiction where they say that the French call a quarter pounder with cheese a Royale with cheese because they use the metric system, is totally not valid:

We also came across this store:

See that turquoise backpack on the right? That's mine, baby. All mine. Best purchase ever since my shoulder bag had deteriorated and all the zippers had broken. See that gigantic zipper down the middle? So satisfying AND functional.

We also found Shinjuku station and walked around the terminal tunnels for a while (sure to be a shock to fellow Americans, walking around a terminal in Japan is a pretty pleasant thing to do). Also came across this shop:

This was a handweaving shop. The lady who owned the place showed us around a little and spoke pretty good English. She asked a lot of questions like where we were from, how long we're staying, why we were here, and she gave us an English flyer explaining the place. Apparently her mom, who is turning 98 soon, invented the Saori handweaving technique which embraces the 'perfection of every mistake.' They offer all sorts of programs for mentally and physically disabled people and there was a young man with down syndrom hand winding balls of yarn. I bought about 90g for my mom. There were ladies there learning to weave on looms:

And creating art:

Down the street was an arcade where we played many games like a Mario Kart 2 racing game, Initial D racing game, and this drum game:

Did I mention the toilet paper had cartoons on it?

Soon it was 3pm so we headed back towards the hotel and found it right away. They had given us their last available room:

It was awesome. We watched some hypnotizing Japanese children's shows and then went to look for a Citibank... cash wasn't super low, but we thought was a good idea. Our guidebook had mentioned that they usually had 24 hour ATMs which worked with foreign cards. We looked and meandered for a long time. We saw some cool bits of town:

But after a while, we gave up. We rounded a corner, and found a Citibank! Along the way we had tried quite a few different types of ATMs, but none of them worked. At the Citibank, Michael's card worked, but not Billy's or mine. Oh well. We got hungry so walked into a nearby sushi place.

The customers sat around the sushi chefs who were surrounded by a conveyor belt. The chefs handmade the sushi and put it on a plate on the conveyor belt:

You then grabbed whatever plates you wanted and stacked the empty plates. When you're full, you tell the guy at the register and he counts your plates and charges you based on the color of the plates you ate. We spent about $30 each and got so full on the best sushi I've ever had. Look at all the exotic kinds up there!

After our fill we wandered around and looked for another arcade. We ended up playing around with some gambling games (like a mini fake horse race thing we couldn't quite figure out), played a Guitar Hero type game and Terminator shooting game. In the areas where there were musical skill games, everyone around us were getting all 100%s on everything. When we walked out of the arcade we entered into Shinjuku night life on a Friday:

There were thousands of really well dressed young hip people everywhere. I usually have a fear of crowds, but Japan is different. The crowd works with each other and everyone is very relaxed. I didn't have a single panicky moment.

We went into the biggest electronics store in Japan, Bic Camera, which had 9 floors (though each one was pretty small). After looking around we left and just let ourselves walk around with the huge crowds of people and eventually started looking for a movie theater. We found one on the 9th story of a building right by our hotel. We saw the newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie in 3D (it was in English with Japanese subtitles). From the previews to the end of the credits, everyone sat completely silently and still. I swear the girl who sat next to me didn't even move her arm. The lights didn't come on until the very end of the credits. According to Mike's experience, it's not uncommon for them to be silent the whole movie, and then if you talk to them later they say "Yeah, that movie was really funny!", but the being still and silent through the credits was a bit more intense than he's seen. People got up and took their trash with them (except for me, silly Gai-Jin).

We had gone up to the theater by escalators that went through a mall, but the movie ended around 11:30pm and the mall was closed, so everyone had to pile into 2 elevators. In line, Billy was ahead of Michael and Marika, and his elevator had gotten so packed that Michael and Marika had to get in a different one! We walked back to the hotel, watched Inglourious Basterds (which was in English/French/German with Japanese subtitles), and fell asleep partway through.