After my extensive hiatus, I would not be surprised to find that any semblance of a readership I had managed to accumulate since the beginning of this blog has moved on to more regular, consistent publications.  I can scarcely blame anyone for this, as I imagine it’s kind of an unspoken requirement that bloggers actually, y’know, BLOG more than once a decade.  For my severe tardiness, I can only offer my apologies and following picture of a kitten in a cup:

If you're still mad at me after viewing this, you're not human.

Seriously though, those of you that moved on probably had the right idea.  Recently I've discovered that both my written and spoken English have deteriorated to the point of near unintelligibility (evidenced clearly by the fact that I just made up the word unintelligibility.) I’ve realized that, when thinking, my thoughts now take the form of some strange and frightening amalgamation of Japanese and English, frequently punctuated by guttural grunts and onomatopoeic sounds that only make sense to me.   When I get back to the States, I’m sure I’m going to have to go through the same English rehabilitation program attended by Sylvester Stallone and Ozzy.

But I suppose you guys don’t really want to hear about that. You probably want to hear about, y’know, actual stuff.  As a dear Austrian nun-turned nanny-turned-family band leader once told me, the beginning is a very good place to start.  I’ll take her advice for the moment, but being the rebel and nonconformist that I am, afterwards I think I’m going to hop to the middle for a bit, back to the beginning, then bits of the end, then the late middle, flashback to the beginning, and then the actual end.  I attended the Christopher Nolan school of story construction, after all.

Although the fastest and coolest way to Tokyo would have been by bullet train, tickets for that are absurdly expensive, and I have better things to spend my money on.  Like Magic cards, video games, and a big ol’ box of Pikachu shaped chocolates.  Don’t judge me.  Anyway, that’s why my group chose to take the night bus, which was significantly cheaper.  Although I wish I could talk about how, since its Japan, we rode a Cat Bus all the way to Tokyo and had a fantastic and magical journey, that unfortunately was not the case.  No, if anything this was really more of a Dog Bus.  I mean we’ve all heard that “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” And it was definitely too dark to read on the bus. (To the three of you who got the reference, give yourselves a pat on the back. I mean that literally. No one ever actually gives themselves a pat on the back, and I’m sick of it.)

Soo…. Yeah. Night bus.  Really cramped.  My legs were screaming in agony the entire time because there was absolutely no space to put them, so I contorted myself into some strange position that probably was the single cause of my moderately unpleasant neck pain the entire trip, and crammed my legs in between me and the seat in front of me. This was excruciating at first, but soon the restricted blood flow to my legs caused them to go numb, and then I was able to maintain that position indefinitely. 

Typical Japanese couple. Or something like that.

The bus departed at about 11:40PM from Kyoto Station and arrived at Tokyo Station around 6:15AM the following morning.  My pals and I wandered around Tokyo station in a state of some deliria for some indeterminate amount of time, and looking back, I’m surprised that, what with my dull, leaden eyes, slackened jaw, pale complexion, and lurching movement pattern, I wasn’t mistaken for a zombie and subsequently kneecapped.  Lucky me!

I’ll fastforward a bit past the boring process of finding our hostel, because I realize now that if I kept up the current pace, I’d make it through the events of the first day in Tokyo sometime around November. 

Alright, so the first sight-seeing place on the itinerary was a Meiji shrine whose name I can’t quite remember.

 It may have just been Meiji shrine.  Iunno.  I didn’t find anything particularly impressive about the shrine itself (I’m probably spoiled by the wealth of super-special-awesome shrines in Kyoto), but was remarkable about the trip was that we happened to be in time to witness and old fashioned Japanese wedding ceremony. Typically only fairly wealthy and important people still have weddings like this, so it was kind of a special deal. Observe:

Whole bunch o' wine barrels. Not for the wedding, just there because.

After spending a little bit more time observing the wedding, we decided to head to Harajuku explore the area.  There were quite a few interesting stores scattered about, and there also seemed to be some sort of protest going on. I’m not completely certain how to embed videos, but here’s one I took of the protest:

Boosh! See that vehicle get nailed by the bus at the end? Had I recorded longer, you would have seen no expressions of frustration or anger expressed by either of the drivers.  Neither gave any indication whatsoever that anything remotely unpleasant had transpired. Why? Because Japan.

The highlight of the trip to Harajuku was when I got “discovered.” Yep, that’s right. There I was, typical, mild mannered Andrew, and a fellow came up off the street, told me I was really cool-looking, and asked whether or not I wanted to become a model. I was a little bit wary, and not quite sure how to respond, so I just explained to him that I wasn’t from Tokyo, merely visiting, and wouldn’t be able to contact him later.  As if my ego really needed any more flattery, 15 minutes later another guy from a different company approached me and told me much the same thing.  This time, though, I was a little bit more prepared.  I was still wary, and didn’t want to be pestered by anyone, so I gave him a fake email address and name, but took his card in case I wanted to contact him. He’ll be rather disappointed when he tries to contact Bruce Wayne at bwayne69@yahoo.com! In hindsight though, this deception was probably the right idea. Glancing over his business card now, I don’t think I’d want any part of a company called “Little Friends Management.”

Alright, that’s all I have time for today, but I’ll follow up as soon as possible with the following days trip to Shibuya! In the meantime, please mull over the following: