Day Three

We got up early again and went to Shinjuku, we walked around for awhile looking up mostly, because of all the skyscrapers surrounding us. As we walked closer into Shinjuku, we visited a park there, quite looked pretty at its' entrance with this big waterfall style fountain, but is (as we saw in shocked confusion) most popular for its blue-tarp tent homeless population. We then walked around back toward the street and found the entrance to the TMG building, which has a really nice view from its 45th story observation deck of all of Tokyo and even Mt. Fuji (although we could barely see it through the smog). We met a Japanese man from Yokohama there who went up to the deck with us. He pointed out the Emperor's Park to us and told us that the Meiji Shrine was in there. So we decided to go with him to look at it. Once we took the subway a couple stops over, we got into the park and walked to the Shrine. We used the Clearwater at the shrine to cleanse our hands and mouth, 'prayed' for Meiji, & got a poem (written by Emperor Meiji). This was all pretty confusing for us good ol' American boys. We left the park and went to Harajuku-dori & Takeshita-dori (this I can understand). These streets are basically teen-goth heaven. Crazy shops selling ultimate goth fashion and other weird shops (namely "Banana Fish" & "Store my Ducks"). For lunch we took the subway back to the Shinjuku station & ate again at one of those vending machine places. After lunch we went to Ginza, which is mainly known for its outrageously expensive high-end shopping (Prada, Bvlgari, Porsche, Mont Blanc, etc...). After this endevour into the rich area, we were extremely tired from walking around all day & headed to Ikebukuro to eventually meet his uncle, his aunt, his aunt's sister, his aunt's brother, their Japanese friend, and his aunt's brother's wife's parents (ha.) for dinner. Well, we rode the subway there and didn't do too much before meeting up with them, but we did end up stopping at this Japanese Pub where we split a litre bottle of beer for 410 yen. After the beer and some dried squid (it's like squid jerky), we went back to the west exit of the subway and met them. We then took a short walk to the restaurant, which turned out to be 'Sumo Food' (aka very similar to Chinese Hotpot). The food was really good, and so was all the beer and sake that everyone kept making us drink more of. So by the end of dinner I was pretty buzzed, this sparked Ruoya and I's decision to return to Shinjuku by the moonlight to check out the neon life. This was a bad idea. We walked down a little dori (Ruoya was drunker than I was ((by a lot))) and ten steps into a very well-lit alley and we were approached by, what can only be described as a 'Nigerian Spammer' who was extremely persistent at trying to sell sex. 15 more steps, another one. Jesus. Once we got away from them, keeping Ruoya from not puking & close to me in the crowds were difficult until we got back on the Oedo line & home safe in Nerima.