Day Two

We got up early this morning (5:30) without an alarm, I suppose this is due to the time difference, but i feel well rested, so who cares. We walked to the subway & rode for about 40 minutes to get to Tsukiji Fish Market. My first impression - wow. Fucking wow. It's crazy how big it is. We walked around for a couple minutes, but then we realized that Ruoya didn't have any money (any Yen that is). So in need of exchange, we went around looking for an international ATM. Well this was a much bigger deal than expected. None of the ATMs we found in various convenience stores accepted our cards, even though some of them had English menus... So eventually, we talked to someone and asked them to direct us towards a bank. Well we walked to the bank and discovered that it was still closed, we looked around in this area and found the post office, inside of which was an international ATM, but it too was closed. So we walked around and eventually decided to get some coffee and a snack. We went into a coffee shop and had some delicious, real coffee, and some pastries. So once the post office opened we got money, but the machine gave us a 10000 yen note (about 100 usd), so we went into the nearby bank in order to change it into smaller bills. Once we had our small bills, we walked back to the market. Once again, we were in awe. There was so much going on at once and once again, it was ridiculously big. After navigating through the fish market and taking a lot of pictures, we're back on the subway to go to Shibuya! // In Shibuya, we ate lunch at a very interesting (and cheap!) diner-like Japanese restaurant. You enter, turn left and go to a machine, much similar to a vending machine, you deposit money, make your meal selection (there are pictures on the buttons or numbers associated with pictures on a poster above the machine) and out comes a ticket, you hand the ticket to the attendant, and depending on your selection (curry comes out in about 20 seconds) you receive your meal, shortly afterward. After lunch we headed to the imperial palace, once we got off the subway, we walked around the entire perimeter of the imperial grounds (there's a moat) looking for an open gate. And all of that to find out that you're actually not allowed to enter the inner grounds anyway. So we stayed near the entrance to try to plan out what/where we would go that night. We decided to just go back to the apartment, rest, shower, and eat. // After dinner we decided to go back to Shibuya to go bar hopping. // OK. before I forget, I need to say that the air in Tokyo is extremely dry, so much so that the corners of my mouth are cracked & my nose is dried out...So last night, once we walked around Shibuya for a bit, we ended up not being able to find any place with any english posted outside (for awhile anyways), but eventually we came across (after walking for about half an hour) GASPANIC, which is a crazy bar with happy hour from 6:00-9:30, during which time, any drink is 400 yen, and for this town, that's not bad. So we each had 6 drinks each, including a Corona. Anyway, this bar is frequented by Young Japanese (mostly women) & knowing American tourists (and Naval personnel, who are very persistent with the women). Making our way back to Nerima in our drunken state was no problem (thank you subway).