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Yesterday was one hell of an experiance! We visited Harajuku to see the teenage capital its known as, and it was quite a sight to see the extremes that they dress up to, some going from surpassing a motley crew style dress sense to others that are completely tarted up. the district was mainly one big clothes shopping cortex, which was intresting to see what you could get but it was all fairly expensive. While we where there we tried to find the famous park that would would show all these people meeting up and having fun but unfortunatly instead of going left at the train station we went right and didn't find the place till far to late. Its one of the large flaws ive noticed is will information to where things are in tokyo. no signs or maps in decent places to point out where land marks are.
we returned back to the train as it was now dark and visited Shinjuku. the place is mind blowing and its doubtful i could do any justification to say how outstanding and complex the place is. As soon as you get off the train you are meeted with flashing lights everywhere and thousands of people passing by you, not to the point where you feel claustrophobic though. after being dazzeled by everything everywhere we found our way to a technology shop; the mobile phone our many years ahead of us and there was temptation to buy one but i wouldn't have the slightest clue how to understand it and i doubt alot of the functions would work back in england. With other things such as Tv's, computers and sound systems they are pretty much on the same level as us. After spending far to long there we trekked off and found a arcade which to be honist wasn't hard at all as they are everywhere! inside we found one of my favorate actors Tadanobu Asano playing on one of the wierd games there and a camera placed behind him watching. a little strange to find him in such a place, then after a couple games with Mario Cart 2 (the funniest arcade game ive ever played somehow) and a 2 player Drumming game we headed outside. James brought a ice cream wrapped up in a pancake and spotted Chris Martin from coldplay walking by with a couple of dames on his shoulders but we wern't really intrested in catching up to him. We headed a little further down the street and found a room where about a thousand people playing this weird ball game, its men't to be extremely addictive, but what i can work out from it is that you catch lots silver ball that fall, by lots i mean thousands or even hundreds of thousands in some people's case. The room was filled full of smoke and addicted players and the noise was insane enough to cause ringing in the ear if you where there for 5+ minutes. From what people have told me its own by the Yakuza (Japanese mafia) that gets a huge amount of profit from these.
We trekked back out and got dazzled by all the lights, after a little walking not just dazed we aimlessly walked into the red light district which i soon realised after a man approached me asking if id like a "specail massage"!! i politley refused then walked a bit further down the street we where out of there. We stumbled across one of the cooliest rock bars i have ever seen. It was out of place with its wooden walls scared and signed with signitures of hundreds of bands and people who visited this place and furniture and its rare collection of Rock posters such as Neil Young and Bob Dylan. It had some great blues being played out of the speakers. so we brought ourselves an expensive drink then headed out.
We trekked out into another arcade to discover the most futuristic machine ive ever seen. It was a cockpit that you could sit with a screen that surrounded the player where they controlled a virtual robot within a game. Its part of the Gundam saga that has taken the minds of many including mine to be admitted. ive never seen anything like it before and i was tempted to play but i didn't understand the concept of how to join using a mixture of cards to gain pass. After having my mind blown we headed back out, it seemed like it was more of a dream than life as we wondered around seeing all that we did. After awhile we decided to head back using the aid of a crossing that as soon as the little red man (with a hat in this country) to the little green man (with a hat) and about 2000 people will cross the road. We headed off to the train station which after having our minds twisted out of our heads from the experiance and took the train back using our rail passes.
The rest of the evening was taken by joining our friends drinking and meeting some new folk, a couple of ozzie lads, two guys and a lady from Korea. We drank till 7 this morning then headed off to sleep where i woke boiling hot and being annoyed by the tapping window shade at 12:30. An amazing night though so it was all worth it despite this handover
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