Shinjuku Nights

Well, it's my last night here in Tokyo. There so much to say, but I don't even know where to begin. The last few days have been a slight blur, but I'm sure I'll have some time soon to sit and ruminate about the whole experience. Earlier this evening, me and my roommate (who is very cool by the way. She is from Texas and lived for a while in San Antonio with her husband, who will soon be joining her here.) went exploring to find a place to eat dinner. Initially, we wanted to eat Mexican food and we found this place called "El Borracho" on the internet, but the directions were a little too fuzzy for us foreigners. So, we decided to just wing it.

We met up with a fellow ALT (that stands for Assistant Language Teacher) and began our search for dinner. We wandered for quite a while. And man, let me tell you, do you gotta pay attention while walking busy streets. People mainly walk on the left side here, but for some reason that rule does not always apply. So you have to quickly shift you directions in a split second. Or else a small, fast Japanese girl can hit you in the shoulder and practically knock you over. Anyway, we eventually decided upon going to a traditional-looking noodle shop. The fun part was trying to choose what to eat, because there was not a word of English to be seen. So we all just pointed to a picture on the wall. And man, we picked a good picture because the food was really good.

Afterwards, we wandered a bit more to take touristy pictures and then eventually headed back to our hotel. My fellow wanderers had prefecture parties to attend and so I decided to head back to my room to pack. Later, I decided to head out again by myself to see what it felt like to be a little foreigner who was attempting not to get too lost. Also, I was in desperate need of a watch. (For the past few years, I've relied on my phone as a watch, but since my old phone is currently in the states, I've had to really on asking people for the time. And in the process I've come to a conclusion: In addition to my previous observation that Tokyo is a super-clean city without any trash cans, it also is missing clocks.) The other ALT that we met up with earlier had found a watch at this really neat electronics store, so I wanted to test my memory in hopes of tracking down the same store. However, after going in a big circle about 2 times and with no sight of said shop, I thought it best to head back the hotel.

But before I could head back, I decided I had to stop by a Pachinko that I kept walking past. (Pachinko is like gambling here in Japan, except it's not. Gambling is illegal, but the Japanese get around this by playing with metal balls instead of money. So, technically, they are trying to win more metal balls. That is of course until they collect their metal balls and redeem them for cash. (For more info, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko) I walked inside and man, the music was blaring. I could only be in there for a few minutes it was sensory overload for me. I know, I know. I'm getting old. I blame it on the jet lag. However, I will try playing pachinko someday.

Okay, well it's time for bed. Gotta get up in the morning and catch a plane to Sapporo City. I'll need to set up my internet, so it may take some time before I can get on the internet again.

Take care to anyone who may be reading my stupid ramblings. And I'll try to be in touch with all of you soon.

Well, here I am...

Right now I'm sitting in the gorgeously, huge Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku. I can't believe I actually typed that sentence. It is after midnight here (Monday), but my body still thinks that it's 10am on Sunday. And yet, I don't care. I don't care about the time because I'm easily distracted by being able to look out my window and see these huge sky scrapers that envelope every corner of my vision. I'm actually speechless. While this is still all a dream to me, I do realize that the next few days are expected to be very crazy, but hopefully, not too overwhelming. I really should be off to bed, but I gotta share just a brief story. After I arrived at the hotel, I soon realized that I had accidentally shipped off a bag that I desperately needed. (Hopefully) my bag should be waiting for me at my apartment in Sapporo when I arrive. So, my first task after getting settled, calling mom and scrounging for some yen to go find something to eat was to find a convenience store to replace some of the things that I was missing. I picked up my room key and jetted for the lobby before it got much later. I made it out the door only to see it pouring down rain outside. So, after some ridiculous wandering around the hotel (which, honestly, was kinda fun) I came across a cute little convenience store. I stood there trying my best to read the labels on some of the bottles, in an effort to find a facial wash replacement. Success! I found a very cute, and cheap bottle of face wash, but upon further inspection, it began to look more like a face-whitening cream...which is what I definitely do not want. And so I kept looking and looking. I'd like to say that I was able to get by on my Japanese alphabet skills, but sadly no. I grabbed the only bottle that said "facial foam" in English. Oh well, that thing that I learned from this experience is that I'm sure that I'm gonna do a ton of silly things and make numerous mistakes in the following months. But hey, that's called living. I've grown to see living as "living forward." We gotta take chances, we gotta keep looking ahead even after a few stumbles along the way. I mean, hey, after what felt like an endless pursuit and through sheer determination, I did end up with a pretty cool face wash, hehe. So I say, keep stumbling. There's nothing wrong with that. Just stand back up, brush yourself off, and keep going forward.