おはよう ohayo andy

The night before, I tried planning a last minute early morning excursion outside of Tokyo for today but ultimately decided there just wasn't enough time to go somewhere and then be back before checkout time which was 10 or 11AM (I can't remember). I planned to visit the Fish Market early this morning but the one day I planned for it was the one day in the month it closed. I woke up like at 5AM for it too. I ended up having loads of time and packed slowly. My flight was at 7PM so I had a lot of time to kill between now and then. I decided to explore Ginza a little more and then revisit Shibuya and Meiji-Jingu because they were a couple of my favourite spots. I decided to checkout of my hotel completely and they were nice enough to hold my bag for me at the lobby until I was ready to come back and get it later in the afternoon. Right in the heart of Ginza, Nissan has a showroom that is only big enough to display one car. They had the Skyline which I believe is the new G3...

Due to the whole chafing situation caused by the day before, wearing jeans was out of the question. As a result, I wore my dress pants and shirt and shoes today. I hardly got any sleep the night before either, just a few hours. I went out for breakfast at my usual time around 6:30-7:00AM. I went in search of another cafe instead of Starbucks and found that there were many in the area. I got another taste of Japanese neat and cleanliness this morning. I went to this cafe where they had a number of items on display such as danishes and croissants that you would pick up yourself and then bring to the cashier. The lady in front of me picked up a croissant with a pair of tongs and then proceeded to the cashier, with tongs in hand. I was like what the hell!? Why are you taking the tongs? So I followed her and pointed to the tongs and asked for them. She kind of look at me weird and then gave them to me. I picked up a croissant myself. When I went to set the tongs down, that...

I think I was up around 3:30AM and I really felt like Bob Harris in Lost in Translation. I couldn't sleep and just sat there for countless hours flipping through Japanese television, waiting for the sun to rise. I left my hotel room early that morning to seek out some breakfast. I ended up going to Starbucks which was just down the street from my hotel. A cheese and bacon croissant and a hot chocolate cost about 600 Yen. I headed for the Kabuki-za Theater which wasn't too far of a walk from my hotel around 9:00AM. Kabuki is a type of traditional Japanese play with very overt movements, dialogue and costumes with lots of makeup that tell stories from the Edo era. It's one where all the roles, including female ones, are portrayed by men. When I got there, the box office which I thought opened at 10:00AM actually opened at 10:30AM. As a result, I headed further east to the Tsukiji Outer Fish Market to look around. On the way there, I stopped in at a couple...

My plane got to Tokyo on time (around 3:30PM local time the next day) and it was nice and sunny. I popped into the bathroom right after getting off the plane and was unexpectedly hit with my first bit of Japan. Heated toilet seats complete with built-in bidet are a common occurrence in Tokyo public washrooms. It didn't matter if I was in a washroom at an upper establishment, a fast food place like KFC or at a subway station restroom. I wasn't brave enough to have my first bidet experience at Narita so I skipped over the spray button and went straight to flush. I knew my cellphone (HTC Touch, a GSM North American tri-band) wasn't going to get any reception but I turned it on anyways to see what would happen. Nothing, as I suspected. If you live in North America and are looking to take your cellphone in hopes of roaming while in Japan, you will need a 3G HSPA phone that will operate on the 2100Mhz band, something like the North American Blackberry Bold or Apple iPhone 3G/S. ...