Japan Day 7

Today we started late to give everyone a chance to sleep a little bit from the rough few days. We had breakfast then headed back to Asakusa. The temple was going to have a couple events for Culture Day. We wandered around and it got very crowded very quickly. We saw some of the White Heron Dance. I filmed a little bit with the camera. It came out decent. Some various things were bought while we were there then we headed out to Shibuya via the Ginza line.

Shibuya has a large park that apparently two-thirds of the city visits on the weekends. I could not believe how many people were there at all. There was all sort of stuff going on from people practicing playing instruments to walking dogs to riding bikes to practicing dancing. There was a girl doing hula hoop stuff to some drummers which was pretty neat. They had a little free dog pen that had all sorts of dogs running around. Basically the area looks like the place to hang out on Saturday or Sunday during the nicer weather.

Getting to the weather, I am not sure if I mentioned it already and if I did I am sorry, but everyone around here seems to think that temperatures in the 60s F are full on winter clothing weather. Everyone that was obviously from Tokyo was dressed in warm clothing as a New Englander might dress in December yet the weather feels like September at worst. I find it very strange but I guess they do get super hot summers and there is some sort of fashion thing dictating how people dress. Everyone around here seems to be very fashion conscious and it is likely that the fashion industry has dictated that fall gear is what you wear now. Not being one for fashion I cannot say that I would be able to handle it. I suppose on workdays that men just wear their suits so it is a bit easier for them to avoid fashion issues, but the women seem to have to dress up every day no matter what. But I guess it’s all city culture one way or the other.

We wandered for some time then headed back to the hotel to regroup in the early afternoon. I chose to get some laundry done quickly. After the short rest we went back out for dinner. Brien wanted to go back to Kirin City so we did. I tried to order a noodle dish however when all the food arrived mine never showed up. Fortunately we had three appetizers to choose from so I ate a bit of those along with having a couple beers. However when we finally left I was still hungry and I had grown stubborn about ordering the dish from them so I instead bought another Mosburger on the way back to the room where I wolfed it down quickly.

We had decided we would try to go out for drinks for Scott’s last night here. There was an article about a bar in Roppongi in the back of an English language tourist newspaper about a bar that seemed kind of cool. We decided we would try to find this place and have a drink there. I figured out the location from the article and a tourist map and realized that Roppongi Crossing is pretty much a straight line past the Tokyo Tower and along the same street. From there all we would have to do is turn right at the crossing and we should be able to find the place on the second and third floor of a building about two blocks up. It was all very simple looking and because we were going to a bar we didn’t bring a map or our cameras and we certainly weren’t dragging the newspaper along. We walked up the street past the Tower and continued straight on down the road and within a few minutes we indeed did find the Roppongi area of the city. It was incredibly packed. There were literally thousands of people at this specific crossing area. Roppongi is the foreign district of Tokyo so there were all sorts of non-Japanese people there and as we got further into the thick of the zone we started to get accosted by all sorts of men trying to give us “free entrance” and “free drink” tickets to entertainment clubs, by which I mean mainly strip clubs. These men were all black and spoke English as a second language and all of them were very persistent in getting people to try to take up their offer for a good club to visit. I am sure that even if we had not chosen a place to visit before getting there I would never choose to give patronage to a place with people like that desperately trying to get me in there and we warded them all off no matter how persistent they were. In a few minutes we were at the crossing and turned up the street to where the bar was supposed to be. The name of the place was supposed to be Kai-pu but when we got to the location that the map pointed to the best that I could tell we found a Japanese language sign only. We tried to go up the stairs because it did appear to be the same place on the second and third floor like the article wrote but when we got there we found that the place had to be closed it was dark and the elevators to get there weren’t working either.

We scanned around for a few more minutes but were none the wiser as to if the article was someone’s idea of a joke or what and decided to turn back into the horde and maybe see what we could find. Since we really didn’t know the area and couldn’t tell which places were safe on our own we decided to try to return to the area near our hotel and see if anyplace that was obviously safe was still open for drinks. As we wound back through the crowds we were accosted again by the various pitchmen and even by some Chinese women offering massages but again made it to the end of the area intact and still with all our money and passports. By the time we got back to the hotel’s zone it was probably a bit after midnight and everything was already closed up except the 7-11 so we bought some water and called it a night by 12:30am. At the very least it was an adventure to see Roppongi and how overwhelming it all was. I would have liked to get pictures but I fear my camera would have gotten stolen. The Japanese crime rate is very low but as this area was not so much populated by the indigenous it had a lot less safer feel and I assume it is one of the higher crime rate areas in the city, if not the country. Marina had already warned us of a bar that a lot of her customers had come back from without money or anything else in that area which was why we didn’t really try to randomly pick a place. It was cool to see the sights of the zone but I am not sure I would again go unless I had another specific bar to try to find that was considered safe by someone from Tokyo, expat or Japanese alike.