Day 34 - Saturday July 25, 2009

CKE and I woke up at 4:15, but decided not to go to the fish market and sleep 4 more hours. When we did get up we got all ready, ate, had a awkward run in with the hostel staff after I tried to steal some bread for our lunch, and off to the fish market by 9ish.

The fish market was an interesting place. There were cars (well trucks and bobcat-like machines) and people everywhere. We finally found the actual market area and saw loads of weird and huge sea creatures: there were shrimp the size of my foot, octopus, squid, an uncountable # of fish with no heads, and even fish eggs (or so I think).

After the fish market we went to the Sengaku-Ji Temple famous for the 47 ronin who committed suicide...It was SUPER lame, just a big cemetery, but I did buy a bunch of overpriced gifts for the fam.

After that we headed up to the Sony building. The had a 3D aquarium - no real fish, just HD tv's and only one of the tv's was in 3D...false advertising. We spent some time in their showrooms before going to lunch at a Japanese hamburger place - it was good, lots of pepper in the meat.

After lunch we went to the Tokyo International Forum, i.e. convention center. It was an awesome glass building - Anyone interested in Architecture should check it out. We were so exhausted from yesterday that we sat on a bench in the AC for probably a half hour, or at least as long as it took us to devour an entire package of cookies.

Then we headed South-West to Omote-Sando Blvd. It had loads of expensive shops and the Oriental Bizarre - we spent some time in there buying gifts as it was prob the only store we would be able to afford on the whole street. The neighborhood North of this street was where it was at. Takeshita-Dori. It was full of young artists and their small, cute, overpriced shops. Seriously one shop we went to called Texas something, was selling about 20 "vintage" t-shirts all even spaced on 2 or 3 racks - when I say vintage I mean this guy bought a ticket to the US went to a Savers or Good Will and brought these $1 shirts back to Tokyo and is selling them for the equivalent of $60. What a rip off, but what a genius this guy is.

Then we checked out the National Yoyogi stadium where the 1964 olympics were held. It was neat, but way too small for olympics. The Yoyogi park took us to the Menji-Jingu Temple. It was pretty and there was a wedding going on and of course I took a pic:

We walked down to Shibuya Crossing which was crazy busy. The pictures below illustrate this point. Apparently this crossing was used in Lost in Translation.

ALL of these people are waiting to cross - there were of course at least 4 other groups like this at all of the stop lights.

And now we are in the middle of crossing. Crazy

Then we headed back to Asakusa for the annual last saturday in July fireworks show. Apparently they set off 20,000. I have never seen so many people in my life! The line at the 7-11 was wrapped around the store - and yes 7-11's are how I judge these kinds of things. We wondered around trying to find a place to sit without know where the fireworks were going to be set off. Eventually we were herded across a bridge like cattle being yelled at in Japanese by a ridiculous # of cops with loudspeakers. We somehow got behind some gates, sat on the street and had an awesome view...I thought we were too close when it first started. That went from 7:30-8:30 then we went back to the hostel to relax to take it easy tomorrow. (We were planning to meet Brenna and family in Kyoto, but it would cost 13,000 yen one way to get there in less than 9 hours.)