Me and Sonia in Tokyo

I was late meeting Sonia in Tokyo. I think she was awfully worried. We stayed in a nice hostel just outside of Shinjuku, the name now escapes me, but it was a nice area. The first day we spent walking around Shibuya and Harajuku. We went to Yoyogi park next to Harajuku station and walked around for a while… we saw a couple of traditional weddings with the whole procession and everything or taking pictures which was kind of nice. It was raining all day sporadically. In Shibuya we went to a bunch of used clothing stores which were pretty spiffy and tried on stuff etc. They were all much too expensive for my liking. That night we went to Shinjuku and had dinner at a Hawaiian restaurant of all things… it was very good. And later while Sonia slept I went for a walk in the neighbourhood around our hostel and it was really nice; one way was very residential and neighbourly and the other was a nice, comfy little arcade and I decided it would be a good place to live.

The next day we woke up at four ’o clock in the morning (gasp!) to go to the fish market and catch the early morning auctions because that’s when all the really big tuna go on sale. Alas, the market was closed once again. I should have known! The whole reason I had a long weekend was because it was a national holiday so of course the fish market would be closed… sigh. We walked around the empty market for a little while inspecting things and then we took the subway back to Harajuku. It was still much much too early. Nothing was open. The only thing was a TGIF restaurant on the corner so we went there to pass the time and have some breakfast. I had my first grilled cheese sandwich in a long time and it was delicious! I love grilled cheese sandwiches. And they had an unlimited tea bar so we drank lots of tea… I like mine milky with two sugars. After a while Sonia noticed the sun. (it had been raining forever so the sun was quite special although that is not to say that it isn’t always very special). We walked around Harajuku for a while and went back up to the park and decided to go to a restaurant with a nice big window view of the park and Harajuku station for something to drink and ended up eating cake. It was banana and cream cake and it was very delicious. After that we headed for an art gallery we had a pamphlet for that was hidden somewhere in the smaller back streets of Harajuku. The art gallery was sooo cool! It was like a shining beacon of light. It really was quite often. It's this space where artists (of any callabre...be it student or genius) can rent out a room to display their art for $5.00 a day! It's really, really colourful and bright and there's a big nose sticking out on one side. It put me in a very good mood. A lot of the artists around displaying thier stuff seemed like students and they were really nice and some of them spoke english very well. There was one artist I really liked that made this really colourful paintings that were a collection of all these little faces smushed together... they were really, really bright, and colourful, and pretty. Me and Sonia had lots of fun walking throught the buildings and I decided that if I lived in Tokyo I'd like to draw pictures and write stories and plaster them all over a wall 'cause it would be fun but also because I wanted to make friends with all the other people there 'cause they seemed really cool and nice. After that, we kept walking along this little street in the back alleys of Harajuku and it wasn't too crowded. Then Sonia was hungry so we went back to this little cafe/restaurant we saw that was really pretty. It was an Indian restaurant and me and Sonia shared dosas and spinach curry which was really, really good....mmm i love curry. We sat at the counter by the window and watched all the people walking by. Since it had been such a long day already, we went home and Sonia went to sleep and I did some doings on the internet.

The next day we woke up late and played around for longer than we should have. When we were finally through, we set off for these cave's that i had wanted to go to when mom and aaron were here but had never got the chance. They are only a short train ride away from Tokyo at a stop that I can't remember the name of on your way to Kamakura. The place was a really cute, pretty, nice mountain town. After a few unintended detours on the bus we found the temple with the all mysterious and alluring cave, but alas it was no longer open at that late late hour (of 5:oo) that we arrived. Oh well... I looked into the mouth of the cave through the bars and it was soooo scary! It was so so dark and i felt like there was a big, monsterous, fierce wolf ready to jump out and eat me... one of those really gnarly ones. I hope that david and aaorn come back with me in the summer so we can go to the cave because i'm not sure if i could make myself go in there by myself, but it sounds really, really cool with carvings and statues and mystery and everything. Me and Sonia walked around the temple and the little graveyard for awhile and there were sooo many huge gangly spiders! The looked like the slightly evil, poisonous kind, that would have a really bad bite... imagine how many of them would probably be in the cave, and you couldn't even see them only feel them crawling up your neck or down your pants! actually i'm sure there are none in the cave dave, i'm sure they keep it very very clean and dust for cobwebs regularly. On the way back we walked through a rice field and the sunset was really pretty and there were all these scarecrows in the fields and i'm pretty sure some of them way far off in the distance were shaped like anpanman. When we got back into Tokyo I got the shinkansen and headed home for work the next day and Sonia stayed in Tokyo.

p.s. the glasses are on account of the fact that when me and sonia were walking in furious rain in the little street in Harajuku thats always really busy we ducked into this little glasses store and we both picked up some dorky glasses frames and i insisted on wearing mine the whole time even though sonia said her's made her eyes hurt. officially i got them for dave to put real lenses into if he wants.