“Neil, I’m in Shibuya”
After a few weeks of running on hectic I’ve finally had a day to myself to sort out some of the things that have been somewhat neglected.
Friday I received a call from my sister saying she’d arrived in Tokyo, so we arranged to meet by Hachiko and go for a meal in the evening.
I arrived early to discover that he’d been fenced off, and that the whole square was full of people meeting people. I accidentally stood by some peace protestors (I nearly tripped over their megaphone, which was so big it was floor mounted).
The next obvious meeting spot was underneath a mosaic of the dog, where we finally met up.
We trogged up the hill to Criston Cafe (again, if you’re coming to visit, you’ll get taken there too!) where we observed bizarre antics with towers of deep fried cheese and were generally treated as tourists.
The next day we met again in the square, where Hachiko was now exposed, they’d cut a little alleyway into the roadworks going on around him. Then off to meet with Damian for his final day in Tokyo.
Collecting him at his hotel we went on to Ginza, where we failed to find the musical staircase but did play with Aibos, then wandering through the city up to the Maranouchi building where we visited the viewing floor at the top of the building before finding pork in breadcrumbs.
Onward to Ueno, where we took a walk around the park, finding a boating lake down the other side of the hill – there were swans with sunroofs and the design of the Nissan Micra makes much more sense now.
Swinging back to Shinjuku to get another view of the city from the Government building, then a walk down the mini-Akihabara around the back of Pachinko Alley, Gillian bought another camera since she’d forgotten to pack hers – she’d been meaning to get a digital camera for a while so now seemed a good time.
By the time the credit card transaction had gone through we were hungry and went onward searching for food – it was getting late and places were closing, so we headed to the local Pot&Pot for more pork, but with curry this time. This was a good thing, since I’d always thought they were worth checking out but hadn’t actually figured out they did anything but seafood (pictures of fried things in breadcrumbs all look the same).
Back to Shibuya via my flat because I’d stupidly forgotten the flyer for Project Elektra….Gillian headed back to her hotel while I went to Club Shu! – a dingy little cellar with a DJ booth taking up most of the space were you’d like to dance.
The night started badly when I didn’t recognise anyone there and started talking to a PR man from Atlanta, who seemed nice enough, but somehow not on my wavelength.
After a while the ‘cute sparkly girl in the corner’ (who had been looking vaguely familiar but unplacable) came over and rescued me – Maya-chan. She introduced me to a number of her friends who she was there with, who had all been hiding on the other side of the club.
I don’t remember the names of the people I spoke to, but I’ve seen most of them before at places like Midnight Mess….good to make more friends. I think one was called Yotsuke, anyway, I spoke to her for a bit, she’d been living near Highbury and Islington at around the time I was on Hornsey Road, going to all the same clubs, but I don’t remember ever seeing her.
Sundays are always a bit of a mess after going out on a saturday night – I met Gillian again at Harajuku station, and we wandered around OmateSando area for a bit, grabbing a disappointing crepe on the way, and, finally, landing up in a basement restaurant laid out as if it were a roof garden.
Then on Monday we met for random drinks and strawberry cake at Ducky Duck, which was mostly unremarkable.
Today has been a national holiday so I’ve now nearly caught up with everything, just got some ironing and washing up to do now, oh, and some paperwork, but I don’t think any of that is *very* urgent.