Explore!

Location | Tokyo

Thursday was lonely because I went off on my own to do everything I wanted to do. The first thing on my list was to go back to Asakusa and the Senso-ji area. There I did some “major” shopping. I was supposed to meet up with Shivali at 11am at Yasukuni Shrine, but when I got to Asakusa, it was already around 10:45. So I decided to stay there and shop around. I got a whole bunch of cell phone charms, a little bag, some snacks for my mom, and various other random items.

After that I had to go to the Tokyo Dome to find the “Mother Garden” store. They were closed… and only for this week!! Oh the agony!! So then I left the area dejected and went to Shinjuku. Shinjuku was horrid!! Besides getting extremely lost and extremely confused inside the train station, I was in pain (from walking so much) and walked in circles until I found what I was looking for: KINOKUNIYA! Kinokuniya is an amazingly LARGE bookstore of many floors filled with so many different kinds of books. So many more than I’ve ever seen in the states. There I got a bilingual book on Japanese culture ~ which I thought would be a good read on the plane.

After this, and not eating since 9am, I went to Shibuya to begin my research. I got to the Starbucks across from the Shibuya station and with a good view of the scramble crossing or “Center Gai.” I was there for about two hours and spent a lot of it looking at the advertisements and different people handing out things (flyers, kleenex packets, etc) on the street. Then I noticed this group of guys (4-5 of them) who were down below. After watching them for awhile, it was obvious what they were up to. They were picking up girls!! In Japan, it’s called “nanpa.” For these guys, what they would do is, wait for the red lights and the cross signal and cross halfway with the crowd. Then in the street they’d look for a single woman (of their liking) and then chase after her trying to get her to go on a date with them!!! This was going on for more than two hours!

Halfway through, a sleezy looking salaryman joined them. It was so ridiculous!!! This salaryman was obviously an amateur because he’d just go after any semi-good looking girl… and he looked so ridiculous in the process of chasing after them.

While further looking up some research on nanpa, I came across this sleazy site about picking up girls in Roppongi. I would totally beware of these sleazy men… some guy in Roppongi asked me if I’d take 5000 Yen (or was it only 500 Yen!?!?!?). EW.

Anyway, after watching these guys, I went downstairs and went into Shibuya to check out Tokyu Hands. This was the most amazing store I’ve been in to! They had tons of stationary, do-it yourself items, household stuff, bags, pens, just everything that I like!! I ended up buying a ton of stuff and not being able to finish looking through the store. So I had to leave and meet up at the hotel to go to dinner. Unfortunately, Shivali, Heidi and Suma had already left so I waited for 8pm to go to dinner with Bryan, Brian, James, Ariela, and Kris. We walked to Roppongi to some crappy izakaya. Afterwards we walked around Roppongi ~ first to Gaspanic to see if it was any good. (Gaspanic has a policy where you must be holding a drink at all times to stay inside!!!) The guy at the door said that there was no one inside, but there would be later. So then they all wanted to go to a club sort of far down the street pass the Roppongi Hills buildings.

So walking there, there were all these sleazy men on the streets trying to “take us out for a good time.” They especially kept asking if Ariela and I were with Bryan and Brian. Of course, Bryan, being the big “joker” that he is, said no and then they started talking to us. Talk about a gross sleazy feeling. So we got to this bar and the cover was 1500 yen. I decided to skip out and I took the subway back to the hotel. Suma, Shivali and Heidi came back and I just went to sleep.

[This entry was taken from my old blog, Building Tokyo. Formatting may have changed when moved to Explore!]