Saturday, December 23, 2006

One night in Tokyo and the rough gets rougher

Last night was a really interesting night in Tokyo. It all started after 10pm.
Where should I start. I was at shinjuku district, and went to the imperial palace (really huge). After that, I decided to go to starbucks to load up with coffee since my plan was not to sleep between Thursday and Friday since my flight would leave at 1140and I would have to be at the airport early.

I realized that starbucks have weaker coffee in the evening and that people go to starbucks when they go out. it was sooo crowded with drunk teenagers. hilarious. one couple started to make out and a bunch of old ladies threw them out...hahaha

starbucks closed at 11pm so my plan was to go for dinner. I found a nice place in Ginza are. Last set of sashimi (I had sushi for lunch at the fish market) and then just to buy yakitori on the street afterward. When I sat on the restaurant, I noticed that I was the only girl at that place. I don’t' know why, but it was creepy. Since I had already orderd food and I find it embarassing just to leave I figured out that I might as well stay. As I had my dinner, I looked out of the window and a guy looked in through the window and started to stare at me while I was eating. I couldn't eat, don't know if he was hungry but that feelt weird.

Anyway, left the restaurant. Ginza is really classy at day but extremely trashy at night have to say. The abiance feels different at night. So my next plan was to go to the stone spa that is open 24hours a day. It was listed in a guide book so I suppose that they overpriced a bit (2700yen) but I didn't feel like looking for other places and that sounded like a safe place. And yes, the stone spa was nice. Except the fact that I was the only one there. Weird.
So the girl who worked was not happy when she saw me at midnight. I guess she wanted to close earlier. I had the whole stone spa all to myself, talk about waist of spa! that was the most depressing part. Alone at a really nice spa, tragic tragic tragic

she said that they closed at 3am. so I was fine with that, my plan was to take the normal subway to Narita airport. So I left the spa at 3am, rested and relaxed. I had found a nice jazz café that looked nice that I planed to go to, but it was closed. The street was crowded with weird dressed people. old men with young woman, as usual. So I foud a” normal" bar where I just order a café latte. All of a sudden, when I looked out of the street a guy just collapsed in the middle of the street.

the funny thing is that I asked the owner of the bar if we should maybe call emergency or something but he just totally ignored it (the Japanese ignoration, you know). aha. there he was, laying in the middle of the sidewalk, people passing by no one cares. I thought that I just tell a police and so I did (with a lot of communication problems). My next plan was to head to the train station, too much action for me in such a short time. on my way, I found an open pharmacy, so I thought, I need to buy that hairoil that I can't find in Sweden, it's a small package anyway. So I went in to the pharmacy, there again, Old guys with young ladies. the girls were shopping the most expensive things (guys paying of course). The guys are the sugar daddies, but honestly, if the girls want to use the guys they might as well go shopping for electronics or real hard cores tuff, not make up. talk about stupid girls.

So by now, I had only 200yen left in cash. I forgot to tell you the adventure I had when I tried to look for an ATM in the afternoon. didn't work well but most places that accepted credit card, I paid with my card (even when I only bought coffee). On my way to the station, there was another guy just laying on the street, but I think t his guy was being robbed in front of my face. I started to run. So I arrived to the station, paid with my credit card for the train ticket to Nairta. But here comes the next problem
I had locked in my language in the lockers at the train station when I arrived at 7am on Thursday morning to Tokyo. According to what's written on the lockers, the price you pay is valid for 24 hours, and my stuff had been there for 22 hours so I didn't think about the lockers. But the problem is that I needed to put in another 500 yen in the lockers in order to open since it was the day before. And I only had 200 yen, no ATM open.
I started to laugh at that point.
What should I do? Most of the stores were closed and even if I'd buy things, I can't take out money at the same time in Japan. This is absolutely one of the disadvantages about travelling alone, no one to borrow small money from (believe me, bigger problem then you might imagine). So my plan was to go back to the pharmacy where I bought the hair oil and return it in order just to get 300 more yen. I was nervous about the fact that the pharmacy guy wouldn't accept it. Thank god I had left the recete and it worked, went back to the station and took the subway.

Here comes the next problem;

I was soo exhausted after all what happened that I fell asleep on the tram that I missed getting off at "Tokyo station".
But what I did was that I continued the whole way, and changed pathway. I was suppose to change at Tokyo station to go with another JR line but instead, I continued to the last stop and changed to Narita. I arrived at the ariport 845 but I didn't have to carry my bags so it turned out ok :)

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