Monday 10 November 2008

The Day After Tomorrow

Hello!

We are dictating this to Freyja on some grass near the Imperial Palace in the sun (it's not been incredibly sunny whilst we've been here but it's been nice and warm).

So breakfast time! Breakfast time! [scroll down to the bottom for the breakfast menu] For 320 Yen (down from 370!) you get unlimited serve yourself tea (and they had at least 20 kinds of tea!), coffee, soup (corn cream instant soup), and toast (which you toasted yourself!). We didn’t eat very much as we were about to go out for lunch.

The second part of the bank money story is coming up now! The human asked the reception human where the Citibank was and he gave her a map and we realised we were right next to the place the night before when we were hanging outside the Metropolitan Art thingy, because it was in the Metropolitan plaza next door on the 9th floor. It didn’t work.

After getting the Marunouchi Line to Korakun and the Ginza Line to Hibya (with a brief stop somewhere that turned out to be a mistake and we had to get back on the Marunouchi Line) we were to get out of Hibya at B7 (or the station next to Hibya at Exit 1 as they were right next to each other). Only on the Hibya Station map there was only A0-9. I said to the human that there must be a B if there was an A (plus we’d been told to go to B) but it definitely wasn’t on the map.

So we left at A7 and found a street map that indicated that the other station was straight up the long road. Just as we were about to set off up the street a very nice Japanese man stopped to help. He was apparently not from around here and was able to read out loud the human’s notes but not understand them. We remembered the word for station and he looked excited. He took us to a police lady who pointed us back to where we just were for Hibya (it’s awkward when people start to help when you already know what to do!) but managed to understand we wanted the next station.

The human found the other human to have lunch with and they had bagels. Then a walk around the area (it seemed like a financially/Bond streety district) and up to the Imperial Palace.

Freyja says that outside the Imperial Palace some guy took a photo of her taking a photo of us, but blatantly he was taking a photo of us having our photo taken. Another nice lady patted us on the head and called us “Moomi” which we hope doesn’t mean she was calling us a Moomin because they scare us. She said no to a photo of us, but then offered to hold Bernard up in a photo so we sneakily took one of her too (hehehe). Then a policeman took a photo of the human (the only photo the human has of herself in Tokyo).

After a walk around the gardens, we decided to move on. Standing in front of a map, considering where to go next (Shibuya or Shinjuku first?) and the human was just saying to us “If we stay here any longer someone is going to be super nice and offer to help, even though we know where we are” and got cut off by a super nice lady offering to help. We acted out that we were just thinking and she went on her way.

So to Shibuya (how can it be bad if it’s called Booya?) where we found an amazing Disney store (the human was a little embarrassing at this point). Then lots of walking and wandering around and lots of lights!

Whilst walking around aimlessly, we found the Shibuya crossing (featured in movies! Such as Lost in Translation and Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift) which the human made us cross even though we were right next to the station entrance. We took the train to Akihabara again (as we hadn’t stayed very long the time before).

We played games machines (UFO Catcha), sweet winning machines, looked at bright lights, saw all the awesome things in the awesome shops, won a big mouse guy who is a chef (he has a chef hat, an apron and is holding pancakes), more lights, more games, lots of excitement and pain to our retinas.

Time for the train to Shinjuku, where we decided that Tabata sounds like Tabitha and so Tabitha must go there and get a photo with the sign. Shinjuku was more walking, more lights, more shops, and more feet pain! Lots of fun.

On the way home, a man called Freyja beautiful (which we found suspicious) and then asked for 500 yen (see!). We are always suspicious when people call her beautiful (follow up on this in the next blog!)

Dinner in the café downstairs again, pack our bags because we’re leaving tomorrow (boo hoo) and then bed (you know I was excited about that part!).

SH.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh it all sounds very exciting and that you're having a lovely time.

I do think your right about if there's an "A" there must be a "B", as your human should know, bearing in mind if there's a "1" there's gotta be a "2" (ask your human and she will understand - DP talk)!


You should have put your sunglasses on for all the bright lights at the games. Was the sweet winning machine a vending machine though? You know you always win on those machines!

Australia tomorrow... yay! If possible can we have a picture of boxing kangaroos? xx