Japan Day Two : Yoyogi Park and other drunken shenanigans

I have just woken up from probably the most random night of my life, and

{2 hours later}

Okay. I just went back to bed for a few hours.

Let me describe the scene....

My face is fucked up, if I didn't have such a flat nose, it would be broken. The little finger on my left hand is probably broken. My kuckles are bruised. My mind is bruised. Woo is lying in bed asking why he cant remember anything and complaining that he is still drunk and hungover a the same time.

Yet we both agree that what little of last night we can remember, we will never forget for as long as we live.

Tokyo is random town. And last night, and all of yesterday in fact, was the randomest of it all.

Write it in your diary folks. Sunday the 8th of February is when Surly and Woo faceplanted the great city of Tokyo, and survived to tell the parts of the story they remember.

Jon Arnold is an old friend of Belinda's. He used to work at Millner College of English in Perth with Belle. He has lived and worked in Tokyo for the last 2 years, and he was kind enough to be showing us around for the day yesterday.

We were supposed to meet him in the lobby at 10am. His phone cant call us, as it doesn't let him call international numbers. When we got out of bed at 10:30am, we were lucky enough that he understood that we were likely to be still asleep after the nuts night we had had on day one. (we went into tokyo and and then out in Shinjuku, to the seedy area know as Kubuki-Chou.... but i'll write day 1 later)

Jon initially takes us to a tower (i cant remember the name of it) but you can go up to an observation deck for free, which was good. It was a beautiful clear day, so we could see Mt Fuji in the distance, which was very impressive. The sheer size of the sprawl of Tokyo is impossible to describe, it seems to go on forever.

After that, it was around lunchtime, and we headed into Harajuku. Jon took us down this crazy little street full of shops and vendors. One shop had a sign out the front which said"No Photo - Fuck off", so of course I took a photo of that.

We went to a sushi place for lunch and beers. It was one of those conveyor belt places where your food comes around to you and you just grab whatever you like. The food was fantastic, the service was lovely and the beers were cold. Everything was going swimmingly.

After lunch we walked down to Yoyogi park to see the cosplay kids. Along the way, we stopped at a little convenience store, where we bought some beers and some "Kirin - Strong" It was a UDL type thing in a 440ml can, and was 8% alcohol. Jon told us that one his other friends had conumed them previously and when asked about them he replied "they really hit you in the mind". We would later find out just how true these words were.

There weren't really that many cosplay kids, which was a little disappointing as I was expecting to be blown away. But all the same, it was still amusing and something that is very different to what we are used to in Perth.

We then walked around the conrner where we found some street vendors and the Tokyo Rockabilly club, all dresse in black leather or skin tight black jeans, with their hair all "elvis-esque" and dancing around in a park. I have many photos and some video, which will go up on Facebook at some time, as will photo's and video of most of the following craziness.

We left the rockabillys and walked over an overpass to Jinnan (i think) where we could hear some beats thumping in the distance. Jon had told us that there is regularly a little tent set up with a DJ and some decks and some speakers and maybe 100 committed punters dancing about. At the base of the overpass was a flea market. Everybody mostly selling clothes, some watches and some tech stuff like old sega games etc etc. We didn't hang about to look at the flea market too long as we could now see where the music was coming from and it was well more than 100 people.

There was probably two thousand Japanese people, nearly all of whom were COMPLETELY off their dial. They were dancing their asses off to psy-trance happy hardcore type music that I would normally hate. It was completely unexpected. Jon had never seen it this big before, and it was completely free. We stood there, drinking our beers and watching the craziness for a good 30 minutes. There was people set up on picnic blankets at the back of the dance area, drinking wine out of the bottle and having a little bit to eat. There was a dessert wine that was in a milk carton. A cute litle Japanese girl gave (forced) Woo and I to have a drink. It was disgusting, but she was cool.

We left there thinking we'd go get some more drinks and then go back there and hang out with the munted people for a bit longer. We walked back a different way through the park. There were groups of people in the park practicing kendo, dance routines and volleyball (with no net). We were accosted by teens in crazy outfits carrying signs that said "free hugs" and then demanding hugs from us. It was kinda cute the first 3 times, then it got somewhat tiresome. Especially after Woo discovered the girls dont love being picked up while being hugged...

We got another Kirin Strong, and Sake in a jar. The sake was dis-gust-ing. I dont see me drinking any of that again. When we got back to the day-rave, they were all packing up. All the punters were cleaning up after themselves and heading off. It was 4:15 in the afternoon, and most looked as though they hadn't slept all weekend.

Jon, Woo and I then walked into Shibuya. We were all fairly drunk at this stage and were having a great old time. We crammed all three of us into a passport photo box before we realised that the machine would not give us change. We weren't prepared to pay $15 for the photo, so we moved on. We played some video games at a timezone type place. It all starts getting very hazy about here, but I do remember shooting tarantulas.

I stopped at a tshirt shop and bought two t-shirts. I say that so matter of factly because that kinda how it went. I walked into the store. Saw the shirts. Tried them on. Paid for them. Walked out. Shopping while drunk is a little different.

We got into Shibuya and walked across what is probably the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. It was mind boggling the amount of people walking across it.

We went somewhere for dinner. I didn't remember even going there until Woo reminded me of it this morning. The food was good, we had to take our shoes off and they gave us thongs to wear when we went to the toilet. Thats pretty much all I remember.

After coming out of the restaurant, very drunk, we had to cross the intersection again. I asked Woo to "ebb and flow" across the intersection. Obviously he was more than happy to do so, and we have video of that momentus piece of history also. For those of you who dont know what the ebb and flow is, it is a special Woo dance that he will show your if you ask him nicely while he is drunk.

We jumped in a taxi and went back to Jon's place. Grabbing more beers along the way. Jons apartment is slightly bigger than our hotel room (ie tiny) but is was beautiful from the roof where you could see straight to the tokyo tower which was only 150m away. It looks just like the Eiffel Tower, but apparently the Japanese built it 10m taller than the Eiffel to piss of the French. Gotta love that!

We then got back in a taxi and went to a club Jon knew of called "The Room". It was nearly 10pm and the place closed at 11pm, but it was still worth it. We got in there, and it was like ambar, ie underground and small, But WAY smaller. Maybe a quarter the size. The music was pretty woeful, and i've heard monkeys mix beats better than whoever was on the decks that night.

The place was great though, the staff were friendly, especially one dude after Woo decided it would be a good idea to kiss his hand after he gave us our drinks. I hope he doesn't consider that standard Australian behaviour. We talked to a few people in the club and had a bit of a boogie before they were getting ready to close. We were the last people to leave, and I'm pretty sure we had three or four rounds of drinks in the hour we were there. Before we left we had some tequila shots with the bar staff and headed out.

Now things get hazy. Really hazy. Jon and I were playfighting a little and that continued as we crossed a road towards a convenience store. We started actually fighting out the front of the store. Neither of us were angry, it was all just a bit of fun. At this time we lost Woo, although neither of us noticed as we were laughing our asses off while wailing on each other. I was working the body for a while, before Jon took it up a notch and Jon socked me a beauty right in the schnoz. Blood was pissing out all over the pavement. I was laughing my ass off, and the next thing I know there were four cops around us, and they were curious as to why we were fighting. We didn't really have an answer but once they knew we were friends they seemed more confused than angry, although they did write all our details down. Jon says we kinda got arrested, but they didn't take us away anywhere so it's all good as far as I'm concerned.

We couldn't find Woo anywhere, so Jon and I jumped in a taxi. I dropped him home and then I went back to the hotel. I got in at about 1am, and Woo was nowhere to be seen, so I went to sleep.

Woo got in at about 4:30am, and went straight to sleep. When we discussed what happened this morning, Woo has no recollection of ever leaving the club. In fact, the last thing he remembers is kissing the bartenders hand. The next thing he remembers is walking around an apartment buildings carpark, where a ferrari f430, a lamborghini 4wd and a merc slk where parked all around him. For an inordinately long period of time Woo walked around the carpak trying to get out, but couldn't. Apparently the lift would not let him out on any floor. Eventually he got to the lobby, walked out the front door and got in a taxi which drove him around for ages before returning him to his hotel.

So that was the night. I have so many RDI's I wouldn't even know where to start. Apparently Jons abdomen is black (I was working the body, remember....) Woo cant remember how he got in that garage, and I may have a broken nose and finger.

However, it would be one of the most memorable nights of my life. Well, what I can remember of it anyway.