Day 4: Saturday May 29

We had planned a day in the mountains with one of my Coastie contacts, but Darryl woke me before the alarm went off at 8. He had received a text from her to say that gray clouds were threatening. We rescheduled for next week, thinking the delay a bit of a blessing, as we were still exhausted, and we went back to sleep for a few hours. We rolled into Shinjuku around 11, first priority: food. Pretty quickly, we found the back alley restaurants, red lanterns hanging in rows outside tiny stand-up noodle bars hidden by wooden screens and tapestries of kanji. We sat at the likeliest-looking place, where the hairy old cook helped us to order by pointing to bowls of soba or udon and holding up eggs and soy sauce. He was expressionless until we finished and D asked if he could film, and then gave us a shy grin. The tempura and soba, though, was nearly inedible and so D and I wandered off unsated.




We stopped at Uni-Qlo, a popular non-brand-name store, and bought a few things: a cheap umbrella (at last--only $15--the cheapest we'd seen in three days), a good linen shirt for D and a silly lacy shirt for me. Now hoping for coffee and cake, we headed two stops over on the subway, to Shibuya.

We were getting desperate and there were no cafes around, so we swallowed our shame and found perches at Starbucks, which has a prime real estate location a storey above the famous Shibuya crossing. From here we could watch thousands of people racing back and forth, across all four directions and diagonally, whenever the lights turned. Across the crossing from us, men in green shirts were protesting something with big signs.



Below us, Western men towered above the crowds, Japanese girls tottered along in heels, skinny Cosplay couples strolled all in black or dressed as their favorite anime characters, and girls dressed as princesses or Little Bo Peep made their way towards the shops.



Rested up, we met Takis an hour later.



He took us to Tokyu Hands, the amazing six story craft and homegoods shop, where I went nuts over pens, lunchboxes, luggage, stationery, magnets, lamps, pots and pans, ribbon stickers, pet costumes, pharmacy goods, and sake bottle sets. The boys looked at camera equipment. We continued on to 109, an 8-storey women's fashion shop, where the girls were as fun to look at as the clothes. We circled down through the departments for what seemed like forever, dizzy from the loud music, swirling lights, and screams of “irrashiamase” (welcome).

Condomania: guess what they sell.



Now T needed a break, so we sat at what he said was an authentic Italian cafe, and then continued to dinner, a place his wife had recommended, on the fourth floor of a building we never would have realized contained restaurants. We had a lovely light salad to start, then dumplings, sashimi, and a sort of fried rice, with a dessert and two bottles of sake which we certainly didn’t need. Takis' wife didn't come because, he explained, of culture--in Japan, you do not simply call someone up and ask them to go out with you that night, and certainly not in a few hours--these things either are planned days in advance, or don't happen.



We were worn out and it was nearly ten o'clock, but we headed out among throngs of drunken people, all dressed up for a big Saturday night and all looking very young. T took us to an Arcade. We bypassed the claw machines--containing fabulous prizes like a full length body pillow with a naked anima character on it, or teensy soft purses shaped like animals, or Hello Kitty dolls--to wait at the photo booths, jostled by hordes of girls also waiting their turn and shouting things at us like “Shake my hand!" "high five!” or “pretty girl!” We took a series of fun photos which we edited, giving ourselves hats and moustaches. D and I were home and asleep at 12.