Tokyo Adventure

Tokyo- WOW!

Well the sights and sounds of Tokyo are a plenty, and I did well as much as we could in the wild weekend. Saturday saw us heading to browse through the four story outdoor store- minimising my purchases to essentials! I showed some restraint! Mandy then introduced me to the 100 Yen store and I was hooked! You can buy absolutely anything there.. well just about, well maybe not a dead rhinoceros! You can buy material, lollies, costumes, fireworks, house decorations, tools- all dirt cheap! I loved the photo booths, in which Mandy and I played in till... we noticed the line up for the machine outside! You can take photos and then do all the crazy additions to them- so cool!

Common to see gardens out the front of buildings

Mandy took me to an Isakaya, where you eat from a tapas style menu, featuring Japanese food, accompanied by beer and saki- it was delicious! After wetting our whistles Mandy headed downtown for some good old Karaoke- Japanese style! You pay for your own room in which you have a catalogue of songs to choose from- but no don't get excited by the film clips – the songs are accompanied by images of America, Brooklyn I think, a real classic! Kicking off the night with some Madonna and hitting a high note with Bon Jovi, we ordered beer and pizza over the intercom and received a few phonecalls to say that they would be closing in 10 minutes. Oh, how the time flies when your being a superstar!

The slow Sunday morning was kicked off with a Mexican breakfast, Mandy style! I braved the supermarkets which is not recommended in a less than chipper mood as there are rows of advertisements that begin to sing Japanese songs at you as they sense you walk past- so not cool after a long hard night at Karaoke!

We headed to see some sights of Tokyo- I saw Elvis's dancing in the park, dolls walking the streets lit by the neon lights of the advertise-scape that covered the buildings above, groups of teenagers dressed as one and enough electronics for sale that would make most techies get goosebumps! It was a wonderworld! I particularly enjoyed the fashion, the temples (where I wrote a wish) and the masses of people that swelled throughout the city. A people watchers dream!

Wishes hung at the Temple

Tuna- cut and labeled for inspection

After 3 hours sleep Mandy and I braved the morning at 3:45 to go to the famous tuna auction. It was at the fish markets and it was early! At 5am we found the auction house- met by the all important man in the uniform to direct us into the auction house and to carry the sign back and forth to announce that the use of a flash was forbidden! The inspection of the fish was a complex process- which involved poking and tasting of fresh flesh and the eying off the gynormigous fish (that were more the size of dolphins than tunas)

. After an hour or more of this the auction started and a man on a stool became animated in a frenzy of selling the rows of tuna one by one to the highest bidder.

Common to see gardens out the front of buildings

After a quick breaky it was a farewell to Tokyo and hello Czech Republic!

Tokyo, Japan