Jakey Jake

Monday 26th April
Woke up with a shocking hangover, not recalling that i had gone down to the shops to buy a third six pack of long necks Today i went with Pete to Ikebukuro, near where pete teached and we grabbed some lunch. Tokyo is actually made up of a bunch of little cities which have sprawlled out. There isnt a whole lot to do here, exceot visit the huge escelator in teh tokyo metropolitan art space, which i did and that was about that. There are soooo many shops, if you ever wanted to shop for really nice stuff tokyo would be the place, with Ginza and Shinjuku and pretty much any available space dedicated to all things retail. So i jumped on the train to shinjuku which is the world busiest train station, it was chock a block when i arrived. I found my way through the crowds and past all the arcade shops and made it to the east side. There i was confronted with a sea of department stores, most of which were selling gucci, prada, etc. none of that cheap stuff. Its a very clean city, and the gardens are immaculately kept. I trekked around the department stores and down a little alley til i got to an area known as golden gai, here there are a mass of bars, all very small all stacked right next to each other, there wouldve been a few hundred, each of which would only fit about 5-10 patrons each. past here it was into the red light district where there were an incredible amount of japanese women on offer on upstairs photo displays. From here i walked to the west side where most of tokyos skyscrapers are. This is because there seems to be less of an impact when there are any earth tremmors or quakes in this area. There certainly are some beautiful buildings and gardens in this area, but the best part of it is the tokyo metropolitain government offices, purely because of the spectacular view they offer from the 45th floor. You can see just how vast tokyo is, with every little nook and cranny being developed. Its not full of massive skyscrapers but this is due to the regions seismic activity. After this i caught another train, this time to Tokyo station, and i began to wander around the Giza area. It was getting late and i fumbled across the tokyo forum building, which was utterly spectacular. It was a shame that i didnt have my camera with me, but then agian i would just come back tomorrow and get some photos then. From there i walked around Ginza, which is a beautiful shopping area, with all the major fashion labels have exclusive stores, as opposed to areas of department stores. It was time to get back and meet pete, tonight was going to be an early one as we were both feeling prety crusty all day. We decided that we would go to Tokyo disneyland on wednesday before it was packed out with Kiddies during golden week.