...and the journey continues...

Second verse, same as the first! ...almost. (Oh just in case, please click on the pictures here for the bigger versions!)

So that night, the Monday night, a group of us from Toronto gathered together to take a tour of Shinjuku! Shinjuku is split up into different sections, East and West being two of them, and where the hotel was located was in the rather quiet business-like West Shinjuku. East Shinjuku was a different story however, and it opens up after the West closes. The group of us went out with JAVA, an acronym the meaning of which I've forgotten, but in a nutshell its Japanese people who sort of act as ambassadors to other countries, or maybe just JET. Either way, awesome people, tonnes of fun. I took a bunch of pictures, but it was quite dark so none of them are steller. Still though, voila!!

I took this picture because I liked the duality of the rather traditional looking ramen shop against the very modern, big-city background. We were very close to the Tokyo subway here, and you can sort of see the sign for the Sakura-ya (a huge electronics chain) in the top right corner there, in orange.




This picture was taken in what our tour guide called "piss alley" - which was actually just a very narrow alley way filled with little restaurants and bars. And many bugs. You can see the back of Megan's head there. She almost gave me a heart attack at one point when she screeched as I almost stepped on a huge cockroach. I'm not afraid of bugs, but when a girl screams, you can't help but scream too. Sorry for the crappy quality of the pics, I couldn't really see what I was taking and so many of these images are less then steller.


Here is an example of the types of tiny little restaurants they had in the alley. It was almost like a bar, with little bar stools that you just sidled up to, ordered and ate at, and then left. We didn't go to one, but we certainly got interested looks from all the patrons and owners as our little group of gaijin walked past.




Here is a picture of downtown Tokyo, though not the 'Times Square' area that we so often see on television. This was still in Shinjuku, and I think that the times square is in Shibuya. I'm not sure though, but either way, this was a very cool area to be in! Not literally however, we were sweating our behinds off. I bought a small fan from a stand for 100 yen (about a buck) and man was it worth every penny.


Again, not a great picture, but it shows our group and a different angle of the downtown. Also you can see the sign for NOVA, another English-teaching program that I had considered going into. Two of my friends will actually be working there this fall I believe, so I wish them both luck!




Here is Meg, showing off her ladylike "glow" (not sweat, GLOW!) in the downtown area. Already she's doing the peace sign in pictures (though I think as a joke)! I have yet to do one, I'm trying to be all 'different'. Only a matter of time. *laughs*

So after we had walked around Shinjuku a little bit, our tour guide, who was a young guy named Toka (I think) took us to what's called a 'nomihodai' - or, an all you can drink bar. You pay a flat amount, and up until a certain time of night you can drink as much as you want.

It was a small, crowded little place that was on top of a 'gentleman's club', and since our group consisted of about 50 people, we had to wander around a bit more before we got to sit down.



Here you can see some of our group! Yup, all of those people were with us. The girl in the glasses looking up was actually one of my T.A.s at McMaster, funnily enough! She's near Kyoto now, just outside of the big city. I hope she's settling in allright!



While we were there, we shared the space with an office party who were out celebrating. I think they had been there a while because they were all really "happy" to see us. It was quite smokey in this bar, because in many places its still ok to smoke indoors, which you can kind of see in this picture. The man standing up there shouted out "WE LOVE AMERICAN!" at one point, until Toka corrected him, and then it was "WE LOVE CANADA!!" We all had to cheer, of course!


Here are a couple photos of the bar, showing just how many of us there were, and me quite sweaty and dissheveled. Hoohaa.



I'm not much of a beer person, so I didn't end up drinking too much, but we were all practicing refilling each others glasses that night, to get ourselves into the Japanese-mindset for manners!


Not sweat remember, 'glow'.



This is what they served us as 'bar food' at the nomihodai. Now I know why Japanese people are so trim. Instead of peanuts and chicken wings, they have SALAD and SOYBEANS when they go drinking! It was pretty tasty actually!




Meg and I decided to 'represent' our respective home-towns, Muncton, and the T-DOT!! Booyakasha!!






The rest of the weekend went by pretty unremarkably. At least unremarkably enough that I didn't take any pictures of it. *laughs* Tuesday included more meetings, and seminars, and by the end of the day I was so exhausted that again I was slightly out of my head. Between the jet lag and the non-stop meetings, I was about ready to stand up and scream by the end of Tuesday, but thankfully Megan talked me out of it.

The next morning we all headed out to our placement cities, and for those of us going to Nagasaki prefecture, that meant yet another plane ride. This time it was only about an hour long though, literally up and down. Once we landed in Kyushu, we were introduced to the infamous Kyushu heat and humidity. Suddenly Tokyo didn't seem so very hot!! I met up with my supervisor, a lady whom I call 'Ogawa-sensei', and she drove me to Sasebo!

This post is getting a little overly long though, so I'm going to safe the Sasebo info for next time. Thanks to everybody who is dropping by to read, or just look at the pictures. ^_^

Ttfn!