Long, busy, fun day today-will expand the blog and add photos tomorrow when I get them off Navina's camera (and have a tad more creative energy!)

In short, we started the morning with a trip off to Kabuki-za, where we took in one show, for about an hour. The theatre has shows all day, and you can buy a ticket to see the whole day, but it seemed that those patrons tended towards the elderly Japanese set. The rest of the foreigners were like us, up in the 4th floor open-seats, just taking in a taste of kabuki. It was pretty interesting! Much more exciting than Noh-the sets had scenery, and there was a discern able plot! We went and got the English ear pieces, which was definitely a good idea--without them, we wouldn't have had a clue what was going on!

After the show (about an hour, a good length to get the idea!), we headed to Shibuya to meet Jordon for some pre-fishing lunch. We headed to one of a chain of Italian restaurants called Tapas and Tapas (or something similar to that-they have an octopus on a plate of pasta as their logo).

After lunch, we headed to Sangenjaya and did some fishing. Seriously. This place has been around since like 1964, and basically its a slightly ramshackle building with stools surrounding a big, above ground, concrete pool/pond, about 4 feet deep. You sit on the stools, and with tiny fishing rods, even tinier hooks, and itty bitty balls of bait, try and catch goldfish. It's harder than it sounds! I caught two, and Navina got one, and that was our sum total for the day! Both of us caught our first ones with the help of a guy who may or may not have actually worked there, but was really helpful-resetting our bait and telling us when to pull. He called it princess fishing, which was perfect!

There was also a random film crew in there at the beginning, and the girl being filmed spoke really good English, so she talked to Jordon a bit - she wasn't having much more luck than we were either! Tons of people there were regulars-really good at fishing (for points!) and just chilling out with their beer, cigarettes, and 24 inch long fishing poles. It was pretty great, more fun and relaxing than we all had expected, although I have to say the actual catching part was a bit traumatic! The first one, I made the guy de-hook (its all catch and release, no sashimi here!) and the second one, I fully just thrust at Jordon to deal with. For some reason, I really have a thing against live, flopping fish! The first fish almost met an unfortunate end, as the guy passed it to Jordon to put in the net, and it jumped out of Jordon's hand and onto the floor! He finally managed to scoop it back up and in, but it was traumatic for the poor little fishy!

After that, since I had remembered that there was a through road to Shimo Kitazawa, we wandered down there, and then once we got there did a big, circuitous loop around the area, taking whatever streets seemed good. Finally, we ended up at a back street izakaya, and sat outside, on converted kegs, for a few drinks. Randomly, we were given some potatoes and pork that we didn't ask for (but had to pay for, i think?) and then some microwaved popcorn, that we REALLY didn't ask for, but also didn't have to pay for. How odd, but a really good spot. We (well Jordon mostly, since his Japanese is so much more functional!) was chatting with the manager of the place, and we got his card, that had all of their locations on it-including one in Vancouver!

After all that, Navina and I wandered home, and have just been watching a couple of episodes of Sex and the City before heading to bed--work in the morning and all that!
Photos and videos of the fishing tomorrow...
xo
D