So yesterday ended up being long and busy, as predicted, and didn't end until about 6am today...

I went to the gym around 7am and signed up, which was great, but took ages longer than I thought it would, going through forms and everything. It's a really nice gym though, with a pool and a sauna and studios (lots of classes), plus the normal gym stuff, and really nice change rooms. Also, totally reasonably priced given that I've gone for the mornings before work only option.

I had time for a quick workout (but no classes), before I headed to work, mostly spending the day on BAB and some other design stuff... Navina, after getting a bit lost in Toranomon, made it to work, with some help from everyone in the office via the phone ("are you near a big sword shop?"), and we went for drinks at Suji's which was great fun before we went to Shinjuku to meet up with Jordon.

Unfortunately, Sarah wasn't feeling great, so she didn't make it, but the three of us wandered around and showed Kabuki-cho, or the entertainment district, to Navina. We went into one of the entertainment arcades that are everywhere, and Navina and I did the Taiko drumming game (kind of like dance dance revolution, but with taiko drums), and Jordon took some photos and video (to come).

After some wandering, we made it to Jordon's friend's Thai restaurant, which was very tasty, and really funly (that should so be a word!) decorated and then headed to Hatagaya, to a cute, small live house called 'Heavy Sick', where we watched Jordon's friend's all-girl band called 'The Feminine' play their garage-rock. It was a really cute space with a comfortably crowded number of people, not so many, as it was small though! And great, because the bar/tables and stuff were in a seperate room from the dance/dj/livehouse space, so while the live show was on, we went in there, but spent most of the night in the lounge area, which was quieter and lighter, and much better for chatting! Randomly, there was a Chihuahua in a purse for most of the evening, which seemed unfortunate, but other than that...

I'd met quite a few people before, which was both nice and embarrassing, as they all knew my name, and I, well, we know what I'm like with names! however, everyone was to nice, drunk, out of it, or not speaking English to really care! Also, when anyone would ask where we were from, and we'd say we were Canadians, and then they'd go "OH! You must be Jordon's friends!"

Navina and I got taken under the rather oppressive wing of one of the event/space organisers (as far as we could gather, that's what he does). He was quite funny, because at the beginning, he came over to me, and asked how old we were, and then when I told him, went "Oh. Too Young!" (for any sort of chatting up, I presume. He was 29...) and then proceeded to just spend the night intermittently hanging out with us. He insisted we memorize his number, so that if we ever run into problems in Japan, he would help us, as he "only has good feelings for the city, and any problems, have, we should call him and fix." Which on the whole, is a very nice sentiment, but he was a little far into the beer, so we ended up having a great round of a conversation, explaining to him about 10 times that we were students, but not in Japan, that I worked at an internship at a magazine, and that Navina was visiting. The capacity for repetition was astonishing! He was nice though, and certainly kept us fairly entertained!

It was also fairly astonishing how many people got falling down (OK passing out) drunk! Quite the percentage, which from a sober standpoint, was entertaining, though I can imagine there were some really, really unpleasant mornings for people today! Navina pointed out it was interesting/kind of surprising that there weren't really any random hookups going on. I wonder if that's a cultural thing, or a 'most of us know each other at least by sight and therefore its not so random' thing, or simply because it's hard to do much of anything when you're glued to the floor under a table?

Ahh, good times!

As one can imagine, after getting home at 5:30ish (we were actually walking distance from home, but didn't quite realise that until today, oops!) not much of anything went on during the day! I slept until about 1, and then got up to basically relocate to the couch, where we watched TV and I napped (for like 2 hours or so), while Peter went with Venus to check out the new dog park in Yoyogi Koen and the Thai Festival. It would have been nice to go and see everyone, but catching up on sleep was lovely as well!

In the evening, Peter took us out for a nice dinner to an Italian restaurant on the 54th floor of the Tokyo Opera building, where we had some lovely views over towards Roppongi, and then afterwards, snuck into a banquet room, and had lovely views of Setagaya-ku. We finished the evening with a drive through the Skyscraper District of Shinjuku with the top down-really nice!

Off to bed now, as you can never have too much sleep, and we want to be rested up for DISNEY SEA tomorrow!

xo
D