Still in Tokyo

I'm doing laundry right now... exciting... I know.

The last couple of days have been pretty weird. I had this sudden feeling of being completely illiterate as we waited in line today to book our train ride to Fukuoka for tomorrow. All signs were in Japanese. The only sign that was in English was explaining that if you needed to exchange your pass you weren't in the right place. I have to say that this is probably the only time I've ever felt this way. It seems like everywhere else I've travelled always has either English, French or Spanish signs (I may not speak spanish but I can read it sometimes). I think this feeling will only get worse once we leave Tokyo.

Two nights ago Ryan and I opted to go out to a bar for dinner and some drinks. We went in, sat down, ordered something we thought looked good and then quickly started sipping our sake. Our food arrived - 5 skewers of 'random' meat. I quickly found out (as I tried chewing through one of them) that the one I was eating was chicken hearts. Ryan apparently got a liver one... The third one was chicken skin with fat. And the last two were pretty uninteresting - beef and chicken. By the time we were on the chicken fat skewer we were both laughing pretty hard because neither of us were particularly enjoying our food, a team of Lituanian Judo fighters (is that what you'd call them?) had just sat down next to us and kept looking our way and some Japanese guy had just said something strange to me (maybe it wasn't strange?? - I didn't understand) as he left the bar. It was a strange scene. At this point it had started raining and we decided that instead of getting soaked we'd just head back home. I forced Ryan to do one more pass through of this alley we'd found full of bars before leaving so that I could take a few pictures. This turned into some Japanese man sitting at a bar alone, turning to find me taking his picture from about 15 meters away (I really wasn't even close and it wasn't so much about him as it was this bar in the alleyway anyway!), getting upset and waving his arms frantically trying to get me to stop (which I quickly did). At this point I tried to explain (in English of course) that I wasn't taking his picture, that I was taking a picture of the alleyway... but this of course made no sense to him (we were still pretty far from him) and prompted him to take the empty stool next to him and wave it in the air at me. We quickly ducked out of the alleyway and went home.

Needless to say, I'm a little scared of taking people's pictures now. I'll have to talk about what we did yesterday some other time because the laundry is almost done and I need to get going... Yesterday was another very STRANGE day... but in a more funny kind of way.

Tonight we are going out to a 'club' - I really don't know what to call this place. We went and found it today (after Ryan and I both spent over an hour (seperately) trying to find it on a map on the internet - again, directions were all in Japanese!). The place looks like an expensive hall. It's burried in a bunch of very expensive looking stores. I'm really not quite sure what we're getting ourselves into. We'll see. The metro here stops running at midnight which will mean we'll be stranded on the other end of the city in a few hours. Walking isn't really going to be an option - we're pretty far away and my shoes just won't allow for it. We've also been told that taxis are pretty expensive so that may be out as well. So... right now we're thinking we should just stay out until it starts running again (5am) or go straight from the club to the fish market to hit the morning auction. Unfortunately I'm not bringing my camera so I'm a little disappointed about the fish market... I'll have my little point and shoot but it just won't be the same. Also, now that I think of it... I'm not sure how much I want to be wearing my shoes in a fish market... oh well, bring on the fish juice.