It’s already Wednesday night? The weeks seem to pass by pretty quickly. This is both good and bad. Good because work seems to go by fairly painlessly in the long-run, but bad because leisure and weekend time goes by just as quick. I’m also starting to realize that I’m not getting anything done in the long-run. Not that there’s anything pressing at the moment to actually get done.
Last weekend was pretty fun. Mueller and Hoyt flew into Tokyo for the weekend, so I met up with them Saturday night after work. Met in Shibuya at Hachiko, a place which always reminds me just how many foreigners are in Tokyo compared to Chiba. It was good to see some friends from the US, especially ones I haven’t hung out with in a long time. For one reason or another, March seems to be the time to visit Japan, because I have a lot of people coming this month. Unfortunately, it’s times like this that the virtual inability to take days off from work really starts to be a pain. But anyways, I met up with the guys and we went to the Starbucks overlooking Scramble Crossing to hang out. Had fun talking about people we went to high school with, the ridiculous number of people who are (getting) married now, and also trying to think of the most obscure people we could name.
After a lot of loitering, it was time to find somewhere in Shibya to go, so we started walking around looking for a deal and/or a guy on the street with a menu to bargain with. No go, but I accidentally found the Shibuya location of The Lockup, a chain of bar/pubs that are themed on an old school jail or a cave, with dark “cells” for tables, waitresses dressed in cop outfits, and monsters running around with plastic knives. Every once in a while, the monsters are released and “attack” the place, which is funny at least for the first few minutes. Almost immediately after sitting down, there was a monster attack, so it was a pretty entertaining way to start. A lot of the drinks at Lockup are also themed on jails, science experiments, zombies, and random stuff like that. I had no idea what any of the super weird ones were, but we ordered the 電気ショック (Electric Shock), which didn’t have ingredients listed on the menu, but just said it was a “super strong house cocktail.” How bad can it be, right? After we ordered them, the waitress again warned us that it was really strong. Seriously, can’t be that bad, right? Uhh… After they brought the drinks to our table and poured them from the graduated cylinder into the plastic beaker acting as a class, we realized they weren’t kidding. What was listed as the house cocktail ended up being a glass of everclear with 2 ice cubes and a lemon wedge. If a drink ever deserved to be called an Electric Shock, this was it.
After Lockup, searched around for a cheap all-night karaoke place, but unfortunately nothing was as cheap as I was hoping to be able, even after bargaining. Ended up at one of the Shibuya UtaHiro’s, and it was pretty good but not great and not as good as the Chiba UtaHiro I’m used to. My main complaint was that the remote controller and search computer were more ghetto than the current one’s, so it was a little more of a pain to use and didn’t have an English feature for the other guys to use. Overall, it was a good night. After we finished karaoke at 5AM, stopped by McDonalds for the greatest Egg McMuffin I have ever eaten. I was starving after not eating dinner the night before, and random fried foods at Lockup didn’t constitute a meal.
Mueller and Hoyt wanted to go to the Tsukiji fish market, especially since we were already/still up that early, when the market is usually at it’s peak. Sounded like a good idea, and I wanted to eat some of the awesome sushi from near there. I think the market is still open to the public, but just the auction part is now closed to tourists. Either way it didn’t matter, since after we got to Tsukiji Station, completely exhausted from an all-nighter, the station attendant told me the market was closed on Sundays. Ugh. Said goodbye to the guys and headed home, sleeping the entire way back and even sleeping past my station. It was only 1 station past though, so it was an easy backtrack. Slept til the afternoon.
The weather on Monday was amazing; almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit! Rented a bike and rode to D2 to buy some apartment supplies and grabbed lunch at Gusto, which has been renovated since the last time I was there a few months ago. Unfortunately, it’s been remodeled into more of a cafe, so while the interior is nice, the menu is different and they don’t have the Gusto Burger anymore, one of the decent non-fast-food burgers I had found around here. Oh well.
