"See I'm stuck in a city, But I belong in a field "
-Heart in a Cage, The Strokes

I had another busy weekend in Tokyo and Yokohama where I managed to meet up with Dirk's lovely gf, Alanna, check out a random dance festival as well as ride a giant ferris wheel and sleep in a morgue...um, I mean capsule hotel.

Eve and I got up nice and early to catch a 6:30am bus to Tokyo so we could catch a local train to Yokohama, Japan's 2nd largest city. Yokohama is home to Japan's largest Chinatown and wanted to check it out for some Chinese food and so I could get a mild taste of what's in store for me Saturday when I arrive in Hong Kong. We saw this bizarre sculpture of a dog wearing a hat riding a dragon with deer antlers above a shop selling ice cream.

Dude on the left was selling handing out ads in a subway with his equally attired partner sans innertube which left nothing to the imagination in their one-piece prison striped pajammas. We then made our way over to a giant ferris wheel to get some views of the city, before I ditched Eve and headed to meet Alanna in Tokyo. Alanna, her friend Julio and I went over to Daiba island for some delicious sushi for dinner and called it a night so I could return to my capsule hotel.

"Look around there's no one else left "

The capsule hotel is the best invention in the world. It was awesome and I am in love with them now. You buy a ticket from a machine, lock your shoes in a cupboard, and get assigned a capsule. My capsule was on the ladies floor and had about 24 capsules. I had a bottom capsule instead of an upper one. Each capsule has a light, TV, radio, alarm clock, blanket and pillow, mirror and shelf which is all hidden behind a pull-down fabric screen for privacy. Being exhausted, I slept like a baby. There is a shared sink area, lockers to store valuables and backpacks, and a toilet area. The showers were on the 9th floor and also had a type of bath house that is shared with the men. I never ventured up there to check it out.

"Help me, I'm just not quite myself "

On Sunday after people watching at Starbucks, I met up with Eve, went over to Shibuya to introduce her to my favourite store in Japan- the music memorbilia store, or more accuratley, the music memorbilia building as there are 4 different shops catering to all kinds of music paraphenalia including overpriced band autographs and t-shirts. Surprisingly, I only made one small purchase of a button. I talked myself of needing another Franz Ferdinand t-shirt or buying The Cribs or Hard-fi shirts that were way too big for me anyway. And of course, I passed on the Boy George autograph.
We again met up with Alanna and checked out what we think was some sort of either dance festival or competition in Yoyogi Park as well as the freaky "Harajuku girls." Then it was time to wander around Ginza before Eve and I showed back up at Shinjuku station 35 minutes beore our bus departed for Fukushima. And here's where we ran into trouble....

"All our friends they're laughing at us"

I can't begin to describe the size of Shinjuku station. It's four stations in one with a random mall in between. We figured 35 minutes was plenty of time to figure out where the bus left from. We were wrong. We were on the toal opposite end of the station that we needed to be on. So after trying to follow signs and asking any number of metro employees, we started to panic as the clock ran out of time. We ran as fast as we could following sketchy directions, pushing past people as we went. Eve smashed into a guy wth her bag. I shoved someone on the escalator while yelling, "SUMIMASEN!!!" (Excuse me...or since it can change meaning depending on context, "GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!). I also inadvertently body-checked a woman who got in my way. Those few times at rugby training paid off. We then came upon the turnstiles at the station exit. In Japan, you need a ticket to get out of the station. I shoved mine through and it wouldn't accept it while Eve had lost her ticket along the way. We burst through the barriers anyway and threw my ticket at the stunned guard at the gate by yelling, "We're late for a bus!!!!" and just took off again. I think we scared him by yelling in a language he didn't understand since he just sat there and stared, wide-eyed at the chaos we were causing.

At one point I was running down the stairs trying to keep my flip flops on while Eve was on a parallel escalator as I'm yelling, "Fuckin' go! I'll catch up!!!!" until she took a wrong turn and I yelled, "LEFT, to the left!" and we caught up at the bus entrance. We tore into the place and security asked us where we were going. One of us managed to yell, "We're late!!!" and dude figured we were running to the 6:50pm bus to Fukushima. He kindly radioed them that we were running and we ran over to the bus. We were finally seated, out of breath at exactly 6:51pm. Thank God. We would have been stranded in Tokyo if we had missed it.

"I went to the concert and I fought through the crowd "

Although shopping in Tokyo is tempting, I managed not to buy any of these...

So now we're back home, safe and sound. And we were delighted to discover that kind people on YouTube have posted videos from this wekeend's airing of the Fuji Rock Festival on Japanese TV (we don't have cable so we were SOL for watching it ourselves). Not only are the videos awesome, but Eve and I managed to pick ourselves out of the front of the crowd at the Franz show. You'll never see us for yourselves, but we can pick ourselves out, hanging over the security barricade at the left, front of the stage. Thus making it our second appearance on Japanese TV in 2 months. Our first experience came with a face to face interview about how much we like karaoke on the local Fukushima news in July. So to check out sweet Fuji Rock videos, go here.

I'll have more pictures and details on the weekend on my travel blog.

"I don't want what you want, I don't feel what you feel "