Karaoke

I went walking around Shinjuku today, it's a great place to sample a taste of Tokyo's cheery sensory overload. I exited the train station and was bombarded with an enormous video screen with an adorable talking muffin selling muffins. I don't know why the muffin was so excited to be eaten, but apparently in the country of ritual suicide, everyone's a bit happy about their demise. I continued walking east down Shinjuku dori and passed some pretty incredible paintings on the street. The Isetan building, which contains fashionable boutiques that were way to elegent for me to even step inside, was right next door. Everyone I passed yelled, "irrashimase," or welcome. It was freighting because I thought they were trying to tell me to leave. I did have a sweaty t-shirt and backpack on in a store that sold pens for more than I make in a year. I left and turned left onto Yasukuni dori and saw the classic orange temple gate across the street. I crossed under the towering gate and made a small donation to the temple, rung a large bell, bowed, clapped two times, and bowed again. I think it has something to do with getting the temples blessing. Also I've gotten into the habit of paying tribute to the kitsune, or fox spirits cause they look the coolest and supposedly have a lot of pull in the spirit world. Next I went to Golden Gai, a collection of tiny networking alleyways devoted entirely to small stand up watering holes. It was completely deserted during the day, but I could only imagine the noise and debauchery that went on during the night. Maybe I'll found out. After that I took a brief look into the red light district, couldn't tell the difference between hair salons and strip clubs, so I left.

Later that night I went out with Casey to meet up with his friend Jeff for a hanami party. We picked up some beers then, get this, drank them on the street. Yeah, apparently Japan has no open container laws, so it's perfectly okay to drink on the subway or on the street, or in a park. Which is exactly what we did until Jeff, drunk out of his mind, called us. When we arrived the hanami party was pretty much non existent except for Jeff who had his pants around his ankles and was swinging from the closest cherry blossom tree. His girlfriend Christine and her friend, "princess" showed up a little later, and man, did the drama start. It was like watching an episode of the OC, and for some reason I felt it absolutely necessary to involve myself in their personal battle, so I stood behind Jeff and made comments to fuel or cool their fighting.

After the drama Christine decided we should all go to karaoke. Karaoke in Japan is ten times better than any karaoke I've been to in the states, for one, you can have your own small room, order food and get non stop drinks all night. Also the song list is EXTENSIVE and updated regularly. Want to sing some obscure song from the 80's? They'll probably have it. We drank, and sung, and drank, and sung some more. The night ended with Jeff, Casey and I, drunk out of our minds eating ramen at an all night shop that smelled like a bathroom. The ramen was still good though.