Konbanwa!

It’s in the early evening here in Tokyo and Napkin and I have made it back to our hotel room after spending the day in Shibuya. Oh, Shibuya– where everyone is beautiful and EVERYONE is dressed to the nines.

First, though, we had breakfast at our hotel at the restaurant Royal Host which was amazing because they had two sides to the buffet; Japanese and Western style breakfast foods.

For example, I had scrambled eggs, hash browns (or potato croquettes, if you’re fancy) and vegetable curry over rice.

With a side of fruit and unsweetened yogurt. I also had Japanese hard boiled eggs that possibly had nori in them as well. I don’t know. They were… strange.

Everything was mechanized at the beverage station so when I tried to get a latte, it exploded over my too-small-meant-for-espresso-cup. I was such a “Gaijin.” Anyway, breakfast was great and because we hadn’t left the hotel yet– we decided to take a little stroll around our neighborhood, Higashi-Shinjuku. Here’s a little photo round-up:

(These are little plastic displays of the foods you can buy inside the restaurant. They are EVERYWHERE! And deceptively delicious looking.)

The only Hummer I will ever ride. These bikes are everywhere! At first, Napkin and I thought they were a joke but there are, seriously, Hummer bikes all over Tokyo.

This picture is of (what I think is) a Host Club. Basically, you go inside and pay for someone to have a date with you. For whatever reason, Final Fantasy Eight hair is a must– and desirable by women seeking out men. What was really funny about Shinjuku is that it’s a relatively quiet prefecture until you hit a few side streets where things like Host Clubs are EVERYWHERE. And totally up and running at nine in the morning. Much like the following:

“Let’s Enjoy Playing Game Amusement!” What you can’t see is that this place is called “GAO.”

I love GAO. I spent all morning in this smoky, cramped arcade (totally bumping at nine AM) winning super cute phone charms like this:

And this:

There were also crazy advanced video games but those pictures are on my Iphone so they will come with a proper update post trip.

After we had won our fill of CUTE we took the subway to Shibuya!

Shibuya is INSANE. And packed. My pictures are mostly of peoples’ heads from this point but we did get to go to one of the restaurants that I was most excited about:

Freshness Burger.

The above photo, my friend, is of one of the best tofu burgers I have ever had. It was seasoned and grilled and super good. “Freshness.” Exactly. Everyone I know that has spent any time in Tokyo recently has recommended this place for the quality– and now I know why!

Afterwards, I drug Napkin into Shibuya 109 (where a lot of the hip Japanese brands have shops) and we sought out a few other arcades and stores. (As a side note, I went to the largest Forever 21 I’ve ever seen. It’s six stories. #sparklyeyes.jpg.)

Mostly, we just wandered around a completely foreign city with complete foreign ways. We also did a ton of people watching. Shibuya, if anything, made me feel bad about myself. Japanese women really try hard in the mornings. EVERYONE had perfect hair, fake eyelashes, knee socks and sky high wedges. I mean– I am trying a little harder in Japan just because I want to be fabulous but once I got to Shibuya I sort of felt messy and gross. I’m going to have to get used to the level of perfection Japanese ladies are trying to achieve. They are BEAUTIFUL.

But no worries, every time I got sad and felt bad about myself I just had mochi and then I felt great.

That’s really the jist of our day– proper updates soon!

GHIBLI TOMORROW!!!!