Tokyo Tower, Night, Chinatown (Continued from last post)

After the Crepes and the shopping mall, the 4 of us meet up with our friend Tyler and go off to the Tokyo Tower. None of us had been there, including Sato-sensei, so we were all pretty excited. After a short wait in line we were up to the tower, where we saw pretty much all over Tokyo. It was pretty cool. I saw the huge building in Roppongi where Rem and I ate dinner. It’s really amazing to look out over Tokyo and realize just how many buildings they crammed on to this little section of land.

Yeah, the views were great and all, but my favorite part has to been the Tokyo Tower mascots Noppon and his older brother by the same name. These guys (see picture) are the most phallic, pink, little “towers” ever. Seriously, these little guys look so weird, we were all making a big deal after seeing a picture of them in the tourist map. Well of course when we get there, there’s a guy dressed up in a 7 foot tall costume, greeting the little kids. Japan is so damn goofy. I made it a point to buy a Noppon cell phone strap to always remind me of this weird Japanese mascot.

For dinner, we met up with the rest of our Middlebury College alumni from this past summer—there were about 10 of us. We went out to an all you can drink place that served a moderate amount of food. Sato-sensei came too, making it really fun.

After that the Sato sensei left and we all went out to a Japanese club. It was loud and smoky. We executed our plan of staying out until the first train at 5am—not the best idea. Apparently it’s really “Fun” to miss the last train at 12:30 and stay all night until the morning. It was a little overrated—I just got really tired around 3am and I think in the future I’m willing to just pay for a cab and come home when I want. But of course I needed to try doing it once.

Because we didn’t get home until close to 6:30am, we slept all day and pretty much wrecked our Sunday, being hung-over, tired, and not getting up until about 3pm.

On Monday, we met back up with Sato sensei and went to Chinatown in downtown Yokohama. It was fun, but I was still pretty tired from Saturday night. (Monday we didn’t have school because of “Sports and Health day”, go figure). Overall, it was a pretty successful weekend.