新宿

Like I said in my last post, TGS wasn't the only thing I did yesterday.

Originally, we planned to meet up with several people at the show, but for whatever reason that didn't happen. I mainly just did my own thing until 4 or so when we finally decided to leave. Outside, a couple friends who had intended to meet us were there waiting. Apparently they weren't allowed entry when they arrived so they waited for us to come out.

Since they had come all that way, we decided to check out more of Tokyo. Right after we left TGS, near the station was some guy doing tricks. He was fun.

We decided on Shinjuku, so after another JR ride, we arrived and started looking around.

Most of these I took while being pushed around in a wheelchair, so they suck, but Tokyo does look really sweet at night.

It was probably around 6 or 7 by this time and we were all starving so we started searching for somewhere to eat (and drink. LOL). Finally, we found a restaurant/bar where everything was only 270 yen.

Right outside the restaurant, though, was some sort of procession. I don't know what it was exactly or whether it was related to the holiday today, but a large group of men were carrying a mini shrine through the street. My knowledge on things like this is pretty limited, but I know that in Shinto, there are spirits known as
kami that reside in everything. In other words, there was a god in the shrine that the people were escorting somewhere. I was busy taking video and didn't realize I was kind of in their way, so this guy made me move. Afterwards, he gave me his headband, which I wore for the rest of the night.

After this fun stuff, we went inside and waited a million years for Andrea to get his bibimbap. LOL. I got like 3 drinks, some yakitori, and a dessert because everything was so cheap.

Oh yea, free edamame too.

Afterwards, we looked for an actual bar and couldn't find one for awhile. Shinjuku has quite a few buildings. Everything looks the same to me and I'm not really good at knowing where I am, especially when I'm tired, dehydrated, and full of alcohol. We ran around a lot, exploring the city, even meeting some random people on the street and exchanging facebooks. People seemed really friendly and more than a few helped guide us around, even though some parts of Shinjuku seemed a little sketch. In other words, homeless and trash. In fact, it was the first time I'd ever seen public liter in Japan. It was actually too depressing and gross to take a picture of. LOL.

Finally, we found a place. I only had one drink in there (because we had had some more drinks from 711 on the street earlier) but we must have been there for at least 3 or 4 hours, just chatting and whatnot. Probably around 2 or 3 am, we were all pretty tired, but we obviously couldn't go home because that involves a few train rides, and the last train stopped hours ago.

That being said, we had to find a place to stay. Fortunately, in Japan, there are manga/internet cafes everywhere. In these places, you pay to spend a certain number of hours there. Once you pay the fee, you have access to your own private cubicle, a library of magazines and comics, your own computer, and free drinks from the vending machines. I think there was a shower as well. I guess you can think of it as a really, really cheap hotel. However, like I said, you literally just have a little box to yourself with a shitty excuse for a pillow. If there were blankets, I didn't get one, but I at least had my own space. The other three people all shared one. I don't even know how they managed that when there isn't even room for one person to stretch out.

After 3, maybe 4 hours of shitty sleep, we all got up. Andrea and I were in pretty bad shape, but the others seemed okay. Unfortunately, the cafe was not only extremely narrow, there were also stairs everywhere. Getting to the bathroom involved me having to go down several flights of stairs and somehow gimp my way there without any crutches or anything. I was similarly overexerted when I had to climb a billion stairs to leave. Overexertion while hungover is the worst idea. Combine that with the random sewage smell that was right outside and you can imagine what happened next.

Two trains and one bus later and I was finally back home. I was pretty much a zombie until then, repeatedly passing out in transit, but when I was finally able to shower, nap, and eat, I felt so much better. If you're already dehydrated from a day at a hot-as-balls convention, don't drink alcohol. Especially if you don't have enough water to drink with it.