tokyo v1.3

departure day. like any other departure day we still had lots to see. more espresso. and you guessed it - red bull chasers.

we rushed to roppongi - our failed destination of the other night. unfortuantely, it was too early to see the clubs in action. but we did get a chance to visit the giant spider statue of maman. i think he fought godzilla. in related godzilla news, hideki matusi hit a home run for the yankees the other night. it was on the front page of the newspapers here.

from roppongi we did a quick tour of the tokyo tower. note on the tower: it was built in 1958, and with a height of 333m, it is 13m taller than its eiffel tower. they both look a lot alike.

then we rushed back north to shinjuku to visit "tokyo techo," the great grey complex of the tokyo metropolitan government offices. picture a completely sterile future working environment, made more alien by the fact that due to being a weekend it was completely devoid of other people. the view from the 45th floor of the twin towers of building 1 was free and gave us a view of the entire city including mt. fuji and the rainbow bridge. still in shinjuku, we hurried to find the park hyatt hotel - known as being bill murray's hotel in lost in translation. quick walkthrough and pics before the security guards set in. i don't think they cared that we know a bill.

back at ikebukuro and our hotel we frantically made a train to narita airport. i don't think we could have seen more in our stay, and our arrival at the airport only an hour and a quarter before our international flight seems to justify this. as lydia wandered around shops near the gate i enjoyed a cold kirin beer and thought back over our visit. our stay, like the timeline we planned it in, was quick. but it left a strong and favourable impression on both of us.

we flew west out of the centre of the world. i thought about how to fill these pages, to express everything we had experienced in such a short time. as i sipped on an asahi we levelled off, flying into a blood red sun.