tokyo v1.1

it is good to see that avril lavigne reads my blog. i'll call soon, baby.

up early in the morning for what would become our diet in tokyo: espresso; red bull; neon.

first stop was akihabara, japan's denki gai (electric town) and the centre for all electronics. storefront after storefront of cell phones, robots, appliances, computers, dvds, games, gizmos and widgets. even the sidewalk had patterns featuring electronics.

then we travelled on the subway to tokyo station and yurakucho for a recommended lunch under the tracks. again refuelled, we hit up the imperial palace or kokyo - the home of the emperor of japan and the imperial family. note on the imperial palace: it was completed in 1968 and is a reconstruction of the meiji imperial palace destroyed in wwii by allied bombing. it was also the site of edo castle, one the world's largest. unfortunately, you cannot get too close to the palace and it is only open twice a year. lyds and i decided not to chance the system of guards, moats, walls and bridges. you could, however, just make it out, and were allowed to wander through the surrounding gardens and statues. after seeing the grounds we walked passed the tokyo international forum to the ginza. it is the ginza crossing, encircled by the shuto expressway, that my dad had always told me about. we can now share stories.

then we visited ueno, famous for its being the last ditch defence of the tokugawa shogunate by samurai loyalists in 1868. now it is home to the ameya yokocho, a black market alley. we hardly stopped to shop, but instead took in what we could and moved on to korakuen - the site of the tokyo dome and home to the yomiuri giants. they are the yankees of nippon professional baseball. what was orginally a "neil stop," turned out to be just as much fun for lyds as we got infected with the excitement of japanese baseball. the grounds of the stadium were packed - and there wasn't even a game. it is a religion here. unfortunately, like the sumo there were no games for us to see. i would gladly be of its denomination if i lived here.

that night was a rainout for lydia and me. we had a quick dinner in shibuya, but had to cancel our plans to tour roppongi. back to the hotel at 2am again.

watching the hordes of people with their umbrellas move past each other was like seeing a game of tetris.

game over.