Day Nine: Yoyogi

days like today go on forever and seem so perfect for stories to eventually tell your own kids.

i start with a little trip back to shinjuku to scope out potential spots to play for a bit, it seems to me like everywhere decent has already been taken by the tokyo musical scenesters. one band was called scattered sheep or something along those lines.

i promptly left, it was too crowded for my feelings at the moment.

i head heard from a friend i met in shibuya that he plays guitar in yoyogi park on saturdays.

yoyogi park has nothing to do with how to greet a bear from jellystone park or his friend booboo. it is a huge park in the center of tokyo between the shinjuku and shibuya wards. i went there looking for tetsu.

the park was huge and loaded with people. hundreds of folks were out and about, playing music, drinking with friends, playing sports, all types of assorted nosh.

i didn’t find tetsu, but what i did eventually find was like gold.

i sat down next to a small pond after a deep sense of being lonely came to me. i had just started writing a song when all of the sudden, three japanese lesbians walked up to me, cigs and beers in hand. one of them sat down next to me and kept trying to touch me and asking me to play songs for her, eventually she took the guitar and also started playing music.

in an uncomfortable way it was so comforting.

they were the lost children of some new generation of tokyo hipsters. lost in being genuine and true to themselves while everyone else seems so fake, constantly trying to emulate the fashion and lifestyle of pop icons and rock stars.

the girl next to me kept asking me to play sad songs, because i felt sad. it was funny to me that this kid wouldn’t speak japanese to me even though i told her i could understand everything she said. she just kept hugging and kissing the guitar and all the while, asking me to play sad songs to express the feeling of loneliness.

eventually the incidents described earlier took place, and she and the kids were gone. it was dark outside now, i had been hanging out with them for almost an hour.

i got up and walked towards where i could hear loud music, like an outdoor concert.

As it turns out, It was a rastafarian festival in harajuku. I walked around a bit, took in some of the night air. Meantime the scent of rum and tobacco burned my nostrils, and I went on my merry way towards shibuya--I was interested in meeting more folks.

So I played there for about two hours, I talked to about five large groups of people, one of them was a group of late teen-somethings heading to some kind of weird slumber party. One of the kids gave me 500 yen, the first cash moneys I have received so far during my trip.

Another was a Japanese man that asked me lots of in-depth questions about how to win the heart of an American girl. He said he really liked a girl he knew that worked here as an English teacher. What could I tell him?

I told him the truth.

To win the heart of an American girl, you take her to mcdonalds, buy her a six piece chicken nugget meal, maybe a side salad with light dressing, tell her you like the movie “the notebook” or any other movie adapted from a nicholas sparks book and then feed her the chicken nuggets while telling her you love her, all in the same night.

Easy as pie, and you don’t even have to buy flowers.

And if youre mormon, tell them how much you enjoyed the five sessions of the last general conference, throw in that youre an rm even if you arent.

Also use a jack weyland movie instead of a nicholas sparks one.

Tomorrow will be a balloon fashion statement in harajuku.

New balloon styles fused with goth-lolita and neo new wave?

More havoc to come.

brandons guide to picking up japanese women

(based on actual events)

step one: find a safe and open spot in your local park. preferably one with a beautiful view of a fountain or some type of body of water

step two: take out a guitar. play any song. It doesn’t have to even be an actual song, you could just play gibberish and pluck various strings, as long as it is audible, you will be fine

step three: wait for three cigarette smoking lesbians to show up with cans of lemon sake in their hands. they will probably come and sit by you. one of them might talk to you very close to your face while her two friends make out with each other a couple feet away.

step four: wait for the girl close to you to start trying to make out with you. she will probably start by trying to touch you a lot, trying to hug you and trying to rub her hands through your hair. her english might not be very good, and she might not even speak english at all, but if youre a former japan missionary, that should not be a problem.

step five: choose from one of two options

one – keep making out with her. buddy youre mackin with a japanese chick and she claims shes 20 years old (almost a definite lie). 98% of the missionaries in japan and all the desperate american guys in this country are wishing for this very thing right this very second. some crude men pay thousands of dollars, lie to their wives about going on a business trip, and search the streets day and night for such an underage girl.

two – realize shes probably on acid and drunk as well as probably tasting like an ashtray, call the whole thing off, keep playing guitar and keep it cool. she likes avril lavigne songs, so play those to keep her busy while her two other friends french each other. even if you don’t know how to play the songs on guitar, just make something up and try to remember the words to the song as best you can.

step six – wait for the entire crew of ten or so japanese lesbians to come and pick up this poor, coked out young woman. say goodbye many times in over six different languages. blow kisses.

her name was pe-chan, and she really wasn’t that crazy, just under the influence of one, two, or seven separate substances.

if you ever read this pe-chan…just let me say youre one in a million, god bless ya

Day Eight: Shimokitazawa

i spent the first couple hours of the day lost on some trains.

luckily i wasnt alone.

a guy was standing on the other side of the platform while i was waiting for a train in yokohama. i had kind of become lost there and was heading for a city called shimokitazawa, apparently famous for its nightlife.

he looked like a thug. he had a shaved head and was smoking a cigarette while wearing these huge black shades. he definitely wasnt japanese, but i also knew he didnt speak english cause he was talking on a phone in some incomprehensible language, at least for me. i couldnt recognize any bit of it at all.

he also looked like he was lost.

he eventually walked up to me and asked me if i spoke english, and i said yes. we talked more.

he worked in a shipping and exports business whos main offices were located in belgium. he spoke five different languages. he would be spending the next eight days in tokyo working in the tokyo offices for his company. when i asked him about his hobbies, he just told me that in belgium, people go to work and then they go to the pubs and then they go home for the night.

i told him things were a lot like that even in america, even in japan, even in the rest of the world.

he was surprised to hear that i was a vagabond like traveller, seeing the whole country by train and said he would never have the kind of courage to do that. i just told him i was crazy.

the train hit the emergency brakes just outside of shibuya station, the lights went out, and we were stuck on a hot train in the middle of the city. i told the man, antonio was his name, how to get where he was going, eventually the train started moving again and i was on my way.

all trains i have been on have signs posted letting everyone know where priority seats are located. for people who dont read japanese, they have these illustrations to let everyone know who exactly is allowed to sit in these special priority areas.



starting from left to right:

1. conjoined twins

2. the beer bellied or morbidly obese with shining stomachs

3. males with crooked genitalia

4. those with large socks





in shimokitazawa

i was looking for a music venue somewhere in the city. i couldnt read a map very well, so i just started asking around. i saw a man carrying a bass guitar, followed him, and he took he straight where i needed to go.


the problem with this city is that everyone tries to dress like a rock star, so its hard to distinguish the posers from the real deal. like the girls and boys of harajuku, everyone wants to dress to impress, and they do, all over tokyo.

it is considered to be one of the fashion capitals of the world, and you take a 15 minute walk in the inner city and you will see why.

the rock shows in japan are very much similar to the ones ive been to in america.


it was an extremely small venue, maybe big enough for a maximum of 50 people, but oh it was glorious.

i was able to see six bands for 2400yen. because the trains stop running in this city at midnight, things like this start and end early. while you might expect a show in america to end at 11 or 1130, this one ended promptly at 10 so that anyone that needs to get anywhere in the city on a train has a good two hour buffer built right in.

it was so loud i thought my ear drums would rupture, but for me this didnt matter. i was experiencing something i have waited years for.

this was the tokyo music underground.

these guys were my favorite band i saw. they bass player looked like some kind of beatles and pee wee herman hybrid. i talked to them for just a bit on my way out and they helped me take one of the most awkward band pictures i have ever seen.

two of them have their eyes closed and the guy next to me looks like he wants to have me murdered.

on the train after the show, i met a man who worked as a scout master in minnesota for six years. ive been considering lately dropping the guitar gimmick and doing something more worthwhile and fulfilling, so i talked to him about doing service work in the country while im not sightseeing.

yeah yeah, ill be honest, japanese people arent about tipping street guitarists, so that has been a bust for me. but also i didnt plan on making lots of cash either, im mostly here for the love of music and performance, but since the guitar is big and bulky and im not getting much fulfillment out of it, it might be time for a change.

when youre on an adventure like this kind of deal, youre allowed to do that kind of stuff.

the guy on the train gave me some simple instructions for carrying out volunteer things around the country and ill probably try to change things up a little bit.

ill be sure to keep you posted.

and stay cool.

Day Seven: Yokohama

what can we expect from japans second largest city?

its the city that is just south of tokyo, and i reckon that if you were to look at a map, it would look like it was only a part of tokyo.

im having serious problems realizing where the cities here begin and end. it seems like tokyo is a neverending city and yokohama is only a part of it.

yokohama is famous for having a special area dedicated to all things chinese.

yep, thats right, chinese food, chinese music, chinese womens, chinese decorations, chinese toys and of course...

chinese turkey.

fa ra ra ra raaaaaaa ra ra ra ra!!!

we also have this wonderful chinese temple built in the middle of the area. it would appear like it was built in some ancient time, but no, it was actually built recently, i heard in the last 30 years or something, but im not really sure.

this is just the outer gate to get into the temple.

i wasnt able to get too many decent pics of the temple, but i got this one of the inside.

it was quite nice.

from that point, i played a little bit alongside the downtown station and stopped when it became dark.

me and my friend went to the top of the tallest tower in yokohama where an observatory is built and took some pictures.

it was extremely foggy at the time, so a lot of the pictures look terrible, but i was able to snap some decent shots of the area of yokohama where a huge ferris wheel stands, next to some other attractions.

and before i left china town that evening, i was even able to eat a dumpling thinger that was shaped like a panda.

ive never felt so happy in my life until that moment, the thought of devouring an endangered species was something rare and magical.


i slept well that night knowing i had done my part for the environment.

Day Six: Kamakura

what are these marvelous and curious things



i eventually end up in the home of a man i met teaching english in a city called shonandai, in the yokohama prefecture.

i shot the pictures above from a photo album he had full of pictures from pre-world war II japan. most of the pictures were of family. his father was a soldier in the japanese army fighting for the axis powers. the pictures i saw that werent of family were of soldiers training for war and in some cases showed combat pictures.

he is a record collector. his home contains over 3000 vinyl records and 4000 cds', most of them being bluegrass or country western styles of music. he loves for country music. he has a record player built in the turn of the century that plays vintage 78 records. this machine has to have the needle changed every time a new record is played and each record contains only two songs, one on each side.


we spent a few hours listening to old vinyl records. bob dylan and the beatles and all sorts of stuff. bluegrass has been the music that has stuck with me my whole life and indeed is the music that is part of my familial heritage. he has thousands of vinly records with this style of music, so we listened and listened and listened.

his record collection also contained a player that was one of the first models of music player invented by thomas edison. it plays cyllindrical shaped discs and was built also in the early 1900's.

my travels today were to a city called kamakura, which is also an old school japanese kind of town. its the home of many shrines, temples and the daibutsu, the biggest buddha...ive ever seen.

maybe theres another one somewhere in the world, but i dont know...ill have to keep looking.

it was raining most of the day, which made for things to contain a marginal amount of suckage. i wasnt able to playe my guitar for fear that it would become wet and furry balls would start to pop out of its back and create an epidemic of gremlins, which we all know are even worse than the swine flu.

or whats worse, the guitar could have melted.

apparently there was a typhoon that just came through this part of the world. im not sure though.

one of our stops was at a beautiful shrine that contained within it a garden. there was a turtle in this garden. i said hello to him and because he didnt speak japanese or english, he didnt understand. i later had a translator come and tell me that he was actually from france, and nobody in the vicinity knew how to speak a lick of french.

anyone looking at the shape of this small pond mind think it would be more appropriate to use for someone in the third reich, but no my friends, no. no nazi sympathizers in this country. this is not the old timey german swastika we have all learned to dislike, this is a symbol still commonly used today in buddhism and hinduism.

the germans, being buttmunchers, merely stole it from the decent religions that build beautiful places like this and used it for themselves.

the swastika the nazi party used was also a mirror of the one used in buddhism, its backwards.

because it was raining so much, during the day, it made things appear beautiful in a dreary kind of way. when youre out looking at things like shrines or temples, the sun doesnt have to be shining bright for us to see how beautiful they are. the spirit of these places alone is what makes them so beautiful.

we came to place where a fountain had formed in the side of a hill. you had to go through a tunnel carved in rock to get to it.

one of the legends of this place was that if you put your money into a little basket and washed it in some of this water, your money would grow and you would prosper.

so i took all my money out and i washed it, all the coin money at least. i asked if it was ok for me to was my paper money, and apparently paper money isnt meant to get wet. wet paper money is like wet underwear, it just doesnt feel right.


i honestly was hoping that i could strip down and take a dive in this pool so i could have my whole body become prosperous, but i held back. there were too many women around and i know if they had seen me, i would be in trouble.

im simply that good looking.

a glimpse of another small shrine built next to a small natural waterfall

and then i saw something else in that cave that i thought was amazing. there were huge origami creations hanging from the ceiling. they look like they had been made from hundreds and hundreds of paper cranes.

and as it turns out, they were. they were made from a thousand paper cranes.

an ancient japanese legend says that by making a thousand of these origami cranes, a wish of yours will be granted, hopefully by a crane, i mean, if youre lucky. for someone wishing for long life or a cure for a sickness of disease, this is a one way ticket to health. if a thousand cranes doesnt work for ya, youve always got the swine flu to fall back on, which cant be any worse than some stuff you might have to deal with.

the story of the thousand paper cranes became popularized from a story and play which was created about a girl trying to recover from radiation poisoning she had received from the detonation of the atomic bomb at hiroshima.

some illnesses just cant be overcome, even by the construction of a thousand cranes.

Day Five: Asakusa and Akihabara

the days seem longer as they go by. i feel like ive been here for weeks.

i guess when our lives become so based on regular routine, the days become shorter. my life is the opposite. with no set plan or schedule, my days are free to do as i choose. because i am free to choose, i choose to stay busy.

like my parents always said, being busy keeps you out of trouble. i guess though that depends on what youre busy doing.

im amazed at how i can keep going regardless of the intense pain in my feet from the hours of walking, or how i can even stay awake at all to keep roaming around. i knew that when i came here, i would have to become accustomed to the huge amounts of walking, but i didnt expect that by day five my feet would still be hurting so bad.

but lets end the pity party right here and get down to brass tacks.

since i am officially on an good-will adventure, a new friend let me stay in one of his groups unoccupied-for-the-night-rooms, so i woke up in this unknown-to-me-girls-room. she wasnt there, which was good because if she had been there with me when i woke up, it would have made things awkward and been pretty weird.

i got my stuff together and headed outta there to asakusa, part of old school tokyo. famous for the kaminari-mon, or i guess what some folks would call the thunder gate, or maybe lightning gate.

i had met my friend jason there the night before, so i had seen it in the evening, and to be honest i think it looked better in the night. not to be cute or trite by saying that something looks better in the dark because it isnt beautiful, because the kaminari-mon was very beautiful, but i noticed a difference between now and last night.

the giant lantern thing that hangs down from the center had been rolled up for people to pass through the gate. you could not even read the kanji for kaminari-mon to let you know what was up. it was super ghetto, but it was still enjoyable to take pictures with the hundreds of other folks doing the same thing.

there were rickshaw folks all over the place riding people around. i saw something i had never seen before, which was a woman being the rickshaw...ist. it was good to see a woman doing a traditionally mans job in old japan.

past the entrance there was a street made up of shops and stores that had to stretch out for at least half a mile. each one had outside of it a japanese flag. i looked through the shops and finally found a cat coin purse to keep my change in. i was proud of that thing. i bought a taiyaki and headed more towards the main temple and park.

when i finally made it to the end of the row of shops, there were more shops, but they were all selling traditional japanese foods.


past the food places was the entrance to the tample. i opted not to take too many pictures on the inside considering i wouldnt like people taking pictures inside of my temple or place of worship for their own personal amusement.

there was a big beautiful park there just past the temple. it was full of shrines and other assorted goodies, like this big pagoda.


i looked around there for a little bit and eventually found my way to the outside of a small amusement park in the middle of tokyo, complete with these japanese clowns ushering folks in.

they might have just been a little bit spooky by american standards, but in my standards, which are rather american, they werent too extremely spooky.

i enjoyed them nonetheless. they made me really want to go into the amusement park, but money is short so i had to stay out. the folks inside looked like they were having a good old time though.

it was rough.

i then made my way to akihabara, the place know for being full or electronic goodies. it was full of electronic goodies, but it wasnt enough to keep my interest too high, so i took muh ol guitar out and tried to get myself feeling more energized for the day. it didnt work too well even though i was able to talk to some more folks.

i ate at a lot of different places, visited harajuku, shinjuku and shibuya again. i saw marybeth lathen, one of the sister missionaries from the tokyo south mission there, and it was joyous indeed.

i eventually made my way back to the train station where i would try to sleep for the night. i realized while i was about to use the phone that my friends phone number was in the cell phone, so i took it out only to find it was broken.

yeah, life just sucks sometimes. i had a broken cell phone, no way to get to my place of refuge and to make it better, it was raining kitties and doggies. i waited at the station for the rain to stop so i could walk to bens house, and as i was about to buy some bread to eat i discovered my cat that i bought to keep my money in was gone. id lost it somewhere while fiddling with my broken phone. so my cat was gone.

i went on a search for it. first i tried the train station, they had nothin, then i went to the building staff guys at the shopping center next to the station, they laughed at me because when i was in the bathroom, instead of pushing the flush button, i pushed the emergency "help me get off the toilet" button. i tried to keep it secret...but they knew. they didnt seem to mad about it though, actually they were really nice but could not find my lost cat.

they did an impression of a cat before i left though.

i apologized for pushing the wrong toilet button, i simply could not read the kanji.

i eventually walked back to bens house, it wasnt raining too much.

and that ended my day for the most part.

more havoc to come

Day Four: Shibuya

its funny how things work out.

Twenty minutes ago i was convinced i would be sleeping in a box for the night somewhere on the streets of downtown tokyo. and i was almost right.

i left for shibuya at about 1pm today. i went to the train station and decided to take a different route through yokohama that would get me to tokyo using the shinkansen. so it was legit. i rode the shink for about 10 or 15 km.

i eventually found my way to shibuya center street. thousands of people lined the streets outside the train station. masses of people like i dont even remember ever seeing in my life, even though im sure i have.

i photographed a picture of hachiko the dog, who is so famous that an exit at the train station has been named after him. hachiko is a true symbol of dedication and devotion.

from what i hear, theres even a movie about this special guy in the works featuring the acting talents of such greats as richard gere and rosie o donnell-- so look out.


shibuya is just another one of the wards of tokyo. it contains multiple areas for all types of things. there is a section for restaurants, a section for clothes, entertainment and prostitutes (all of this is part of the entertainment district). i definitely wasnt all about the red light, so i hightailed it out of there and made my way towards the station to make music shortly after i started exploring the area.

the crowds of people were almost too overwhelming, but i loved every second of it.


here is a view of the famous shibuya intersection

i met some really great people as well throughout the day. i met two guys from saitama-ken that were interested in rock music, a man that told me he loved georgia so much that he had an old school style georgian house built in tokyo, and a kid named tetsu that played the drums and was also really great. come to think of it, he wasnt a kid at all, he was a few months older than me.

and this has to be my favorite couple i met during the day--the suave akihiro and his beautiful girlfriend asuka.

we talked for a good long while about all types of random stuff. he said he liked motorbikes and she liked fashion. decent hobbies i thought. they asked me to play a song for them, so i busted out "brown eyed girl" and during the song this creepy old guy came up to asuka and started whispering stuff into her ear. im not sure what it was, maybe that i was a foreigner trying to take over the country with music or something to that effect.

anyway, akihiro saw what was going on IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SONG mind you, and grabbed asuka and shooed the scary old man away.

akihiro, if you ever get to read this, youre a good man and i appreciate you!

then they both signed my guitar and akihiro put a heart between their names. it was mega kawaii.


i met my friend jason from the mission at about 7pm at the statue of hachiko and went on a trip around shibuya. i showed him the magic i found in the entertainment and red light sections of the town and we went and ate some rice. i thoroughly enjoyed myself.

then we went and did an hours worth of karaoke. jason being such an incredibly decent man footed the bill for that. we met tetsu again on the way to the train station and he introduced us to his bands guitarist. it was cool, just wish i had got a picture of him tho.

anyway, jason did more than just foot the bill for karaoke and be my three hour travel companion.

im on my way back to where i have been staying when i realize something. all trains stop at midnight and i will never have time to make it back. so what do i do?

i dont know, i had to come up with a plan. i called jason and headed back to tokyo. i was planning on finding a nice nook in the city and sleeping til 5am when the trains would begin running again, but i made it to asakusa, making the final subway car by only a few seconds. after searching for jason for almost an hour, we found each other at the kaminari-mon, a huge sight here in asakusa tokyo.

he told me that by some mere chance, one of the girls living at the hotel where he is-that is involved in the same english teaching program- didnt need to use her room tonight, so i would have a place to stay.

so here i am now, sitting in a room of someone ive never met, in the middle of tokyo, feeling so grateful from the kindness of strangers and friends and acknowledging the importance of both. i also have to admit that its a miracle i was able to find my way here because i get this sinking feeling that some nights on this trip i wont pull out of my problems so lucky.

but you really never know.

more havoc to come.

Day Three: Harajuku

there was some type of tour going on there for some musical artist or tv personality or something. im not sure, but all i know is that there were traffic law violations and pushing and shoving all the way from here to cape canaveral.

this is harajuku



and this is even more harajuku

this cat made the observation that the shirt i was wearing actually had two hearts on it. he kept touching my chest.

the eki (train) was too small for the number of people going in and out of that place, and as it is the eki that falls between shibuya and shinjuku, i would have expected it to be bigger-- but it wasnt.


no matter. harajuku is where the neokids come out on sundays to showcase fashion, style and talent. it was like a street freakshow. you have people dressing like goths, ravers, new wavers, all kinds of stuff, but my favorite of all that day was this guy.


and i of course liked him so much that i got some pictures with him.


and there were lots of more wacky people. not to say that anyone there was brain damaged or otherwise mentally ill, but theyre just ballsy to do what they do, and in the city on the absolute cutting edge of fashion, this road is their catwalk.

so i got pretty mad cause for some reason some "just-dressed-in-a-cowboy-outfit guy" was guarding all the super weird looking neokids. maybe MY camera wasnt big enough or something? i couldnt understand it at all, but there were flashbulbs everywhere and people taking hundreds of pictures of these kids.

i eventually found myself at the center of the photography when i took out my guitar and
started to play. it was great to become another one of the freaks of harajuku.

about this time was when people started taking plenty of pictures-- and im not gonna lie-- it was pretty sweet! i let the pink man strum the guitar while i fingered the chords on the fretboard and sang, and boy the folks sure did like that.

i made friends with a legit israeli guy and some other neat japanese kids there. they all signed my guitar before i left and the pink man even stole one of my pics and ran away with it.

he apologized later and asked me to autograph it for him.

some pictures i promised some folks i would post...

more havoc to come

Day Two: Machida and Tokyo Tower

machida is a city i both love and hate. i spent four and a half months there on my mission and experienced some of my most challenging times.

but like ive mentioned before, it wasnt all bad. machida is a city that serves as a shopping area for southwestern tokyoites. it is a city full of stores, shops and eating type joints. many of the city-esque pictures i used for the headers on this site came from machida. i basically went to this city to reconcile with myself and allow myself to feel some sort of peace after the trials i experienced there.

and i did. i found it was so much the same as i remembered it. the stores were the same, the pimps still walked the streets looking for new clients and it was still rocking and rolling with thousands of people crowding into the miles of streets and back alley shops.

there is a store there that sells all the same type of trash that hot topic might sell in america, except the stuff they have is cooler and every single item in the store is only 390 yen, about the same at $4.

Think that for only $4 you can get...

a michael jackson keychain

a large assortment of trucker hats, legit shirts and kanye wests pointless style shades

and alabama license plates

i remembered specific instances where i felt so much fear and sadness and loneliness in the city, but it was all gone. i have overcome those things and can walk through the city, even though it still carries with it those old school memories that never can quite go away. sometimes there are memories that never go away no matter how long it has been since we had them.

from that point i went to the tokyo tower with my friend ben and his friend takeshi.


there have been specific moments since ive been here where i realize that i wish that the moment im living in would last forever-- the type of time where the beauty i see is so great that i just want to freeze it or never even have to leave the place at all.

this is what i felt while i was in the observation deck of the tokyo tower. i thought for a moment that the city at night was the most beautiful thing i had ever seen, or wondered if it was even real at all.

tokyo from the sky at night is so beautiful with all of its organized chaos. it is a huge city that is held together with millions of people sharing the same sorrows and trials as any city--just like anywhere else i would be familiar with in america. still it seems to be so very well organized.

before we got into the tower, there was a guy that looked something like a...well he looked like something, youll have to judge for yourself. he looks like the offspring of a crayon and something pink, but hes got real swagger you have to admit.

i think he might be something like the tokyo tower mascot. i wonder what kind of response he would get being the mascot of an american major league team.

we can only hope for such a day to come.

anyway, he waited in line there to go to the observation deck of the tower for a good long while, helped some people from another country cut in line and finally made it to the doors.

as it turns out, theres lots of fun stuff to do up in the tokyo tower: theres a cafe, little screens that show you various shots of tokyo throughout the day that you can look through using this slider bar thing, and plenty of other goodies.

there are also these little screens that they show you on your way up with this mascot guy, i think his name is noppon, doing lots of stuff.

for example, he uses binoculars and says "what a view"


he tries to sell himself...


and he lets us know that looking through the windows on the floor is like walking on air.


so i followed his advice and tried it myself. it was terrifying.

all in all it was a fantastic day. im grateful to my friend for letting me know how to get there and being a for-sure help.

and back at the base, before we left i took one last shot of the tower. i figured that even with the technology of today, there is no camera powerful enough to even give us the feeling of being there in a certain time and place. pictures are only small representations. ive seen so many pictures of this tower and never quite felt the beauty of it until i saw it for myself with my own eyes and not through some picture. yet another reason i am so grateful to be here seeing all of these things i have dreamed of eventually seeing.


tomorrow will be harajuku.

more havoc to come.