suntory boss is the boss of them all.

so this was my last day in tokyo, my last day in japan. i tried to make the best of it.

in the morning we first visited the attractions in asakusa which means we first went to the asahi beer building with the huge golden fart flame on top of it and then the kaminarimon (gate to senso-ji), nakamise (street leading to senso-ji) and the senso-ji temple. i didn't know it was the most popular and famous temple which probably explains why it was so crowded there, even on a wednesday morning.

we walked along the kappabashi shopping street and took the train to shibuya at ueno station. i guess shibuya and especially the large intersection at hachiko exit of the shibuya station will never stop to amaze me. when onur first showed me shibuya, we went to this building with the huge advertising screen right in front of the intersection (by the way, in the movie lost in translation it's that screen where charlotte sees the ad with the huge dinosaur). there is a tsutaya (cd/dvd store) and a starbucks on the first floor and from there you have a beautiful view over the crowd. we spent quite some time at tsutaya, listening to japanese punk and hip hop and pop. i was just listening to a cd by 東京事変 (tôkyô jihen, tokyo incidents) and i really liked the music and then suddenly i found out that this is shiina ringo's band! i really like shiina and i liked the songs so i bought the brandnew album "娯楽(バラエティ, variety)".

we walked over to harajuku, bought chûhai and sat at the side of the omotesando avenue, watching people and resting for a while when a really drunken bum showed up and started to bother us. when julian told him to shut up in japanese he got really angry and started insulting us and went away. when he came back later with a new cup of cheap sake in his hand, he had already forgotten everything and started babbling again and we decided to move along. my brother had asked me to buy a tshirt by a certain brand ("bape") and we searched for the shop in takeshita dori for over an hour until we found it by chance. well, at least takeshita dori was really interesting.

afterwards we got a train to shinjuku (it was rush hours btw so it was real fun in the crowded train) but as julian was too tired and went home, i walked through shinjuku alone. i wanted to look for the park hyatt hotel from lost in translation but i terribly lost my way and ended up in the middle of nowhere, went back to shinjuku station by train and went to some gamecenters in kabukicho. that silent hill arcade game was rather boring but i really liked playing tekken 5! *sighs* gonna miss the game centers...

tokyo