Japan Day 19: Roppongi - Where Patrick Would be King (leading to a failed state)

Today was somewhat sad for us. We had to leave Kyoto and Allan had to make sure he had pictures he wanted from there. We didn't get much sleep either because we stayed up drinking with Stefan, Tim, and his girlfriend, Mayu. He loves to talk about how she has such a young face. It's true, but it gets her nothing but harassment. Then it was blog time. It left us with four hours of sleep since we hauled our asses out of bed early to go meet Tim before he had to run off to work. Luckily, we were successful, and found both him and Stefan in the morning.

The Shinkansen ride back would have been more restful if they hadn't stuck us on the side of the train with three seats and had random people moving out from the window seat! Honestly, we didn't want to leave Kyoto yet. Too much fun there, and it felt like home. Our apologies to Ai, Rina, Naomi, and the people we've met here in Tokyo, but we just like Kyoto better. :)

Anywho, we came back and tried to meet up with Aleem and Kat. Easier said than done! They went to the wrong side of Shinjuku station. Not the first time someone's done that! We ended up wandering to the hotel and doing a bunch of mundane crap like laundry and luggage. We even tried to find out where you can find Street Fighter figures (you can't).

We did manage to meet them later though, and we went to Roppongi. This is one of those "rich" parts of Tokyo. Patrick would love it! Lots of uselessly huge facades, TV screens, lights, girls dressed like they want things other than trinkets, and tall buildings.

We found ourselves on the observation deck of Mori Tower. Ok view, but the whole experience wasn't quite as interesting as the Kyoto one. The one striking thing was Tokyo Tower (the big orange thing in the picture). They had the Mori Art Museum there too.
Considering the price of the tickets (1500 yen) we were obliged to check out the art. It confirmed my opinion that much of modern art is a scam even if the scammers don't know it yet. I liked the slices of plastinated cow and the thing called "the void," which was just a floating blackness, but honestly I think artists just make up shit, join a clique that decides said shit matters, and then make money, leaving lots of perfectly good artists starving! Half the stuff in there could have been generated with a computer program and passed off as human work yet I have so many friends who draw and paint beautifully who get squat! Yeah, so that made me hate that place. We went to a Koots for some tea/coffee concoctions. Kat says it's her favourite place in Seattle; Aleem says they closed the one in Seattle! It was good, but at almost 700 yen for our drinks I wouldn't be doing it every day.

Dinner was good stuff. Aleem didn't wanna go, so he wandered off, but we had some Korean BBQ at a place in west Shinjuju. It was good, though I think I enjoyed the place in Osaka more. That one had more variety of meat. Funny how good the ears off of pigs and cows can taste when you grill them over some coals! :p

I'm outta here though. Need sleep. Gotta go look for some things we want to buy tomorrow. Allan's on blog duty tomorrow, but if shopping sucks enough I'll sneak some nasty remark about it in there. hehehe Yuck! I HATE shopping! It's like work, but usually less interesting and harder.