When Things Go Awry....

A friend of mine came over to Tokyo, daughter and husband in tow, from Canada several weeks ago.  We made arrangements to meet up on Sunday the 20th.  Concurrently, a co-worker was down in Tokyo on vacation.  Before he had departed we made plans to drop in on a mutual acquaintance who is now living in Tokyo.  Since this was all arranged using LINE there was no element of surprise.  Yuko, our mutual acquaintance, was told ahead of time we were planning to go to the cafe/bar where she works.  I took the time to take screenshots from the Apple Map application to show my co-worker where exactly in Shinjuku to wait for me.

So, as I arrived at Tokyo station on Saturday night I sent a LINE message to my co-worker.  His response was "F***, I'm in Chiba.  I forgot what day it is.".  Okay.  That definitely wasn't the response I was expecting.  I sent a query asking if he was going to start heading back to Tokyo.  No response.  I said to myself, "The heck with him" and made my deliberate way to the Burger King in the Kabuki-cho district of Shinjuku.  I sent a LINE message to my co-worker advising him that the Whopper I had just inhaled was good.  "Boy, you're fast" was his response.  Which basically told me that he hadn't budged an inch off the bar stool he was sitting on in Chiba.  After I had checked in at the capsule hotel I had made a reservation at, I headed off to Yotsuya San-cho-me on my own.  I met up with Yuko who was a bit surprised to see me without my co-worker in tow.  Needless to say she was less than impressed with his performance when I told her what he was up to.

I spent about a day and half taking my friend and her daughter around a number of spots in Tokyo.  Her husband came down with a cold so he was mostly bedridden for two days, Sunday the 20th and Monday the 21st.  Sunday afternoon was spent shopping in the area just east of Shinjuku station.  The crowds weren't too bad so it wasn't an exhausting experience.  We checked on her husband around 5pm and then headed out for dinner.  I couldn't find the place I had in mind so we settled on a yakitori restaurant.

We covered a lot more ground the next day: Harajuku (specifically the first few blocks of Takeshita Dori), Meiji Jingu, Roppongi (for the express purpose of going to a Sushizanmai restaurant a friend of mine frequents), and Odaiba.  We purchased day passes to ride the Yurikamome line and used it enough to get our money's worth hopping on and off a couple of Yurikamome line stations..  Didn't do any shopping in Odaiba but we checked out the beach side park, the life size Gundam robot, and the Toyota centre next to Venus Fort.  They have a new program for the Toyota ride simulator so we checked that out.  My friend's daughter, who just turned 12, thought the ride was the highlight of the day....

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Postscript:  One of the shops I checked out on Sunday morning, before my friend arrived in Tokyo from Kawaguchi-ko (next to Mt. Fuji), was Kinokuniya Books.  It goes without saying that my wallet became a touch lighter after my visit there.  I picked up a copy of a somewhat thick magazine whose current issue is focused on manga-ka Eguchi Hisashi.  When I got to the floor where they sell foreign language books and magazines I more or less just wandered around.  Then I got to the section where they have their selection of novels.  I don't know why but I remembered then reading a review of Yann Martel's latest novel.  But I couldn't remember the title of the book.  I found several books by Martel though.  I ended up buying two...but I can't remember their titles right away as I had the store clerk make book covers for my purchases....