Beautiful Neon Explosion

5/5-

Though I got a slow start, I did actually do and see quite a bit today.  I started by going to asakusa, an old temple, blah, blah, blah.  It was no better than any other temple, even with a nice garden and vaguely interesting history.  I spent some time in the area shopping for souvenirs to send home and found a cheap kimono for myself.  There's some argument about kimonos.  A truly traditional kimono that a geisha would wear, made of silk and embroidered, is wildly expensive and can get into the couture price range (tens of thousands of dollars) so many tourists set on getting a kimono of sorts, opt to buy a yukata which is kind of like a thin bathrobe geishas wear underneath a kimono.  Even these are very expensive so many opt to buy them second-hand.  Unfortunately, second hand stores selling kimonos and their accessories are very difficult to find.  The kimono stores near tourist areas often sell some high end kimonos, but sell many more cheap ones to tourists or Japanese who wear them traditionally.  Some people argue that these are not "real" kimonos, and while they are much, much poorer quality than the ones geisha wear, they are still kimonos and that was good enough for me and my slim wallet.

I found a blue-greenish one that was actually fairly plain, though it has a basic bamboo leaf pattern.  It fit well, though it was a little long and I liked it emotionally more than I logically should have aesthetically.  It was also my last day to possibly buy one and was the right price.

Taking the Tokyo Metro from one station to another should be simple.  The stations and trains are fairly clean, there are Women Only cars for peak hours so you don't get molested by a chikan (yes, they have an actual word for subway sexual predators!) because you're so packed in, most signs are in Japanese and English and trains are reasonably fast  Unfortunately, there are serious organizational problems that make stations illogical and transfers ridiculous.  Amazingly, I never actually had too much trouble, but the system was so illogical and bizarre, I don't know how I didn't.  My trip today emphasized that.  On the map, Asakusa station is one a particular line, Asakusa.  It stops at Bakuro-yokoyama station, where I could transfer to Shinjuku line to get to, Shinjuku.  So I entered Asakusa station but didn't see a single sign for that line, despite seeing several for the Ginza line (though I did later find a very small single one, squashed in between other, useless information, that I'd missed).  There was a man at an information desk I asked and he told me to leave this station to the street through a particular exit then follow the signs to Asakusa station Asakusa line.  In other words, there were two unconnected Asakusa stations.  It wasn't a long walk, but just shockingly unplanned.  I got to the station, got a train to Bakuro-yokoyama, my transfer point and was again shocked at the confusing directions.  To transfer to the other line, I again had to leave the station, go aboveground and walk.  Again, it wasn't a long walk, just a few blocks, but there were turns so it wasn't just walk two blocks straight, and few signs, through a neighborhood that didn't feel unsafe exactly, but underpopulated- a place I wouldn't feel completely comfortable walking through at night.  Like I said, I somehow managed all this without getting lost or confused, but I just thought it was an insane system.  I took a picture of one of the signs to show the craziness, but lost the picture with my camera.

In the middle of the transfer, I stopped at a Yoshinoya, a Japanese fast-food place, for a beef bowl for dinner.  Finally, I arrived at Shinjuku.  Shinjuku is probably the area closest to the super busy Tokyo at night stereotype you imagine.  It's just all neon lights and people and noise and it was wonderful.  It was the sort of place where I think other people might feel overstimulated, but I felt like "Finally! A place I won't be bored!"  There was also this area of three tiny alleyways nearby filled with tiny bars, most with only the bar and three or four stools before you ran into the wall.  Many of them had vague themes and apparently many of them are so exclusive that you can't go in unless you're a regular (so how one becomes a regular in the first place, I don't know, maybe it's hereditary).  Anyway, it was just really cool and dark and dingy and off and low-key and happy.  I don't know, but I thought it was fantastic.