A Drifting Feeling

Another traditional Japanese feast for breakfast saw us on our way back to Tokyo after a relaxing time up in the mountains. However I come away with only one small disappointment, not with the hotel, but with what I had hoped to see. For those of you that know what Initial D is, then you may know that Mt. Akina (Takumi's home mountain) is based on Mt. Haruna. All the places in the anime actually exist, and I had hoped to see some of them. However the onsen was only half way up the mountain, and a few kilometres away from the base of the winding roads used for drifting. I took some photos of the top half of the mountain when we went for a walk, so that will have to suffice.

We decided to head into Shinjuku to see the nightlife and do some shopping. Upon exiting the train station we went into a multi-level department store where we spent the next 2 hours being amazed at the range of items on offer. We found some food on the basement level and ate it while PChii tried not to have a sleeping/drunk Japanese man fall off his stool onto her.

When you tend to see night street scapes of Japan with all the bright lights, signs and people bustling, I often wondered where those pictures are taken. I now know, because I've taken some of my own.

We walked down a heavily crowded main street to a checkout OIOI (Marui), a department store well known for its loli & goth clientèle. The Japanese certainly have style but holy cow, talk about expensive! PChii said I just had to try a crepe from one of these street vendors, aparently I have Megan to blame for PChii's addiction to them. It was quite tasty, and I even took a movie of him making ours which I will post later on.

Oh, and on the way back to the train station we saw something more unusual than normal.. someone wearing a white horse head. Hey this is Japan after all.