Another day of rampant sightseeing - slash - shopping. I`m well and truly sick of walking into and out of shops now. I visited 3 areas of Tokyo

Jimbocho - the hotel clerks said that this was where all the sports stores were - and they were right - snowboard stores everywhere! There were so many I got sick of going into them, coz they all had the same stuff. I bought some bubble grips for my stomp pad, and 2 snowboard vid`s - quite old, but they were cheap!

Shibuya - trendy shopping district of Tokyo - so many people, and Shibuy 109 - which is a shopping mall with ONLY female clothing stores, is eye candy city! But I felt silly walking around in there - seriously there was not a single guy in there...so I bailed out of there..

Harajuku - looks like a tourist trap - its a small group of streets - main one being takeshita st (yes, take-a-shita street) and full of your typical weekend markets - but in a small alleyway. Starting to see some of the more `colourful` tokyo-ites around here :). There are alot of goths in tokyo! And alot of wannabe homies! And whats with the girls in school uniforms on the weekend - did they actualy have school - or do they were their uniform as a fashion statement?

Meiji Shrine - shrine of Emperor Meiji. Situated within a huge park, with wide avenues in between the huge native Japanese flora (I have no idea what those trees are called). Its visited by both tourists and locals - as a place to pray to the late Emperor and ask for good fortune. The way you pray is make a small donation, then bow twice, clap twice, pay your respects, then bow once again.

And finally - Akihabara - nerd city. More electronics shops than you could possibly visit. And a Sega World - which was a pretty cool games arcade. They have new games, as well as all the classics - they still have heaps of Street Figher Turbo machines. I played a few games, lost all of them - I`m crap as usual at arcade games. In addition to electonics shops, there are alot of DVD shops, and a few things that caught my attention;

there is not much point buying any dvds from japan bcoz they are all in japanese...even manga is pointless to buy i reckon
there were 3 whole stores of manga porn. and just manga porn. nothing else
there were whole stores of porn. and just porn. nothing else.
(I of course wandered into these establishments inadvertantly - there were no warning signs! and of course didn`t stay any longer than I had to)

After this long and tiring day...I come back to my hotel, with the cute desk clerk hehe I might have to find a reason to go up to talk to her ...but in the meantime I need to find something to eat

btw 2 footnotes

it is very difficult to find something to eat in tokyo - they aren`t that big on their fast food - not many around at all. And the casual food halls or restaurants they do have, very few of them have english menus
in japan you are not allowed to smoke on the footpath, but you can smoke indoors