October 26th (Tokyo)

Today we decided to sleep through our breakfast and just get up when we were awake. We went back to Harajuku because on Sundays, at a specific location, there's a bunch of kids (mostly girls if not all) that dress up extravagantly and just chill at that spot. A lot of tourists go there to take pictures of them (guilty :P), all dressed up as anime or manga characters, punk clothes or goth-loli clothes (gothic-lolita).

Proof that some wagons are reserved for women because of pervert problems (ass-pinching, up-skirt pictures, etc)

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Harajuku girls

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This one is mine :)

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We went back on one the main streets to a 6 story toy store called "Kiddyland". I think we spent 2 hours in the store. We even helped a little girl find her mother (well, we managed to tell an employee that we thought the girl had lost her mother).

After that we meandered on Cat Street which a street that has store mostly for men. It's a "hip" and a bit expensive kind of street. I'd like to have that street in Montreal.

We had pretty much seen what we wanted in Harajuku and Shibuya and I was starting to want to visit Akihabara which is 10 minutes from our hotel and the district I wanted to see the most. It's the "electronic district" and it's supposed to be the biggest in the world. It's also to place to find new and used video games and a lot of thing related to anime or manga.

Akihabara is also known for it's "maid-cafes" which are cafe where the waitress is dressed up as a maid. We decided to go try one because we were in need of coffee and a break. We chose the only one we had seen. We waited 5 minutes (there was a small line up) to get into an elevator. We decided to exit at the 5th floor. There seemed to be different cafes at different floors from the 4th to 7th or 8th floor. When we got out, we realized that there was a longer line up in the stairs to get in... It was all confusing, we didn't know how long we would have to wait, where the line started or ended and I didn't want to wait in line just to drink coffee. It's not like I needed a maid fix...

We decided to take the stairs to get back down but they were blocked halfway... Then we tried to take the elevator but it was always full... We decided toi go to the top floor and take the elevator there to get down. It took us like 20 minutes to get out. I was kind of pissed to have lost my time for nothing. We went to our usual internet cafe so Nath could check if Daniel had written to us about supper. We also took the opportunity to drink coffee and soft drinks. At a lot of internet cafes, all the drinks are free (read included in the price while you use internet). There's even an ice cream machine :D

Daniel hadn't written to us so we called him. He was with Mikayo and we left Akihabara (shopping would have to wait) to go back to Harajuku (yes again) to meet them.

It's really nice to be able to go out with locals when you're in a different city! Mikayo took us to a Izakaya which is like a Japanese pub. We ordered a couple of different dishes that we all shared and we drank some beer and other drinks.

Nath and Daniel had to squeeze their own grapefruit to put it in their drink

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Daniel and Mikayo

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We left to go to a nearby Thai restaurant to meet one of Mikayo's friends. We drank some more (myself a bit too much of sake), ate some more, talked and laughed. We had a lot of fun with our new friends ;)

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Mikayo answered some of my questions, her English was very good. I learnt that you can drink anywhere, at any hour in Japan :D That would explain the beer vending machines almost anywhere.

We left around 11pm to go home. The metro closes at midnight in Tokyo.

Cat in a bush !

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