Weekend Tokyostravaganza

Actually, I only spent Saturday exploring Tokyo, but I did enough stuff to take up an entire weekend. I started traveling into Tokyo at around 1:00 Saturday afternoon. Before I got into Tokyo though, I needed to stop by an ATM in Yokohama to pick up some cash. But, once I left the station, the building I needed to get to was across a large street with no crosswalks. So I looked around and saw what looked like stairs to an underpass for the road. When I walked down the stairs I wasn't greeted with a tunnel under the road, but an entire underground mall spanning at least two blocks. It was full of shops and restaurants and I got a nice meal by myself at a little ramen place. The interesting part of this restaurant was that you order your food at a little vending machine by the door and you are given a ticket for your purchase. You then hand this to a waitress, they give you a seat and your food gets delivered to you incredibly quickly. After that nice lunch I proceded to get back on the train and go to Ebisu.
In Ebisu I went to the Ebisu Beer Museum. This is a picture of some giant tube they brew beer in (I forgot the name) that was pretty much the centerpiece of the museum.
The most interesting part of the museum was the bar, though. The next picture is the little sample I got of four different kinds of Ebisu Beer. They were all great and I got to talk to a nice Japanese businessman while I sampled them. He spoke pretty good english and I complimented him on it, but he explained to me that "I only speak english when (points to his drink.)" So, because of the relaxed setting, I tried out some of my Japanese on him and had a great time. I actually learned a couple interesting differences between Japanese and Chinese. Apparently the word for "wife" in Chinese means "Mistress" in Japanese. That could lead to some sticky situations.
My next stop was a Photograph museum also in Ebisu. I went into two exhibits: Warfare from Vietnam until the present and Award winning photos of pretty much anything. There were pictures of natural disasters, animals, sports, you name it. It was also very interesting because most of the images I saw I had never seen before because they had been pretty much censored out of American Media. They had a couple photographs from Hurricane Katrina that really drove home how big a natural disaster it was. So that was definitely a different experience from the beer museum but it was really fun as well.
My next stop was Shibuya, which is one of the most lively sections of Tokyo. I actually got a picture of the most frequented Starbucks in the world. There is constantly a crowd in it, from the dusk 'til dawn. For most of my time in Shibuya, though, I wandered through a couple malls that were conveniently placed right next to Shibuya Station. I walked through a Japanese book store in one and got a Japanese comic (Manga) to read on the train. I also got to stop off in a Japanese arcade and test my skills. If you didn't already know, beating a Japanese person at video games is like capturing a live giant squid. You know that it's possible, but you just never seem lucky enough to do it. Needless to say, I left the arcade giant squidless.
For dinner I found a Curry-Rice restaurant, which, surprisingly, specializes in serving various mixtures of curry with rice. I got some medium hot pork tonkatsu curry rice(breaded and deep fried pork) and ate it happily.
After my delicious, and cheap, dinner I made my way back to the station and made the long trip home. Needless to say it was a great weekend and a very cool experience in Tokyo. I'm definitely gonna take more excursions into Tokyo whether it is by myself or with company, so you'll be sure to hear more about this fascinating city. Alright then, thanks for all the interest and I'll post again later this week.