19th
Woke up suprising early and decided upon a little jaunt to see the imperial palace grounds.Navigation of the subways,as always was easy and the trains are ludicrously on time,as soon as the clock ticks to the correct arrival time you see the lights appear out of the dark.imperial palace grounds are vast,we thought we might have walked around all the grounds but turned out we only ventured into the eastern gardens.was such a long walk we decided to replenish energy sounces with a banana.good idea up to the point we realised we didnt have anywhere to put the banana skins,the only resort being to wander around untill we found a bin.after half an hour of comical torch like banana skin bearing we decided to look up in our hilariously titled giant 'pocket' english dictionary how to ask where the bin is,'gomebako doko desu ka?' we finaly came across,just before we bumped into a bin.damn it.cantinually getting hungry we left the imperial palace grounds and entered the mainly upmarket bussiness end of maranouchi,bit like tokyo's version of canary wharf.stumbled into a upmarket department store and found the food prices to be weirdly on par with tesco's,strange.and thats it methinks for that day
20th
Went to harajuku upon hearing that cos-play normally happens at the train station in harajuku on sunday.Arived in the station at aoyama in the centre of all the upmarket stores ralph lauren bulgari chanel etc and feeling a bit outpriced we went to harajuku further up the road.along the way we spotted the first of many 'condomania' stores where you can buy all sorts of themed johnys,not in the slightest bit descrete with a flashing neon smiling latexy one waving you into the store.not long before we came across a pikachu condom,bizzare.feeling slightly confused (im getting used to being confused here,im gonna be tripped out when things start to make sense in oz) continued up to harajuku station where loadsa girls were dressed up like various japanese metal bands,somewhat scary,only in the sense that there were girls there being around 14 looking slightly like prostitutes,bar that it was quite interesting,they put quite alot of effort into it and it is downright strange,i like strange,its what i came here for.after that me and jimmers crammed ourselves into takeshita street (hehe)lots of cool clothes there for very reasonable prices.got an awesome crepe from one of the shops there and spotted a roof top netted driving range,something im sure my dad will be envious of.