Top Of Shinagawa

Work, work, work...

After our yakiniku dinner we got an e-mail from a Japanese colleague that he got the thing that we have been working on the whole week running. Great!

We continued the night going to the bar at 39th floor of the hotel. We sat there till quite late - maybe 1:30 AM.

Shinagawa Station from Top Of Shinagawa.

Ninja Food And Karaoke

Matcha icecream in the afternoon. :)



After work some Japanese colleagues took us to a ninja themed restaurant. To go to our room in the restaurant we had to go through som "ninja training". A ninja jumped out from the wall and led us through a very narrow and dark aisle with different difficulties along the way.

The food was good - 10 courses. Here are some of the dishes.









I really didn't want to eat this little ninja. Kawaii!





Ninja chef.



Trained ninjas.




Afterwards we went to sing Karaoke - singing AKB48.

Having Dinner With Hiromi

Mostly work today as well. The others left the office at around 6 PM. I stayed and worked a little bit more because I had planned to meet an old colleague for late dinner.

Turned out the others went to Shibuya and had dinner at
The Lockup, a "haunted" prison/dungeon restaurant with loud music and darkness and a lot of monsters coming in to scare the guests. I heard they put handcuffs on Alex at the entrance. :)

I had matcha three times today - matcha latte in the morning at Starbuck's, matcha cake in the afternoon and matcha dessert at dinner.

Akihabara

Didn't do anything special today. Came to the office quite early, but my computer over here didn't work, so we had to reinstall Linux on it.

The others arrived after lunch and were quite tired after the long ride.

We left the office at around 6 PM and went to Akihabara.
Some of us were looking for AKB48 things and it wasn't me. ;)

It's Dark In Tokyo

Well, I'm here in Tokyo again. :)

Landed around 9.30 this morning. Took the airport limousine (i.e., bus) to Shinagawa Prince Hotel. The sky was very cloudy today and the risk of rain was hanging over us the whole evening, but luckily the rain never came.

I came to the hotel around 12.30 and wasn't allowed to check-in yet, so I left my bags and wandered around Shinagawa Station. I bought some green tea, had lunch and took it very slowly. I bumped into a colleague, Mattias, on the way back to the hotel. He was on his way to job. :(

The view from my hotel room at 22nd floor.




People queueing for something. Don't know what. Maybe the dolphin show they have at the hotel.




I skipped my usual afternoon nap, which I always take the first day in Tokyo in order to be human and alive again. I didn't feel so sleepy today after all. I guess I slept a few hours on the plane because all of a sudden it was time for second serving.

After a quick shower I took the train to Harajuku for some shopping. The clock was after 15 by that time, so I figured I had around 3 hours' shopping. And this is the art of spending three days' travel allowance in 3 hours. :-D

In Tokyo, they hand out the BIG shopping bags. :)




And if you notice the Lilo & Stitch bag, no, I wasn't at the Disney Store. I just
desperately needed a bag for all the stuff I bought at the Daiso 100 Yen store, most of it just candy and useless things I guess I will never use once at home.

Shopping T-shirts at UT store is always mandatory - I bought 11 for myself. Good quality, cool prints for affordable price. :)

In case you are reading, Jazze. Here is your shirt:




I wandered to Shibuya and took the train back to Shinagawa.

Yeah right, almost forgot to explain the title of this post. It is indeed very dark in Tokyo because they have to save electric power. Buildings and neon signs that usually are lit up are now turned off. At first I thought that they were celebrating something today and the shops were closed. Even the big crossing in Shibuya is not as lit up as before. I think only about 1/3 of the lights and signs are on.