Picciture 1:
ah yes, our first night in Japan...So the story goes that we had a 6am flight out of Melbourne and a few of the guys thought it would be a good idea not to sleep the night before the flight so that they would be able to sleep the whole way there on the plane. In theory I suppose it is a valid idea, but it didn't really work like that as i had anticipated. I think they couldn't sleep sitting up, try as they might, and were getting frustrated and grumpy and still dead tired. It was kiiiind of funny but also really bad.
We flew into Osaka airport and got a train from the airport station (best thing ever) into the city where we were all super excited at everything we saw. Think "Oh my god, look at those lights!", "Omg, we're in Japan!", "Oh man, i want to come back here and look at this shop tomorrow!!". We wanted to walk to our hotel cos we didnt want to blow money on taxis and plus we wanted to take it all in. i had the lonely planet guide map open trying to navigate to our accommodation. One thing i have found about those maps is that they are sooooo not accurate. Only the main roads have street names, sometimes. All the little alleys, which in Japan are...well... EVERYWHERE, are not named. Plus the scale is all whack, you think you still have like 5 minutes of straight walking until you reach a street, and all of a sudden you realise you walked past it already. I remember walking along a main 4 lane road wondering where we were on the map. I think we got lost inside this undercover shopping arcade, it was like a black hole and we came out somewhere totally different than where we thought we were. The guys couldn't figure it out either.
we eventually stopped and asked a Japanese guy for directions who was the owner of this buffet restaurant. He was a funny character. He had an American English accent and was trying to use his GPS on his phone to help us find the address. He was telling us to come back the next day for lunch and explained that "soft drinks... all FREE" in this heavy american accent. so strange. Anyway he sent us back the way we had come. After a while we worked up the courage to ask this other Japanese guy to help us with directions, he was a hippie and we thought he looked nice and friendly. Cos a lot of Japanese people get scared off when you start talking to them or try to get their attention. Anyway we asked him to look at the map and asked if we were close to the hotel and he shook his head and laughed and indicated that we were way off. None of us could believe how lost we were and how no-one could help us cos our map was in English. So yeah then we got in 2 taxis and asked the drivers to take us to the address and they said they didn't really go to that part of the city, they only knew the other part of the city. Weird.
We eventually got to the hotel like hours after we got to the city and wouldn't you know it.... they didn't have our reservation and were fully booked. 6 people, little sleep, tensions running high, no place to sleep. I showed them the email that they had sent me which said "thankyou for your reservation" but apparently by saying "thankyou for your reservation" they actually needed me to reply confirming again that yes, ontop of the last email with all of our details and credit card details, i would AGAIN like to say that i would like to book. I wanted to blow myself up and take everyone down with me. So after much conversation we discovered that they had a sister hotel on the other side of the city and we managed to get a suite for all 6 of us. Then we had to get cabs again over there and the poor night guy had to stay back and wait for us before he closed up for the night audit. We crashed hard after laying out the futons on the ground - which is what is happening in the picture above. I was so embarrassed and angry at myself cos i was meant to be the Japan expert and first night i looked like the biggest dick head. It was a pretty shit night but also really funny at times and we were all joking about things we saw and Stevenz was imitating the American accent of the Japanese guy for the next week, it was hilarious.
Piccy-ture 2:
This isn't a story per se, but i like the picture. That flower I stole from the entrance of a Pachinko Parlour. I would link to a description of Pachinko, but i could just give it: it is a gambling machine similar to the pokies. you put all these little ball bearings balls in the top and they clatter down and somehow you win money. like that carnival game where you have to get the ball in the clown's mouth. Pachinko is massive in Japan. They have gigantic buildings dedicated to it. People sit in rows and it is a sensoral RAPE when you walk in the doors. You are accosted with a wall of deafening techno/j-pop music trying to rise above the noise of billions of ball bearing balls clattering all over the place. And as in Japan you are allowed to smoke indoors the building is so thick with smoke you feel like you are in a nightmare club. anyway for some reason they all go overboard with the fake flowers to decorate the entrances.Pici-ture 3:
this was after a big night of drinking - maybe after our little episode at Club Pure in Shibuya i think (someone correct me if i'm wrong as we seemed to be hungover a lot). We had to check out the next morning and we were all pretty devoid of happiness or life. We caught a train to harajuku and locked our big bags away so that we might be free to roam around a little. On the map we saw there was a park near the station called Yoyogi Park so we stumbled over there hoping for a bit of peace and quiet. We all had a little nap on some benches - hobo stylllle. It was so relaxing. Eventually we were awoken by a strange smelling smoke that wafted our way but were too chicken to investigate it's origin. We watched the rockabilly dancers for a while before heading off into the gigantic park for a stroll. It was the end of autumn so the leaves were falling so delicately and serenely from the trees, i have never seen anything like it before. it was like a dreamscape! We eventually came upon a big dog pen where everyone put their dogs so they can play off the lead. We stood looking at those dogs for hours... i think they saved our lives a little bit. I'm pretty sure that at some point we were plotting the dognapping of a few of our favourites. I didn't like the ones in clothes. A lot of them were wearing clothes. It was intense.Piccyture 4:
This was a poster at the train station, trying to reinforce the Japanese peoples love for peace and quiet on trains. The man who is disapproving of the behaviour looks so freaky. His eyes are dead. I think the poster should read "this party is a zombie free zone" and the poor zombie is left out *cry*. The most rowdy behaviour i saw on a train there was at night... this one Japanese guy was on his was home from a night of drinking, and he was falling asleep but was leaning on the girl next to him and he dropped his phone. He was trying so hard to stay awake, and trying to appear normal....but everyone was like *DANGER DANGER* and cleared out the carriage. It was bizzare! Here i have seen people "nodding off" on the trian but not because they are sleepy but because they are needle junkies. I have seen people take pills in unicen on the train, seen a few people smoking and a lot of people drinking, see a few fights, seen a near stabbing... yeah different worlds. 
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