Fun Times in Tokyo
...pictures from July 23-27, 2005

These few days went by in a blur! On sunday I arrived and checked into the Hilton in Shinjuku where I met Ryan from Vancouver and Tom from England who I'd be sharing my room with. I left the hotel in the evening and promptly got lost on my way to the Keio Plaza which turned out to be two blocks away. It's difficult to navigate the neon wasteland of Shinjuku at night if you don't know where you're going.

The next day was really sweet. I had a buffet breakfast at the Hilton and then headed to the Keio for meetings. After lunch I hooked up with Leanne from Calgary and convinced her to skip the rest of the afternoon's meetings so we could explore the city. We changed out of our business atire and made our way up to the observatory at the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Then we took the Yamanote line over to Harajuku and checked out the trendy teenagers. Finally, we headed one more stop over to Shibuya, and after somehow getting slightly lost, checked out the swarms of people in the world's busiest commercial district.

On my last day in Tokyo I called my Japanese friend Rie, who somehow can afford living alone in a nice apartment next to Shibuya despite being a student. We took a taxi to Kabukicho for dinner and drinks and had a very nice time even though Tokyo was being hit by a typhoon and the trains were stopped as a precaution.