I got to Tokyo's Narita airport at noon; I slept a few hours on the 4 hour bus ride and 2 hour plane ride to Tokyo. then after getting my bag and clearing customs and the 1 hour train ride into Tokyo($10 on the regular train), the subway transfer to the correct stop, etc., it was 2:30pm. I then got some Subway, a guacamole/Japanese grassy straw type vegetable sub on wheat and watched the traffic for 1 hour.
I then started to look for one of the 2 capsule hotels in the area, I am staying in Akasaka, it’s a foreigner friendly area within walking distance of Roppongi where all the night life is. Cabs are very expensive so its best to sleep in an area that you plan to be in after 10pm when the subways close. It took me 2 hours to locate one as the first one was no longer open( a regular problem when you don't call ahead and rely on lonely planet) and the area is confusing because most of the street signs are in Japanese, After the first hour I started asking for help, which I should have done in the first place, but since the capsule hotel check ins aren't until 5pm,it didn't matter anyway.
I then got to my capsule watched 2 episodes of Entourage on my laptop and crashed for 13 hours, I was exhausted from drinking all night and traveling and that brings me to now its the second morning in Tokyo and I am at a coffee shop typing this I'm still not sure exactly what I'm doing to day but I'm about to head off on the subway and figure it out.... (Wrote this earlier)
I decided to go to Ginza to see the Sony building and whatever else was nearby. It is only a few subway stops away on the same line my hotel is on so that was nice. I loved all the gadgets they had there. It was 4 floors of stuff I wanted to buy. Joe if your reading this don't ever go there you’ll have to mortgage your house. They had all sorts of cool new gadgets, some where literally just created this week and they were prototypes so you couldn't even buy them yet. I think the most amazing thing was a little regular sized square battery, it didn't say what it was called or how powerful it was, but it was a standard 1 inch by 2 inch by ½ inch square battery. It was powerful it could run 3 processors by itself at once. I'm sure they were mobile low power processors but this is still amazing, you weren't even allowed to take pictures of it. The coolest gadget for sale was the Rolly, its a small cylindrical speaker system about 2/3 the size of an American pop can or jut slightly larger than an Asian pop can. It played music loudly and could spin and twist so it danced to the music, it even had a few moving parts that opened in closed in sync with the music, it was amazing. They also had some really sweet and ultra tiny laptops for sale that had only been out a few days. After the Sony building I walked around Ginza and looked at all the designer shops and the Kubuki-za Theater. Ginza is the oldest and most famous shopping district in Japan there was every designer I have ever heard of there and tons of electronics stores.
After Ginza I walked around the Imperial Palace grounds and gardens. The palace itself was closed, it always is except for 2 days a year, but it took me almost two hours to walk around it and see all the sights it's huge. I then went to the Yasukuni-Jinja which is a shrine and a few museums that are there to celebrate the 2.4 million Japanese who have died in wars since 1853. There are statues and memorials for several well known war criminals there so there are usually protesters there but I didn't see any. I can't really say anything anyway as these days we Americans regularly commit war crimes and we don't arrest our leaders who do this. The coolest things I saw here were a real Japanese Zero airplane just like the ones that bombed Pearl Harbor and were famous for the Kamikaze pilots. They also has a WWII era artillery gun that had tons of battle damage on it, there were at least 20 places were it was hit with gunfire or worse. This is what I did on my Monday. I just got down soaking in the sauna and cold pool in my hotel, I think I'm going to go out for a little bit tonight but not to late I want to get an early start tomorrow.
