I had a couple of things on my list for Day 1. I wanted to buy the things I forgot (like toothpaste), buy an electric travel toothbrush that took batteries, buy a data SIM for my iPhone that’s ¥3480/month instead of ¥1500/day, look for my mom’s stuff (a magnifying glass and a pencil sharpener), and look for a couple of locations that my sister told me to check out. I know it’s too early to hit the hay at 4PM JST (midnight at home) so I had a very expensive cup of coffee (¥510 or about $6.50 USD) so I could rally and find some dinner. For that cup of coffee I had the right to camp out for a while in the coffee shop, but I just wanted a hot cup of coffee rather than a cold one out of a vending machine. It’s still too early for most vending machines here to start selling cans of hot drinks.

I got a bit of a late start today. I got up at 6:30 but puttered around, mostly on my computer until 10AM. Heck, most stores aren’t open until 10AM anyway and I’m on vacation. During that time I had the “free” hotel continental breakfast this morning of little tiny bread and yogurt.

It wasn’t too hot when I first got going but the direct sunlight was incredibly hot. It reminded me of what my aunt told my sister, that the rain here is different than the rain in the US. She might be right as it is a lot further south than Portland. But just walking down the street was making me happy. It’s different and I’M ON VACATION!

I walked from my hotel to Shinjuku, even after being warned it was around 20 minutes away. Meh, Mos Burger was only like 12 minutes and I wasn’t in any hurry (and Mos Burger looms large in my psyche and is only a couple of minutes from Shinjuku Station). I went by our usual hotel, the Nishi Shinjuku Hotel My Stays and decided to finally visit the Buddhist temple next to it. Coincidentally, a neighbor is the daughter of one of the people at the temple and I’m guessing it’s someone important.

Walking around the neighborhood, I saw a guy who was dressed in white going into a modern-looking building and thought it was a dentist’s office, but it was a tonkatsu restaurant! I love tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlets), and I even order it in Korean restaurants in Portland knowing that the tonkatsu there will be thin slices of pork that aren’t what I’m used to. The special was oroshi tonkatsu, or tonkatsu with shredded daikon radish and I had to try it. It was great and just around the corner from the hotel we usually stay at. I was the only customer at 11AM which was good, since every table had an ash tray on it.

After that I wandered around geek shopping. I got my data SIM, I checked out the things my mom wanted but didn’t buy them quite yet, and wandered aimlessly looking for a curry restaurant my sister talked about. I ended up in the “scary” part of Shinjuku’s Kabukicho, where the people finally stopped trying to get me to come into their restaurants and were hocking girls and illicit DVDs instead. Walking back towards the train station, I saw a bunch of huge Japanese guys in the nicest suits I’ve seen in a long time, which is weird because they weren’t lightweight summer suits. They were built like linebackers and looked exactly like what I’d cast as Japanese gangsters, two on each side of the narrow street. They were talking in a friendly manner with oddly simple language to another group of big guys who were dressed in more thuggish clothing. At that point I decided I never wanted to be on that street again. I found a police box and checked the map of where I was, and it was only halfway to the hotel my sister asked me to find. I don’t think I’ll recommend that hotel to anyone unless they can find another route there.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon trying not to fall asleep (hence the coffee). For dinner I went to a Nepalese/Indian restaurant where I ate too much. There were other Nepalese people there and they were eating all sorts of things I didn’t see on the menu that looked like yakisoba and shumai. Who knows. All I remember is that it took forever for them to bring my check, not that I was in a hurry.

Tomorrow may be more shopping, or not. It’s supposed to be rainy so I may just hide out. But there’s so many things to see, even where you’re not expecting them.