More of Japan

 In the heart of one of the busiest suburbs of Tokyo, this guy has
probably been people watching for his whole life.

So back to my Japanese escapades, I had a great time there. Obviously, I took a million photos and am still going through them. I need a new computer ... this one is 4 years old, which is eons in computer years, and it takes forever to go through them. Overall at this point though, I'm happy with what I seem to have captured.

My overall impression of Japan was completely wild. I dont think I mentioned before, but the guy who I was traveling with (Ralph - you can see a video of him below), had a Japanese neighbour back in his hometown in New Zealand, and she pretty much pulled all the stops to make it an amazing experience for him, and I was lucky enough to get to partake in the festivities as well. She even did up an itinerary for us for how to best use our rail passes and see the best of what Japan has to offer. What a freakin gangster! We mostly stuck to it, actually, but once the nights ran out of places to stay for free, we skipped off the itinerary completely (in all actuality; we missed our train stop on the express train and spurr of the moment decided to just go with it and stay on the train! Luckily, I have a friend who just happens to be living out in the boondocks a few hours from the North coast of Honshū (the main island mass), so we went out to his REALLY small neck of the woods and had a great time out there at his local haunt and corner karaoke booth. Gotta say though, kid had a ballin house for living alone. You'd never see such a thing in any of the cities.

c'mon, how can you not love this?!

One of the things I loved most about Japan was ..shoot me.. but the bikes. They were EVERYWHERE and a lot of them; as hipster as they may seem; were freakin HOT. They pay through the nose to look that styley, but apparently since the economic downfall, biking has become an even more popular mode of transportation and recreational exercise, hence the being willing to dole out fat wads of cash on your sweet ride. 

 In the clear and in line for Space Mountain!

In the meantime, I'll finally mention one of the things we did that I was so stoked about. This is actually my favourite one, and one of the craziest things I think  I've ever really gotten away with completely in the clear.

We snuck into Tokyo Disney. I won't go into a whole lot of detail, just incase  it might somehow get me in trouble one day, but lets just say some climbing, sneaking, jumping, running, and ninja moves were involved. I actually think we lucked out that it was heavily raining at the time were were doing the actual sneaking; plus the park was really not full. The one bummer was that the Haunted Mansion was closed that day, and opened literally the following day for the Halloween period! Dangit! But WHAT AN AWESOME DAY. We ran around like kids who forgot to take their prozac medication that day, and ran from ride to ride and even rode Space Mountain something like 6 times in a row right as the park was about to shut. Glorious, glorious monumental marker in my life, for sure.