Amazing night in Tokyo

Yesterday was by far the best day I've had yet in Tokyo, and also my hardest. I didn't have clinic so I didn't head to Shinjuku for class. Instead, I slept in and did responsible things like laundry and cleaning my room. I must say, my mom would be quite proud of my room at the moment. Since I was still making plans for the evening, I decided to head out and freeline around the side streets. Then Arisa called and we made plans to meet at Shinjuku then head out. I'm not entirely sure how, but I somehow got to Shinsen-Shinjuku instead of Shinjuku. So I called Arisa to tell her I was going to be late then attempted to find a train that would take me to somewhere familiar. After about 15 minutes of fruitless searching, I headed farther into the station to find a map. At that point, I realized Shinsen-Shinjuku is connected to Shinjuku, it just has newer (and developing) lines. So that was a good 20 minutes of my life I wasted thinking I was lost but actually wasn't. *facepalm*

From there, we headed out to find the movie theatre. Not a big deal, right? Heh.. Shinjuku is one of the hardest districts in Tokyo to navigate. Arisa was using her phone for a map and we still weren't making progress, but we did get some nice exploring done. After an hour or so we passed a Softbank store (pretty much Japan's equivalent to ATT) so I went in and used their display iPads to find the theatre. Success. The movie theatre had a nice design that was ultra slick and modern, but the seats were strange. Pictures on Facebook here. Our choice of movie was narrowed down to the new Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Swan. I've already seen Black Swan so we got tickets for Pirates in 3D. They were more expensive than I liked, but it was my first time seeing a 3D movie. Not only was the 3D amazing, the movie was in English with Japanese subtitles so I was able to understand it (which I was not expecting). And the movie itself was pretty decent, an extra bonus.

Finding the train station from the movie theatre was pretty easy, then we headed to catch a train heading out. The train waiting in the tracks was super packed. So my logic was, "This train is crowded, we'll just take the next one." Great idea, except it was the last train of the night. Apparently the trains in Tokyo stop running around 12:30am (I'm not quite sure why). After that, I just figured we would have to take a taxi, not a big deal. When I asked Arisa if she was going to take the same taxi to Sengawa then continue on to where she lives, she said she was just gonna wait for the first train in the morning since the taxi is too expensive and she lives fairly far away. Tokyo is one of the safest cities in the world, and we were in a pretty relaxed district, but I didn't particularly feel like leaving some girl in Tokyo to wait all night by herself until the trains start running again. So instead of a taxi, we walked over to a 7-eleven and bought food - and by food, I mean cup noodles. Delicious, delicious cup noodles (the 7-elevens in Japan have hot water dispensers so you can make the noodles in the store). Other than food, my iPod also occupied us until 4:30ish when the first train left.

One of the best parts of the aforementioned adventure was that it was nearly entirely in Japanese. Arisa kind of practiced the simple phrases she knows but I was pretty adamant about practicing my Japanese. Twelve hours of communicating in Japanese. I didn't mess up too often, but I had to look up a lot of words in the Japanese dictionary I have downloaded on my iPod. All in all, the night was amazing. I got to freeline, I spent the night in Tokyo, watched a movie in 3D for the first time, got stranded in Tokyo, ate cup noodles from 7-eleven, and stayed up all night speaking Japanese. And then I slept until 2pm. =D