We started by heading to Yasukuni to visit one of the most important and politically controversial shrines in Tokyo. The issue is remembrance area has all the names of the fallen solders from the wars but over time some of the named have been convicted of war crimes so other affected countries want the names removed.
On the way to the shrine we found a beautiful little park called Kitanomaru Park which we explored and typically found Japanese celebrating (the very last bits) of himanmi. We stumbled across a massive line of people being controlled by men with megaphones. The temptation, being British, was to join the queue but we resisted and explored the source of the line. There was a concert being held at a music venue next to the park for someone called "Yukari Tamura" who as best as we could figure out from asking round and checking Karaoke songs is a very famous Anime singer who geeks like! The queue was 99.5% guys and none of them looked cool in the slightest way. They seemed to get great delight in picking up pink hoodies and fluffy hand puppets, and to be honest we don't think she's a gay icon in any way
The shrine we visited was actually quite plain so we didn't spend long there. We made our way to the site of the Tokyo Sky Tree after stopping off for a very tasty meal of miso, katsu, pumpkin, salad and a lush iced coffee :)
The Tokyo Sky Tree isn't a tree, it's actually a rather large TV mast. It's a replacement to to the Tokyo Tower which I went up last time and serves analogue TV signals to the population of the city. In order to broadcast digital TV to Tokyo they needed a much larger tower. The tower is still being constructed, we thought that we may be able to get up to the observation deck but the tower isn't open until next year, even then it's booked out for 6 months. Oh well, not the worlds greatest fan of hights so not too bothered but I'm sure we would have gotten great pics! It's 643 meters tall and will be the second largest thing in the world (I think)
After the tower we arranged to meet Neils friend Dusty in Akihabara and we walked around all the geeky tech shops and some of the slightly more smutty retail outlets in the area!
Yoko joined us and we walked through to Ueno. This had a more more Market style feeling, similar to Camden. We grabbed a quick kebab and explored the shops.
After that we went to Shinjuku and met up with Kenji. With it now being Friday night in central Tokyo we tried a few restaurants before we came across one which had space for us. It was a western izakaya aufuu style restaurant similar to eating tapas we ordered lots of small yummy dishes and washed them down with a few cold beers :)
After food we headed to Golden Gai, to our favourite little Karaoke bar again, Champions. Lisa and Jules joined us and the bar got very busy. A much more lively atmosphere than the other nite as the small place was always crowded. We made friends with a few salary men again and made use of the 500¥ strong black russians!
Once we'd sung our hearts out the three gays moved on to Arty's club for more drinking and dancing. The place was pretty busy and had a great atmosphere. It was Kenji's first time in a gay bar, he seemed to have a great time! No matter where you are in the world whenever a Lady Gaga track comes on the atmosphere will go mental, and it went berserk! Even more so than when Kylie, Madonna, or Rhiana were on!
Had a fantastic day / night and it ended with eating beef curry from Matsuya :)
Result!
Location:Tokyo
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