1. Shea Stadium for Game 2 NLDS
2. Shibuya
3. Bahias de Huatulco
4. Shark Ray Alley
5. Hottakarashi Onsen

Lonely Planet Japan is dead on in likening the Japanese to the fickle tastes of Japanese teenager girls. November is one of the more ideal times to visit Japanm but you will still need to hope for the weather to cooperate. The mornings during our time here are quite chilly, the sun peeks out for a few hours and provides an uplift to the temperature guage, then comes evening when it can be outright frigid. There is also the rain that seems to hit us on our travel days. Fresh off the 14 hour flight from NYC, we had to brave the rain looking for the hostel. The day I absent-mindedly left a bag on the shinkansen was a soaker for the entire country. The day we arrived in Fukuoka was drizzling on and off. The following day, the skies opened up and dropped buckets all over the entire Kyushu region. Fortunately, there are enough indoor attractions as there are outdoors in Japan. What better time to do engage in the local activity of shopping than on a rainy day?

… but today was ridiculous. We left Hakata at 10am for Kyoto. The 3 hour ride through the rain was lightning fast. It was so fast that I left my day bag on the shinkansen that was Tokyo bound. In the bag was my camera, ipod, and some random receipts. Luckily, the passports and JR train passes were stowed away in my jacket. I would have jumped in front of a speeding Nozumi express if the train passes went to Tokyo along with the bag.

The staff at the Kyoto info desk contacted the conductor on the train we were on, which at the time was still enroute to Tokyo. Miraculously, he found our bag! And just as amazing, was how they were able to reach the conductor while the train was still in transit! We love Japanese technology and efficiency! Our bag was going to be kept in the lost and found office in Tokyo. We decided we needed to go to Tokyo that night. But at least with our bag located, we felt better and decided to check into our Ryokan, where we can dump off our 30 pound backpacks, before trekking out to Tokyo to get our bag. What was supposed to be a three minute walk from the train station, turned out to be a 20 minute walk of getting lost…in the pouring rain!! After asking about 6 different people where the Chita guesthouse was, we finally found it tucked in an alleyway. Upon our approach, Karen nearly gets hit by a car, we angrily shout at the driver in English…only to learn that we just cussed out Mrs. Sakai, owner of the Chita Inn. Luckily, she doesn’t know one word of English! We kissed and made up, when she heard (based on our broken Japanese and gesturing) about our bag incident on the Tokyo bound shinkansen. She drove us to the station and agreed to keep the door open for us in case we returned after the 11PM curfew.

Three hours later, we arrived in Tokyo. We had a small window of 30 minutes to get our bag and catch the next train back Kyoto. There was a lot of lost in translation and frustration trying to explain in our bad Japanese what we were looking for and moments of sheer panic when they didn’t seem to have our bag! We finally spoke with the lost and found manager and were lead to the shinkansen head office where I picked up my bag with all the contents untouched! If this were to happen back home, all the contents PLUS the bag itself would’ve been sold on the street! I signed some form, and graciously thanked the staff. We left the office with the widest of smiles and headed back to platform 15 to catch 7:06 Hikari express.

We arrived at the Chita guesthouse at around 10PM and were greeted by Mrs. Sakai who presented us with an ice cold can of Asahi. No translation was needed for her to know that was exactly what what we needed.

On our last night in Tokyo, we hopped into a happening izakaya in Ebisu. There wasn’t an English word anywhere except on the Kirin label. We couldn’t understand what was asked of us. We just wanted to point and use hand gestures. The waitress needed to know right away what it was we wanted to drink and eat. Looking like idiots, she asked around if anyone can translate for us. Luckily, we sat between a couple of girls who can speak a bit of English, and a lady who was fluent in mandarin. I was never so happy to be bustin’ out my putonghua. They helped us order food and drinks and chatted quite a bit. The girls were excited to know that we were from NYC. One of the girls even asked if we knew Kanye West. That marked the second time in Asia that we’ve been asked about Kanye West.

It’s no secret that Tokyo is expensive. Inexpensive lodging were few and far between for folks like us on limited budgets. As much as we were tempted to splurge on a neat boutique hotel deadsmack in shibuya, we came back to our senses and opted for a, damn i hate to say the H-word, hostel out in Asakusa. It’s about 30 minutes on the subway to Ginza and Shibuya and in a quiet residential neighborhood that let us feel a bit like locals in Tokyo. The touristy Senso-ji is within walking distance so there is some life in the area. There are a couple of bars catering to the backpackers, but otherwise, the area is pretty dead.

The name of the hostel screams backpacker. The rooms are backpacker-esque. The common area is filled with empty beer cans and the requisite pot noodles. The free computers are shit. Plus, there were a group of German stonemasons at the joint. In other words, Khaosan Tokyo had all the markings of a typical hostel. At about $19 a person, it is a bargain by Tokyo standards.

However, the walls in the “private” rooms did not reach all the way to the top of the ceilings. They were paper-thin, so we could hear all the snoring and coughing emanating from the group of middle aged Russian men in the next room. The showers on the first floor had low ceilings and quite cramped. Anyone over 6 feet might have to bend down slightly while showering. On the plus side, the hostel does have those bidet toilets that spray your ass after you do your business.

Tokyo is way too cute. We’re all familiar with Hello Kitty, My Melody and the rest of the Sanrio characters. Then there are cutesy cartoon characters all over town doing everything from telling metro riders to watch for the closing doors, puppies on construction warning posters, a racoon informing you on the process of purchasing metro tickets, the iconic Doraemon shaking his thaaang for a delivery service, stuffed toys of the shinkansen, smiley faces on toilet tissue, shapes of stars from the kupi mayo, happy loaves of bread, and of course Hachi-ko is seen pretty much everywhere around Shibuya. The colors are soft and pastel adding to the cartoonish and the cute. It does, however, give some character and ligten up the otherwise, bland information posters and signs all over town.