Thursday, 27th November

Chrissy: Today was awesome.

We went to the Ghibli museum today! It was quite a long trip. First we had to take the train to Shinjuku, then transfer to another line to get to Mitaka. It was really cold and wet! I was not wearing enough clothes. We walked for about 20 minutes to get to the Museum. It was a beautiful place with lots of trees and lovely houses. Our entry ticket to the museum was a still from a Miyazaki movie. I got Kiki on her broomstick! The museum was really busy but enjoyable. I thought it was lovely because there were all sorts of people there. There were two German punks and lots of little Japanese kids and some other foreigners and older Japanese. We watched a great short film about an adventure that happened to Mei after the Totoro film. All the museum exhibitions were great, except for one called Mini Louvre, which was full of copies of Renaissance painings. They were mostly nudes and were a bit weird. The gift shop was RIDICULOUSLY crowded. I could hardly move around at all.

We had lunch at a nearby bakery. The buns were really cute. One was shaped like a frog, which had sweet custard in it.

We went back to the hotel to rug up some more, then went out to Ginza again. Chucky wanted to see the Sony Building and the Apple store. We also went to UNIQLO, a big clothing shop. All I found there was some purple tights. And they weren't even a very bright purple. I bought an ARASHI single and CD. YAY!

Around 6pm, took train to Roppongi. Ate dinner in some fast food place, wasn't very good. I didn't eat enough because it wasn't great. After dinner we walked far enough along the road so that we could see Tokyo Tower in all its orangeness. It's huge! We were really tired from our long day, so we didn't get all the way up to it. We took some photos and started to walk back, stopping in some shops on the way. I bought a cute live green skivvy with little flowers on it, and some socks for Emi and me. They were 3 pairs for 1000 yen, how could I resist?

It turns out that it's a really long way from Tokyo Tower to our hotel. We found this out after we got back to our hotel. It was a fun walk though, because there were lots of interesting places to look at and also some art and illuminations.

Wednesday - 26th November

Charles: Today was our first full day in Japan. Our plan for today was to meet out friend Steve so he can take us to visit a class at Toho Gakuen which is a music academy where Keiko Abe teaches. The first thing we had to do was figure out how to meet him at Sengawa station. After scrutinising the Tokyo railways map we figured out that we needed to go to Shinjuku to get the Keio line to Sengawa. Emi was going to meet a friend today so she organised to meet at Shinjuku as well.

We caught the train to Shinjuku and found where we had to go and then walked around for a while. We walked outside which was pretty and walked in a big department store called O-dakyu. It was amazingly busy but we saw a great food market all kinds of japanese food being cooked and on display.

Eventually we got on our way to Sengawa and had a fun train ride looking out at the Tokyo suburbs.

Chrissy: At Senagawa there were lots of cool little shops. I went to a 100 yen shop and a bookshop which had Fruits magazine and a Gothic Lolita Bible.

Charles: When we met Steve we had coffee together and happened to meet some of the students at the academy. They told us that the teacher for the class would be Keiko Abe herself! When we went to the academy, Steve had to go to work so he left us there by ourselves. We met all the students and were able to speak to them a bit in Japanese. When the class started we met Abe-sensei who spoke to us in english very kindly rearranged the class so that we could see some cool pieces. The class was a percussion ensemble rehearsal and we got to see the class playing Ionisation (perfect performance, no conductor) and Prism Rhapsody II which featured two marimba soloists who played in perfect sync, again no conductor. Amazing!

Chrissy: There was one girl who was totally weird towards me. She stared straight at me for about 1 minute without blinking and later gave me some rubbish. I didn't know what to do. Then she played a solo part in Prism Rhapsody II which totally blew my mind.

Charles: We left at about 5:30 and made our way back to Shinjuku to meet Emi and her friend Masoto. Masoto was also a student at ANU but is now looking for a job and apartment in Tokyo. We wandered around looking at Christmas lights and bought dinner downstairs in Odakyu. After dinner we said goodbye to Masoto who was going to take an 8 hour bus trip to Osaka overnight (!). We decided to go to Ginza to have a look around.

Chrissy: There were millions of bright lights. It is what everyone thinks Tokyo should look like! We went to a little bookshop and I bought a craft book on tiny cakes made of clay. Everything else was closed. We got back to the hotel around 11pm!