I'm not going to fool myself into thinking anyone actually wants a minute by minute recap of my entire trip so don't worry, I'm not going to venture into that. Part 1 set the scene for sure, but there's more going on that I want to talk a bit about. If you want to see Tokyo through my eyes definitely keep an eye on this flickr set as I'm dumping all the photos I take in there at the end of each day and of course I'll be posting a few of them here along the way.

Yesterday it rained most of the day thanks to the Typhoon (which was barely a tropical storm by the time it hit us) but I was cooped up inside most of the day because of it. When the big rains finally stopped a decided to get outside and just walk around. I took the train up to Shibuya, walked up to Harajuku, through Yoyogi Park, and back to Shibuya. I had my iPod shuffle filled with Lush and My Bloody Valentine (which has become the soundtrack for this trip) which, when combined with walking around alone, at dusk, with a bit of rain made for some pretty incredible music video like moments. In fact for maximum impact you should open another browser window to one the the following and click play, then come back here and let those just play in the background while you read the rest of this.

My Bloody Valentine - Come In Alone
Lush - For Love

Here's just a few of shots to also help set this up:

While the first day and a half I was here it was it was nonstop action surrounded by people, the following day counter balanced that almost perfectly. When I set out after the rain slowed down I was totally on my own. I wanted to just observe as much as I could but thought a good place to start would be food with folks I had something in common with. I hit up a vegan place in Shibuya though that didn't turn out exactly as I'd hoped. You can read the full story here but basically I was there for an hour and a half and walked out after not eating anything. In a weird kind of way that set the tone for the rest of the day. I'd studied the map of the area and knew which main streets to take to end up in Yoyogi Park in Harajuku but decided to walk a few blocks off of that to get a little different view than storefronts. The streets were quiet and peaceful, if a little gloomy because of the overcast and little bit of rain that was still coming down but it was a very nice change of pace. No one walking around me, and very few people even passing me going the other direction.

I told several people that kind of getting lost in the crowds was one thing I was really looking forward to. In Los Angeles one of the things that I love about Midnight Ridazz is being in a huge group of people that I don't know but that we share this common interest. I rarely talk to people I haven't already met but at the same time love being in the middle of a group of folks I don't know. There is something tranquil about it and I actually get a lot of really good thinking done there. A lot of the recent self discovery life renovation steps I've taken were probably mapped out to some extent while I was riding a bike around LA in the middle of the night with a few hundred total strangers. So in that respect, I was really looking forward to that kind of feeling but multiplied out to an entire city worth of people.

I definitely got what I was looking for with that yesterday. Walking through the empty neighborhoods was one thing, but when I got to the park it really hit me. Yes I know that the rain and darkness contributed to the place being empty but Yoyogi Park is something I've seen photos of forever and it's always packed with people. So standing there in the rain with barely anyone else around, and the people who were around I couldn't talk to even if I wanted to, definitely kicked the isolation feelings into overdrive. It made me start thinking about the connections I do have with people and my relationship to the rest of the world. Yeah yeah, boring shit I know but it was a pretty important thing for me to go through. As I walked out of the park I passed a few of the stereotypical Harajuku kids who were hiding under some umbrellas and it made me smile - I'm still not really sure why. Maybe something about picturing their connection to their own world, and even in the miserable weather they knew where they belonged and were going for it.

There's a pedestrian bridge you have to cross to get from the park back to the shopping area of Harajuku and when I was on top of it, looking back at the empty and dark park, and forward at the bright lights and bustle of the stores I just stopped. I stood there for a good 15-20 minutes getting rained on and watching all the activity below me. Somewhere in there I crossed a line. In my head I went from really enjoying the solitude to wishing there was someone there to share the moment with me. Don't go thinking I'm turning into some sappy bitch or anything, in hindsight I blame the music pumping through my head at the moment (I hope you clicked one of those links above so you know what I'm talking about at this point).

From there I walked towards the lights, the shops and the crowds. I found Zoff which I'll be returning to soon to pick up some swank new frames. I found a crazy rockabilly store called Pink Dragon. I found a punk rock store called 666. I also found a Gap, and Audi, and a Fifi & Romeo but those weren't nearly as interesting. I found natto rolls in a corner convenience store had those with some canned coffee which for some reason seemed like a great idea at the time. When I finally got back to the big intersection in Shibuya near the train station it was a whole different world. When I was there earlier in the day it was light out, and much of the crowds seemed to be going somewhere else, just passing through but all converging on this street corner. Now, closer to 10 PM it seemed like that was the destination. The crowd consisted of way more non-Japanese folks. I'd been ignored for the most part earlier, now everyone was looking at me. I got some random "wassup" and "yo dude" thrown at me from hipster American/English dudes hanging around rocking their sideways baseball caps and spikey studded belts. There was a lot going on, but not what I was interested in at that point. I hopped on the train and made my way back to Joi's lab.

When I got off the train in Jiyugaoka I remembered my friend Andy Muller's advice from sometime early last year. He told me that when he's taking a route he takes all the time sometimes he decides to take the longcut and just make random turns and see where he ends up. Since I'd walked that same 10 minute stretch from the lab to the station several times at this point I decided to take the long cut and made the first left rather than the right which turned a 10 minute walk down dark streets into one that lasted 45 minute. It was awesome.