Shinkansen to Tokyo

This morning we went to the Shin-Osaka station and boarded the bullet train for Toyko. Ross and Misato slept much of the way there while I worked on the presentation I was going to give later. I just input the final bullet points into TextEdit so that I could copy & paste it into Keynote later.

We quickly checked into our rooms, met in the lobby and headed to the subway station to meet our college buddies Yuki & Kento. Kento met us at the station and drove us back to their condo, where we met their new daughter. Maeri is quite cute and energetic! And they all seemed very happy.

Because we had plans for dinner later we left after a couple of hours. Kento drove us back to the train station and we headed to Shibuya. I LOVE Shibuya, just for the sheer novelty of being in an ocean of people.


We went to the Hachiko statue outside the station to meet John and Shizu. Ross was not all that impressed by the "ocean of people" that I kept harping on. The Hachiko statue is a popular place to meet one's friends or a blind date. After looking around at the crowd Ross stepped to the side and looked out at the intersection just in time to witness a pedestrian crossing.

"Holy shit," he yelled. That was about my reaction the first time I witnessed this spectacle. That particular intersection has the most pedestrians crossing during a light change than any other intersection on earth. It is truly amazing to witness.

John & Shizu met us and we followed them to a nearby restaurant. We had our own private room and the food was great! Shizu is a longtime friend of Misato from Osaka and her husband has lived in Tokyo for 13 years. We talked, ate and drank quite a bit of sake. We all had a great time!

When we got back to the hotel and went to our rooms. Misato was still hungry so we grabbed a ramen up the street. Ross had headed out on his own, still a little buzzed from the sake we had earlier.

We were in the middle of Roppongi, which is packed with gaijin bars and other forms of... umm... entertainment. So Misato and I figured Ross could cut us loose at night and easily find a good time.