Shinjuku

I mentioned previously that I'd explored Shinjuku within the first week. The san-nin headed over there after the festival thing outside our dorm and were planning to meet Teresa there in the evening. We walked around a bunch, I showed them the Don Quixote, although the one we went to wasn't that nice (not that Don Quixote is extra nice...but this one didn't have very wide aisles at all, nor was is very organized), but basically it's floors and floors of everything, from clothes and costumes, to groceries and household products, to electronics and crazy toys...it's just hard to find it all! Then we headed over to a 100yen store to try and find slippers and other things, as I mentioned before. Didn't get the slippers, but got a bunch of other things. Then we stopped at an arcade where Greg got into the Taiko drum game and another crazy drum game. Natalie and I were amazed when we found a Typing of the Dead machine in the corner and just had to play. Each floor housed a different genre of games, and the very top floor was for purikura (sticker pictures).

Time flew by there and when our game ended (it ended only because we got to this boss that killed us...we would be asked a question and a few choices would show up on the screen, and we'd have to type the correct answer and it would strike a blow to the boss, but every wrong answer would kill us...unfortunately all the questions were in Japanese so we couldn't really figure them out so quickly...otherwise we were doing really well), we headed to find Teresa at one of the exits at the station, luckily we found each other right away. We first took her to the arcade (Greg hadn't quite gotten his fill of the Taiko game, nor had he been able to get on the other drum game) and we took purikura. Then we just explored the whole area, doing a ton of walking and went into random stores, and stopped at a Yoshinoya for dinner because we really couldn't decide on anything else, and Teresa hadn't been to one yet. Finally called it a night around...10 or so, and headed back.

Mascot we ran into doing promo outside some store. This frog has pretty human-like hands though, and it's bipedal...pretty crazy...

Typing of the Dead machine! (This is for you, Jeremy!)

Natalie and I are awesome. Game description: the world's being taken over by zombies so to save people and kill zombies you have to type the word/letter/number that shows up on the screen, so it tests your reflex and typing. And then at the end of every stage you have to fight and beat a boss to move on and there are variations on what/how you type. This version was Japanese words, but you had to type them in romaji (Roman characters) so that's why we decided we could handle it. ...until the Japanese showed up.

Signs outside purikura floors. Males aren't allowed into purikura areas unless they're going with a female, because of...well you can see how that could be a bad situation if some random guy goes into this area where girls flock. But the way this sign put it...is great.

Shinjuku. See the buildings. See the lights. See the people.

This is actually just at an intersection. Once that green walk sign comes on, the streets become flooded. 人山人海, for my Chinese readers, hahaha.

I thought this ad was really cute and clever (those are stairs and it's pigs at a dining table and it's pink.) It's announcing some new restaurant I think.