Tokyo Day 3 (Saturday yes I'm slack): Malls, towers in Shinjuku, dinner & Pirates in Shibuya

We went out for breakfast at a local cafe, then took the train into Shinjuku and watched hundreds of people (I want to say thousands. There might have been thousands) cross at one of the crossings. There was a huge Pirates of the Caribbean poster along a wall of the station, so we posed in front of that and then ventured out into the crowds.

You get used to huge numbers of people. You stop being amazed and start trying to figure out where is the best part of the pavement to walk (where you’ll bump into the fewest people). Circus Girl took me to the most amazing mall that just kept going up and up and up. When I win Lotto, I’m coming back here. Many of the shop girls were dressed up as if they were on a catwalk, with huge long nails and professionally-styled hair, and they were insistently helpful. Shoe shops and clothes shops (one of which was called Sheep Dip...) and sock shops (many of these) and jewellery shops... Each seemed to have their own individual style, and I didn’t see any big chains that I knew from elsewhere.

I wanted to go up the government towers, so we left earlier than I would have liked and trekked over to the towers. Until recently they were the tallest buildings in Tokyo, and it’s free to get up to the observation deck. Halfway there I remembered about earthquakes and such and had to convince myself that the chances of a large earthquake occurring while I was in a skyscraper were minimal, and in any case Japan has very good seismic standards. When we got there, though, it seemed the tower was closed – there were signs out and the lobby was dark, and people better able to read signs than us were turning away. We took some pictures of the building from the ground and some statues instead, and walked back towards the centre to go to another karaoke place :)

We found a nice place in Shibuya for dinner, and then met Circus Girl’s friend at the cinema. The cinema is very slick and white and huge and crowded. It looked quite futuristic. We saw Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (in 3D and with Japanese subtitles) which I really enjoyed, and then took the train back home. It was a good night.