Tokyo: Day 2

Back in the States, I love browsing bookstores without actually buying anything. It's not as fun when you can't read any of the book jackets, so I was looking forward to visiting the well-known English bookstore in Shinjuku. Though the selection was dominated by Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels, I did pick up the latest John Irving and Douglas Coupland works. I will read these at my desk extra obviously when salesmen approach me with better cell phone and insurance plans. It's much easier than confounding them with my inability to speak Japanese. Sometimes I even surround myself in a little fort made of a few dictionaries and the "Japanese for JETs" book. Not to mention (though I will mention) that the "Japanese salesman" is already an enigmatic figure because his societal and fiscal obligations are at odds. He must sell things while being as apologetic, sincere, and non-pushy as possible. Looking up from my desk could cause him to approach, but it's worth seeing some of the lowest, longest bows I've found in Japan. The bow seems to say, "I'm incredibly sorry that I'm bothering you at work, but if you buy these encyclopedias I can feed my daughter and wife, but don't buy them because I need the money, only buy them if you really want them, but it'd be great if you wanted them because I could really use the money for the food I mentioned earlier. Help."

After the bookstore, we went to find lunch. I'm not the least ashamed to say we went to Wendy's. We went to Wendy's. We went to Wendy's. I loved it.

Next was the Asakusa area of Tokyo, where there's a few temples and random items of amusement. People threw coins over masses of other people into a square area for good luck. Lauren, who came up Sunday morning, shook a large metal cylinder until it dropped a stick with a fortune wrapped around it. And unless they translated the Japanese incorrectly, I think 2008 is gonna be her year.

Afterward, we went back to Shinjuku for one of the few touristy things I am genuinely happy about doing. We went to the New York Bar at the Park Hyatt, the same bar where a certain Mr. Murray met a certain Miss Johannson for the first time in a certain movie that may have inspired the naming of this weblog. We were seated by the window (a ridonculous view of Tokyo), but I kept looking over my shoulder to the bar stools where they sat. And since we had to take two different elevators to get to the bar in the first place, we made up for it with a 45,000 dollar bar tab. Ok, it was yen. Semantics.

It was Seth's birthday, so we headed to a famous jazz club called DUG where Coltrane and Davis have played. That's Jim Coltrane and John Davis, but who cares? Semantics. For such a famous jazz club, there wasn't live music on Sunday, so we went to another jazz club that... didn't have live music.

Regardless, we stayed. We put Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday" on the jukebox.