Shinjuku

Next stop was Shinjuku.

It's a pretty busy, touristy place, but it's where I first discovered the awesomeness of Japanese arcades. Unfortunately you're not supposed to take pictures inside, but I did snap a photo of the result of my second ever play of the game Jubeat.

At Taito arcade, there's a whole bunch of Jubeat, Beatmania, Groove Coaster (aka Rhythmvaders), and Pop'n, which are all fun (there are also 3 or 4 other rhythm games that didn't entice me) but the winner in my opinion is Sound Voltex.

The controls look like this. The knobs on the left and right are analog - you have to turn them to the music.

Oh and by the way, I spent 7 or 8 credits (100 yen, or about 1 dollar, each) playing these rhythm games the first day, and I got pretty damn annoyed, because every time I would start the game, it would force me through a minute long tutorial.

These arcade cabinets are all hooked up to the internet, and they store your progress with the help of a card called an e-amusement pass. I thought maybe getting one would stop the tutorials.

So, I spent 10 minutes walking around trying to find an e-amusement machine, before giving up and asking one of the attendants there. She sends me to the second floor where I mime some more at another attendant, who then shows me how to buy the pass. I go back up to the rhythm game section, start up Jubeat, and then I have to register the damn thing. So I randomly fumble through the menus, make several guesses and finally figure it out. As you can see above, the first image shows Guest-03 and the second image shows my name. It's a pretty cool system though — in both Jubeat and Sound Voltex, you level up and unlock songs (and... some other stuff I really couldn't figure out) as you play.

But yeah, once I got the pass, I had to stop watching the tutorial every time, hooray!

Then I went to a cat cafe. They were all very docile, but they were really only "friendly" when you had food. I mean, I guess they're cats. They looked very healthy, despite apparently feasting on tourists' chicken.

Also, despite foreigners being something like 1% of the population, almost everyone at the cafe was a foreigner. Most of them seemed to have American accents. That made me feel slightly disgusted and touristy...

Near Shinjuku Station

Horse meat for lunch!

All you can eat shabu-shabu for dinner!

On the attractiveness of girls in Japan and other countries

This is a stupid chart I made that, strictly mathematically, makes no sense, but best sums up my experienced people-watching opinion from my travels abroad.

Yeah, my chart making skills are pretty incredible.

On average, Japanese women are incredibly attractive! I think part of it is the fact that the majority of the Japanese people I've seen so far (men and women alike) are very well dressed. I totally dig the dress, tights and heels thing that everyone seems to rock here. I also think that girls tend to be better at makeup here, for whatever reason, although this is not a particularly well-informed opinion.

In any case, it seems like Japanese people don't age after 30...

I can't really say what the men look like in each place, but Japanese men do dress well and seem to be more healthy looking on average than their American equivalents.

The first few days

Didn't really take any pictures the first night because I was too stressed making sure I got to my hostel's reception before they closed. But here's some pictures of my room:

Nothing too fancy, but oh man was it cheap. About $400 for one month, which is insane. And it's in a great location too (Sendagaya).

The first meal I had in Japan was from a convenience store. It's significantly cheaper than fare from convenience stores in the U.S. and WAY tastier. Seriously, this was good. I went back recently to get it again.

A spider I found...

Next up was Yoyogi Park.

There are a whole lot of ravens in the park. They're huge and surprisingly beautiful birds. Also, they're very intelligent (see this video, among others)

A nifty sculpture of Quetzalcoatl

There's also a bird sanctuary. For some reason, one species of bird was extremely curious and/or friendly — two of them actually landed on my phone as I was holding it up! Despite this, I didn't get a good picture of the flitting critters. Beautiful, colorful birds, too. I was a little sad I couldn't get a clear shot.

I couldn't resist buying the weirdest drink I saw at the convenience store. Unsurprisingly, it was delicious.

On the way back from Yoyogi, I unexpectedly found the snake cafe! It was a bit overpriced, but I got to talk to the person who takes care of the snakes, who was very nice. He worked as an exotic vet in Miami and Chicago, so his English was relatively understandable, unlike the rest of the staff. The snakes were all extremely healthy looking!

"This one bites sometimes!" He warned me. That's mostly why I chose it.

Sadly, this adorable snake was in the "taking a break from customers" part of the store, but holy crap, this is by far the biggest ball python I have ever seen... by like 50%.

This is a famous statue in Shibuya of a faithful dog who came to meet his master every day, even years after he died. The master, not the dog.

On this day, a cat decided it was a good spot to nap! It drew quite a crowd.