here's most of my photos from tokyo, my new phone takes really shitty-looking photos unfortunately. we didn't take many because there was nothing to take photos of! just generic buildings.

the night bus building in sendai + the bus itself:







arrived in shibuya, this was what we saw after walking for a little bit


this place had homeless people


the white mist here is actually smog


in the same park, a girl was doing "aspiring idol" dance practice and her friend was filming her


the cosplay section inside "donkey hote". they actually had a little men's cosplay too, but i didn't get a photo of that. the website for this photo is here, and through that i found out they actually DO sell cosplay in the sendai donkey hote shops too....:
http://tokigra.com/cosplay.html


the famous harajuku stationhouse, which i had no clue was famous but my wife knew


you could get a souvenir stamp, like what you normally only see at museums and historical landmarks. apparently you can actually get them at most tokyo stations but those other ones were only if you literally bought a ticket and went inside the station


otherwise it was a normal station, and pretty small


right outside that station, they had ads for "make sure you have a good password!". a bunch of joke stuff like "that guy you think is hot won't talk to you until your password is better, stupid ditzy shoujo manga girl!".


we saw various stuff like this, i didn't get a photo of any of the super red-light-looking things because people just happened to be watching us when we passed by them : / oh well, some other time.


all the shops were closed!!!


"definitely improve! english and buddist conversation! 4 times a month 10,000 yen! some number of times a month 20,000 yen! free trial!"


in general i really got the vibe that people in tokyo do actually feel like they can get a job in literally anything they want. i saw a super lame street performer (he was just juggling 3 balls... that's it).

this is a help center, it too was closed. but if you get lost or something you're supposed to go here.


famous shop that my wife knew. also closed of course.


saw a lot of groups of trashy-looking americans just hanging out randomly, like this one. i noticed that all the european/american girls were wearing super weird summer clothing (at least, NOT the kind of summer clothing japanese or nordic people wear) and it felt really out of place.


found a swedish brand name or something (blå konst = blue art).


this "Q-plaza" is where the BL event took place. my wife says it was just like a normal café and stuff. i didn't go in, since entry for the event cost 1,800 yen.


special motorcycle-only parking!! wow, never seen this before.




outside Mandarake, the doujinshi/used manga shop, there was a little window advertising goods from a mangaka i really like. but they were overpriced for what they were (not overpriced in general), like a t-shirt was 4,500 yen or something like that which is pretty normal for a "designed t-shirt" but still. so i didn't buy anything. i hope i can buy them cheaper online later. if you had bought either a bag or a shirt you'd get some free stickers but like.... those too weren't so good. also, mandarake is like 3 staircases down to the basement and they have FLASHING LIGHTS throughout that whole stairway which nearly blinded me. the actual shop has normal lights.


the shop was hiring. the pay was 1,000 yen an hour, and you get 1,200 yen if you cosplay while working. in general a ton of shops were hiring and the pay was always around 1,000 yen an hour - you could extremely easily get a work VISA just by getting work at 2-3 shops all in the same neighbourhood. the problem is, you definitely shouldn't live or work in tokyo if you can help it, is my opinion. for both your physical and mental health. but if i'm desperate to keep living in japan before my degree is finished, i'll just go to tokyo to find work.


the only "line-out-the-door" shop i really saw.... was this mcdonald's. this wasn't even half the line.


by halfway through the day my shoes had worn these holes into my socks. by the end of the day it was even worse. for some reason my skin was pretty tough and only started bleeding at all when i literally got home, took the socks off and got into the bath... we had walked basically all day, and even when we got home to sendai we took the last subway home and then walked 20 minutes to our apartment.


the esperanto café called "Sojo"! the staff-guy was super nice, he could speak esperanto and japanese (and seemingly at least a little english). our friend called half an hour ahead of time to ask if he could make anything without wheat or sugar, and thought it would've been a lot better if we'd've ex. called a full day in advance, he still managed to make something for us... and then he even went to start looking up other places we could possibly eat at in tokyo! the food was cheap for eating out too; only 700 yen for this whole amount here. you'd expect to pay around 1,000 yen i think, based on the few family restaurants i've eaten at.






despite being a custom meal the food was the same cost as the normal special of the day (rice + soup). we had full-grain rice, vegetables fried in oil, more vegetables with a sort of mustard sauce, dates, and miso soup, and (not pictured) tofu with paprika. luckily his miso didn't have any sugar in it. sometimes i get sick from tofu but i didn't seem to get sick from this guy's.


also he had some esperanto merch (buttons and stickers and stuff), a mini esperanto-and-english bookshelf, some stuff on veganism in general. i think the other customers were confused since our table was switching between 3-4 languages (japanese with our friend, esperanto with the shop staff, swedish and/or english when our friend left the table to go look at stuff lol). my wife and i always switch languages randomly so we don't even think about it, now we also say japanese words like "conbini, baito" when speaking english or swedish instead of "convenience store, part-time job"... which is why it's hard and feels really unnatural to switch to totally normal english or swedish that everyone understands, these days.

just like in anime/manga, a newspaper stand" this doesn't exist in sendai


geisha vending machine. decorated vending machines weren't common, but a few were entirely graffiti'd over. in fact graffiti was freaking EVERYWHERE and when i went into donkey hote's bathroom even the signs saying "don't make a mess please!" etc were in graffiti-like font, akin to everything in samurai champloo.


homeless people eeeeverywhere. this little tunnel-thing had a ton of boxes that homeless people obviously sleep in. it was a really narrow tunnel so i couldn't get a good photo. the text says "bound for shibuya".


we found the building where they do rakugo but didn't understand ANYTHING!! right in front of it i saw an unhappy blonde foreign mom wearing what looked kinda like striped pajama-ish clothing (they did look like they came from a fashion magazine), modelling in front of this rakugo theatre, and her husband was taking "professional" photos of her. at least that's what it looked like was going on to me at any rate, i'm almost blind so what do i know.


finally going back to sendai... we bought a train+bullet train ticket from a machine (they have english instructions too, though it didn't help much). 10,160 yen per person. the ticket DOES NOT SAY which gate you find the train at, the specific train number or train name or anything!! so our friend looked it up online and sent us the route. i have no idea how you're supposed to know this crap if you don't have a smartphone and someone who knows the system already to help you.



stairs down to the bullet train station.


the actual bullet train.


the sign for the bullet train. our train was the 21:50 "Yamabiko #223 to Sendai" train on track 20, and again I have no idea how we were supposed to know this without our friend's help. the sign says 自由 席 "free seating" (= tickets without a seat number) in wagons 1-5 and 12-17, except there were actually only 10 wagons on the train and wagons 9-10 were for train staff only. bullet train announcements were in japanese and then with recorded english, i think.


i might post more photos later from my wife's camera, i dunno.