Day 42 - Nakano

Well today was rather, interesting. After class no one seemed to have plans (to be expected) so Kenji (Clinton) and I decided to yet again go to another new location. And seeing how poorly our last few choices played out, the Koreans decided not to join us for what could be another disaster of an adventure. We picked Nakano which is actually on the same train we take to school, in the opposite direction.

We stopped by Shinjuku to meet up with Benshiro, who decided to join us for the ride. We promised nothing but a different location to see, and he said sure. Of course Kenji and I don't really care at this point whether or not the place is exciting, only because we're down to the last several weeks with a map of places still unvisited.

Arriving in Nakano, the three of us were starving and decided to look around for a suitable restaurant. We happened to walk so far off from the station that we hit a residential with no food places in sight. Walking back toward the station, we found a place with what I think was the best katsudon I've had yet on this trip. I've had a lot of food, in a lot of different places. Everything is outstanding, and far better than Hawaii. So if you take my word, you should be certain the food is really, really delicious.

Once we could think straight, we pulled out our map again to decide where we'd want to go next. We had two options -- 1) go back to Shinjuku and go somewhere else or 2) try walking around the opposite side of the station. Because we have a tendency to pick the wrong side of the station to walk out of the first time, we figured we'd give walking around the other side a shot. And what do you know, we were right. There was so much more to do that we were shocked. After no more than a three minute walk we found a mall strip full of life and stores selling various items.

At the end of the strip was a mall of four floors where we decided to walk around. As we moved from floor to floor we noticed this place was full of nothing but vintage toys and books, magazines, etc. There were anime toys, anime dvds, anime drawing cells, and anything you could imagine. Just as we thought this place was a place for dorks, Ben received a message from Kouji (our local friend) saying this about Nakano "If you walk North from the station you'll find a mall -- it's known to be a nest for geeks." At that point, we couldn't stop laughing no matter how hard we tried. The message summed up everything we had just come across.

Because it was already past six we decided it'd be best if we didn't go to a new place just yet, because daylight was only going to last another half an hour and we were already pretty tired from the accumulated days.

At night however, we did regain enough energy to hit the Izakaya for yet another time. There was a group of about 13 of us this time, and we drank with no intention of waking up early the next morning. Especially for Kenji and my case where we had already planned ahead of time to skip our only afternoon class due to the fact that we have a concert the following night at 6:30.

In addition, when my big beer showed up, I was verbally challenged to drink it all in one gulp and to prove what worth it may provide I tried. And to my surprise, I succeeded. It was pretty fun because as I was drinking, everyone on our table was either shouting "EK" or "Nomu" but the table across from us (who had all been watching at this point) was chanting "Nonde, nonde, nonde... nonde, nonde, nonde.." On a side note, if you couldn't guess (nomu/nonde = drink).

We drank until morning, and after the Izakaya a few of them came over to hang out in my room. There we sang, told stories, and laughed until the early hours. When we finally called it quits and I walked one of my friends back to her apartment it was already around 4:30am and the sun was rising. I knew the day ahead of me was going to be a fun one.