more tokyo, please

so i am heading off to akita this morning, traveling with the rest of the incoming folks to my prefecture. we ended up going to a all-you-can-drink (and eat) restaurant the other night instead of karaoke, where we had a private room, it was quite fun, and i tried plum wine, which was delicious. I was told it was a very girly drink, which is just fine with me.

yesterday's orientation activities had helpful practical workshops like lesson planning (something I've never done before!), driving in japan, and games to facilitate on elementary school visits. After all that, I went with some of the folks from NYC I had befriended, since I will probably not see some of them again for a long time, as they will be western japan, to the akihabara "electric town", a very neon neighborhood that has many electronics shops. My friend was looking for a special video game, and I got a special shiny pin with a cartoon of 2 teddy bears, one in diapers looking dead hanging over the top of the other one - why was such a pin made? I do not know, but I had to buy it. Here's a pic of akihabara:

we then headed to harajuku, where I planned on hand selecting a posse a la Gwen Stefani. Unfortunately I only saw a few girls who would have made the cut, I don't recommend trying to sort that out late night on a weekday. Here is a pic of some harajuku girls I would have asked to be in my posse, if they had been there:

We went to a little restaurant in harajuku where I had tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet), rice, and a soup with soba noodles. afterward we wandered over to a crepe stand where I had a delicious crepe filled with banana, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Yum! Next to the crepe stand was a photo booth station (there were like 10 different machines, all with different backgrounds etc!). So we had quite a fun time in there, taking pics and decorating them on the machine- there were so many options, it was mind boggling. i could have spent hours there, but alas we knew we had early mornings and would be meeting our supervisors, etc. so we headed back. and so this morning I will be leaving the lovely keio for a flight to akita. I am not sure what the internet situation will be there, but hopefully I will be able to post again soon.

I'd also like to say sorry about the lack of personal pics on the site so far, my camera is actually out of commission for a while, but should be back and ready for use soon, so you can expect tons of pics soon enough!