Lost in this Nation

So today we decided to take things a little easier after basically walking a marathon the first couple of days that we were here.

Jeff wanted to check out Shibuya and try and find this t-shirt shop that he remembered, sorta, kinda (not really) from when he was here ten years ago. Shibuya is where that famous crosswalk of insanity is...

Can you find us?

What do you mean no?

Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love people and crowds so this was all super fun for me, in an oh god get me out of here sort of way. But Jeff obviously knows me well enough so he had found a list of some of the best ramen in the area so he could shove food in my fat face so I would stop complaining. And oh did it work. We found this place called Asuka...

And by 'found' I mean eventually we stumbled across it because everything is banana-pants in Tokyo, even the GPS. For some reason Navigator Nucera's phone likes to do this fun thing and the map starts to spin around so you have no idea where you are going. It's actually fitting because we have no idea where we are going ever! (side note: that is nothing new to me, I still get lost in Pasadena and I've pretty much lived there for 12 years on and off)

But I digress. We walked in and it was a really small place with a square bar surrounding the chef in the middle. We were the only Americans so I knew we had found a good place because it was filled with locals. And man was I right...the ramen was insane! I got a spicy tan tan ramen which was a spicy broth with noodles and deep fried crispy pork on top. It was amazing!

And a shout out to Sam for forcing me to eat spicy food and now I actually crave it...well done Mr. Pedersen. I did sweat through about 5 napkins but it was worth it.

Jeff whimped out and got the non spicy version which was also so good it's dumb.

After we ate our faces we set off to find the t-shirt shop and after wandering all over Shibuya, huuuuuge shock but we never found it. It started to rain so we went back to the hotel to rest...

Once we rested a bit we headed out for the evening. The plan was to head to the hotel from the movie Lost in Translation...

It's pretty apropos because since we got here we have pretty much been lost. This time we had to hop on two separate subway lines, which seemed simple enough until we tried to do it and it turns out the second line we had to transfer to was actually in Guam. For reference, this is the Tokyo metro map...

And add to that fact that English signs are in some spots and not in others. And of course we had to hop on the line called 'New Keio'. Seemed simple enough until we realized that the entire line is called Keio and they haven't named each separate track on the new line just yet...hi, Tokyo get it together. ALL THE LINES ARE CALLED KEIO!?! WHY?!?

Eventually we figured it out....sorta. And then it was onto the next confusing part of the evening, and we haven't even had a drink yet. Apparently it is so confusing finding this hotel bar that someone actually came up with directions to find it. It's basically a scavenger hunt...

https://www.itsfivehere.com/drinks-translation-visiting-new-york-bar-park-hyatt-tokyo/

After wandering around the lobby we finally figured out how to get up to the halfway point...

Then we found the library, which was the final leg...WHY IS EVERYTHING IN TOKYO SO CONFUSING?!?! Or are we just idiots? Don't answer that...

Finally we made it and I will admit it was worth it, such a cool bar and we were so high up that we were in the fog...

So we commenced with eating and drinking our faces off...

Jeff's tattoo somehow made it on a wasabi pea...

And then Jeff had to go explore the bathroom...

Seriously.

A post shared by UHJeff (@theuhjeff) on Jun 20, 2018 at 6:12am PDT

Does the end look familiar to you?

While he was in the bathroom I decided to order us some wine and I wanted to splurge a little so I decided to get the $48 dollar bottle of wine, because we were being fancy! Well turns out it is $48 a glass haha whoops! I am apparently not smart enough to understand how the exchange rate works here. It was so delish we ended up ordering another round of it. All in all we had a fab evening!