L'Earthquake

So today I woke up kinda late after recovering from "clubbing" last night. Yeah, we ended up NOT clubbing after all, thank god. My roommate, who's an Aussie/Chinese girl from Melbourne wanted to get her drunk on after work, and I was obliged to accompany her out of the goodness of my heart :).
This is her;

This is her after a couple drinks;

But that happens later.

She asked me to meet her at Shibuya station, at which point I laughed at her request, because Shibuya station puts Times Square to shame. Exhibit A through C;

Total sensory overload, for someone who has never been there before. But "No!" She reassured me, "NO worries, Mate, we'll meet by the dog statue! It'll be fine!" RIGHT. A STATUE. OF A DOG. IN A 20 BLOCK RADIUS OF TIMES SQUARE-LIKE ADVERTISEMENTS. Needless to say, I was slightly tardy. But I found that mother-freaking dog like it was a lost relative. Stupid dog;

So we walked around for a while, trying to find a club that didn't have a cover charge. We found one, but it was crap... because it had no cover charge. So, desperate for a drink of any kind, we ducked into this GEM, which I will never forget;

This place is a trucker's wet dream. Open 24 hours, Denny's style food, Smoking section ONLY (take that, you health freaks), serving booze the entire time. No cut offs. You can sleep at your table if you want to. And it's SUPER CHEAP. My roommate and I ended up just staying there until around 3am.

That's the "We Need To Go Home" face. 5 hours of drinking for 4000 yen ($45) for the two of us. And no tipping! I really felt sorry for our waitress.

So, one of the crappy things about Tokyo is that the subway stops running at around 12:30 am, which means we had to hoof the 4 km home. Cabs are outrageously expensive, and most of them try to rip you off. So we walked. Oh! but I almost forgot to post this piece of proof that Asians don't really understand English;

This ad for the Blue Man Group was on my subway ride to the bar. If you can't read the English part, it says "Please do it in the theater." If you insist, Mr. Blue Man... :)


Oh yeah, and there was a massive earthquake today. 8.9 on the Richter scale. Totally decimated north of the city with fires and tsunami. The original quake lasted an hour, and then the after shocks went on for a couple more hours. I seem to be impervious to earthquakes. Hey, maybe I'm a superhero!?! Or just very lucky and in a good home. Nah, I'm a superhero.
On a more serious note; my heart goes out to all the families that lost someone today. This country is very strong and will rally behind them.

Koun wa, anzen ni tamotsu (Good luck, and stay safe)