Ya man it be Saturday

pretty sunset near Imperial Palace
Tokyo
mmm sweets!
Peace candle holder

June 11, Day 9:

Saturday...Saturday Saturday! What a glorious feeling isn't it? Amazing how you are reminded of the glories of the weekend when you work. But, used to waking up at an early time and wanting to get our free breakfast, Bean and I were soon up and moving. Searching for lunch took longer than usual. Outback Steakhouse looked like a familiar, yummy option but absolutely everything on the menu was at least $10 and our college driven souls couldn't take the price. Ended up being a good decision to leave because down the street we found a really cute Italian cafe where we sat, watched the World Cup and ate a Teriyaki Chicken pizza. The pizza was delicious!! One of the most delicious meals we have had so far I think. Next, we wanted to check if Midtown Park was having another weekend festival like Randonee Picnic (our hippie outing of last week), so we headed that way. Unfortunately when we got there no tents or festival was set up, but there were many locals and tourists alike enjoying their Saturday on the lawn and outside tables of the surrounding area. Next to our park there is an enormous building and we entered in search of The Ritz Carlton's front desk to ask directions for Tokyo. To our surprise we found ourselves in a 4 story of fancy, high-end shopping and eating stores. We found a event desk promoting a lighting of candles for the next weekend. The candles were to be set in a heart shape in a large field and Bean and I decorated our own cups to have a candle put inside. Walking around, since we already ate, we mainly just drooled over all the restaurants we passed, especially the bakeries and chocolate stores that had very beautifully crafted and amazingly scrumptious looking deserts. Besides the desert and food areas, we also found ourselves in a very expensive wine, italian seasonings and pasta store. Everything was in the several hundreds, so naturally we picked up everything and talked about the options. We tried a sample of the wine, which will probably be the most expensive wine my lips touch for the next severalll years. Next we found a supermarket and bought a FLAVORED ramune. Opening it was another story though because, like a shaken soda, it squirted and spilled all over the floor and our hands. No worries, it was still delicious. Following our ramune incident we preceded to walk up the remaining floors of the "mall," not buying anything for our wallet's sake. After at least an hour of walking, we finally decided we should probably go to the Ritz Carlton and ask our question. We got on the subway to go to Tokyo and in no time we were blindly walking out onto the Tokyo streets. To our surprise Tokyo was very clean and beautiful. The buildings around us were did not tower too high over our heads and the park greenery and river around the Emperor's Palace gave Tokyo a calming feel. We walked around everywhere in the park and got drawn towards a mystery concert of reggae deep into the Park. To our dismay tickets were sold out, but listening to the awesome reggae tunes and people watching made my night. With Roppongi only being a 30 minutes walk, Bean and I soon were off towards home with map in hand. We only stopped once for directions. As we walked we saw one bar full of foreigners watching the World Cup and vowed we would come back here and hopefully meet people and watch the games. Back at the hotel we attempted to watch Iron Man 2, but it was too blurry and not good sound, so we ended up talking to people on skype. No surprise, I fell asleep while Bean and I were on skype. Why do I have a form of narcolepsy?