13th may was supposed to be a rainy with typhoon, but neither happened, so i went asakusabashi with frank to search for zephyr. it was super duper cold though, about 14degrees. all pictures courtesy of frank, since i didn't think it was necessary to bring my camera (boy was i wrong).


this place actually sells A LOT of beads.


and here we are at zephyr!

spent like 8200++ yen on 2 wigs and its conditioner. but i was still very happy!!! you can't get looooooong wigs for 3800yen in singapore!

then we tried to walk to asakusa.
passed by an obscene looking statue, with a hentai looking at her obscenely.

ate some anman (fried bun?).

dropped some crusts, which was picked up by the local friendly pigeons :D

at the end of the day, we boarded a bus back to ikebukuro.

and so suay! my psp ran outta batt and we got stuck in a jam cos of some accident. and managed to watch d'gray man from frank's phone! it's a fight between crowley and some akuma/noah i've never seen before.

anyway, the accident was apparently this shopfront which has its entire front blasted. it was pretty shocking. but what was even more amazing is the bus driver. he apologized to every single customer and kept repeating about the delay all the way to ikebukuro. the trip took us about 1.5-2horus long!!! *bows in respect*

oh man i think 11th may was the longest day of my life. all of us stayed up till about 430am, then frank me and stefan went to catch the first train back home.
once home, me and stefan had to climb some stupid walls, walk through aurelie's room (since our dorm is locked from 12am-630am) before we can bathe and then sleep for a few hours.
to wake up at about 1130am and assemble at 12pm for a dorm event - bowling at shiki. i slept with my wet hair (not a pleasant experience), and managed to wake up and even have a slice of toast before i left.
here's the bowling lane anyway!

and its tiny cafe.

counters.

i thought it was pretty cool too the way they registered all our names on screen and welcomed us there.




here's my team!

and our final scores.

i'm the first person. see how much i suck at bowling. HA HA HA.

the tour is over, but my day wasn't over.
missed the chance to go celebrate frank's birthday at the maid cafe. but managed to go to this asean restaurant for dinner with 20 other people instead.
as a replacement for cake, frank got this uber huge parfait which is filled with cream (not even ice-cream...) and cornflakes... and later on some brownies at the bottom.


eventhough it was raining, i joined them for drinking afterwards. these people are really jokers... they tried to drink while flexing their muscles and made all sorts of hilarious movements.


instead of drinking... he decided to do something else (-_-`)

and tim has really baby soft hair!


after drinking, we missed the last train home and had to stay at one of the foreigner's house (which was a hugggggggggggge mess). oh man i can't remember their names.

finally the last stop of the day! fukugawa edo folk museum.


some stuff lined up at the entrance...



and the main attraction!


this cat was actually very small then i have no idea what they do to it. the guide explained but i can't remember. anyway this is a robotic cat, it moves and meows.

more edo period houses




a typical setting of a house


tour guide demonstrating how to hold the super heavy knife.

and it really was damn heavy.

a watch tower i think.

a house with an amulet to ward off juliet ghosts. (seems like romeo and juliet story exists here too). their romeo is called hisamatsu.

and a house supported by the government (see the kanji 'zheng zhu' at the side), with no tatami mats (too poor).

open-top toilets! even for the females. so they can keep a lookout. seems that it's quite common in the past and women are not that particularly embarrassed to be seen like that...

tempura shop?

a boat station

we went in this house where we could touch everything we want.

altar





end of tour. then i roamed around some more for random pictures.



lots of people here waiting for show to start.

ended the tour with a shamisen (can't really remember the name of the instrument) performance. the guy also sang towards the end. don't really know how to appreciate it though...


on our way back to the station, we also stopped at a little shrine where basho-an (a famous poet in the edo era) lived at when on march 37, 1689 he set out on his journey.