Farewell Jimmy-Bob

ASAKUSA
We kept it pretty quiet this week as we knew James' farewell on Sunday would be quite large.
James had told us of a restaurant in Futako-tamagawa, which is 2 stations from where we live, that had 1500Yen all you can eat buffet, so first thing in the morning James, Dave, Ryo and us headed for some devouring. In Japan an all you can eat session is called “Viking” because, naturally when you are there, you eat like a viking. We stuffed ourselves stupid, and all left in pain.
Cam's students had all been telling him to head out to Asakusa, so with our stomach's full we jumped on the train. It's meant to be the only part of Tokyo that is still like the old days. Asakusa is a tiny city of Tokyo, and basically all there is there is Senso-ji, an old Buddhist temple, and a long shopping market filled with tourist junk, and a really crap amusement park. It also harbours the Asahi so-called-brewery (which we later found out was just the office buildings!). These 2 buildings are very controversial amongst the Japanese, as its set in the oldest town in Tokyo, yet is a ultra modern construction of gigantic proportions. Completely out of wack to the rest of the landscape....still amusing though

Giant beer and a giant ???

Sophi in a Barrel

Aashi Gets Creative

All in all it was kind of interesting to check it out, and we realised that most of the tourists there were actually Japanese, so we guessed maybe if we knew more about their history then it might have been a little more interesting.

Stunning door handles

Big

Fat dudes

Bustling Asakusa market

Friday night we decided to eat something not Japanese, as we were getting a bit sick of Japnanese cuisine. We found a little underground Thai place in Shibuya, as we were about to walk in we received a phone call from Lou, who was in Argentina at the time. It was so nice to talk to her, find out what those guys have been up to over there, sounds like they are having an awesome time. The Thai food didn't disappoint, and brought back memories of home.

GOODBYE JIMMY BOB, GOODBYE.
James' farewell was organised for Sunday afternoon in Yoyogi Park, but unfortunately the rain didn't look like it was going to go away that day. He and Eri walked around all day and finally found an Izakaya for us to eat and drink at. We met some of James' Japanese friends/students that we hadn't met before which was really fun. We spent hours there doing Nomi-hodai (all you can drink) and got stupidly drunk.

Jimmy Bob Offically Turns into a True Dirty Westie

The crew

Sophi can still remember this part of the night

We headed to a coins bar (a cheap gaijin bar) for a few hours and continued on in the same fashion. At what Cam thought was nearly 1am, a too drunk Sophi wanted to go home, so Cam put her in a cab because she had missed the last train (12.40am) but when Sophi arrived home she realised that it was not even midnight yet.... (still haven't found an explanation for this).

Eri, James, Cam



All-you-can-drink is a dangerous game

We crawled back to the same Izakaya after the coins bar for another session of Nomi-hodai, but it was cut short by James stupidly kicking the bathroom cubicle door 'Miami Vice' Style while Cam was on the toilet. A typical disrespectful act we have come to expect from James over the years (something that is not easily forgiven as we grow older). The metal blade on the side of the door sliced Cam's eyebrow open, very nearly getting his eyeball.

You should see the other guy!

That's him there....


Tokyo: It's a warzone


Baka James

Kumiko, Dave, James and Cam said farewells to everybody and jumped a cab for the hospital. Sophi was passed out at home and Cam had her phone, so had no way of contacting her.
The first hospital apparently didn't have a doctor there that knew how to do stitches (what a load of crap!) so we taxi'd to the next hospital. Luckily we didn't have to wait long there for Cam to get his 7 stitches.
Meanwhile, outside James was pushing himself around in a hospital wheelchair, and trying to do wheelies, and collapsed backwards, when a nice Japanese girl came out and thought James really was a cripple and tried to help him up. Dave decided that a good idea was to push the extremely wasted James in the wheelchair toward the road and let go of him. A parked taxi was James' target, and he smashed into the side of the car. The taxi driver got out and, again thought James was a cripple, so proceeded to push James back up toward the hospital and just left him there.
Can we just say a big thankyou to Kumiko for looking after Cam and translating everything to the doctors, without her there it would've been quite a disaster. Because Cam is a tourist the price for his stitches was roughly $500!! Hopefully the insurance company will fix that up for us. As usual Cam and James stayed up all morning and all the next day drinking for one last time together. A few days off work were definately needed for Cam after that distructive weekend.