Tokyo update number 3

by Ben

Day 3: We began the day by meeting up with Chazz and some of the SF kids. We were sitting on the railing at about 9am, drinking coffee and talking. Everyone was real excited to see each other. We may have been too excited, though because someone called the hostel an complained about us and we had to move the party inside. After a while we rolled out to Yoyogi park, where there was a big festival going on. We wandered around in the park for a while. The funniest thing that I saw was this section of the park where all these rockabilly guys and girls set up sound systems and do these elaborate choreographed dances in competition with each other.

After a while we rolled over to Shibuya and just bombed around the streets for a while with the SF kids. Riding here is still crazy, but I am getting used to it. At one point we were at this huge intersection in this shopping area near Shibuya Station. It was like Michigan and Chicago ave times 1000. The light changed and cars were coming into the intersection from every direction and thousands of pedestrians were crossing at the same time we were trying to get through on our bikes. It was nuts.

The opening party was last night at Club Asia. It was a blast. My ears are still ringing the morning after. This amazing Japanese rock band played. Then they had dance music and everyone was going nuts. The only weird thing was they shut down the party at 21:00. In true global messenger style, about 150 of us grabbed some beers from 7-11 and rode over to Yoyogi park to drink, catch up with old friends, and make new ones. Somebody told me before we left that it isn't socially acceptable to hug in public here. This doesn't seem to be true, though. I was hugging Japanese people left and right last night. The messengers here are really cool. The language barrier is there, but most of our conversations last night wound up being me yelling "I love Tokyo!", them yelling "I love Chicago!" and then we would hug and both yell "yeah!"

We went back to the hostel, I curled up in my box, and slept like a log.