Summer Vacation- TOKYO - day three

For the past few days I had been sort of marveling at the ease of traveling alone... how unstressful this trip to Tokyo had been and how my expectations of it being a completely overwhelming city were not the case. Since I am traveling by myself, there are no real time restraints. I only need to wake up in time for breakfast and be back at the hostel before curfew. I don't have to worry about meeting someone at a specific time, or take into account someone else's tourist schedule. I go where i want, when I want to. When I get tired, i take a break an relax- have a cup of coffee somewhere. When i get hungry, I stop and eat. Best of all, no compromising what things I want to see. Also, i think, when you are traveling with someone else you worry even more about getting lost. By myself, I can just wander around without any particular aim in mind. Eventually I will find my way back to the train station, museum, etc.
Also, Tokyo seems relatively empty. Not really empty, since its Tokyo, but there aren't hoards of people battling there way, politely, through each other to get where they are going. Its O-ban now, a special Japanese holiday. Its one of the three major holidays in Japan. It lasts roughly a week, and its when most people go back to the homes of their parents and honor the dead in the their family. usually it involves cleaning the graves of your family members, leaving an offering or two, and then inviting the ghost back to your family home where you have a big dinner waiting for them and you. Basically, many people that live in Tokyo have left the city to celebrate in whatever place they came from. The crowds now are just light crowds. I am not smashed like a sardine on the train.
Long story, short I was feeling really at ease touristing Tokyo. I even help clueless Americans buy their tickets in the train stations. So far no problems finding places. The gazillion train and subway lines hadn't been a problem. Everything: smooth. That was until today of course. Perhaps it had something to do with adding another person to the mix. Perhaps it was karma. I was supposed to meet Wade at Ueno at noon. I finish breakfast at 8:30 so I figured I had a little time to do something before I met up with him. I decided to go to Nihombashi to find the English language bookstore and then go to the Kite museum when it opened at 11. I found the bookstore no problem. I browsed in there for a while and then left 20 minutes to eleven so that I would be at the kite museum exactly when it opened. It seemed nearby. I started walking in the direction i thought it was. But for some reason i couldn't get my bearings with the map. Nothing looked kite-like. I even hopped on the subway to get to a closer station. I just wandered and wandered. It kept getting later and later. It got so late that I wouldn't even have to time to go inside when I found it, since I had to meet Wade. However, I was annoyed at the Kite museum's elusiveness. I had even found a map on the street that said it was just across the road. But i could not see the sign- I could not see one single kite. I kept looking though because I wanted to know where it was in case i decided to give the museum another chance. Finally, I found a tiny wrought iron sign, no bigger than a sheet of paper, that was conveniently the same color as the building it was attached to. It said kite museum. Feeling slightly victorious, but mostly cheated I ran to get back to the train station. i was already running a little late to meet Wade. i got a bit lost trying to find the train station too. I got to practice some japanese though and asked a Tokyo stock exchange minion on the street. I arrived at the Ueno station only ten minutes late. Wade told me to meet him in front of the hard rock cafe. I ran out what was called the central exit. All I saw though was the zoo and an art museum. Down the road a piece was a lot of lights and buildings, so I figured the hard rock cafe must be down there. i walked and walked, but didn't see it. I asked someone in Japanese, they said they didn't know. wade said that I couldn't miss it, so I figured it had to be within sight of one of the exits from the train station. I decided to just start walking around the station until I saw it. I ended up walking for 45 minutes. I was really frustrated. i figured Wade probably left since I was almost an hour late. Finally I went back inside the station to ask at the information desk. The woman said it was just straight across the way. And there it was. Not to be missed. But INSIDE the train station. The whole time I had been outside the train station. I couldn't believe it. the whole time I kept thinking- what a stupid place for a hard rock cafe. Unbelievably, Wade was still there waiting. he said he kept telling himself that he would leave after a half hour, then after 45 minutes, then after an hour. The crazy Tokyo fashion was amusing him as he waited though. lucky for me, he waited.
We went down this shopping alley with all sort of little shops. We ate kebabs and pineapple on a stick. We looked at funny t-shirts with bad English one them. We passed old men selling eels and fruit. After shopping around for a bit, we walked to Akihabara- the place with all the electronics. It was a bit if a walk, but we made ti there all the same. We went to Yodabashi camera- a 10 floor electronics store. I was starting to feel really tired from the day. My feet were also hurting from these new shoes I had bought. So we sat upstairs in the food court until I felt well enough to go on.
Then we went to an arcade. Wade and I played a car racing game. Then we decided to go downstairs and get our pictures taken in one of the photo booths. The photo booth had all these crazy graphics in the pictures. They were going to be so awesome. However, when it was all over, we couldn't find where the pictures printed. there was no slot anywhere. We looked around the room an nothing. We decided to give it a shot at another machine. We went into one promising looking one with pens that helped you select things. We thought we were picking the backgrounds to the photos we were going to take. We started going crazy with silly backgrounds and putting pineapples and octopi on our pictures. We had been doing this for a while when we realized that all the sample pictures were of the same girls, and they weren't the ridiculously primped Japanese girls that are usually in the demos. Then Wade said "wait, there isn't a camera in here. shit, lets get out of here fast". We ran out of the booth and the girls that were in the "sample" pictures were standing right there. We bolted past them and down the stairs and out of there as fast as we could. Turns out, the photo booth we were in had a two step process. You take the photos on one side and electronically decorate them on the other. We had stumbled into the second part and had putting all sorts of goofy crap all over these girls pictures and essentially ruining them. Luckily we were out of there before there was hell to pay.
I walked back to Ueno with Wade. We said our goodbyes and then I went back to the hostel for a nap. It was dark when I got up. I went to Ikebukaro- the part with the huge department stores. I wanted to find another English language bookstore there, but couldn't so i just wandered around. Then I went to Shinjuku and wandered there too. I saw some skyscrapers and then dragged myself back to the hostel to the sento.