June 7 -- Shinjuku

This morning we awoke and packed our bags. Around 9:00 we caught the train to the Sanjo market in Kyoto to look for cloth and souvenirs – to our dismay, most of the shops were still closed or didn't offer what we wanted, and we could not find the two fabric shops recommended to us.

We came back to the temple, said our goodbyes, and hopped back on the train – this time to leave Kyoto. We were ready to continue our adventure, but a little sad to be leaving the peaceful surroundings of the past few days. Little did we know that around 4:00 in the afternoon, we would find ourselves lugging packs through Shinjuku, one of the busiest districts of Tokyo. When you see Tokyo in books or on TV they usually show a crazy intersection with huge neon advertisements and hundreds of people in the crosswalks – yeah, that was right outside our hotel. We dropped off our packs and wandered the insanely busy neon sidewalks and alleys of the district. We soon found ourselves deep in the rabbit hole of Japanese fashion, what seemed like a bizarre intersection of red-light district and Alice in Wonderland's Mad Hatter tea party – we actually saw someone in a dress that was almost a rabbit costume, and another with an 18-inch bow in her hair. Don't even get us started on the mullet-wielding women's pants-wearing quasi-punk men of Tokyo. We were too busy scooping our jaws off the floor to take pictures!

We shared nigiri and chirashi for dinner (nigiri is sushi, chirashi is a bowl of rice and sashimi), and toasted our accidental adventure in Shinjuku with a bottle of cold sake. We seem to keep finding these interesting spots by accident, or when we get lost – this time because we mis-planned our return to Narita airport from Kyoto – more evidence for Margaret's recent assertion that we have fun adventures because we can't seem to follow instructions! After dinner we wandered a bit more just for the entertainment of watching the people, found some fun desserts (pineapple on a stick, and a crepe filled with berries and whip cream), then returned to our hotel to sleep. After all, our train leaves at 6:30 tomorrow...