Hey kid! You want to go to Tokyo? Cool. The question is, which part of Tokyo?

Tokyo is THE place to be if you go to Japan, even for just a visit. There are many, many districts within Tokyo that are all unique in one way or another. The beauty of these little places in Tokyo is that there is SOMETHING to do EVERYWHERE. It is insane if you think about it.

As the title might hint at, Shibuya was one of the first places we visited. The mission…find our book for class. You see, some of us didn’t have the book required for class. I feel like I needed the book as well, but I don’t completely remember. I’m pretty sure I had the book from the get go. Anyways, we needed the educational level books and they were going to be MOST LIKELY at this store in Shibuya. A city that comes alive at night. I couldn’t believe my eyes at the sheer amount of people in the area so late at night. The stores were bumping and thumping. Sensei, our professor, knew a rough idea of where to go. This is a good moment to bring up that Japanese people don’t actually know Japan by heart. Similar to the misconception that Asians are good a math or martial arts, our professor didn’t know where we were a lot of the time. This probably isn’t that surprising, but I just imagined that our Japanese professor knew everything there is to know. So, we followed her into the night in this giant part of town.

We found a book store that had many…many floors. We went to the floor that made the most sense to have the books we needed. We were in luck, sort of. There was only a copy or two of the books. I believe a little negotiating was going on amongst our class and some deals were made. We managed to leave this area with some people satisfied.

I don’t have much more to tell about this place on my behalf. A bookstore trip was just as boring as going to Barnes and Noble here in America. The surrounding area was very visual and interesting though.

We decide to head back for various reasons, sometimes simply because sensei was heading back and that implied we “should” come back too. This was not the case for a special student in our group.

Our buddy Marc decided to go alone and return “soon”. This was NOT the case. Marc never returned that night, and most of that morning the next day. Our professor was mildly worried but assumed it would be okay. In the case he would become MIA, this would have been a nightmare for the class and our professor. Later that morning before we all went to class, Marc strolls in and crashed on the bunk bed, pulls the privacy blind, and passes out.

Later on that day, as he didn’t go to class, he let us know about his time that night in Shibuya. He presented it as an experience he was glad to have while in Japan. I can’t say I feel the same way. He walked about the night and eventually got lost. Lost in Shibuya. As much as I can remember, he slept on a bench until he was told to move, drank with a guy at a bar, had a miserable time communicating with anyone, missed the last train to anywhere, and when it all opened up again he skipped the ticket gate and forced himself through. He found familiar things and eventually found the hostel.

We went to a book store and our boy Marc got stuck in Shibuya, a city of the night.