Alistair was here for the past week. To make a long story short, we did the following things:

*Saw the Grand Sumo Tournament in Ryogoku
*Hit up Ginza for a kabuki play ("Kinkakuji: The Golden Pavilion")
*Visited Kamakura to see some sweet temples and the Great Buddha statue
*Checked out the view from the top of Tokyo Tower at night
*Had a nice dinner at Fujimama's in Harajuku (yay English-speaking staff!)
*Had a not-so-nice dinner in Roppongi (Mexican food as interpreted by Japanese people - yikes)
*Went to an "English Pub" where we drank pints of Kirin Ichiban until we were entirely unreasonable
*Took a stroll through Shinjuku's Kabuki-cho red light district and gawked at the yakuza and their cars.
*Got terrifically lost late at night trying to find my friends in Shinjuku's gayborhood
*Fought through crowds in Shibuya, twice
*Pumped too many 100-yen coins into arcade games like "Lets Go Jungle!" and "Taiko something-or-other"
*Izakaya, izakaya, izakaya

Now that I'm back in Japan and on my own again, I feel like the new year has really begun. Today I threw my 5-yen coin into the shrine with a vague prayer for happiness, then decided to go for a walk to clear my head. I walked past Hikawa Shrine, through Omiya Park, and continued around the lake, farther than I've ever gone before. Past the lake, I found museums and a library, and a huge state-of-the-art swimming pool surrounded by tall bleachers. Everything was cold and empty.
On the way back, the shrine was closing to the rhythmic echo of a massive drum. I stood on the bright red bridge over the carp pond and listened until the beats became further between and finally stopped altogether.

It's my year. The Year of the Boar.
Let's get this shit started.