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| The drivers area of our limo bus, note the inside and outside shoes, the sequential shifter and many buttons controlling who knows what. | Our bus was typical of Japanese buses, clean and comfortable. |
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| Rob Choo, editor of D Sport magazine and his wife Brooke. | Ed and Char Bergenholtz. I don't think I have ever seen or taken a photo of Ron looking normal. | Jenny Bergenholtz practices her JDM Race Queen pose. |
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| Strange Americana, our teriyaki plate had French fries. |
We were hungry so after dumping our luggage in our rooms, we ate at this small restaurant in the train station that Evan Griffey discovered years ago where we seem to end up eating on every trip to Japan, and then went exploring via the train and subway system. The coolest thing about Japan is that it is probably the safest country in the world and it is absolutely no problem to go wandering around nearly anywhere at night. Tokyo never sleeps and has a vivid night life, much like New York but without the crime. The only place a dumb foreign tourist (us) might get in trouble is if one were to wander into a Yakuza bar/club.
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| A late dinner in the Shinagawa train station. | Nan Desu ka? |
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| Ed Bergenholtz purchases a train ticket. Although it looks intimidating due to a lack of English instructions, getting train tickets and stuff in Japan is somewhat intuitive as many machines have pictograms. |
The Yakuza is Japan's organized crime group, sorta like our mafia but Japanese society tolerates their presence. For instance a local merchant may pay insurance to the Yakuza instead of more traditional means; someone might go to the local Yakuza chief for a loan rather than a bank or go to the Yakuza to solve a crime rather than the police. Almost as if they are a ruthless private enterprise. If you have seen Toyko Drift, then you know what a Yakuza bar is like more than I would because I know better than to go inside one.
The reason you avoid a Yakuza bar is that once inside you will be told you have to join a “club”, a club where they will take all of your money and credit cards if you are lucky. If you are unlucky you get your ass kicked as well. Its easy to spot such a club, they have heavily fortified doors and usually have gangster looking guys out front as well as VIP Style cars parked around. If you can avoid this sort of thing, you will be fine.
So for our first night we wandered around Shinjuku looking at the famous “Tokyo at Night” displays and hunting for bargains in electronics. Shinjuku is where some of the chase scenes from F&F3 were supposed to be (many of them were in LA, CGI modified to look like Shinjuku). BTW for someone from California it's freaking cold as well! It was around 35 degrees or so but fortunately the weather was clear and sunny if cold for the duration of our trip.
