Day 3 - Jan 9

Today started off being a very uneventful day.  I had decided to just sit around all day and get myself settled in, which I did until about 4 PM when Tom asked if I wanted to go to Shinjuku with him.  We were out and on our way to the station a little after 5 PM.  The train ride there wasn't too difficult, and I definitely think I'm going to be taking the Yamanote to class instead of the metro, especially since I won't need to change trains.  Shinjuku was crazy packed, even more so since it was Saturday night.  We wandered around for a bit marveling at the intense amount of lighting until we decided to go into a Bic Camera store.  Holy crap that place was cool.  They fit about 5 Best Buys into 4 floors each only a bit bigger than my room.  Afterwards we wandered around a bit more taking some pictures.  Happened across several homeless people at the edge of this park kind of place as well.  Japan is very interesting; one bum had left his sleeping mat out with his bedding perfectly folded on top of it and a couple small books next to it, all completely unattended.  Over the course of the night I also saw several people walking around with snowboards, which rather confused me.  We stopped by a McDonald's, but unfortunately they didn't have shaku-shaku chicken T_T so I just got a chicken sandwich. 

The train back to Takadanobaba was extremely packed, and when I was leaving the station the gate wouldn't let me through.  I became very confused and a security lady came up and started questioning me in Japanese, which didn't help.  I was able to stumble my way through enough to understand that I couldn't go through that gate and needed to go downstairs and go out a different one.  I think that one must have been a transfer gate and I just wasn't paying attention.  So anyways, I head down and go out the other gate, which let me through without trouble.  I had asked Tom (who went through the first gate ahead of me) to just wait for me out in front of the station, but when I got there he was nowhere to be found.  I looked around for about 10 minutes and he finally came out of the station.  Apparently he stood there waiting for me at the gate and the security lady asked him what he was doing after a couple minutes.  Eventually she game him some random ticket which let him through and he then went through some other gate and came out of the Big Box building.  We checked that out, which was pretty cool.  I picked up an umbrella at the 100 yen store inside the Big Box and then we headed back to the dorm after stopping at a conbini on the way.

So... I don't think it was a commercial, but for some reason there were Capybaras chillin in the water at a temple on tv for a good few minutes.  Those things have got to be the most disinterested animal on the planet.  You could be trying to kill them and they'd probably still just sit there and look off to the side like, "meh."