I realise random-ness is the best way (for me) to get to know a city.

It was five gruelling days in Tokyo -- slept rather little, shivered in the cold, commuted like mad, had to deal with raw fish, yearrrrghhhh.
And in order not to waste that air ticket, I just had to explore, but of course. Unfortunately, every hour of exploration that I pulled out was an hour less of sleep. When I got back on Singapore ground, I slept so much even I thought I was dead.

Here's Serl's random pictures for today.

I'm not a particularly sashimi person girl, but this food looked especially fresh and delicious. Somehow, the ice bowl (yes it's carved from a hard coconut kind of husk of ice) reminded me of ice kachang.

"Someone took my parking lot, so I just had to park the car on the streets. I hope nobody steals it!"
Ooh, I just love the car! Dead sexy, cool thing to be riding on streets eh. A bit old, a bit slow, and I'm sure it breaks down all the time, but I just love open tops! It's just something about it. (I'm being random and obscure today, I don't even know what I'm talking about.)

Traditional kabuki theatre. Too cheapskate to go in and watch (wouldn't understand a word anyway, and nothing was showing). Oh yeah, and the Tokyo people who are perpetually in a rush.

Someone tells me these girls dress up to serve "masters" in cafes. They charge you for the space you occupy, for the coffee you drink, for playing games with the "maids", for taking the maid out for a walk, and you don't even get to touch her (at least not in the cafe itself). Not cheap leh, a coffee costs like some $8? All for the shiok feeling of being called "Master"?

Yeah, they may be the maids, but someone else here is being taken for an easy ATM card. And a fool.

Okay, these were the two most decent girls in uniforms I saw in Japan. Every other school girl has skirts that height or shorter, blouses tighter, hair more teased and WAAAAAAAAAY more makeup than that. Let's just say that the bathrooms in train stations are crowded once school gets out. These girls unpack a ton of makeup and put on false eyelashes, enough mascara to paint City Hall black, and I even saw a couple take out handheld battery operated hair curlers! Yes! They either straighten their locks or curl and tease their hair into impeccable locks.

I am acceptable by Singapore standards, but by Japanese standards, I'm a slob. An unhip (read: boring, conservative) slob (read: little make-up, glasses and jeans, not tiny short skirt). It was cold, for your information! I don't know how these girls tahan.

Another thing: the older Japanese women, especially the office workers, dressed like me. It was tailored suits with suitable length skirts or pants, regular make-up (not half of the Shiseido shop) on their faces, and regular bags. They looked normal and sweet and classy and all the other good things you think of Japanese women. What I want to know is this: what happened in between the slut phase and the sophisticated take-home-to-Mommy phase? Do they wake up one day and decide, hey, I don't feel like being a slut anymore?

No particular reason for choosing this picture. I told ya I was random today. Probably cos all the journos were super tired and all looked like this most of the time. Many Japanese people looked like this on the trains too. And I feel like going to do this now. ZZZZZZ.