Ykohama.

I woke up at the normal, ass crack of dawn hour and devoured a bowl of granola and soymilk. Today Andrew had a tattoo consultation in Yokohama. Seeing as we weren’t the best at riding the trains solo, we allowed 2.5 hours to get to our destination that would take any Japanese person only an hour. Even with all of the extra time we allowed, we still somehow managed to be an hour late.

We arrived at Yellow Blaze Tattoo Studio in Yokohama and sat down with Tomo, the extremely talented tattoo artist. Andrew explained his idea and they talked numbers. The only problem with talking numbers, was a) the Yen to Dollar confusion, and b) how much fucking money he wanted for a tattoo. After crunching numbers, using a currency converter, and talking with friends, we realized that this guy wanted a little over 4k for the tattoo Andrew had in mind. And let me tell you, ain’t no tattoo worth 4 grand. I don’t care if you are using gold ink or god himself is tattooing you. Who has that kind of money for a tattoo! In the nicest way possible we told him absolutely not, and then asked him where a good spot to grab lunch was to lighten the mood and cushion the disappointment.

We looked at a map, said our goodbyes, and scooted off to China Town. It was fairly large, and highly confusing. If our Japanese wasn’t already terrible enough, now we had to try and communicate with Chinese people living in Japan. We went to the first spot that had lunch specials and asked to see a menu. Thank god the entire thing was a picture menu, making it much easier to order. We pointed to each dish to enquire what was in it, and got enough English out of our server to order. I ended up with a cashew chicken dish, and Andrew ended up with a spicy tofu dish… with beef! Why they decided that tofu and beef went together was beyond me.

After our surprise meals, we walked around a bit and looked at some shops along way out of China Town. After strolling the streets of Yokohama for an hour or so, we made our way back to the train station and back to Tokyo.

We stopped in Harijuku on our way back and grabbed some snacks to eat in Yoyogi Park. Of course after about 30 minutes, the wind started howling and it looked like rain. So we took a stroll through Harijuku and down Cat Street. We finally made our way to The Pink Cow, had a delicious veggie burger, and that fantastic burrito again.

Can’t beat good friends and food.