Today we went to Harajuku early to meet a good friend of mine, Laura Waiss. She has been here for a year now teaching English and we were super excited to meet again! It has been a loooong time since I've seen her. She was our tour guide for the day as we started out walking around Harajuku, catching up. Nothing was open yet, so she suggested we go to a place she called a "cheap Disneyland of food".

We headed to Ikebukuro to Sunshine City, a place we had used as a landmark the other day to find the Animate shop. Little did we know that underneath this mall was Namjatown, a place full of fun, discovery, puzzles and food, for only 300 yen. You can pay more than that, but that allows you to play the games which are in Japanese anyway. Nope, there is plenty to do with just your 300 yen ticket. Each part of Namjatown is differently themed: a haunted street, 1900s Japan market full of gyoza, 1950s New York, a sci-fi part called G-Bomb with a ridiculous video, dessert island with palm trees with television faces, and baked goods in a romantic, Italian-like street. This is all under the streets of Ikebukuro, and there were little hallways and coves with secret passages, buttons you can press, things you can interact with. Laura said, "just press buttons when you see them, twist doorknobs, just play around. There's so much stuff hidden here!" It's true! We ate some delicious gyoza like cheese gyoza, okonomiyaki gyoza, and garlic gyoza.

We still had time to kill before the main event, another themed restaurant, so we went back to Harajuku and did some shopping. We looked for purses and jackets and souveniers. Jeph went into a cool punk store with neat jackets and an old lady there, who designs all the clothes, was very forceful and abrupt in getting Jeph to try on the jacket, holding up matching shirts, constantly saying, "Do you understand? No, you don't understand. Do you understand?" Laura and I were cracking up!

We headed to Shibuya for some karaoke, since Laura and I had been dying to sing Gessekai together. Hooray! We were able to sing both the opening and the ending song to Nightwalker, and relive our fun and crazy otaku memories of high school. We also found that we kill at singing to anything older by The Killers!!

Finally, around 5:30 we headed for The Lockup Restaurant. This is a prison-themed restaurant where you are taken hand-cuffed into a prison cell with an eating table. There they close the prison door and waiters in prisoner's stripes take and bring your order. They have special "roulette" menu items where you share with each other, but one item is always super-spicy! We played Sushi Russian Roulette. Alas, Jeph was the loser with this one as the entire middle of the sushi was filled with wasabi! We also ate curry fries and some really fantastic nachos! Then sirens began to wail as the monsters broke loose and wreaked havoc on the diners' cells. People in masks would come by and shake the bars, and then scantily-clad waitresses with cap guns would come by and round up the monsters with gunshots and handcuffs. Again, a crazy performance, but it was great! It was hilarious to hear the other female diners because they were easily scared and there were lots of high pitched screams and "Yamatte! Kowai! Eeeek!"

After dinner it was way past our old-person bedtime, so we said a sad goodbye to Laura. We hope to see her in December when she comes home for a while for winter break!! Thank you Laura for the wonderful time!