crazy or lucky?

two trips to Tokyo in two weeks - is that insane or what?
 
quite a few pp have said that it's a crazy thing to do but i like to travel. i dont mind the 6 1/2 hr flights, the bad inflight entertainment and the same boring food on UA. (ok maybe a little bit) because i wanted to go back to japan (and yet i also wanted to fly back to Sg instead of staying for another night, but that's my story and i'm not going to tell it to the world)
 
Anyway here's how it went =
on the bus back from Mt Fuji on the 12th of July, my phone rings and it's the sub asking if i'd wanna go to japan on a junkett to promote an all-male ballet performance. she didnt know i was already in japan and started laughing when i told her.
 
the details werent too clear and i was kinda tired after the long day on the mountain so i said probably not. but then i thought it over and i was like, hey why the hell not? so i whipped out my long-forgotten Singtel worldcard and dialed the office using my singtel-rented CDMA phone which cost me a bomb to rent but was definitely worth it just to receive that phone call from work!
 
and that was the beginnning.
 
and the end was that i got back from tokyo last night after 2 nights at the Tokyo Hilton (hilton whoo!!) near Shinjuku.
 
The first day was such a hectic one. arrived at narita at 3something, got onto the narita express and made it to the hotel at 5 something. checked in, hopped onto a taxi for Omiya Sonic City where the troupe would be performing (taxi fare cost a bomb - but luckily was paid for by the PR company) and then after watching the amazing performance, went back to Kabuki-cho for dinner (altho we inadvertently ate a korean restaurant - but that was some of the best korean food i've ever had!) and finally went back to crash.
 
and crash i did. i set my alarm at about 8 (we had an interview at 10), got up and then went back to sleep telling myself 30 more min. next thing i knew it was 930. i jumped into the shower, jumped into the cafe for breakfast and then rushed down to the lobby. 5 min late.
 
after the interviews, more travelling - this time to Fuchu where the troupe would give another performance. we got to ride on the bus with them and watched their warmups and rehearsal at the theatre where i experienced the second earthquake of my lifetime. this was a slightly more violent one than the first (in LA in the 1990s) and you could hear the light fixtures rumbling. the dancers leapt off the stage whereas the watching schoolkids just sat and giggled at their flightiness.
 
after catching the first bit of hte performance which we had missed the day before, we decided to head on out and caught a cab back to the hotel and then took the train out to Harajuku where unfortunately many of the shops had already closed by the time we finished our tempura don. but it was a nice pokearound. we also took another look around shinjuku, chancing upon the red-light district where the many many love hotels looked unlike our hotel 81s and instead more like classy, tho very discreetly done-up places.
 
on the last day, after breakfast we went our separate ways. i headed down to asakusa to buy some souvenirs for forgotten people. and then to shinjuku where i checked out two dept stores and then lost myself in the underground maze. cldnt figure out where to take the hilton bus from so i had to jump into a cab and head back for the hotel. grab my luggage, meet the pr person and head off to shinjuku station again to catch the narita express back to the airport. i love trains! and honestly the subways werent as bad as warned. altho initially the whole jr/subway thing did get me confused.
 
all in all, a fantastic trip, make that trips to japan.
 
cant wait to go again.