Low-key weekend

This weekend was a decidedly more low-key affair than any of my other weekends in Tokyo. I think that I've tired myself out by sightseeing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday every weekend. Also, I wanted to save my energy for when Carol gets here (she's arriving on Thursday.) I did manage to do a few things, however. On Saturday I met Yuka and 3 of her friends in Shinjuku, and we headed up to Ikebukuro to see the aquarium and the planetarium. The planetarium exhibition was, sadly, entirely in Japanese, so I missed out on its full educational impact. The aquarium seemed fairly good, except that some of the tanks were rather spartan and I felt sorry for the fish. We had some ramen for dinner in Ikebukuro, and then went to Roppongi for salsa dancing. The club we went to was called "Salsa Caribe" and is distinguished mostly by the fact that it is incredibly tiny. Even with only about 40 people inside, it was a battle for space when you wanted to dance. I thought that the club had a really good atmosphere, as people changed partners with every song and seemed willing to dance with everybody. Unfortunately, I don't know how to salsa dance, so I was very shy about asking strangers to dance. Most of the men in the club were very good! On Sunday I decided that my goal was to finally buy some jeans, since I've heard so many good things about Japanese denim. So far my jeans shopping experience has consisted of seeing $300 jeans in department stores and being scared away, so I decided that if I could find something for less than $100 that fit well I would go ahead and buy (after all, I do not often get the chance to buy Japanese jeans!) I went to a store called Marukawa in Machida, which sells jeans exclusively on 5 floors and has the inspiring and direct slogan of "Here is Jeans." It was cramped and congested, which boded well for my theory that the more space you have while shopping in Tokyo, the more you have to spend. They sold 4 brands, and unfortunately 3 of them were American brands: Levi's, Lee, and Wrangler. That left me with the one Japanese brand of Edwin. I tried on about 8 pairs before finding something that fit properly, and noted that it was a bargain at only $70 (somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that $70 would have seemed expensive to me in Texas.) You know how American movie stars sometimes make advertisements for Japanese products to earn some quick cash? Well, Brad Pitt has advertised for Edwin. So you know that they have to be cool :-) After leaving Marukawa I stumbled upon "Book Off," which is a really great store. It sells used CDs and books at fantastic prices. I wanted to buy some Japanese pop, and I finally had a chance to purchase a CD for $1.50 instead of $30.00. Once I realized how great the prices were, however, I also realized that it's a lot simpler to leave a music store because everything is overpriced than it is to pick out songs in a foreign country once you've found a store with good prices. I purchased 3 CDs "at random" which I hope are good; I haven't had a chance to listen to them yet.