alcatraz, church and an ER??

Well its back to work, blah. But actually things have been better already this week than last. No school Monday, yay! And then I had 5 classes both yesterday and today, so the week seems to be moving along at a nice rate.

This weekend, some fellow JETs and myself, braved the artic temperatures that had blasted into Japan on Saturday and headed into Tokyo. We decided that we needed to have a much-needed get together after the holidays, and spend some time in the city. We decided that we were going to visit a few themed restaurants/bars that could only be found in Japan.

First, it had been decided that we would go to Christon Café (CHRISTon, incase you were unclear of the theme). None of us knew what to expect, but after walking around for about 40 minutes in the cold looking for the place we were happy to be indoors, and to our surprise the place was gorgeous. It was a huge place, with incredibly high vaulted ceilings (a bit unexpected considering we were on the 8th floor of a 12 story building. There were gorgeous chandeliers, stained glass, and candles everywhere. It really should have been more characterized as gothic than religious, except for the huge alter and organ that were at one end of the place (oh and the religious music playing in the background). Food wasn’t all that amazing but the setting was quite nice.

Next we moved onto Alcatraz+ER. A prison and hospital themed restaurant, don’t exactly know how the two fit together, but like I said only in Japan. After one member of our group was handcuffed we were all led off to our cell (table). We were in the ‘brain surgery’ cell. We were put in and they closed the gates on us, to order we had to bang on the metal bars and a nurse would come and take our order. We ordered various drinks, and when they appeared we were quite surprised as some were in lab kits that you had to mix yourself, one was in a baby bottle, and one even came inside of a woman’s head. There was also a show. During which the lights went out and some masked man appeared in our cell and decided to scare me when the lights came back on! And eventually they found an unsuspecting customer who they put on a stretcher and carried around and performed some sort of ‘surgery’ on. It was all very odd, and uniquely Japanese.

I think that's most of the weird events of the night but more about the weekend to come, have to run to class….