It's been nearly three weeks since we left Tokyo, and I still haven't managed to think of a good way to sum up our experience of the city. Perhaps because we spent more time in Tokyo than any other single area, I don't have a neat, clean opinion of it to share. It's easy to have a unified impression of a place you only spend two days in, but of course it's never an accurate one. Our experience of Tokyo was perhaps more genuine, but that makes it much harder to share. So, instead of summing up the entire week, I'll just give you one last moment.

It's very late at night, or rather, very early the next morning, and we are walking somewhere in Tokyo, our beds some distance ahead of us, and the perfect Tokyo evening behind us. We didn't set out to have the ultimate Tokyo experience, but we realized that we had done just that when we stumbled out of Shinjuku station, the last train rumbling away into the night, and our capsule hotel waiting miles away. (Of course, if we had planned it, we would have picked a capsule hotel in Shinjuku!)

The night started in an izakaya. Most Japanese restaurants specialize in one type of food, serving only ramen, only sushi, etc. Izakayas are actually bars, but they also serve dishes from a variety of Japanese cuisines, often in small plates for sharing. This makes them great for groups, and for foreigners, since they can cater to a wide variety of tastes. That made it perfect for the group of friends we had made while snowboarding earlier in the month. There was sushi, sashimi, yakitori and yuba, as well as plenty of beer, sake, and shochu spritzers with fresh grapefruit juice.

From the izakaya, we moved on to (where else?) a karaoke bar. Now, I am not a singer, and I have always passionately hated karaoke in the US. You know why? Because they make you do it in front of strangers. Possibly sober strangers. But put me in a private room full of friends and grapefruit shochus, and let me tell you, I am a convert. And this is why we found ourselves running for the train at sometime after midnight, managing to screw up the karaoke room payment system in our haste to leave, and still missing our connection at Shinjuku. It turns out that Tokyo is very pretty at 3:00 in the morning, and surprisingly quiet, except for that one tipsy tourist who can't stop humming Tom Jones.