It's a Friday night, you've just had a delicious bowl of tonkotsu ramen at Ippudo, and the night is still young. What do you do?
Walk among the side-streets of course!
Although I am in Shinjuku ward, and hence the centre of Tokyo, the wonderful thing about the area that I live in (and much to Tokyo) is that the streets have retained their tiny, narrow, winding quality from ages past. Even when the city was fire-bombed in the final stages of WWII (remember the houses were pretty much all wood and paper back then), they rebuilt it in almost exactly the same way.
What this means is that it is very easy to have a night of adventure simply by getting lost among the alleyways.

I could go into so much detail about what I saw, but I shall keep it brief so as not to overload you all:

• A tiny, crazy-looking Mazda sportscar with gullwing doors. Saw the owner and had a small chat with him too - he was also a student at Waseda! Dave took a photo with his phone, but I do not have it...
• Numerous interesting looking bars and restaurants. More often than not these were absolutely tiny, seating no more than 5 or 6 people, but looked like perfect places to go on a quiet night out (or date, I suppose...;) )
• The Tokyo Academy of Bread, offering two year bachelor degrees in bread and cake making.
• A huge, apparently Edo-era mansion. I have no idea how we can just stumble across these things in the middle of Tokyo, where the land price is so high.
• Lots of little parks.
• Cats!
  

The other thing I love about walking at night here is that it's so safe. I never feel like I should hurry home - there's just no fear of being robbed, attacked, or whatever. Even when I stumbled across these tiny parks with only one entrance and filled with several homeless people sleeping, I still felt totally at ease.

Also, earlier today I came across an ex-rental CD sale right near the station. The CDs were in very good condition, and at such great prices that I couldn't help myself when I found two of Monkey Majik's earlier albums....