The next weekend in October was the subject of much waffling for me. On the one hand, the festival in Ogaki where foreigners get to participate and help carry a portable shrine was that Sunday, but on the other hand my friend Dan (from UW) was going to be in Tokyo visiting my other friend Alaina. With some added persuasion from Erica, who was promising a restaurant with real pie, I decided to screw the festival, take the Friday off, and have a long weekend in Tokyo. So I hopped on a night bus to Tokyo and arrived in Shinjuku bright and early Friday morning. There wasn’t really much of a plan, but I then got a call from Alaina telling me to meet them at Asakusa, which has a big famous gate with some god statues, a long arse touristy market, and then an impressive temple. We were all without breakfast, so we stopped at…Denny’s! Yeah, Dan’s big trip to Japan, and we take him to Denny’s. We are AWESOME guides. Denny’s in Japan pretty much does not at all resemble Denny’s in America in terms of their menu, but they did have French Toast, or something semi-close to French toast.
After our lovely breakfast, we strolled up and down while Dan looked for some souvenirs. We stopped at a place with a huge variety of soft serve flavors. I went with citron, and it was tasty. We checked out the temple a bit and then decided to go to Japan’s nerd/electronics mecca, Akihabara. We strolled up and down the street, popping into arcades and used game stores, while getting ads handed to us every half block by some female dressed in a maid costume. We then stopped by the Pokemon Center, which may as well have been a Mecca for Alaina and Dan, who are still big fans of the series.
As you can imagine, I didn’t buy anything from the store. Although the sight of a 20 or so people hunched over playing their DS’s did almost bring a tear to my eye (even if they were all just playing Pokemon).
We called it an early night (woot, what a crazy birthday, I know!) and I headed to Chiba to crash at Erica’s place. I stopped at a ramen place on the way from the station, and was surprised to find nearly the entire place taken over by some sort of work party/gathering. It was a stereotypical work party in that the beers were flowing and soon so was the bullshitting. But they were so overpowering that the people working at the ramen place kept apologizing to me and the couple others customers who weren’t part of the merry band. After arriving at Erica’s place, we were soon joined by another CIR in the area, Sami. As a bit of a birthday treat, Erica brought out some little single service cups of Haagen Daas ice cream, which was tasty. I also drank a beer that Erica was trying to get rid (not so tasty) of while we all chatted.
It seems a little...TOO obvious.
For lack of anything better to do, Dan, Alaina, and I headed out to Odaiba the next morning, and were joined by a old classmate of ours from UW. We did some mall crawling, stopped in at Muscle Park again where I once more horrendously failed at the Sasuke obstacle course. I can’t really even hold myself up on the cliffhanger, which is pretty embarrassing.
Salmon ladder FAIL
But oh well, I don’t really feel like devoting my life to the thing, quitting my job, and losing my family like “Mr. Sasuke” did (only expecting Wallin, Maria, Sarah and Jon to get that reference), so I think I can live with failure on an obstacle course. We stopped at an Indian restaurant for lunch and grabbed some Baskin Robbin’s afterwards. After killing a little more time at the mall, we went to Shibuya and killed some time at Mandarake, a chain of stores that carries used comics, CDs, anime, movies, and related merchandise. This particular location happens to be a good 4 stories underground, where no natural light can enter (perfect place for a nerd shop, am I right?). After spending waaaay more time in there I cared to (especially since their retro video game section was no longer existent), we finally left to meet up with Erica to head to Shakey’s Pizza for dinner!
Once there, we waited for Aaron (who also lived on the Japanese language floor of the dorms the same year I did). I hadn’t seen him in almost 4 years, so it was good to catch up. And getting to stuff my face with pizza wasn’t bad, either. Erica kept gloating that she was putting away more than me, but I blame it on the fact that the Indian I had for lunch was also all-you-can-eat, so I was still recovering from that.
The main plan that night was to take Aaron’s advice and go to a bar called The Taproom. As Aaron promised, the bar had lots of tasty microbrews on tap. I went with the darkest thing on the menu, and wasn’t disappointed. We sat around chatting some more over a couple of beers, and I heard about Aaron’s current exploits as a member of the localization team at the video game company responsible for such perennial series as Dynasty Warriors and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It turns out things don’t seem to be a whole lot different from my current situation in terms of general work environment and workload. Not that I was really considering working at a game company in Japan, but his description certainly wasn’t overly enticing. Aaron bid us all farewell once we left the taproom, but we were bound and determined to take Dan to karaoke, so the night continued on. This was part of our attempt to show Dan a true Japan experience (and maybe make up for Denny’s earlier), but Dan was not at all enjoying himself. I guess he’s not a big music person in general, so even when we sang “classics” he didn’t get into it. We managed to get him to help out on one or two of the songs, but that was about it.
Dan's Happy Face
On Sunday we took it easy and hopped on the train for a couple stops to visit a ginormous mall. Erica was busy clothes shopping and Sami was busy worrying about a date he had that night, so I ended up providing brutally honest counsel to Erica on her shopping purchases. We hit up a forgettable Italian place for lunch and later went to Cold Stone for dessert (the line was ridiculous!). Also, there was a store named Ducky Duck. Go Japan. Erica decided she wanted to go into a pachinko parlor, since neither of us had been. I have special bit of hatred saved up for pachinko and had never planned on stepping foot inside one of those places, but Erica was persistent and I figured justifying my hate wasn't the worst thing in the world. And yes, it was pretty much hell. I couldn't hear myself think for all the noise. I see the appeal for older folk since that is probably the one place they can take out their hearing aid and still be fine. The visuals were obnoxious, too, and the "game" nonsensical (you really can't control much of anything).
We then stopped at a gyoza restaurant chain for dinner and headed back to Erica’s place. We ended up watching Salt, which I had heard mediocre things about, but I’m glad Erica insisted, as it ended up being pretty awesome. I’m a huge sucker for the storyline where some badass gets wronged and then goes on a justified rampage until they make things right...or at least even. That would be why I love the Bourne trilogy, any of Tony Jaa’s movies, Count of Monte Cristo, etc. Also, apologies to Alexandre Dumas for mentioning his book in the same sentence as the Bourne Trilogy. (Although to be honest, there is far worse to be had than the Bourne Trilogy in terms of contemporary company to keep.) Anywho, so we finished watching Salt, and not too long after got a call from Sami (this is after 1am, mind you) saying that he felt horrible and thought he had food poisoning. (guess the date went well...zing!) Erica immediately went into mother mode and called a cab so we could take him to a walk-in clinic. So after a lightning quick change from pajamas, we are soon in a cab with Sami. The first place wasn't open, and after some consultation with the cab driver, we had a plan B. This place was open, but said they couldn't take him for whatever reason, and that we needed to go next door to the emergency clinic. We went over there only for them to tell Erica that they couldn't take him because he hadn't come in an ambulance. WTF? Really guys? So nobody is going to take him? I mean, he is hurling intermittently as we walk back and forth between these two establishments. I think he needs some help. After getting refused for a second time, Erica had had enough of the ol' run around, went back to the first place, and threw some chairs (verbally and politely, of course) until they agreed to see Sami. I sat down in the waiting area and after awhile they came out and Sami went to the counter to get his meds. He walked away with a couple pills, a couple powders, and everyone's favorite, a suppository. After a relatively uneventful cab ride back, we got to him back to his apartment and explained when and how he was supposed to take each medicine. (Yes, that's where you have to stick it! Did I st-st-stutter?!) With Sami seemingly on the road to recovery, we went back and promptly zonked out.
All hula-hoopers please stay to the left.
The next day we planned to go to Yokohama's Chinatown for lunch and grab some pie at a place Erica had raved about. (They have key lime pie!) So we went to some all you can eat buffet place in Chinatown, and boy was it tasty. Now this isn't crap sitting out on a buffet. This is made to order. You get a menu, and you tell them how many you want of what item. No limits. It's a beautiful thing. In particular, there was this spicy eggplant with ground meat dish that was quite frankly the most delicious eggplant I've ever had. I could've eaten just that. But there were dumplings and tofu and other goodies to try, so I made sure to be an equal opportunity glutton. There also happened to be a Japanese couple sitting next to us who I swear had the most bored expression on their faces and hardly spoke with each other. Now granted, it could have been an awkward first/blind date, but they were definitely a little on the older side and seemed a veteran couple who were simply not terribly interested in conversing with each other. I mean, where is the random banter and bullshit that (at least I think) is the base of any good relationship? Anywho, after lunch Erica wanted to get palm readings, which is apparently a pretty thriving business in Yokohama's Chinatown, since every five paces or so there seemed to be such an establishment. We picked a random one and sat (because, yes, there was a wait). As anyone who knows me a bit could probably imagine, palm reading isn't the first place I'd think to drop some cash, but I was somewhat curious since I'd never gotten one before. Thankfully, we got an older lady as our reader, and not the young twentysomething dude, complete with spiked Asian mullet hair, sitting at the table next to her. I'd have a hell of a hard time taking to heart life advice from a callow punk such as he. (To clarify, that was a deliberate use of the subject pronoun in the predicate for extra voice, NOT an English fail. That's just for those *cough*Maria*cough* who might call me out for that.) Anyway, the old lady did a solid job, and some of the conclusions she drew from the lengths of my various palm lines were actually rather spot on. Others, however, were somewhat off the mark. Still all things considers, she seemed to give seem relatively sage advice on all things paphian, academic, monetary and otherwise. Although when we had a chance to ask a question, she said I should go to grad school and continue studying, which at the moment doesn't look like it will happen. She did add the caveat that I should return to school only if there is something I truly want to study. I guess that's what I need to figure out. But lest I launch into prolonged ponderings of post-present possibilities (awkward alliteration for the win!), I shall move on.
I had planned on going to capoeira class in the evening with a guy from my group who lives in Tokyo. Sadly, time was running out so we had to bail on the pie restaurant Erica had mentioned and just strolled through a park area on the way back to the station. Near the park, though, there was a Happy Lawson! Now, Lawson is a massive chain of convenience stores in Japan, and sometimes they have sub-chains, such as Lawson 100 (think dollar store), Natural Lawson (a slightly snootier version with more organic products). I had never before seen a Happy Lawson, and this is the only one Erica has ever seen. Anywho, it had some different merch inside, including name keychain and loose mix n' match candy.
HAPPY LAWSON!!!!111!!!!!111
From there I grabbed the train to capoeira. It was just me and the one guy for most of practice, but during one of the "warm-ups" (and in retrospect, this was not exactly a movement that should be done as a warm-up, but I digress) I tweaked my neck pretty badly. I had limited range of motion the rest of class, which thankfully has improved, but sadly there is now a rather nagging, chronic pain persisting in my neck. Boo to that! After that it was a night bus back home (also a pleasure after the neck injury). I don't want to end on a whiny note, so a brief current update! I went to nearby smaller town today to go to their onsen (natural hot spring). It was snowing all day, but that made everything rather beautiful. Plus, I actually rather enjoy the simultaneous temperature extremes that are experienced when I'm roasty toasty in hot spring water but my head and shoulders have snowflakes landing on them. Woooo, poorly constructed sentence. Time to end the post.
Please. I only hate on your grammar when there is something to hate on.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in your pachinko section, you totally forgot an article. You're welcome! :)