August 25, 2005

Random Trip to Japan: Part One.

After a month of teaching English at two camps in South Korea, my friend Mike suggested that we reroute our flights home through Japan for a four-day layover...

Thursday, August 25th

Thursday morning, 5:50am: Bags packed and ready to check out of our hostel in Seoul and head to Incheon Airport.

It was a horrible, rainy morning - perfect weather for leaving a country - and Mike showed off his poncho.

We breezed through ticketing, checked our bags and set out to find some...

andy b — ...BREAKFAST! Hahaha. Look how happy Andy is!

me, mike doyle — And we're airborne! Japan, here we come!

Apropos reading.

mike doyle — Hahaha. We were all sooooo exicted!

A few hours later...

...and we'd landed at Narita Airport (which is Tokyo's major airport located like an hour by train outside of the city).

From the airport, we hopped on what we thought at the time was the famous shinkansen ("bullet train") to Tokyo (but later we learned that we just taken an "express" train (as in "makes less-stops") and not the famous train that goes crazy-fast.

Which makes this photo that I took of Andy when he and I were like "Holy shit, I can't believe how fast we're going!!!" really funny in retrospect. We got off the train at Shibuya Station (which is sort of comparable to Times Square in New York City), stashed our bags in a locker there, and set out to do some exploring before we were scheduled to meet up with some of Mike's friends later on.

After dropping off our bags, we hopped on Yamanote line to check out...

...Harajuku`` the area of Tokyo that's famous for having all kinds of fashion stores (and for the kids who come out every Sunday afternoon and dress up in crazy outfits...but more on that later).

After walking around aimlessly in Harajuku for awhile, it was time to get back onto the subway and head to the neighborhood where one of Mike's japanese friends lived (I have no idea where it was).

This is an advertisement for a very famous Japanese game called "Stand on an I-beam and grab the falling Easter hat with giant pole-pincers."

We got of the subway to find that the rain from Korea had made its way east to Japan.

So we ducked out the rain for some quick yakitori (barbequed meat skewers)...

...and some gyoza.

And despite being totally stuffed with food, I spied a poster for this badboy on the wall, and snapped a pic to remind myself to sample the Club House Mac, Japan's contribution to McDonald's international menu before leaving.

After relaxing at Mike's friend's house, later that evening we to a noodle house called Afuri to get our noodle on!

You order by purchasing a ticket at a vending machine, and then hand the ticket to the cooks behind the counter.

A few minutes later and you're totally hooked up!

Then later that night, we met up with Matt and Lara and some of their Japanese friends for yet MORE FOOD!

Here's a funny story: right when we'd arrived in Tokyo earlier in the morning, I found a drugstore and tried to buy purchase something to help relieve the athlete's foot I'd picked up (probably by not wearing sandals in the hostel's public shower in Seoul). Anywya, my feet were REALLY itchy, but I couldn't find a pharmacist or anyone who spoke any English. So much like when I had to get jock itch cream for my friend Grant when we were traveling in Budapest, I ended up doing all sorts of elaborate "my feet sure are itchy" pantomime for the bewildered Japanese staff at a drug store, they finally all went "Ahhhhh-soooo!" and handed me this tube of cream. I almost balked at the $23 price tag, but my feet were so itchy, I bit the bullet and purchased it.

Throughout day, as we'd been exploring Tokyo on foot, I stopped several times to wash my feet, apply some of this cream and change my socks. Now that we were finally at dinner with someone who read and spoke Japanese, I busted out the tube of cream to find out what I'd been rubbing on my feet all day....wait for it, wait for it...Yep, I'd paid $23 to rub mosquito bite cream on my feet all day. AWESOME!

And I thought Koreans had small feet - check out the size of the largest slippers in the men's restroom!

After dinner, Mike, Andy and I headed back to Shibuya Station to retrieve our bags from the lockers only to discover that our locker was unlocked and our bags had been hanging out in the open, totally unprotected for the last 15 hours! Here's what happened: We all loaded our bags into one locker, closed, then ran to get change to feed the locker. When Mike came back with the change, he fed it into an empty locker next to the one with our bags in it and locked that locker. At some point after we left, the luggage in the locker shifted, opening the locker door and half-spilling our contents out onto the concourse of one of Tokyo's busiest subways.

In addition to the $250 bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label Scotch we'd bought as a gift for Mike's friends who were letting us crash at their apartment, Mike's bag contained his passport and over $1,000 USD in cash. Nothing was taken!!! How fucking crazy is that?

After laughing about how lucky we were that Japan has almost no crime, we hopped on the subway and headed towards Rob and Atsuko's apartment - Mike's married friends who were gracious enough to put us up for a few nights so that we could afford to explore Tokyo! Here's Andy and Mike on the couch with Atsuko.

Rob and Atsuko's apartment was towards the top of a huge, residential skyscraper and there was a 24-hour snack shop (sort of like a 7-11) on the ground level. Mike, Andy and I went down there to do some late night exotic snack shopping. Here's our bounty.

Here's the view of the train line and the city from their balcony.

There were hurricane (typhoon) warnings that night and the wind was so strong out on the balcony that we were able to lean back into it was all of our weight and it would temporarily prop you up for a second or two. (The wind also apparently caused us to make awesome faces).

andy b, mike doyle — Hahaha.

Friday, August 26th

We woke up bright and early the next morning...

...and Mike busted out his "things to do in Tokyo" itinerary that he'd created to make sure that we maximized our 3 remaining days in town.

Mike on the balcony checking out the gorgeous weather. (Turns out the typoon had taken a turn in the middle of the night and the forecast was now calling for perfect weather for the next few days).

Rad view, right?

Perfect day.

Before heading out for the day, we left our "thanks for letting us stay" gift with a note for Rob and Atsuko to find later in the evening (we later found out that neither of them drink or like Scotch. Doh! Hahaha).

andy b, mike doyle — After a quick breakfast at McDonalds (hey, it was also on the ground floor of their building and one of the few places open!)...

...we hit the train station and waited to catch a train to Tokyo station so we could check out the Imperial Palace. On the train platform, they had a ton of posters with wanted criminals.

I bet these guys are going to get caught soon - it's not easy to not be noticed when you have a cartoon body.

We got to area where the Imperial Palace is located (not pictured) and then found out that the palace is only open two days a year. So other than the giant stone wall that surrounds the palace grounds, there wasn't much to see.

We walked around the Palace area for awhile and then made our way towards Akihabara - which is pretty much the undisputed nerd capital of the world! It's an entire area of Tokyo that dedicated to gadgets, technology, anime stores and arcades. It's the place where all of the otaku (people obsessed with games and anime....the Japanese extreme equivalent of "nerds") come to hang out and buy electronics and play games.

Right upon arrival, I forced our group to make a bee line for the Sega Gigo building - which houses...

...a six story arcade!

The first floor we check out was entirely dedicated to some arcade version of a MMORPG.

The consoles were all networked, and beyond using buttons to play, each player had a stack of physical cards that represented characters and weapons in the game. They would lay the cards down on the game's playing surface, and the game would recognize each card (I'm guessing they each had some sort of RFID tag in them).

Players would engage other armies and characters by frantically sliding cards around the board. If you won the battle (or whatever) the game would print out new cards for you to use (I guess it would deactivate cards for weapons owned by people you defeated and then print out a new one for the victor?) Who knows - all I know is that video games over there are complex at a level that we can't even begin to understand.

The floor that we were on had all of these 200 page booklets that I'm guessing explained the finer details of the game that we were watching everyone play.

We decided to check out a few of the other floors and play some games.

We decided to pass on "TheIdolM@ster" (some other crazy complicated role playing game).

And opted to play some good old fashioned racing games. Not the most exciting thing in the world, but at least we didn't need a 200 page booklet to get started.

Then it was on to battling space robots.

Woooooo!

Matt and Lara weren't so much into the arcade games.

So we hit the streets and set out to see if we could...

...discover any kind of crazy gadget discounts in the back-alleys of Akihabara (nope, just as expensive as the States).

We stumbled upon the filming of some sort of street bikini contest...

...nice, I like.

Then decided to find a place to grab some lunch.

More dumplings!

Afterwards, we decided to do some more walking around. Here's Andy admiring the largest scooter any of us had ever seen! (Look, it's even bigger than the giant motorcycle it's parked next to!)

We also debated purchasing some sweet, Japanese jewelry.

Mike's repping for the Westside, yo.

Afterwards, we walked over to Ueno Park - which is sort of like Tokyo's version of Central Park in NYC, except that it's like 90% pavement.

For seriously.

We went to check out one of the fine arts museums, but it was really expensive and closing soon, so instead we went to check out one of the nearby historical temples that borders Ueno park.

Temple lanterns. (Just like in Shinobi!)

There were literally hundreds of these stone lanterns leading up to the main entrance of the temple.

Temple gates.

This temple in particular had an collection of the photographs Yosuke Yamahata took in Nagasaki the day after the US detonated atomic weapons over the city. If you've never seen them, you can check them out here. They will be among the most horrifying and spooky pics you will ever see.

After the park, we started walking back towards Shibuya.

Exploring.

Hachiko Square in Shibuya!

This is a famous intersection where 7 streets come together. Every couple of minutes, the traffic lights block cars and pedestrians flood the streets to cross the 7-way intersection. It's b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

mike doyle — Oh, did I mention? Drinking in public is A-OK in Japan. Here's Mike D. putting down a pint can of Kirin right in front of the Shibuyu police station.

As it started to get dark, we decided it was time from some dinner and at Mike's suggestion, headed to one of Tokyo's famous conveyor belt sushi restaurants.

We arrived right at peak time and the place was a mad house. We had to wait about 30 minutes for seats, but it was totally worth it.

It pretty much works exactly how you think it would. You sit down, and there are hundreds...

...of plates of different types of sushi and sashimi that go by on little plates. Each one has two pieces of sushi on it, and each plate costs 100 Yen (about $.85 USD). When you're done eating, they charge you by counting the number of empty plates you have stacked in front of you.

Here's another pic I took a few seconds later just to give you an idea of the variety!

Tasty!

What I didn't know ahead of time, was that because it was "rush hour," there was a TEN PLATE minimum per person!!! I was only a little hungry (because I'd pretty much been eating non-stop all day) and only managed to eat 5 plates. Andy was happy to pick up my slack and eat 5 extra plates for me. Check out his insane 15-plate stack! Hahaha.

After dinner, we headed from Shibuya to Shinjuku to go to a rock club called Red Cloth (which is a downtown rock club - probably comparable to something like the Mercury Lounge in NYC).

andy b — On the walk over to the club, we stopped at a store to buy some booze so we could do a little pre-show warm up. We were too full to drink anymore beer, so we were totally psyched when Andy found these to-go jars of sake! One Cup for you!

One Cup for me! Hahaha.

Mike had asked a friend of his if there were any upcoming shows in Tokyo worth seeing and he recommended that we see a band called The Neatbeats.

They were fucking awesome! They were a four-piece dressed up in suits with slicked back hair and they sang 50s-style rock n' roll.

The club was jam-packed and the audience was like 90% female.

The guitar player would repeatedly dive into the crowd and solo while kneeling in the crowd.

I've since learned that they occasionally come to the States and play - so if you ever hear they're going to be playing near you, make sure to check them out. (You can search for them on YouTube and there are a bunch of vids of them playing live if you're interested.)

After the show, we decided to buy some beers and hang out outside of the club, and we ended up making friends with some locals.

Our friendship mostly involved pounding beers and teaching each other obscene phrases in each others' native tongue.

Good times.

On the way back to the subway, we stopped at another convenience store to get some snacks and I took this picture to show how pretty much every store in Tokyo sells magazines and there are always people just chilling and reading them.

I debated dipping into this mysterious bin filled with water-submerged treats - but ended up chickening out.

Andy got another beer...

...while Mike and I opted for some sort of fruity peach drink! Faaaancy!

Back at the subway station, we were fortunate enough to spot...

mike doyle — ...a drunk salaryman passed out! Salaryman are white-collar Japanese workers that are essentially overworked wage slaves that are expected to put in ridiculous hours. Every once and a while, they cut loose and hit the town, only to end up totally overdoing it and are famous for falling asleep and/or passing out in the streets in their work clothes.

Not to be confused with your run of the mill, drunk student that passes out on the street.

Aw yeah, Nintendo DS!

Back at Rob and Atsuko's building, we hit up the convenience store for some more mystery snacks!!!

I opted for this mystery-meat and egg on white bread sandwich....

...and Andy went for some equally mysterious noodle dish.

Tasty!

We were about to call it a night when Atsuko and Rob suggested we head to their local bar with them and grab a nightcap! Exhausted as we were, we decided to go for it!

The bar was totally chill - we ended up playing darts...

...shooting pool...

...feeding the local bar-dogs dried fish treats...

atsuko — ...and trying to cure Atsuko's hiccups by making her chug drinks upside down...

...before finally calling it a night at 4am. Holy longest, busiest day ever!