Inebriated Exploration... Week 3 (May 26th to June 2nd)

Inebriated Exploration
Week 3

Fade to black...

So it's official, I should be posting these every Tuesday night hopefully. I've also changed the way that I've been recording it so the updates should cover from Tuesday to Monday, basically one working week for yours truly.

Now if you'll excuse me for a moment, I'm cooking for the first time since I got here. Just pasta and pesto, I know it's not impressive, but hey, it's something...

Alright, not quite done yet. Let's get a few more sentences down.

So I guess where we left off our devoted protagonist he was (checks his own blog) getting some much deserved shut eye on Saturday night after a relatively brutal second week in Japan. Sunday dawned fairly nice as always. I slept in pretty late, round about 11 AM, then got up and started getting ready to go out. One of my coworkers had invited me out to play poker with a few of his buddies, so that was the plan for me that Sunday, nothing else major on the table. I also of course had the pleasure of spending a little bit of time on the inter web, saying as it was still new and incredible for me in Japan.

I left the house at about 4:00 (if I remember correctly, pardon me if the times are wrong. Actually, scratch that, the times really don't matter at all. You're lucky to be getting them in the first place.)

...and half hour break to eat dinner. Kind of good. Not sure if It was actually pesto that I put on it, it tasted kinda like green tea. No matter.

Right, where was I?

Oh, leaving the place on Sunday. Yes, very nice weather weekend before last. It was in the high 20s, a little bit humid, but no trouble. Nice little journey out to my coworker Sean's school too. The other school he teaches at is in a suburb from Tokyo about a half hour away by train, Toyoda (See map at start of this blog post).

I had to go through Tachikawa to get there. Uneventful trip and, of course, plenty of great views of the city. I realized yet another thing on this train trip though: everything seems to be just a little bit too short for me. Only a little bit, like 2 or 3 inches, but it's enough to throw me off. The train made me realize this because I couldn't just stand and look out the window, I had to hunch over just a little bit. No matter. I pulled into Toyoda station a couple minutes late and discovered that there was no one there to meet me. That is of course, other then the single gaijin that was hanging around the terminal and turned out to be part of Sean's group of friends. Of course, I didn't know that at the time, so we just made awkward eye contact two or three times and kept on chatting on our cells.

Eventually Sean discovered our whereabouts and escorted us first to the nearest convenience store for beer and snacks and then after that to his apartment. I think there were about 7 people at his place, which made for a pretty packed room, but a very good game of poker. There were representatives from the US, Canada, Britain and Australia at the party, so all in all it was pretty interesting. Lots of different stories, accents and expressions flying around.

The game was, of course, Texas Hold 'em. 1ooo yen buy in, 3 buy backs of 1000 yen for the first three losers. I won one or two hands early, but ended up being the fourth guy to end up chip-less along with another one in the same hand. I went all-in on a spade flush, four on the table one in the hand. Unfortunately, my 5 of spades was beaten by the ace of spades that the victor held. Eh, it was worth the ten, sucked being out of the game though.

Good night all around. It was nice to see a little bit of Toyoda too. The city is smaller then mine and very residential. The only area with shops was basically in front of the station. Walk one block past and you hit residential area. As a bonus, I got to see the Japanese Alps for the first time since setting food in the country. Just a brief view on the way into the train station, but it was nice none the less. From what I've seen so far, they're not nearly as imposing as the Rockies, but hey, mountains are mountains.

I hopped back on the Chuo line and was enroute back to my Leopalace well before the last train ran, around about 10. I walked home really fast, don't know why, but I always seem to walk faster when I'm drunk. Back to the apartment and in bed no problem. First drunken trip through Tokyo completed successfully!

Sunday was relatively unimpressive. I bought a TV stand and assembled it. My lunch consisted of Sushi and Smirnoff Ice purchased at the same place. I started taking detours through the back streets of my neighbourhood as well that day, and despite running into a couple of dead ends had a very interesting trip home. Monday also marked the day of epic cleaning that comprised the fourth entry in this blog. I cleaned the bathroom, toilet, main room and the sliding door that leads to my balcony. The worst part of this was actually the sliding door. Most of it was black with grime. Absolutely disgusting. It took me most of the day to clean that and buy the TV stand.

Oh yeah, I also jogged that morning for the first time in Japan. Very nice. Did it in Koganei park and discovered that there's an entrance to the park literally at the end of my street. Makes it about a 2 minute walk to get there. I'll certainly be taking advantage of that.

The week of teaching passed fairly well. I won't be putting as much detail into this as I did in the past just because it's beginning to normalize for me. I was feeling much more comfortable then I had in the past and I think I'm beginning to establish a much better rapport with most of my students. I felt kind of like crap all week though, lots of headaches and getting tired around about 5 PM. I guess my body is still adjusting, but it certainly didn't make for a fun time.

I will reiterate (I think I mentioned this before) and say that I love Saturdays. I teach 7 classes which is the most on any one day by far for me, but they're all a lot of fun, especially the last couple. I end the week on a super high note, a class with two older gentlemen who have excellent, excellent English. One of them is fluent. We choose a Newsweek article every week and have these very high level discussion about foreign policy, politics and economics. Really a great way to end it. I felt really, really good at the end of last week too.

I went out for dinner on Saturday night with the NET and the JET at my school. I really have to start taking pictures of the food I eat when I go out, but it's kind of conspicuous. On a related note, the lesson I taught in class today was obligations. Just popped into my head when I wrote "I really have to."

Dinner was good and had plenty of interesting food. The table service was, of all things, pickled squid, which was pretty good. We followed that with some good fried rice with egg, a bean sprout dish that was quite spicy and was kind of killing Sean. We finished with these amazing hors d'oeuvres, small pieces of asparagus which were only as long as the width of a piece of bacon, which is what they were wrapped in. Oh, and skewered on a stick.

Pardon the language but these were scrumptious, delightful, all-in-all, fucking delicious.

By the time dinner was over, the week of feeling kind of down had caught up with me and I was about ready to pass out at the restaurant. I made it home though and got some much needed rest because tomorrow...well, tomorrow was big.

Wait, that doesn't convey the magnitude properly.

Epic. Legendary. Would remember all of it forever if I hadn't been so drunk by the end.

But I still remember it pretty well.

The day began early. I was on about 7 hours of sleep, which was plenty for me. Well fueled. I was meeting two teachers (Kevin and Winny) at 11:00 at Shinjuku station. I had trained with these two in Vancouver and actually had met Kevin as far back as the interview in Toronto. Those two are also canucks, and at the same school coincidentally, so it was nice to have some Canadian content for the first time in a little while.

Off we go. This is going to take a little while. Hopefully I won't be writing much past 1:00 AM.

I left the Leopalace at 10:15 after spending a little while debating on what I should wear out. I chose to rock the undershirt (very good idea) an Ottawa Senators cap (it matched better then the Canadians).

On my person, I left the house with the following.

Front right pants pocket:
iPod, about 1000 yen in change

Front left pants pocket:
Passport, keys to the apartment, cellphone.

Back right pants pocket:
Wallet (natch)

Back left pants pocket:
Pocket Japanese-English dictionary

Note to all Japanese pick-pockets, aiming for the back right pants pocket is advisable.

I was really fortunate on this day. The weather was very nice, possibly for the last time for the next month or so. Rainy season began two days ago, so I don't expect to see much sun for the foreseeable future, what with the weekly Typhoons and all.

I made it to Musashi-Koganei station a little behind schedule. I also almost ended up waiting on a platform that was out of service, thank god I saw the construction worker waving a baton up the stairs and over to the other platform. I got on the second car of the train and started my trip to downtown. Two things of small note occurred on this trip.

1. About 5 minutes in I looked to my right. I was right at the front of the car I was on and next to me was the door to the first car in the train. This door was bedecked with a large, pink, floral sign that proclaimed in pleasant, bold letters: Women's Car Only! Along with what I can only assume was the equivalent in Japanese. This was a little startling for me because I almost walked into it, after all, I was only one car away. Little cultural lesson for all of you out there that aren't in the know. A few years ago women on packed Tokyo subway trains started to get groped by random male passengers. This eventually led to the establishment of occasional women-only trains during busy times. Close call for me none-the-less

2. I started getting calls from Kevin about 15 minutes from the end of the train-trip. Fair enough, I was 15 minutes late. The downside is though, I couldn't answer any of them, and my emails back weren't getting through to his phone for some reason. Again, cultural lesson. It's considered extremely impolite to talk on a cellphone or make untoward noise on a train in Japan. I probably could have played the ignorant gaijin card and answered, but I figured it was better not to look like too much of an asshole. I have a hard enough time remembering not to leave my chop sticks standing up in my food (symbolizes death, very bad!)

I hit Shinjuku at 11:15. At this point I called Kevin and started trying to find out where he was. He informed me that he was standing next to an electronics store that was the size of a block. I figured that would be a pretty simple thing to find.

Turns out, easier said then done.

I walked out of the west side of Shinjuku station and was confronted with a pretty amazing view. Huge skyscrapers, massive billboards, everything that I'd ever experienced about Tokyo vicariously through Japanese movies and comic books. My very first thought was Ghost in the Shell. This was the first time I really, really felt like I had arrived in Japan. It's this sort of thing that I had wanted to see since I got here. I'm sure I looked like an idiot grinning from ear to ear and walking around, but hey, tourists mostly look like that anyways.

After wandering around for about 20 minutes and looping back through the station I managed to link up with the other two. This took a number of confusing and increasingly flustered phone calls. My second call to Kevin, right after I got out of the station, went something like this:

Ian: "Okay, where are you guys? I game out the west exit."
Kev: "I told you, we're by the electronics store."
Ian: "I don't see it, that could be anything around here. What's it's name?"
Kev: ". What are you looking at right now?"
Ian: "Uhhh...a skyscraper that looks like a wicker lattice."
Kev: "What?"
Ian: "That's what it looks like."
Kev: "What else?"
Ian: "The building with the giant blue Subaru sign?"
Kev: "I don't see any of that."
Ian: "Okay, I'll wander around and see if I can find your store."



My third call was just about as aggravating for both of us and involved the following: "Kevin, finding this electronics store is like finding a needle in a stack of needles." Thank you Saving Private Ryan for that quote. Anyways, I finally found Winny and Kevin showed up soon afterwards. I turned out that they had been just around the corner from where I made the first phone call. Only took us 20 minutes to link up. It's too bad that Shinjuku doesn't have something like Hachiko. That would have helped us find Melissa when she arrived a few minutes later. Took another 15 minutes to find her.

Finally the first bit of our little party was hooked up and ready to rock. We had about 3 hours until Ryan and Zoey showed up at Shinjuku, so we decided to do a little bit of sight seeing. I'd heard that the Tokyo Metropolitan Building provided free rides to the top floor, which is much better then the 1000 yen price tag that most other places require.

On the way to the building we stopped for lunch at an Ootoya. I had the dish on the left. It was pretty damn good, I gotta say. We totally looked out of place though. Everyone seemed to be in their business clothes, which makes sense I guess. After all, we were in the primary business sector of Tokyo.

Wow, this post is long. I've got like another 15 hours of this day to recount.

After lunch we trucked our way out to the Tokyo Met. Building. Hoped on the elevator and rode our way on up to the 45th floor observation deck.

H
O
L
Y

S
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The view from here was one of the most insanely impressive things I have ever seen. I've seen a few large cities, but Tokyo makes everything else look like a drop in the bucket. Toronto is a large city, but from the top of the CN Tower you're going to see a lot of Lake Ontario. Tokyo is close to the ocean. I could not see it from the Tokyo Met. Building. It was just city. Forever. In every direction. As...far...as...you...could...see. It was like the city itself was an ocean, interminable crests and troughs of buildings stretching further then the horizon.

We could see the Imperial Palace complex a little bit from up there, but it was shrouded in trees. What I'm basically trying to say here is that it was impressive. A lot.

We headed back down stairs and were impeded for a few minutes on the way out of the building. The escalator on the way in had stopped working and, oddly enough, in Japan people don't just walk down it. Security wouldn't let us onto the escalator until it was moving again. Ah well. Another small hitch was when I almost jumped into a fountain by mistake on the way out of the building. Stupid gaijin moment.

We headed out to a nearby park that we'd noticed from on top of the Tokyo Met. Building. It was quite nice, lots of trees and a nice play structure for kids on one half of the park. The other half had a flea market and a small museum. The museum was pretty interesting, as it was also a temple that I guess had been retrofitted for that purpose. It was quite beautiful. The flea market was kind of odd, like most flea markets are. There was a pretty impressive menagerie of tchotchkes available for purchase though.

By this time it was starting to get a little close to 3, so the lot of us headed off to Shinjuku station to pick up Zoey, Zoey's cousin Amy, Melissa's coworker Ben and Ryan. This took about 40 minutes, during which time we had a rest at a nearby sidewalk cafe. It was at this point that I imbibed a 500 yen glass of coke. It wasn't worth it.

We decided that we'd seen enough of Shinjuku, so the lot of us (numbering 8 now) hopped a train down the Yamanote line to Harajuku.

I mentioned this in one of my previous posts, but Harajuku is lousy with foreigners. Ryan and I had a small conversation about this. We both live in cities were it's not uncommon to go a few days without seeing another foreigner. Every time we see one though it breaks our illusion of total cultural immersion. We both get this sort of "this is my god-damn adventure! Stay the hell out of it!" vibe. Anyways, there was a TON of that vibe in Harajuku. It was also totally packed. there's one particular bridge that all of the Harajuku girls hang out on, and we spent a little while doing the tourist thing and snapping pictures. Some of them were oddly self-conscious about having their pictures taken, and they shied away when people leveled their cameras. I can understand their feeling, but it seems odd that you'd go to a place renowned as a tourist spot and then become shy took pictures of you. After all, Harajuku gear isn't exactly low profile. It was bad enough towards the end that I was feeling bad about taking pictures. Not exactly what I was expecting.

There's a large temple right near here that we didn't explore. I might go back this weekend and check it out.

After our adventures with the people that made Gwen Stefani lose her mind, we headed down the main street of Harajuku. Here's where I finally saw the packed-like-sardines pictures they always show of Japan. It was pretty tight there. After shuffling down that street we decided to head to a restaurant and get some food.

We ended up at a chain called Shakey's Pizza. The pizza was pretty damn good, although pretty light. The pizzas themselves came in one size, about medium or so, but you could order a quarter, half or whole. Ryan and I had a whole to ourselves, which was pretty good. The others bought quarters, which wasn't very much as it turned out. This is also where the drinking started, two draft beers, Kirin. Very good.

Ryan and I had a very interesting conversation at this restaurant that I feel would be worthwhile relating in part. After talking about our respective towns for a little while, we started talking about why we came to Japan. Ryan related to me a conversation he'd had with one of the other trainees in Vancouver, Marc. Marc had described his feelings for Japan before he got there as "nostalgia for a place he had never been." I have had similar feelings, although they have waxed and waned at times over the years. Now that I'm here, and adjusted, it feels pretty comfortable.

The second half of the conversation revolved around another aspect of our experiences here. Ryan asked me if everything had been what I expected. I had thought about this a little, because it kind of wasn't but it kind of was. When I first set out for Japan I was looking forward to two things, silly as it may seem. The one was the Ultra-High-Tech-Blade-Runner-Ghost-In-The-Shell-Matrix-Sci-Fi-Hyphenated-Technology
paradise that I'd seen in so many pieces of pop culture. The other was basically to step off the train into a world of Yojimbo, Samurai and Daimyo, ancient Japan where your honour meant everything and blind swordsmen wandered the countryside looking for nothing but food.

Obviously I didn't really expect either of these to greet me in Japan. However, both of these worlds appear to present in much of the day to day workings of Japan. This fundamental dichotomy (thanks for choosing the perfect word Ryan) between the high-tech future and the ancient past is present everywhere that I've been so far. It is perfectly evident in the tree-shrouded shrines which rub shoulder-to-ankle with 50 story skyscrapers, the curtains that drape over the entrances to restaurants the same way they did 500 years ago, the bonsai pines sculpted around car ports. This seems to be the quintessential characteristic of Japan. I'm not going to say that's the end all be all quite yet, but mark my words, dear readers, I will find out.

After finishing our beers and pizza we wandered back to the station with a slight detour past the Tokyo Olympic Gymnasium where a high school cheer leading competition appeared to just be letting out. The large number of people milling around brought us there. Nothing really interesting though, so we hopped back onto the Yamanote line for our final destination of the night: Roppongi. At this point Melissa's coworker and Winny departed, cutting our group down to 6.

We had to transfer onto the subway in order to get to Roppongi, which wasn't too interesting, but made the trip home a little complex.

The first thing we did upon arriving in Roppongi was go into the nearest Pachinko parlor. Quick explanation if you don't follow the wikipedia link: Pachinko is like a game of vertical pinball combined with a slot machine. So you gamble, but supposedly if you have some talent, you can win some cash. It's also incredibly noisy. Almost rock concert loud, but just terrible sound effects from the dawn of the digital era. Absolutely deafening. It was a trip though.

After the pachinko parlor we partook in the classic Japanese tradition of drinking in public. We all bought a Tallboy of beer at the nearest 7/11 and wandered around the neighborhood a little more. We walked through Roppongi Hills complex, which contained an art museum, a shopping mall, a movie theater, the Asahi TV station and, at the time, a beer festival. I felt pretty out of place with my clubbing clothes and can of beer, but whatever, it was fun. We were on the lookout for a club, but were unable to find one. We wandered back to the main sort of strip of the town. We took a detour into a building where we hoped to find a bar for a bit of rest.

The weird thing about buildings in this section of Tokyo (and I imagine a lot of the rest of it) is how things are layered. You think about a club like Barrymore's or Babylon in Ottawa and you know the layout. It's a low-set building, large open space, lots of dancing. The buildings in Japan are totally different. Because everything is built up, you'll have one building that will have something like this:

1F: Fast food joint
2F: Music Store
3F: Dance Club
4F: Strip Club
5F: Bar
6F: Strip Club

And the REALLY trippy thing is that the building is super narrow and from the outside it looks like condominiums.

What we found was a gay strip club on the floor above the one we were supposed to be on. Turns out the fifth floor was blocked off or something. It was still a rather impressive detour. After all, the handle on the door for this strip club was a giant gold phallus. Impressive? I'm also impressed to know that one of the clubs in that building, 7th Heaven is, according to Wikipedia, one of the largest and most well known of strip clubs in the whole district.

That building is officially the most seedy, sketchy place I have ever been.

We finally found a bar after receiving directions from a nice, english speaking gaijin. It was called the Spunky Bar, which was a really inappropriate name. The decor was incredibly dark, lots of wood with light fixtures that looked like more modern versions of the horns that might have once bedecked the lodge of Erik the Red. Lighting consisted of Salt Crystal lamps at tables. Kind of an intimate setting I guess. We had a few more beers here (Carlsberg). We waited until about 10 and then headed off to the Mos Burger for some more food.

With stomachs properly filled, we set off once more. We'd finally decided to find a Karaoke place then find a club to do some dancing. This plan was delayed a little bit on account of us all spotting Tokyo Tower. I figured it was pretty close, so I persuaded everyone to walk the three blocks over to it.

It was closer to 10.

But it was worth it in the end. Very surreal sight, very very cool. Especially when you're tanked. But it was just a very neat and surprising thing to see. (picture 4)

We finally headed back towards the strip for the last time and went to a Karaoke place. It was very well appointed and had a realllllly good selection of music. All those hours of playing Rock Band finally paid off. Ryan, Melissa, Kev, Zoey and I rocked the mic pretty hard. We had some pretty stunning renditions of Learn To Fly, Black Dog, Enter the Sandman, My Name Is and a number of others. Tons of fun. I absolutely killed my throat singing the chorus to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" though. As long as you're willing to embarrass yourself, karaoke is some of the most fun you can ever have in one place. The three pitchers of beer that Ryan, Melissa, Kev and myself shared helped too.

We left the Karaoke place at 3 AM. It was clubbing time. Almost right across the street was this Hip-Hop club called Gas Panic. We were already pretty trashed coming in, but fortunately they didn't bother us to buy much in the way of booze. I bought my first drink, drank a quarter of it, splashed another quarter on the floor while dancing, and then dropped it off at the table and didn't look back. I danced with the rest of the group for about 2 hours straight. Man, it was a ton of fun. I'm sure I looked like an idiot, especially cause I was completely drunk, but everyone seemed really into it, so none of it really mattered. It was pretty funny actually. Everyone was flashing signs, dancing like crazy, and just having a great time. I danced a little on the stage with the group and mostly just bounced around like an idiot. I mean, how could I not when they were playing DaRude, Soulja Boy and Linkin Park/Jay-Z? There weren't many people there, maybe 30, so there was lots of space to move. Also, great lighting! Zoey and her cousin left at about 4 AM.

At 5 AM the club closed. I found myself exchanging a huge handshake with a couple of the black guys in the club that had sort of been cheering everyone on. Speaking of cheering, that's what everyone was doing. It was a great feeling. Everybody was just super pumped and happy, it was a ton of fun. Short conversation with a guy from Minnesota who spent a lot of time in Ontario and then we were back in the bright morning sky. We headed back to Shinjuku, where Melissa and Ryan headed off in their own directions. Kev and I went the rest of the way back to my place. Oddly enough, while waiting on the Chuo line platform for our train, we ran into the teacher Kevin replaced at his school. She was teaching in Shinjuku now and had been out all night as well. We'd been talking about her a few minutes ago, just an odd capstone.

Kevin and I made it back to my house at about 7:20 AM on Monday. My legs were killing me. They still are 2 days later.

Kev and I woke up at about 1 PM the next day. He left my place at about 1:30 and made the trip back home no problem. I spent most of the rest of Monday recuperating, although I did venture out to buy a few things. I also jumped around the apartment a little and enjoyed the ringing in my ears from the club. Truly an incredible night. I don't really know what else to say. I'm going to remember that night for a LONG time to come.

Sorry this was so long.

I did a lot of things.

See you all next week! I should be out doing things a little bit more touristy. However, this Saturday I DO have my welcome party at the school. Should be interesting.

Keeping it real in T.J.

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

(sorry about any grammar errors, it took me about 5 hours to write this)