Obnoxious Oration
Week 5
Week 5
Phew.
Rough weekend.
I'll get to that in a minute. First order of business (which happens to be chronologically ordered) is the week before the weekend.
Which was very uneventful.
It went pretty smoothly through and through. I'm getting better at planning lessons and am settling in pretty well, all in all. I need to get just a little bit faster so I can pull my weight of the paperwork, but that's about it. Only a couple things of note occurred:
As a North-American, born and raised, I've always thought convenient stores are pretty, well, convenient. They fit their moniker quite well. Japanese convenience stores in comparison, make the Mac's Milk and 7/11s of the USA and Canada seem like a school bully that hoofs you in the junk and steals your lunch money. Japanese convenience stores are all over the place, usually one per block, whether it's an AM/PM, 7/11, Family Mart or Circle K. They sell the usual menagerie of moderately overpriced grocery store goods. However, like I previously mentioned, they also sell alcohol, and some pretty decent baked goods (like the cheesy bacon pastry that I'm eating right now), and re-heatable meals that look home cooked. They also let you pay bills (I paid my gas and water bill earlier in the week at a Circle K) and buy tickets for concerts and whatnot. Pretty impressive.
The week reeled off like usual. Lessons went pretty well, I was tired every night, but not exhausted. I've taken to walking a different route into work. I found out that there's a hospital very close to my place. I never would have known. It's maybe 4 stories tall but the proximity of most houses to the streets tends to break your line of sight. I've walked past it dozens of times. I jogged on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which was quite nice. I also managed to jog for a 1/2 hour straight for the first time on Friday. That was very fulfilling, especially because I managed to muster enough energy to sprint the last couple meters. Sweet. I was pretty dead on Friday night though, let me tell you.
Check out that segue way!
Saturday dawned to the first of what will probably be many in Japan: an earth quake. I had just woken up at the time, so I wasn't entirely lucid. I actually mistook it at first for a really bad headache. Bear in mind that Fridays see me get home around 10:30-11:00 and Saturdays start at 11:00 AM, which means I'm usually up at around 7 or so. Not such a great turn around. Anyways my first thought was "Shit, today's gonna suck." Then I realized that everything was moving a little bit and that I've never had a headache bad enough to think that the world was moving.
Crap.
I was a little nervous, but in all honesty, it just felt like a really drawn out tremor, which is all it really was. Northern Tokyo got rocked a bit though. Apparently the magnitude was 7.0 which is pretty damn big. It had a slight effect on the rest of my day too, but I'll get into that later.
I headed off to school with a change of clothes in my backpack and a smile on my face. That night myself, Melissa and Ryan had decided to meet downtown for another night of drunken dancing and singing. The target area was Shibuya, an area of Tokyo associated with young people and the things they do (drink/dance/shop). After changing clothes and jumping across the street for a Mos Burger, I headed downtown, ready to engage in the reveling. Oh, right, this is of course after I stopped by the Circle K and bought two tall boys of Sapporo and got the party started. I drank one of these on the train and the other outside Shibuya station while I waited for the others to show up.
I arrived at Shibuya station around 10:45 so I had about an hour to kill. I spent most of that time chilling near the statue of Hachiko and watching the scramble crossing from Lost in Translation cycle. Pretty cool. Weird thing about this was that I've been playing a video game The World Ends With You that is set in a stylized Shibuya. Despite the modification in the games' presentation I could still sort of figure out where I was, taking into account the slight changes in name to a few things (Towa Records is Tower Records in real life).
I waited around sipping my beer and not really doing much until about 11:20. At some point during this time I actually saw two of the people I spend the latter half of the evening with. James and Emma are two other GEOS teachers who knew each other from training. I just noticed them when they walked by because of their British accents. Accents like that still stand out to me despite the fact that I spend most of my time here in the company of Brits.
So 11:20. I had to use the washroom. I don't really know what the etiquette for barging into a restaurant's restroom in is Japan yet, so I figured I'd just waltz back into the station and pay the 130 yen to take a piss and head back out.
Not so easy apparently.
Oh taking a piss was easy, as was getting the ticket. Walking out wasn't so much. To my surprise the ticketing system prevents tickets being used at the same station to leave the place (maybe a bug in the system?) Anyways, I was forced to take a train one stop away to Ebisu, purchase a ticket back in the opposite direction and hop off there. No harm done, but 260 yen for a washroom break is kind of a drag. In a fit of spite I used the restroom again on the way back. That'll show em'.
Met Melissa at 11:45 or so. We bounded off in search of a bar in which we planned to imbibe beverages of an alcoholic nature. On the way, right after getting through the scramble crossing we passed a crowd of police officers outside of a building. I have no real idea what was going on but I do know that there was someone who looked like they'd either taken a very bad spill or been clubbed with something. He was bleeding pretty profusely from the head. It was a fairly surreal start to the night too due to the tight packed crowds in the street we were on.
We made it to the bar and rendezvoused with the aforementioned Emma and James who were enjoying a fag outside of the place. The bar was packed which might have to do with the Arsenal game that was playing out on the TVs. It also catered pretty heavily towards foreigners, which was nice for a change.
I had a couple beers here with the others (count is up to 4 now). They were very cheap, 300 yen per. Not bad either, good old Asahi. I did, however, make a mistake here.
I had a craving for a Jaeger bomb.
For those who don't know or are too lazy to read the Wikipedia entry, this video gives you an idea of how they work. Actually it doesn't at all, I'm just messing with you. But the video's funny, just like this one. Pardon the swearing.
So yeah, in short a Jaeger bomb is a shot of Jaegermeister in a glass of Red Bull. Only problem is that apparently the primary drink mix with Red Bull outside of North America is Vodka. Eh. The first time I tried to order it at this pub all I got was a shot of Jaegermeister, which is kind of vile by itself. Fun fact: Jaegermeister was used by the German army in World War 2 as a field anesthetic. We left the bar shortly afterwards when we were joined by Don, a nice fellow from New York State.
We had to meet Ryan at the station. As previously mentioned, he's quite a distance away from Tokyo and it takes him a few hours to get into our area. Things were further complicated by the earthquake earlier in the day. Some of the trains had serious delays due to the uncertain state of the tracks. Ryan was supposed to make it to Shibuya for around 11:30 or so, but didn't actually reach it until around 12:40 or so. The Shinkansen actually stopped running. I suppose when the trains are moving as fast as they do you have to make sure that there aren't any faults on the track.
We collected Ryan and headed off to a club. The destination ended up being a basement club by the name of La Fabrique. The place had a lot of French writing around that made little sense but meh, what are you going to do? The music was a mix of electronica and other stuff, I guess. I'm not really sure, there are so many sub genres and they all sound generally the same to me. I wasn't really a fan of the DJs at this place though. They tended not to switch up beats fast enough. I think I would have preferred Gas Panic over this, but I'm not sure how the others would feel. Apparently Gas Panic is notorious as a pick up joint. Meh, I like the music.
The cover charge for the club was a whopping 3500 yen. $35. One drink. That's pretty ridiculous. Apparently a lot of clubs are like this in Japan, so it very much discourages doing much in the way of club hopping. It also turns out that a lot of people in Japan are not very energetic dancers. Such was the case at this club anyways. The patrons of the club seemed to stand mostly in nice little rows and sort of shuffle a little bit while moving their hands slightly.
It should also be known that I dance like a retard. I shouldn't be criticizing.
So I like to move my feet. Go sue me.
Seriously though, for my third serious time out clubbing, this was not so impressive. I still danced like crazy, but that's just how I roll. The DJ was bad enough that Ryan and I found the time to waltz for about 15 seconds in the middle of a particularly lame number. Might have just been an off night, who knows?
I proceeded to attempt to order two more Jaegerbombs at this club. The first one also ended up being a straight shot of Jaeger. The second however, after screaming at the top of my lungs, ended up being a proper bomb. My craving quenched, and with wings attached to my back, I hopped back into the melee. I bounced my way to the front and shook hands with the DJ and danced up there for a while before heading out with Melissa, Ryan, James and Emma. Don stayed behind with a Japanese acquaintance. It was about 4:30 at this point, so we headed out for a little bit of Karaoke. We booked a room and hopped to it. Karaoke is always fun, whether you're singing some serious stuff or bouncing to some ridiculous stuff. I soloed a classic: Backstreet Boys - I Want it That Way. Ryan and I slammed out Smashing Pumpkins - 1979, Emma and James rocked David Bowie - Space Oddity and everyone had great performances on Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger and Rage Against the Machine - Bulls on Parade. I killed my throat a little on that last, but it was worth it. We had a couple pitchers of beer and, as the oddest thing I've eaten in quite some time, fried chicken cartilage. That is some incredibly crunchy, chewy stuff. Very odd. Not bad though.
We left the club at (I think) 6:30 AM. We wandered our way back to the station and stopped by McDonald's for a quick egg mcmuffin. I was home by 8:00 and had a bottle of water on the walk home to help mitigate my impending hangover. My feet and legs were hurting after having danced for about 3 hours straight, but what I didn't realize at the time was that I actually had a really bad bruise on the inside of my right foot. I have no idea how it happened. My memory has never really been that bad after a night of drinking and I didn't fall down or anything. I did have a number of people step on my feet during the night and I also slammed my feet around pretty hard while I was dancing so really anything could have done it. Pretty frustrating though. I hope I can still jog tomorrow. I had to pass on Monday.
Sunday dawned with me nursing a bit of a hangover. It wasn't terrible, but enough that I hopped online and looked up a couple of hangover cures. Lots of water and Bananas are supposed to be good and I had both. I took off for my destination that night at around about 4:50. The destination was Hachioji-shi for another round of poker with Sean and his buds. I would go into depth about this but really, it was a fairly unremarkable night. I was second out of the game following Jason, the other Canadian guy there. I was very unlucky with the cards all night. The best hand I had was three of a kind and I was beaten by someone with a straight. Meh, it's only 1000 yen, right?
Going out a little bit early was nice though. I got to relax and drink quite a lot, again. Jason and I got into a very heated discussion about Indiana Jones. Jason is under the mistaken impression that the Temple of Doom is the best in the series after Raiders of the Lost Ark. This is obviously a massive error in judgment. The Last Crusade is BY FAR superior. Anyways, we got rather raucous and made asses of ourselves. We also had some INCREDIBLY spicy salsa. The spiciest salsa I've ever had. While I'm not a huge aficionado of extremely spicy foods, this stuff was brutal. It was bad enough that I teared up. It was good though.
The poker game ended around about 11:00. I spent the last 45 minutes bugging the remaining players to raise their blinds. Anyone who plays hold 'em knows you gotta double EVERY time someone goes out. That's what keeps the game high stakes. I also played some electronic darts and lost a lot because I've very rarely played darts. I caught the train home with everyone and apparently was drunk enough that I shouted on the train. Very taboo in Japan. I didn't remember this the next morning but I think that's mostly because it wouldn't have been thought of as all that unusual on a bus or train in Canada. Guess I still need to acclimate myself a little bit.
I made it home again, safe and sound, and slept in nice and late the next day. Later then I wanted too. I was hoping to get out and about, see some of Tokyo, but once again a hangover kind of prevented that. Again though, it wasn't too bad and I was feeling pretty good in an hour or too.
I headed out to grab the train into downtown Tokyo at around 1:00. I stopped by my school quickly to grab my clothes and my backpack and promptly forgot my tour book on my desk. Nuts. I had already paid for my ticket and was on the platform when I remembered. Oh well.
Because I didn't really have a guide I ended up sort of revisiting Shinjuku. I saw the other side of the city though, the more shopping-centric area. It was very cool. Not too busy because it was Monday and lots of interesting stuff. The Electronics store I went into was MASSIVE and I was very happy to find some of the best of Western game design represented. I tried to get a shot of myself holding a copy of Half-Life 2 while wearing the shirt with art from the same game printed on it, but no dice. I also discovered the DVD section which was pretty fun also. I bought a couple movies to watch while I'm over here and spruce up the collection of DVDs for the lobby DVD player at my school.
The advertising is very impressive in Shinjku. It's EVERYWHERE. It's to the point that buildings will have the contents of individual floors advertised on the outside of the building on a per-floor basis. Pretty insane. It was pretty fun to just sort of wander and happen upon some pretty cool things.
At 4:00 I nabbed a train heading south in order to meet up with Melissa, Ben, Don, James and Emma who were all going to the TGI Fridays in order to take advantage of Happy Hour. The avid readers of my blog will recollect that this is the town that I traveled to on the second day that I was in Japan. This trip was much happier and less stressful. I was there with just enough time to snap a picture of the station's police box before Melissa & Co. showed up. For those not in the know, Police Boxes are small police outposts that are used to stay in close contact with the community. They help out with things like directions and whatnot.
We headed to TGI Fridays and had a few drinks. I had my first Japanese Long Island Iced Tea and was seriously disappointed. The Margaritas were better though. I should have copied Melissa and had a mudslide. On the plus side, the finger food and quesadilla that I had were excellent.
Dinner concluded, the group split up. Don and I headed back to Tokyo and stopped off in Shinjuku for a short while. I wanted to check out a bookstore for a few books and maybe a text on Japanese. No luck though, the store we found was closing just as we got there. Ah well, next week. I made it home by around 9 and spent some time uploading pictures and whatnot before hitting the sack, another week concluded.
All in all I was a little disappointed by this last weekend. I still haven't felt like I've had the opportunity to really snoop around Tokyo and the twin hangovers really didn't help. I think next weekend I'm going to go clubbing again on Saturday, take it easy on Sunday and then explore Tokyo energetically on Monday. That's my plan anyways. Also, learn a little more restraint when out drinking.
Anyways, that's it for this week folks. I'm enjoying the sun flower seeds that one of my students brought me back from his business trip in Thailand. They're excellent!
Post again next week!
Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello
Rough weekend.
I'll get to that in a minute. First order of business (which happens to be chronologically ordered) is the week before the weekend.
Which was very uneventful.
It went pretty smoothly through and through. I'm getting better at planning lessons and am settling in pretty well, all in all. I need to get just a little bit faster so I can pull my weight of the paperwork, but that's about it. Only a couple things of note occurred:
As a North-American, born and raised, I've always thought convenient stores are pretty, well, convenient. They fit their moniker quite well. Japanese convenience stores in comparison, make the Mac's Milk and 7/11s of the USA and Canada seem like a school bully that hoofs you in the junk and steals your lunch money. Japanese convenience stores are all over the place, usually one per block, whether it's an AM/PM, 7/11, Family Mart or Circle K. They sell the usual menagerie of moderately overpriced grocery store goods. However, like I previously mentioned, they also sell alcohol, and some pretty decent baked goods (like the cheesy bacon pastry that I'm eating right now), and re-heatable meals that look home cooked. They also let you pay bills (I paid my gas and water bill earlier in the week at a Circle K) and buy tickets for concerts and whatnot. Pretty impressive.
The week reeled off like usual. Lessons went pretty well, I was tired every night, but not exhausted. I've taken to walking a different route into work. I found out that there's a hospital very close to my place. I never would have known. It's maybe 4 stories tall but the proximity of most houses to the streets tends to break your line of sight. I've walked past it dozens of times. I jogged on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which was quite nice. I also managed to jog for a 1/2 hour straight for the first time on Friday. That was very fulfilling, especially because I managed to muster enough energy to sprint the last couple meters. Sweet. I was pretty dead on Friday night though, let me tell you.
Check out that segue way!
Saturday dawned to the first of what will probably be many in Japan: an earth quake. I had just woken up at the time, so I wasn't entirely lucid. I actually mistook it at first for a really bad headache. Bear in mind that Fridays see me get home around 10:30-11:00 and Saturdays start at 11:00 AM, which means I'm usually up at around 7 or so. Not such a great turn around. Anyways my first thought was "Shit, today's gonna suck." Then I realized that everything was moving a little bit and that I've never had a headache bad enough to think that the world was moving.
Crap.
I was a little nervous, but in all honesty, it just felt like a really drawn out tremor, which is all it really was. Northern Tokyo got rocked a bit though. Apparently the magnitude was 7.0 which is pretty damn big. It had a slight effect on the rest of my day too, but I'll get into that later.
I headed off to school with a change of clothes in my backpack and a smile on my face. That night myself, Melissa and Ryan had decided to meet downtown for another night of drunken dancing and singing. The target area was Shibuya, an area of Tokyo associated with young people and the things they do (drink/dance/shop). After changing clothes and jumping across the street for a Mos Burger, I headed downtown, ready to engage in the reveling. Oh, right, this is of course after I stopped by the Circle K and bought two tall boys of Sapporo and got the party started. I drank one of these on the train and the other outside Shibuya station while I waited for the others to show up.
I arrived at Shibuya station around 10:45 so I had about an hour to kill. I spent most of that time chilling near the statue of Hachiko and watching the scramble crossing from Lost in Translation cycle. Pretty cool. Weird thing about this was that I've been playing a video game The World Ends With You that is set in a stylized Shibuya. Despite the modification in the games' presentation I could still sort of figure out where I was, taking into account the slight changes in name to a few things (Towa Records is Tower Records in real life).
I waited around sipping my beer and not really doing much until about 11:20. At some point during this time I actually saw two of the people I spend the latter half of the evening with. James and Emma are two other GEOS teachers who knew each other from training. I just noticed them when they walked by because of their British accents. Accents like that still stand out to me despite the fact that I spend most of my time here in the company of Brits.
So 11:20. I had to use the washroom. I don't really know what the etiquette for barging into a restaurant's restroom in is Japan yet, so I figured I'd just waltz back into the station and pay the 130 yen to take a piss and head back out.
Not so easy apparently.
Oh taking a piss was easy, as was getting the ticket. Walking out wasn't so much. To my surprise the ticketing system prevents tickets being used at the same station to leave the place (maybe a bug in the system?) Anyways, I was forced to take a train one stop away to Ebisu, purchase a ticket back in the opposite direction and hop off there. No harm done, but 260 yen for a washroom break is kind of a drag. In a fit of spite I used the restroom again on the way back. That'll show em'.
Met Melissa at 11:45 or so. We bounded off in search of a bar in which we planned to imbibe beverages of an alcoholic nature. On the way, right after getting through the scramble crossing we passed a crowd of police officers outside of a building. I have no real idea what was going on but I do know that there was someone who looked like they'd either taken a very bad spill or been clubbed with something. He was bleeding pretty profusely from the head. It was a fairly surreal start to the night too due to the tight packed crowds in the street we were on.
We made it to the bar and rendezvoused with the aforementioned Emma and James who were enjoying a fag outside of the place. The bar was packed which might have to do with the Arsenal game that was playing out on the TVs. It also catered pretty heavily towards foreigners, which was nice for a change.
I had a couple beers here with the others (count is up to 4 now). They were very cheap, 300 yen per. Not bad either, good old Asahi. I did, however, make a mistake here.
I had a craving for a Jaeger bomb.
For those who don't know or are too lazy to read the Wikipedia entry, this video gives you an idea of how they work. Actually it doesn't at all, I'm just messing with you. But the video's funny, just like this one. Pardon the swearing.
So yeah, in short a Jaeger bomb is a shot of Jaegermeister in a glass of Red Bull. Only problem is that apparently the primary drink mix with Red Bull outside of North America is Vodka. Eh. The first time I tried to order it at this pub all I got was a shot of Jaegermeister, which is kind of vile by itself. Fun fact: Jaegermeister was used by the German army in World War 2 as a field anesthetic. We left the bar shortly afterwards when we were joined by Don, a nice fellow from New York State.
We had to meet Ryan at the station. As previously mentioned, he's quite a distance away from Tokyo and it takes him a few hours to get into our area. Things were further complicated by the earthquake earlier in the day. Some of the trains had serious delays due to the uncertain state of the tracks. Ryan was supposed to make it to Shibuya for around 11:30 or so, but didn't actually reach it until around 12:40 or so. The Shinkansen actually stopped running. I suppose when the trains are moving as fast as they do you have to make sure that there aren't any faults on the track.
We collected Ryan and headed off to a club. The destination ended up being a basement club by the name of La Fabrique. The place had a lot of French writing around that made little sense but meh, what are you going to do? The music was a mix of electronica and other stuff, I guess. I'm not really sure, there are so many sub genres and they all sound generally the same to me. I wasn't really a fan of the DJs at this place though. They tended not to switch up beats fast enough. I think I would have preferred Gas Panic over this, but I'm not sure how the others would feel. Apparently Gas Panic is notorious as a pick up joint. Meh, I like the music.
The cover charge for the club was a whopping 3500 yen. $35. One drink. That's pretty ridiculous. Apparently a lot of clubs are like this in Japan, so it very much discourages doing much in the way of club hopping. It also turns out that a lot of people in Japan are not very energetic dancers. Such was the case at this club anyways. The patrons of the club seemed to stand mostly in nice little rows and sort of shuffle a little bit while moving their hands slightly.
It should also be known that I dance like a retard. I shouldn't be criticizing.
So I like to move my feet. Go sue me.
Seriously though, for my third serious time out clubbing, this was not so impressive. I still danced like crazy, but that's just how I roll. The DJ was bad enough that Ryan and I found the time to waltz for about 15 seconds in the middle of a particularly lame number. Might have just been an off night, who knows?
I proceeded to attempt to order two more Jaegerbombs at this club. The first one also ended up being a straight shot of Jaeger. The second however, after screaming at the top of my lungs, ended up being a proper bomb. My craving quenched, and with wings attached to my back, I hopped back into the melee. I bounced my way to the front and shook hands with the DJ and danced up there for a while before heading out with Melissa, Ryan, James and Emma. Don stayed behind with a Japanese acquaintance. It was about 4:30 at this point, so we headed out for a little bit of Karaoke. We booked a room and hopped to it. Karaoke is always fun, whether you're singing some serious stuff or bouncing to some ridiculous stuff. I soloed a classic: Backstreet Boys - I Want it That Way. Ryan and I slammed out Smashing Pumpkins - 1979, Emma and James rocked David Bowie - Space Oddity and everyone had great performances on Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger and Rage Against the Machine - Bulls on Parade. I killed my throat a little on that last, but it was worth it. We had a couple pitchers of beer and, as the oddest thing I've eaten in quite some time, fried chicken cartilage. That is some incredibly crunchy, chewy stuff. Very odd. Not bad though.
We left the club at (I think) 6:30 AM. We wandered our way back to the station and stopped by McDonald's for a quick egg mcmuffin. I was home by 8:00 and had a bottle of water on the walk home to help mitigate my impending hangover. My feet and legs were hurting after having danced for about 3 hours straight, but what I didn't realize at the time was that I actually had a really bad bruise on the inside of my right foot. I have no idea how it happened. My memory has never really been that bad after a night of drinking and I didn't fall down or anything. I did have a number of people step on my feet during the night and I also slammed my feet around pretty hard while I was dancing so really anything could have done it. Pretty frustrating though. I hope I can still jog tomorrow. I had to pass on Monday.
Sunday dawned with me nursing a bit of a hangover. It wasn't terrible, but enough that I hopped online and looked up a couple of hangover cures. Lots of water and Bananas are supposed to be good and I had both. I took off for my destination that night at around about 4:50. The destination was Hachioji-shi for another round of poker with Sean and his buds. I would go into depth about this but really, it was a fairly unremarkable night. I was second out of the game following Jason, the other Canadian guy there. I was very unlucky with the cards all night. The best hand I had was three of a kind and I was beaten by someone with a straight. Meh, it's only 1000 yen, right?
Going out a little bit early was nice though. I got to relax and drink quite a lot, again. Jason and I got into a very heated discussion about Indiana Jones. Jason is under the mistaken impression that the Temple of Doom is the best in the series after Raiders of the Lost Ark. This is obviously a massive error in judgment. The Last Crusade is BY FAR superior. Anyways, we got rather raucous and made asses of ourselves. We also had some INCREDIBLY spicy salsa. The spiciest salsa I've ever had. While I'm not a huge aficionado of extremely spicy foods, this stuff was brutal. It was bad enough that I teared up. It was good though.
The poker game ended around about 11:00. I spent the last 45 minutes bugging the remaining players to raise their blinds. Anyone who plays hold 'em knows you gotta double EVERY time someone goes out. That's what keeps the game high stakes. I also played some electronic darts and lost a lot because I've very rarely played darts. I caught the train home with everyone and apparently was drunk enough that I shouted on the train. Very taboo in Japan. I didn't remember this the next morning but I think that's mostly because it wouldn't have been thought of as all that unusual on a bus or train in Canada. Guess I still need to acclimate myself a little bit.
I made it home again, safe and sound, and slept in nice and late the next day. Later then I wanted too. I was hoping to get out and about, see some of Tokyo, but once again a hangover kind of prevented that. Again though, it wasn't too bad and I was feeling pretty good in an hour or too.
I headed out to grab the train into downtown Tokyo at around 1:00. I stopped by my school quickly to grab my clothes and my backpack and promptly forgot my tour book on my desk. Nuts. I had already paid for my ticket and was on the platform when I remembered. Oh well.
Because I didn't really have a guide I ended up sort of revisiting Shinjuku. I saw the other side of the city though, the more shopping-centric area. It was very cool. Not too busy because it was Monday and lots of interesting stuff. The Electronics store I went into was MASSIVE and I was very happy to find some of the best of Western game design represented. I tried to get a shot of myself holding a copy of Half-Life 2 while wearing the shirt with art from the same game printed on it, but no dice. I also discovered the DVD section which was pretty fun also. I bought a couple movies to watch while I'm over here and spruce up the collection of DVDs for the lobby DVD player at my school.
The advertising is very impressive in Shinjku. It's EVERYWHERE. It's to the point that buildings will have the contents of individual floors advertised on the outside of the building on a per-floor basis. Pretty insane. It was pretty fun to just sort of wander and happen upon some pretty cool things.
At 4:00 I nabbed a train heading south in order to meet up with Melissa, Ben, Don, James and Emma who were all going to the TGI Fridays in order to take advantage of Happy Hour. The avid readers of my blog will recollect that this is the town that I traveled to on the second day that I was in Japan. This trip was much happier and less stressful. I was there with just enough time to snap a picture of the station's police box before Melissa & Co. showed up. For those not in the know, Police Boxes are small police outposts that are used to stay in close contact with the community. They help out with things like directions and whatnot.
We headed to TGI Fridays and had a few drinks. I had my first Japanese Long Island Iced Tea and was seriously disappointed. The Margaritas were better though. I should have copied Melissa and had a mudslide. On the plus side, the finger food and quesadilla that I had were excellent.
Dinner concluded, the group split up. Don and I headed back to Tokyo and stopped off in Shinjuku for a short while. I wanted to check out a bookstore for a few books and maybe a text on Japanese. No luck though, the store we found was closing just as we got there. Ah well, next week. I made it home by around 9 and spent some time uploading pictures and whatnot before hitting the sack, another week concluded.
All in all I was a little disappointed by this last weekend. I still haven't felt like I've had the opportunity to really snoop around Tokyo and the twin hangovers really didn't help. I think next weekend I'm going to go clubbing again on Saturday, take it easy on Sunday and then explore Tokyo energetically on Monday. That's my plan anyways. Also, learn a little more restraint when out drinking.
Anyways, that's it for this week folks. I'm enjoying the sun flower seeds that one of my students brought me back from his business trip in Thailand. They're excellent!
Post again next week!
Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello
2 comments:
$35 COVER CHARGE?!?!!? that's ridonkulous!!! i've never heard of such sheer thievery.
ps. jager is too a good shot!
Blech! There are much better ones!
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