Cinephilic Surfing
Week 13
Three Months
With a whiz and bang my fingers tap out the rhythm that is ensconced within this most holy of internet institutions, the blog. More specifically, Japan from the Canadian Eye.
Back again with more tales of daring-do. Let's get the formalities out of the way first.
The work week was pretty decent, quite quiet. It's Obon season right now (well, more specifically at the time I'm writing this) but a lot of students are still out on summer vacation. Wednesday was a little bit unusual. Sean and I didn't have any classes in the afternoon so we headed out to Tachikawa to poke around a little. We stopped by Bic Camera where I found a really, really cool tripod that's super small, super light and fairly decently featured for less than 1000 yen. It even came with a bag! Really cool, I tested it out today (the 12th) and it works wonders!
Sean and I had lunch at a little Italian place that was pretty decent. Apparently it's a chain of restaurants, but the food was pretty decent, including the pizza we had. Other than that, it was straight back home to Koganei to finish off the work day and, by extension the work week.
Saturday was an unusually easy day for me this week due to a few students shuffling their schedules around to contend with work schedules and holidays. I only ended up teaching 3 classes as opposed to the more standard 7. This also meant that I finished the week at the down right early time of 6 o'clock. Unfortunately this meant I had five hours to kill before I met up with Melissa, Winny, Zoey and Ryan in Shibuya for the usual Saturday night activities...da clubzzzz!
I filled the intervening time by heading over to Kichijoji (a few stops down the Chuo line) and went to my first Japanese movie theater! It was a pretty unusual experience. The ticket booth was on the outside of the building to start, kind of like in a a super old theater. I paid my money and promptly took an elevator up to the 5th floor, which was where the cinema for my movie was located. As it turns out, movie theaters in Japan (or Tokyo anyways) tend to be built vertically. So every two floors in the building held a theater for a total of 4 or 5, I didn't count. Once i made it to the floor my theater was on my ticket was ripped and I was ushered into a sort of...lobby. It felt more like the waiting room for a dentist or something. There was no snack bar, just vending machines. On the plus side, one of them contained Sapporo, which I purchased to start the show with. On the down side the only popcorn available was in a bubble gum machine-like apparatus and was heated by a light bulb. The machine claimed that the popcorn was both "hot" and "fresh" but I have a distinct notion that this is propaganda the likes of which has not been seen since the middle of the Cold War in the good old U.S.S.R.
After the previous showing of the film let out the ushers propped the doors open much like I used to do at Silver City and I headed on in. Rideau Center may in fact be a better comparison though. The theater was kind of showing its age, from seats that were still in the old "gentle slope" pattern rather than the stadium-style seating of modern multiplexes to the curtain that draped itself over the screen prior to the show. Also, no digital pre-show. It was kind of nice to see the curtains roll open at the start of the show though. Really brought me back *tear*.
Japanese theaters also benefit from a near complete absence of non-filmic advertising prior to the trailers on the print itself. I really appreciated this, although the opportunity to see some wacky commercials is mourned when it passes by.
The trailers rolled and speakers crackled and, a couple of minutes past eight, I was watching a sub-titled in Japanese print of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I won't go too deeply into a review here (that might show up on Cutsc3ne later in the week) but I will say it was pretty decent. I went in with pretty low expectations though, so it would have been quite difficult to disappoint me. I would say it was better than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom but not as good as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Oddly enough, there is a scene involving a nuclear detonation towards the beginning of the movie. I was watching it on August 9th which is the anniversary of the dropping of the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. I found that a little bit awkward.
Once the credits started sliding up the screen I was already skittering towards the door. I was on the Chuo line before I knew it and headed to Shibuya.
We all met up at around 11:30 (with the exception of Zoey, she met us at 12:15) and headed to get some food. We had intended to go to the really cool elephant izakaya from two weeks ago before hitting the club scene but we accidentally got off on the wrong floor and ended up in something that looked like it had gotten pulled directly out of Kill Bill. It was a kind of recreation of a small Japanese village, really, really cool. We had our own little booth with a rice paper screen and everything. The food was good, but expensive. I tried sashimi for the first time. Sashimi, for those who do not know, is similar to sushi with the exception that it does not have any rice to accompany it. It is only strips of raw fish, that's it. And it's very good, especially with wasabi!
Conversation was quite jovial around dinner, as this was the first time Ryan had been down for some time, and we had not seen him in a few months. Stories were swapped around, jokes were made, a good time was had by all, and I was almost sad to leave the restaurant for a dialog decimating club. Alas though, around 1 AM it was time to displace.
Properly energized, we departed for Club Pure, for numerous reasons, enumerated in no particular order:
1. The cover charge of 3500 yen (2500 yen for women) included unlimited free drinks.
2. The choice of music for the night was Hip-Hop which, other than Gas Panic, we hadn't really experienced yet in Tokyo.
3. It was close? I don't really have a third, but what's the point of listing with numbers if you don't have at least three points?
The club wasn't bad...It wasn't great either though. The inclusion of free drinks in the cover ensured a cheap, but frustrating night. The bar was, of course, CONSTANTLY packed. Also, the drinks were generally about half what you normally expect. They even skimped on the Coke in the Jack and Cokes Ryan and I ordered. It was also pretty packed. Melissa even told me that she was about to throw down on someone for bumping into here too much, but fortunately that didn't end up happening. Overall I wasn't greatly impressed. Really, it was an upscale Gas Panic and it didn't have the big advantage of Gas Panic: you can't finish your night there for free after enjoying music OTHER than Hip Hop.
We broke up at around 4:30 and headed home. Ryan was coming back to stay at my place for the night as he was also taking part in the festivities the next day down at the beach. We were stranded in Shinjuku until 6:20 so we decided to walk around a little bit. We ended up strolling through Kabukicho again. This time, as two adult males without the benefit of female companionship, it was a little bit more seedy than the last time. We were approached at one point by a fellow who was likely part of the Nigerian mafia who offered us "pretty ladies" or some such at the small price of 4000 yen an hour. When we kept on walking he began to reduce the price until it became "I will give you 2000 yen to go in for an hour". Yeah. THAT was likely to happen. We were also solicited by a pair of call girls a few blocks down.
Not really all that more impressive than it was during the daytime. Apparently it's the Yakuza that runs the businesses in Kabukicho but it's the Triads and the Nigerians that handle most of the dirty work. Pretty interesting power structure there.
Ryan and I made it back to my place around 7:30 AM and hit the sack only to awake about 4 1/2 hours later at 12 PM in order to head on down to...ENOSHIMA!
...AGAIN!
What? I'm still excited! It's a freakin' beach!
We headed down and made it there for a little past 3:30. We took an oddly circuitous route that ended with a monorail trip. I thought it was pretty cool though. We also had a to hike a bit to meet up with the other on the beach (Melissa, Zoey, Winny, Kaz, Yuka and Seth). I shouldn't be complaining though. It was damn nice to be on the beach.
Once we found our spot we dropped our gear and I dashed off (literally) into the ocean. The waves were a bit bigger this time out, the largest one being maybe 4 feet or so, which made swimming a lot more interesting. Especially for Seth who was trying to keep his drink uncontaminated.
The larger waves also made for a slight problem, at least in the eyes of us swimmers. We had to start dodging surfers and body boarders later in the day when the tide started coming in and the waves became decent. That made the denouement of our swimming a little less entertaining, but I still had a great time.
After we dried off we headed to Fujisawa and a place called Nexus for dinner. It was a nice little diner that made some really good food. I ordered a bunch of Mexican with Ryan and Yuka, but then decided it would be better to order something else when I discovered that our order of nachos contained about 7 chips. Not so impressive. The enchilada was good and Ryan told me that the Fajita was too. I ordered some taco rice and opted out of the rest of the mexican food so Ryan and Yuka would have enough. The taco rice turned out to be amazing though. Probably the best food there.
I headed home and hit the sack. Unfortunately I set my alarm wrong and missed my opportunity to hang out with Winny and Zoey in Ginza. As it stood I just sort of "puttered around the house" as Anna would say. I left to meet Jason and Sean at 6 in Tachikawa as this weekend would be appropriately book ended by films. The second is one I've been looking forward too ever since I saw the first trailer...
The Dark Knight
Tachikawa's theater was a lot more modern than Kichijoji's, but still didn't have the level of quality of a multiplex back home. It wasn't bad though, and the picture quality was pretty decent too. Focus was a little bit off though.
All this doesn't matter though.
The Dark Knight was really, really good. I urge everyone to see it, as it is a good movie in addition to being a good comic book movie. It's also likely the best comic book movie ever made.
That pretty much ended my week though. I headed home, bought some groceries and organized some more for Fuji. I'm going to bleed a little bit over into the next week and just say that I spent some time in Shinjuku today buying equipment for the climb (boots, a head lamp, gloves and socks). I also went back to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building and got some proper photos of Tokyo at dusk and in the late evening, hence the photos at the top of the page (Blade Runner eat your heart out).
I climb Fuji next Sunday. I'll talk to you all about it next week, and don't worry, I'll be safe.
Talk to you soon.
Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello
All this doesn't matter though.
The Dark Knight was really, really good. I urge everyone to see it, as it is a good movie in addition to being a good comic book movie. It's also likely the best comic book movie ever made.
That pretty much ended my week though. I headed home, bought some groceries and organized some more for Fuji. I'm going to bleed a little bit over into the next week and just say that I spent some time in Shinjuku today buying equipment for the climb (boots, a head lamp, gloves and socks). I also went back to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building and got some proper photos of Tokyo at dusk and in the late evening, hence the photos at the top of the page (Blade Runner eat your heart out).
I climb Fuji next Sunday. I'll talk to you all about it next week, and don't worry, I'll be safe.
Talk to you soon.
Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello
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