Mariachi Uprising - Week 16 (August 26 - September 1)

Mariachi Uprising

Week 16

Hello again!

Well, another week of relative inactivity has passed by over on this side of the Pacific. As previously mentioned, I've been keeping it low-key in order to save up money for Thailand although the next two weekends promise to be a bit more exciting.

The week started out a little bit rough for me. After running too energetically (or recklessly) on Tuesday night I ended up with a pretty nasty calf strain in my right leg. I think this was a long time in coming as I've had repeated problems over the past couple months with this particular bundle of bone, sinew and tendon. Blame shall be targeted at running the stairs in the park, due to the sudden speeding up and slowing down that has to be done on the ascent and descent.

The upshot is I had to take a week off of running. I just ran again tonight (Tuesday) and made it slightly under my usual distance before I started getting some unusual sensations in my leg that prompted me to end the jog prematurely. It's still tingling a little bit now, but I'm hoping that that's not really a problem. We'll see tomorrow. (ed: Ice helped as it turns out)

Other than that the week ran pretty smoothly. I picked up two new movies for the lobby on Friday (Titanic and There Will Be Blood) and enjoyed the change from The Kingdom. Payday, woohoo! I also paid for my flight to Thailand on Friday which I may regret doing. More on that later.

The one major downside to this week was the sequence of major thunderstorms that rocked the city, especially Thursday night. Thursday may have been the worst storm I've seen here so far. Extremely heavy rain combined with near constant thunder for something like 8 hours. Friday contained a very random lightning strike that was within a kilometer of the house after about an hour of silence. Sounded like shotgun going off in the room. All and all terrible weather.

Saturday came and went peacefully without any wild and crazy goings-on in Tokyo. I selected my team for Fantasy Football in the afternoon with Sean. Turns out I either have a hidden talent for fantasy sports or I'm just extremely lucky because I jumped from 8th out of 13 to the coveted number one spot in our private league. Not bad, but probably won't be holding this position for long.

Sunday was unremarkable too. I had perhaps intended to go down to Ueno, but a combination of wanting to conserve money, ironic considering the purchase I made Monday, and the late hour at which I awoke resulted in me dropping my plans. Spent the afternoon reading my book, researching Universities and playing video games.

I can say though, that Monday was pretty interesting...and weird. This all started with the knowledge that Zoey, who I have mentioned multiple times on this blog, departs for colder pastures in the next couple weeks. Before she took off though, there's still a couple of things that had to be attended to. Checked off the list as it were. One of these was located in the the hive of wretched scum and villainy known as Akihabara.

We were going to a maid cafe.

And there was a decent sized group for it too. Myself, Melissa, Don, Zoey, Shinsuke, John (a fellow from a competing language school) and even Winny who took the bus down from Fujiyoshida for the occasion. We headed out to the @Home Cafe, which occupies four floors of a building in Akihabara. It was actually pretty difficult to get in considering the fact that we were there on a Monday afternoon at about 3. We had to line up on the exterior stairway for about forty minutes in sweltering Tokyo weather. That wasn't so much fun.

By the time we got in though we already had a pretty good idea of what was in store, which was a good thing because, well, to be quite frank, it was pretty fucked up. That's not to say it wasn't entertaining, it was just pretty...unusual.

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Well, first of all, everyone in there is wearing a french maid's uniform, in this case, white and brown. There's J-pop music blaring out the whole time you're in there, which was annoying at first but kind of faded into the background. The maid that took our order had very good English, which I think is a direct result of the number of foreigners that patronize these places. There were a couple of thugged-out chaps sitting at the entrance when we arrived that could not have looked more out of place.

We took our seats (Melissa and John were separate due to sitting limitations) and ordered up. A short while later, another maid returned with our orders. In the interim Don took the opportunity to get a picture taken with one of the maids, which was pretty awesome. I was the only one who had ordered something that required additional preparation (a blended coffee, as opposed to American coffee, which are the only two main types of hot coffee in Japan). I asked for 1 milk and 1 sugar and was completely surprised when the waitress mixed them into the coffee for me. After that, she had everyone else select a straw for their drink.

Then things got more surreal.

The maid had everyone form a heart shape with our hands before waving them back and forth in unison while saying "moe, moe, kyuuuuuuu." Moe translates to something like "love" or "sexy". I have no idea what Kyu means. But it was kind of...insane.

The two major sources of money in this place seemed to be the pictures with the maids and also playing bizarre little games with the maids. Think games along the lines of Rock em' Sock em' Robots. I had a profound sensation of "not getting this" the whole time I was there. We left after our allotted one hour was up with our member's cards in hand (pictured above). If I visit the place 2000 times my card gets updated to "The Legend" level. I think once was enough.

We headed out to Akihabara Yodobashi Camera, an absolutely massive branch of this national electronics retailer. We were all on the lookout for something. Melissa ended up with a pair of iPod speakers, Zoey with new ear buds, Caroline (who took John's place when he left) a set of headphones. Winny hunted for a camera but was ultimately unsuccessful. I, on the other hand, found what I was looking for. Canon's Digital Rebel XSi or, as it's known in Japan, a Canon Kiss X2. Very, very nice piece of photographic equipment, switchable lenses, everything. It makes me feel more professional just holding it. We'll see if that holds up in Thailand.

After Yodobashi it was off to dinner at a place I recommended to everyone: Fonda de la Madrugada. I know, I know, it's a repeat of dining locations, but when you have a craving for Mexican you MUST satisfy it. And damn, was it ever satisfied. That place is easily one of my favorite restaurants ever. Especially this time, because Don recommended a song off the soundtrack for Kill Bill vol. 2, "Malaguena Salerosa". It was a really impressive performance, the guitar especially. Huge applause from everyone at the restaurant. Great times had by all.

Headed home, did some grocery shopping, opened up my new camera and started taking a few shots. Nothing amazing, just testing right now. I'm really happy with it so far though.

A final note for this week, though it boils over into next week like a storm surge over a levy wall. Thailand is currently in the middle of some mild political upheaval. We're going to give it a couple of weeks to calm down, but if nothing changes there will be a sudden and abrupt change of plans in the coming weeks. The likelihood of us canceling plans is directly proportional to the amount of time protesters spend blockading airports. I'm not particularly interested in spending a week languishing in Bangkok International...so yeah. On the downside, I doubt I can do anything to un-request my vacation time now. Them's the breaks. Also, flight cancellations are expensive as it turns out. I'm hoping everything comes together, but unless the Prime Minister of Thailand acquiesces to the protesters demands, it's not likely.

That's it for this week. Next weekend is the big going away party for Zoey, so expect a lot of drunken reveling to be related in these storied...um...kilobytes?

yours, perplexed as per usual

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello


P.S. Les, I emailed you concerning locations of interest in Thailand, but I'm not sure if your email blocked my address. I hope you got it!