Hydrophillic History - Week 6 (June 17 - June 23)

Hydrophilic History

Week 6

*A much more rested then usual Ian sits down at his laptop and gets to typing*

Hello once again from Japan. I shall endeavor in the following short 'blog' entry to recount my exploits from the last 7 days, a period of time colloquially known as a 'week'.

Well, this week started much like many of the others have since I got here: on a Tuesday. My week was, once again, somewhat unremarkable. As previously mentioned, work doesn't really allow for much exploration or adventuring. A little heavy on the work and pretty light on the free time.

I will however say that I took a jog one of those nights (Wednesday I guess) in Koganei park. I was supposed to have run in the morning but I didn't due to the aforementioned injury I sustained to my right foot (see entry for week #5). I felt pretty guilty about not running when I got home from work though, so I strapped on my PT gear and jogged my usual route. My running shoes are more comfortable than I thought, so it didn't even hurt too badly. The park is a little bit eerie at night, I'm not going to lie. There's plenty of people around though, even at 10 PM. The most unexpected thing were the bats. The forested areas were rife with them. Makes jogging kind of odd when you have to duck your head every few seconds because something comes hurtling out of the blackness in front of you. I also ran across one of the most annoying things that can happen to me when I'm jogging: another jogger.

"But dear narrator," you ask, "you yourself were jogging. How can you express irritation on behalf of another fellow engaged in the same physical activity you are?"

My reply is thus:

"Close your gruel hole peasant! I make my reasons known only to those worthy of my auric phrase."

Ahem.

I don't have much of a competitive streak to me. There are only a few situations that'll really make me push hard. One of those is video games. The other is things like this. The jogger was running more or less the same path as I was and was about 50 yards ahead of me.

He must be passed.

So I did. Had to push myself a little hard to do it, but I did. Guess maybe that makes me kind of a dick, but it's just a personal thing. A goal to set. I guess I ran too many races as a kid or something.

Anyways, it was a fun run. I repeated the run again on Friday, but in the morning, which was absolutely killer. The weather turned extremely, extremely humid on Thursday and Friday as well as most of Saturday.

And that brings us up to the exciting part of the week.

That's right, Saturday.

After finishing off my article class, the article once again concerning the oil crisis, I changed into my clubbing clothes and hung around the office for a couple hours waiting for the Korean teacher to finish off her class. After closing up I booked it down to the convenience store, bought a six of Asahi "Super Dry" and hopped the Chuo to Shinjuku station. I met my buddy Kev from Fuji-Yoshida there (see post 3 for his original exploits) and we departed for Shibuya where Melissa was to meet us 11:15.

The plan was once again, Ageha.

By the time Kevin and I had gotten to Shibuya, it was raining lightly. Sadly, the "light" part of this was only temporary. Seeing as we had a little while to wait before Melissa showed up, Kev and I took a little promenade around the city and stopped by a McDonalds for food. I had a Teriyaki burger.

Stop!

Fun fact: according to the JET at my school Teriyaki is not an authentic Japanese food. Teri-Yaki actually refers to the way a fish is cooked on a flat grill (like the chicken and beef etc. at a Teriyaki place is) while yaki means sweet. Or something like that.

Go!

While Kevin and I were sitting there a couple of club-looking girls came downstairs. The one in front stopped with a surprised look around her face and uttered something that included "america-jin". I was sure to correct her by yelling out "Canada-jin desu!" They didn't respond.

Properly girded, Kev and I headed back to the station to meet with Melissa and Zoey. At this point it had started to piss rain. I was seriously starting to regret my decision to not bring an umbrella. Hindsight = 20/20, right? As we were leaving the McDonald's we passed a large group of gaijin which I hailed with "'Sup gaijin" and again got no response. What, am I invisible or something?

Kev and I bounced down the Hachiko and waited about 30 seconds for Melissa to show up. We then proceeded to stand in the pouring rain under Melissa's umbrella waiting for Zoey. As it turned out, Zoey was late and had forgotten her cell at home. We thought her phone was off or something, so when we couldn't get through to her we guessed she wasn't coming. Zoey did show up and actually ended up heading to Ageha on her own. Apparently it was gay night there, so it might have been a good thing Kev and I didn't end up there. I don't know how to say "just dancing" in Japanese.

With Melissa in tow (or maybe with us in tow) we headed out towards where I thought the bus terminal for the club was. Turns out I was wrong. We ended up wandering around in the rain. by this time I was soaked and so was Kev. My compatriot in hydraulic saturation was fortunate to be wearing a brown shirt. Myself, not so much. The white shirt I was wearing was becoming nicely transparent. Meh, I've got nothing to fear, except looking stupid. Check.

We ducked into a Mos Burger at this point to partake of the rest rooms. Melissa, having not eaten decided it was a good time for a burger. I concurred because I wanted to dry off a little. I'm glad we did because otherwise we wouldn't have had a fourth member for our squad.

Shortly after we settled in our booth a fairly tall individual sat down next to us and began to work away at his fast food. After he had finished he leaned over and asked us if the trains were running. We told him that they wouldn't be for much longer (it was 12:15 at this point) and that if he wanted to catch em' he'd better start running. After a couple minutes more of conversation we learned the following:

1. His name was Dennis
2. He is from Toronto
3. He's of Russian descent (he immigrated to Canada and has a slight accent)

This kind of weirded me out because he looks very similar to another Dennis I know that is of Russian descent, immigrated to Canada and shares about the same size and build. Very odd. Gave me wicked deja vu all night, so that every time I called him by his name I immediately did the "oh crap, oh crap, I just made a stupid mistake."

Anyways, after we left Mos Burger we decided to give up the search for the bus to Ageha. Instead we decided to go to a place called Club Asia that we had seen earlier that night. Shortly before venturing in that direction Kev and I bought some nice $15 umbrellas to see ourselves remain relatively dry for the next few minutes.

Shortly before reaching the club we were delighted to see a very, very wet Dennis poke Melissa on the shoulder. It turns out that his train had stopped running, so he was stuck in Shibuya for the night. The more the merrier, right? At the door to Club Asia the bouncer quickly confiscated our new umbrellas and tossed them in a bin. Nice. More on that later. He then proceeded to advance on me while uttering something I could barely hear. Turns out it was "body search" which went no problem. Into the club we go.

The place was kind of dead to start. A 3000 yen cover charge, which was cheaper then La Fabrique, a plus in my books already. Another nice thing was that the first thing that happened upon entering the club is that the bunch of us stumbled into a toast with a group of Japanese. It tasted kinda like Red Bull, don't know what it was. After a brief conversation, I got my first of three rum and cokes and was soon ready to hit the dance floor. Again, it was dead. We ended up waiting around in the bar until about 1:30 when the live band came on, the Metalchicks. They weren't bad, kind of minimalist thrash metal, just guitar and drums. It wasn't really anything to dance to either, but it got my head bouncing and got everyone pumped for the next DJ to pop onto the stage. He was called Force of Nature, and he wasn't bad. At this point I'd topped up with a Vodka and Red Bull (Jaegerbombs are just too hard to get) and I was really prepped to dance.

Which turned out to be a very, very good thing.

The next DJ, Rebel Familia, was AWESOME. Which is not much of a qualifier coming from me, having only been out clubbing 4 times. I danced my ass off. For like 3 hours. Again. Hurt feet in the morning, right? I should know better, huh? That's a no. I even managed to work my way all the way to the front and dance right next to one of the subs. This club was, of course, similar to La Fabrique last week in that everyone was facing the DJ while they were dancing in fairly well ordered rows. I, being the sucker for non-conformity that I am, turned around and ended up being just about the only guy in the place looking at the back of the club. Which was nice...I guess. I made my point anyways. Rage Against the Machine, right?

There were two memorable events. The first was that Kev got his ass grabbed a couple times by anonymous suitors. This leads me to conclude, along with the noted lack of the fairer sex at this club, that it may have in fact been Gay night here as well as at Ageha.

The other interesting thing was a guy that was head banging his ass off at the front of the club for most of the night. We'd seen him sort of low key dancing at the beginning of the night, gettin' his proverbial groove on. I guess he also got his liquor groove on because he was in fine form by the time Familia hit the stage. Enough that he jumped onto the stage and then got hustled off by security. Earlier in the night I'd done a little dance battle against him and ceded victory to him. I ended up at the front head banging along with him for a little while. Shortly thereafter I headed back to the bar to use the bathroom.

Aside. Oddly enough the bathroom had a continually replenished stick of incense burning next to the urinals. Smelled nice though.

I ran into this fellow in the bar on the way back. He grabbed me bye the shoulder and started telling me in broken English that he would quote "never forget this night." I sort of bobbed my head and nodded until he offered me a drink.

Sweet.

So I got a free Smirnoff Ice or, as SilverCity knows it, a 'gay', out of it. Appropriate for the night, no? We left the club shortly thereafterwards and used our ambulatory limbs to navigate towards the Shibuya Gas Panic. Same club as Roppongi from a couple weeks ago, remember? We enjoyed some choice hip-hop for a couple hours before the club closed down.

After leaving Gas Panic Kev and I were basically without umbrellas. Remember the two we bought before we hit Club Asia? Well, I left Club Asia without my original umbrella. I grabbed one that someone else dropped because I couldn't find mine. Kev managed to locate his, as did Melissa. When we left Gas Panic however, Kev's was gone. Mine was too, so I just nabbed another one. Unfortunately, it was a piece of crap. I dropped it in the umbrella rack at one of the 7/11s on the way from the station to my apartment.

I finally hit the sack at about 8:00 AM.

I woke up at around 3:00PM on Sunday. It was still pouring rain. Which was alright by me, I hadn't planned on doing anything on Saturday for the first time in a couple weeks (my apologies Sean and Patrick). I got up, with very sore legs, and hopped in the shower. After getting cleaned I filled the tub and took a bath, figuring it was the thing to do in Japan. I couldn't really deal with it for too long though. It had been so warm for the past few days that the last thing I wanted to do was cook in water for a half hour. So I hopped out after about 15 minutes.

Taking that bath was actually a really good thing I think. My legs felt a hell of a lot better the the rest of the day. Speaking of which, I spent the rest of the day doing a few chores around the house and watching 10 hours of The Wire. Lame, I know, but it's a really great show.

I woke up around about 10 on Monday morning and took off for downtown Tokyo. I was on my way back to Harajuku with unfinished business. There's a huge shrine in the middle of the area called the Meiji Jingu. This was my destination for the day.

And it was quite the day.

The area around the shrine is absolutely beautiful. Despite the fact that it's in the middle of Tokyo you can barely hear the city around it for all the birds and sound of wind in the trees. It feels isolated in a city of 30 million. Very impressive.

This was a pretty important day for me. It was really the first time I'd ever felt like I was looking at the ancient Japan. I can pinpoint the exact moment too. I walked out of the woods at one point and looked down at the fishing hole that Emperor Meiji had constructed. It looked like something out of a painting. I just kind of stood there and chuckled. It felt like all the history of the country was sitting on my shoulders.

I was also fortunate because the lilies were in full bloom in the shrine. I'd happened across the place in the best part of the year. Check my Facebook for pics. I can't really do it justice with words. The shrine itself was very cool, I walked around for quite some time before taking back off downtown to Shinjuku. I picked up a few books at the bookstore before heading back home, doing my weekly shopping and then basically calling it a night. I got in a little argument with my mom over the webcam. Apparently there's a 35%-45% chance that a magnitude 8 or higher earthquake hits Tokyo in the next couple years. Kinda late to find that out now. If it happens, it happens, right? That's the way the dice rolled.

Anyways, that's the long and the short of my week. I might update later with a longer entry about the Meiji Jingu, but I'm pretty tired tonight and I still need to upload all the pictures from this weekend.

One final addendum. On the way home from clubbing I had the weirdest revelation. I realized that the ground I was walking on, that very same ground, at some point, might have had a ronin face off against a group of guards, or a bunch of bushi fight off some bandits while protecting villagers. I hadn't realized the history of where I was quite yet. Very cool.

Anyways, until next week, this is, and will always be...

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Obnoxious Oration - Week 5 (June 10th to June 16th)

Obnoxious Oration

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

Equestrian Deviation - Week 4 (June 3rd to June 9th)

This post fueled by nikkuman, ramen and Asahi Super-Dry


Welcome back to the program.

Equestrian Deviation

Week 4

Quick recap. Last weekend ended with a somewhat beaten and exhausted Ian recovering from a night of wild festivities all over Tokyo. Thus, begins, the fourth week. As a note, I'll be skipping over any days during the work week that don't contain any particularly notable events.

Tuesday dawned with a nice new feeling for me. For the first time since starting this new job: I was really looking forward to getting into work and getting down to business. That having been said, this was a fairly unremarkable work week with a couple of exceptions.

I had to take care of quite a bit more paperwork this week then I had previous weeks. Fortunately I managed to keep up with my lesson planning, so ultimately no concern there. My routine at this point has been well established and I'm looking forward to the point where my lesson planning gets smooth enough that I can establish a week-long lead on planning. I'm nowhere near that point now though.

Wednesday was kind of unusual. It had been very humid for the last couple of days and that night, during my final lesson of the day, I was unfortunate enough to receive a pretty decent size nosebleed. At least it provided plenty of humor for my students while I tried to look serious with a piece of ripped up Kleenex jammed into my nostril. What can I say, I aim to please. On the downside my nose also started to bleed on the way home and I'm not yet in the habit of carrying around a package of tissues to wipe my hand on or, in this case, soak up blood. I ended up snorting like a coke-fiend for most of the 20 minute walk. Fun times. Oh, and it was raining.

Which is not unusual right now. It's rainy season for Tokyo, so it rains pretty much all the time. When it's not rainy it's oppressively humid and very warm. I prefer the rain myself. Except when I'm in a suit. Which is often. That's why they have dry cleaners.

Wednesday was also pretty impressive because I got called a gaijin for the first time while actually in earshot. By a four year old girl no less. AWESOME. The little tyke got a light tap on the chin from her mother for it but I don't really care. I find kids actually stare at me a lot. It's like I'm growing a scrotum out of the side of my head or something and the adults are all polite enough not to point and stare. Kids not so much. But it's kind of fun. I just smile and wave and they usually pretend like they weren't looking. Yep. I have light brown hair and blue eyes...unusual I know.

Rest of the week was pretty solid, nothing unusual happened. On Saturday my Newsweek article students didn't show up, which was kind of a drag because the article was quite interesting and fanned the flames of social justice in my heart. Did you know that the number of billionaires the world over has more then doubled in the past 5 years? Pretty insane, no?

But Saturday. Saturday was the start of a big-ish weekend. After work it was time for my welcome party at long last with the students from my school. We went to an izakaya which is sort of a Japanese fusion restaurant. Price of admission was $3000 yen a head, but it came with unlimited free drinks. Yeah. You read that last part right. Alcoholic Beverages. All you can drink. Mixed drinks, beer, whatever. As much as you want. I know, I thought it was insane too, but it made for a fun night. There were about 12 of us there including myself and the other two teachers from Musashi-Koganei. The food was excellent and varied. First dish was a sort of Japanese kim-chee that was very good, and cooked at the table on a gas burner of course. This is in addition to the nice salad and salty rice crackers that greeted us at the table when we sat down. After that it was, surprisingly enough, a large platter of nann bread and curry (made me think of you Kev). Finally we had some nice honey-garlic-ish chicken and some steamed vegetables. The very last dish we received were some noodles and a few raw eggs which one of Sean's student used to change the remnants of the kimchee into an entirely concoction. Very cool.

All of this food was interspersed with 4 beers and plenty of excellent if somewhat fragmentary conversation. Sean and I made a pact that by the end of the year I will make him a fan of the Montreal Canadians while he will make me a fan of Manchester United. I wouldn't mind getting a taste for soccer, it is after all the world's most popular sport. One of my students had been out surfing for the first time this year and was bright red with sun burn. I hope he's alright, because it looked like he might have some 3rd degree burns. I talked quite a bit to my students about movies and sports which was quite nice. It was also nice to be a little, teensy bit less formal around everyone. I think it was a great time for all. I also got complimented on how well I use chopsticks. That's pretty sweet. Thank you Manchu Wok and the dozens of discount of Chinese meals I had there while working at Famous Players Rideau.

I began the long march home around about 11:00. I was very philosophical (read: drunk) at this point, so it was a pretty fun walk with the exception of one thing. A block from my house I happened to look left at a rock wall and noticed a cat that was standing on top of a brick wall. Unfortunately, it looked like the cat might have run afoul of a car or scooter or something. the cat had a pretty wicked scratch on one of it's hind legs. I walked back to my house, hopped into my plain clothes, grabbed my Famous Players flash light (wow, Mo!) and headed out to find the cat again. I succeeded only to realize the utter futility of my situation: I don't know where the nearest animal hospital is and I don't speak the language and I think it would look pretty insane for me to stumble up to someone's house drunk with a bloodied feline.

*sigh*

So I turned around and went home. I feel pretty guilty about that cat. I hope it's okay. On the plus side, on closer inspection, it didn't seem as bad as I initially thought. Plus the cat was ambulatory, so as long as it kept itself in plain view, I'm sure someone helped it.

So other then that, it was a pretty great night.

Saturday was also a benchmark for two other things. The first is that it marked exactly one month of living in Japan! Woot! Betcha it feels like I've barely left, right? *insert trademark lopsided grin* The other is that it was the first time I got a student to renew their contract with the school! Granted, she was a shared student, but it felt pretty good.

Sunday dawned and I hopped out of bed with a purpose. A friend of Sean's, Gareth, had invited me to the Tokyo Racecourse along with Sean to partake in that most classic of British sports, horse racing. Sean had been talking about it all week and we had decided to dress up all classy like in our suits and really hit the track like Ocean's 11 or something.

I ironed up a shirt, threw on my best pink-and-black striped tie and started on my way to meeting my friends at the train station. It was very hot, maybe high twenties plus about 80% humidity. More maybe. I don't know. Enough that everywhere you looked it was hazy. I was sweating pretty badly in my suit.

I got off the train on the way to the racecourse and bounded up the steps in the station only to see my compatriots clad in what could only be described as T-shirts and shorts or jeans. Needless to say, I was surprised. But no problem. I was just cooking all afternoon. On the plus side, I didn't get any sunburn.

The Tokyo Racecourse is large. Very large. And very impressive. Maximum capacity is 223,000 people. This is of course pretty impressive because most of it is just on one side of the track. There's a sitting area in the middle of the track ring, but other then that, all on one side. Very cool. Also quite busy too. We got to betting right away. This was somewhat difficult, due to the fact that the betting forms were entirely in Japanese. Fortunately, Sean had printed out a translation from the web a couple of nights previously which was a great boon to our effort. I still managed to beat on the wrong horse though. On the plus side, I won! I made about 650 yen on top of my 1000 yen bet. The rest of the day didn't go as well for me. I kept the rest of my bets smaller, around 200 yen or so, with the exception of the 11th race, which was the last race of the Asian Mile Challenge. Pretty exciting. I bet a total of 1600 yen on the 11th race across a number of different horses. One of the ones with a smaller bet on it won, so that was pretty cool. Very very exciting.

My lunch was some onigirii and beer. Followed by more beer. I'd had three by the time we left the track at around 5, and the combination of extreme heat had already made me a little tipsy. Afterwards we went out for Korean BBQ which was awesome, but also came with about 2 or 3 more beers and some crazy milky Korean alcohol which I don't remember the name of. Dinner was, again, awesome! Cow tongue, grilled veggies, mmmmmmm very good, all topped off with a simple vanilla ice cream.

I'd consumed more than my usual amount of alcohol so by the time I was on the train home I was pretty ruined. I managed to stumble back to my apartment and pass out. A fantastic night all and all though. I had a ton of fun and great conversation with all the other teachers. An excellent night all around.

Monday dawned at around 8 for me. I had planned to roll onto the floor and get up early enough to head out for a bunch of sightseeing. But that didn't happen. Combination hangover/laziness/weekend led to three hours of hitting snooze and then getting out of bed at 11. I wasn't hurting too badly though, so I got dressed in my basketball shorts and Casino Royale T-shirt and went for a nice jog in some light rain. Very pretty. I pushed myself pretty hard and ran for about 20 minutes straight without stopping, which was nice. I rested a little bit towards the end and finished up my 1/2 hour before turning for home. I hope to be out jogging again tomorrow morning, but we'll see if I have the energy.

By the time I'd gotten home from the jog it was already well past 12. I had to do some laundry and I didn't want to leave the house before it was hanging, so I got that started and surfed the web for a while. By the time that was finished it was approaching 2. I finally got everything together and left the house at 2:30.

I had a couple of tasks to take care of. The first was getting my dry cleaning done. The former occupant of my apartment had left a number of ties at work, which was pretty awesome of him. I took those and a couple of my suit pants to the cleaners and went through the fairly simple process of getting my membership at the place. Membership also came with a bonus gift of a bottle of dish detergent, so I'm good in that department for a couple of months. It was about 3:00 now and it was time to get my haircut. I found a salon near the dry cleaners that was open (most of them were closed for some reason) and got my haircut. It was pretty nice atmosphere and the young woman cutting my hair was quite nice. Had kind of a Bohemian feel to it. (Damn, just started chewing my last piece of Canadian chewing gum. I'll miss you excel!). I had a conversation with her that was pretty fragmentary, although ultimately pretty good. We discussed a lot of music. She was a fan of Paris Hilton (ugh) but also a lot of techno and house, which was cool. Plus she knew the Foo Fighters. The PA system in the salon played Aqua - Dr. Jones and a song by New Order that I don't know while I was there. Pretty unusual tunes, put cool at least for the latter. I managed to avoid confusing her at all and was greatly aided by the directions my JET had written out: "Same style, 2 centimeters shorter". I ended up with pretty much the same haircut I had before, which is pretty cool, but I'm kind of bored of it at this point. This explains the picture of Daniel Radcliffe up top. I think I'm probably gonna print a couple of pictures and ask for that haircut next time I go. Opinions? I've already been told I look like Daniel Radcliffe a couple of times over here. The capstone to this experience was when the hairdresser asked me if my hair was dyed. When I responded no she told me that my hair was beautiful.

Not used to that.

Okay. 4 o'clock now, one 3000 yen haircut richer. Like I said, I had planned to hit the touristy spots but it was a little late in the day for me to do that now. I had a dinner I was supposed to attend in Yokohama at 7 but it was cancelled, so I didn't really have a reason to leave Musashi Koganei. I decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to explore a little bit south of the train tracks.

Musashi-Koganei has kind of a strange feel to it. At times when I was walking around it almost felt as though I was in a small town in rural Ontario. I know that sounds kind of insane looking at the density of it all, but it really is a small town as far as cities go in Japan. It's a pretty neat aspect of the town, and may I reiterate that I'm very, very happy to be living in this particular town.

I explored the South of my city quite a bit. I came across a river that I later learned was called the No River which sort of appears out of nowhere. It also had paths down along the River bed. I wandered around town a little bit more, explored a temple that I found (very peaceful) and eventually ended up walking with the ducks, butterflies and fish down near the river. Very weird thing to find in the middle of what is otherwise a very dense city. It made for a very, very nice walk though.

I'm gonna take a minute here to yell a little bit about something though. So far, and speaking through un-culture-shocked glasses at this point in time, Japanese neighbourhoods are a world apart from their North American counterparts. Yeah, Japanese yards are tiny, but they don't need to be large. It is very nice seeing all of these neatly ordered houses with their 5 feet stone walls. Not only that, but the small trees that almost everyone seems to be growing out of their yards are absolutely idyllic. This has brought me to a stunning realization.

Grass is fucking ugly.

No seriously, it really is. It's like having a giant bright green carpet. Who wants that? I'd much rather have an awesome little garden or some nice trees or a hedge or something. Lawns are a waste of space.

There, I said my piece.

I wandered back to the center of Koganei after walking along the river for about 20 minutes. I stopped off at a Graveyard on the way to look around. Very nice, but pretty similar to western ones, just closer packed (again, no grass). After that I made my way to Jonathan's. Very nice little restaurant specializing in American food. I had a Japanese dish though. I was very happy to order food in a proper restaurant for the first time by myself.

My timing for dinner (around 6) was fortuitous in that about 15 minutes after I got there the skies split asunder and started pouring rain. And I mean pouring. It was Blade Runner rain. I've never seen it rain that hard for so long. The storm lasted almost 2 hours and was very close by. No time between lightning strikes and thunder. I went out to get some video of the storm and soon thereafter made my way through the pelting rain to Seiyu. Nothing really remarkable there. I bought a handkerchief to mop up sweat and a folding chair to sit in that doesn't cause severe spinal injury like the stool I had been using thus far. It's quite comfortable (bounces) and only cost me 1500 yen. Very nice as Borat would say.

The oddest thing about Seiyu today was the music selection. In order, I received muzak versions of the following: BJ Thomas - Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head, Hanson - MMMMBop, Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit. In that order. Bizarre.

The rest of monday was very uneventful. I bought some Asahi super-dry on the way home and cleaned my apartment a little before heading to bed. Another week complete!

Note to everyone still reading. Photo requests are now open. Here's how it works: Post a comment on this post at the bottom detailing what you would like me to try and get a picture of. I'll do my best to get em' as soon as possible. Kinda like a scavenger hunt around a country, right?

Next Tuesday I'll hopefully have tales of a gigantic dance club. We'll see though.

Updating again soon.

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

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
H
I
T
!
!
!

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)