Maidservant Contusions - Week 11 (July 22 - July 28)

Maidservant Contusions

Week 11

And here I am with the second half of this week’s blog posting! I’ll refrain from the small talk and jump right into the meat of today’s recital of adventuring and whatnot.

I’m writing this particular post from the comfort of my desk at school listening to Sean’s dulcet tones as they delve through a sprint 7 lesson. It’s a bit cloudy outside and I have a wonderful view of the massive construction crane that’s helping in the assembly the second set of elevated tracks at the Musashi-Koganei station.

This week started with some rather unfortunate news. As you know from my short blog post, I lost my internet. I’ll get into the reasons for that later. As for the week itself, it was good, as per usual, although extremely busy. I’m edging pretty close to being on overtime as far as teaching hours go. Fortunately, things have cooled off a little in this passing week.

One thing that has changed for the better is my Wednesdays. I’m back to my more traditional Wednesdays that have only one class at 8:00 PM, hence the decidedly afternoon-ish composition time of this particular blog entry.

I got my hair cut Wednesday using the picture of Mr. Radcliffe from Week 5's entry as a model for the cut. It came out pretty much looking exactly like it did before, but a bit shorter. It did inspire to begin using what is colloquially referred to as ‘product’. Just a little bit of hair wax to keep things under control. Still haven’t found a type of wax that’s strong enough to actually keep my hair in position for an entire day. I’m not sure, but it might just be a difference between the thickness of my hair versus the thickness of the average Japanese hair...

The haircut itself was actually quite a bit of fun though. I spent most of the time trying to keep my head still while looking through my English-Japanese dictionary so as to be able to talk with my hair dresser, Haru. Took about one and a half hours for the whole thing, but it was a lot of fun. I talked music with her and a co-worker, Ryo. It’s a pretty funky little hair salon and I throw a wave in their direction every afternoon on the way to work.

Ahem.

After that liberal dose of metro-sexuality, let me get on to the rest of the week. Last week actually was more remarkable than usual. Thursday, for example, was Unagi day. Unagi, (eel) which I had for lunch last week in Asakusa, was being served in almost every restaurant in Japan. I got my bento of Unagi from Wakana, and it was quite delicious with the possible exception of the very sharp but small bones that occupy the rear section of the fish. I was informed by Kayoko that this section, although being served, is not supposed to be eaten. Looks like I came out without severe intestinal bleeding though. I think Thursday also marked the largest earthquake I’ve felt so far. It was heavy enough that my windows rattled, and it went on for about two minutes (sorry mom, I know this will freak you out, but I want to record it!). I think, after looking at some information, that the quake probably measured somewhere between 4 and 5 on the Richter scale. I’ve actually come to use my hibiscus as a kind of canary. If the leaves are shaking on it I know it’s an earthquake I’m feeling, not just my imagination or a particularly bad hangover.

Friday marked the beginning of the Koganei summer festival. Decorations had been appearing all over town for the past couple weeks and the festival itself began with a flourish on Friday night. I spent most of Friday night yelling over the drums as I tried to teach my students, which was mildly annoying, but was made up for by actually being able to witness most of the festival on Saturday.

Saturday night again ended with a memorable moment in my article class. I’d been talking to my students about the Asahi Super Dry Building and its somewhat questionable piece of modern art. One of my students in this final class of my week started laughing when I talked to him about it. His comment on my story goes as follows:

“Do you know what we call that here?

“What?” I replied.

“The golden shit!”

Again, I laughed like crazy. That class is such a great note to end the week on, something like a b -sharp I should think.

And that of course also ended my work week. Suit off, jeans and T-shirt on, I hit the streets with my coworkers to check out the Koganei festival, and more specifically, the Awaodori dancing.

Awaodori is a style of dancing that originated from one of the two southern islands of Japan, Shikoku. There are a couple of different cities in Tokyo that perform this particular style of dance at their festivals, Koganei being one of them. It’s pretty neat, every district of the city has their own teams that come out and compete. One of my students was actually dancing on one of these teams, so I spent most of the festival wandering around looking for her section. I think I found it too, towards the end, but I couldn’t pick her out. I recognized the yukatas on the team though.

This festival made me really feel a sense of community that I hadn’t felt for a very long time. The city was really hoping and it seemed as if almost the whole city was crowded around the downtown. Food vendors had materialized in the streets and were selling all sorts of different food. It was a really great time, but I only caught about an hour and a half of it before the festival started shutting down and I had to leave.

I had plans.

And these plans involved one James, who was previously present for clubbing at La Fabrique (see week #5 ). It was, unfortunately, another farewell party, for James was returning home. I headed down to Shibuya and met up with Don and Melissa after sitting in the Hobgoblin for 45 minutes waiting for an order of chips to come and slowly drinking a nice big glass of Heineken. Melissa showed before the chips came though, so I sent them off to another table and met her at Hachiko.

We proceeded to be met by Faye, another GEOS teacher, who took us to a restaurant where the other members of our party were waiting. Seth, another co-worker of Melissa’s along with James, Caroline and two managers from Melissa’s area comprised this additional detachment of merry-makers. The restaurant was another Izakaya, but it was very cool, with this really neat Indian theme. I’m looking forward to heading back there at some point.

After a quick dinner we marched down to the club area of Shibuya and attempted to get into Club Atom. Our efforts were rebuffed however when one of the members of our party discovered that they did not have a photo ID in their possession at the time. At times like these there’s only ever one option...

Gas Panic.

We headed to this house of hip-hop which, as previously mentioned, enjoys a slightly infamous reputation. Every time we go there something unusual seems to happen, and this time was no different.

Since we were there early in the night, this was my first experience with being bothered incessantly to buy drinks in the club. There’s no cover charge, which is extremely unusual in Tokyo so it doesn’t really bother me that much, it just makes it tough to dance sometimes. When the barmen start coming round with their flashlights and laminated menus I start to feel like a grizzly bear trying to live in Central Park.

It was fun to dance to hip-hop again after all the techno we’d been listening to lately. This particular night the club was quite packed, and eventually the dance floor was getting pretty squished.

And it was somewhere around this point that one of the women in our group started getting grinded (or ground on, I'm not sure I've heard the latter conjugation used to describe this action) on by some random dude.

Now, call me naive, foolish, old fashioned or any combination of the three, but it kind of bothers me when someone jumps into the group without any pretense and starts up with one of the girls in our posse. I always have this instant "leave her the fuck alone" impulse that shoots through my head. It usually results in me moving over and dancing close to the other fellow in an attempt to edge him out in as subtle a way as possible. Suppose that makes me a "game killer" or a "cock blocker" or some other slang term. Usually nothing much comes of it.

In this case it was not a sound course of action.

I bumped into the guy a couple of times and shortly after the fourth time I was getting helped up off the floor by about three or four guys. It was literally that quick, I don't even remember falling. The guy must have pushed me or hit me or something because that couple of seconds is the only part of the night I don't remember. I've been reflecting on it all week though. I guess my actions may have been a bit sexist. Really, women will be able to handle this particular situation themselves, almost all the time. It would take a spectacular dick of a guy to not take the hint and back down. I figure in the future I'll probably leave les mademoiselles to handle it on their own. I'm not much of a fighter anyways. However, to anyone who ends up clubbing with me in the future, bear the following in mind: if you need a hand with an overly aggressive fellow, dust off both your shoulders, thumb your nose and stomp three times. That'll be the equivalent to my bat signal. Otherwise, I'll leave well enough alone.

We left the club immediately after I got knocked over. I guess it was time to depart anyways, seeing as the man of honour had already took his leave and was engaged in that most traditional of Japanese past-times, karaoke.

Karaoke was a ton of fun as always. I got to belt out my rendition of Oasis' Don't Look Back in Anger which, as I have previously mentioned to almost every solitary soul I know, I am particularly fond of.

I headed home, as always on these expeditions, in the early AM. I spent quite some time mulling over how crappy a job I'd done of standing up to the guy in the club although, in retrospect, I was being kind of a dick.

Sunday dawned with me in a degree of pain. As it turns out my ego wasn't the only thing that was bruised. Apparently the fall in the club involved me bashing up my tail bone, lower back and the rear of my head pretty badly, enough that all three areas were nicely swollen. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't move around, but it did hurt quite a bit. As such I canceled what plans I had and spent the day fending off the Mongols and invading France in Medieval II: Total War.

I also went out and bought eggs, bacon and toast and 'seriously' cooked for the first time since I arrived here. Like I've mentioned previously, my stove only has one burner so most recipes have to be pretty simple. I'm hoping in the next few months to cook more often, but I'll have to see what happens. The bacon, eggs and toast were damn good though.

Sunday was unremarkable other than for these two things.

Monday dawned with me heading back to Tachikawa to get things patched up between me and Leo-Net. It started with another bacon and eggs breakfast due to the spoilage that would occur if i left them in my fridge all week.

I miss the Dunn's Breakfast Special like crazy!

It took me until about 2:30 to get the internet thing done, at which point I took the train down to Ueno-ku, one of the oldest wards of Tokyo. I met Melissa, Ben and Don there. We were hoping to go and see some museums but, alas, pretty much every museum is closed on Monday. Instead we wandered around Ueno park a little bit. Don and Melissa took a swan paddle boat out into the lake there while Ben and I strolled around it and talked about life in Tokyo.

The lake we walked around is one of three lakes in the park that are divided by spurs of land. The other two lakes were completely filled with these giant lily pads. The flowers on these things were about the size of my fist and the leaves stood about two to three feet out of the water. Very cool looking. I asked my students when they bloom and the answer is in spring, so I'll head back there and see it again next year.

After we got tired of the park we jumped on the good old Yamanote and rode one stop down to Akihabara, the consumer electronics sector of Japan. Or at least it used to be. Don't get me wrong, there's still a ton of electronics for sale there, but it seems to have been overtaken by 'otaku' (nerd) culture. There were a ton of comic book stores and anime shops and whatnot.

Oh, and Maid Cafes.

A lot of Maid Cafes.

Like, Dozens.

Oh, what's a Maid Cafe?

Well, a Maid Cafe is exactly that: a cafe. The sole differentiating aspect from other cafes is that all the waitresses are dressed up in rather intricate, old fashioned French Maid uniforms. The skirts that accompany these uniforms would never have been found in a traditional French household.

I made some sort of comment about how these things are kind of sexist and Melissa pointed out that Hooters is pretty much the same deal back home. Well played. The two restaurants offer a fairly good analog to each other, so I'll just leave it at that.

After being offered handbills for about 50 Maid Cafes the three of us (Don, Mel and I, Ben had departed) decided it was best to head to our dinner destination: Fonda de la Madrugada in Harajuku!

Don and one of my students had both recommended this place to me at various times and I was really eager to go there. It's supposed to have some of the best Mexican food in Japan and comes fully equipped with an authentic mariachi band!

Don lead us to the place, which is actually mostly underground. It's pretty amazing though. You go down a spiral staircase and open a darkly-stained door and then you're suddenly in a quaint Mexican villa. We found our seats and enjoyed some excellent, excellent food along with really good music too. Zoey joined us about a half hour in as well. A good time was had by all and we all headed home after dinner, our stomachs well girded for another week of teaching.

Well, there. I'm caught up. I should have the rest of my posts up promptly and on time, although this next weekend might be fairly bereft of notable occurrences.

In related news, I climb Mt. Fuji on Sunday, August 17th.

Until next week, I remain as always, your slightly bruised,

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Supplemental Ascension - Week 10 (July 15 - July 21)

Supplemental Ascension

Week 10

Well, I'm back online again. Pardon the lack of a post for last week and the likely tardiness of week #11. I've had some japanese illiteracy related problems that I allege were surely the responsibility of the "flat" renters to mitigate, caused me to lose my net connection for the last week. Hopefully I'll be able to remember two weekends ago, but if not, my apologies.

As I recall the week was unremarkable, with the exception of the last class of the week, as per usual and with the noted exception of Friday night. More about these two in a second.

Teaching is still really enjoyable for me, but due to an unlucky convergence of student's vacation times, I'm teaching an inordinately high number of private lessons, so it's been quite busy and I'm a little bit stressed. Fortunately, as of writing this, my worst week in the foreseeable future is done and I should have an easier time of things in weeks to come.

Friday night was unusual because it was the quasi-start of my weekend. As soon as class ended I hopped into some casual clothes and rode the train out to a fairly remote section of Tokyo in order to attend a small going away party for one Gareth (see weeks 3, 4 and 5). He left Japan for greener (and colder) pastures having headed back, not to the rain-soaked moors of England but to the snow choked wastes of Canada.

The bar was pretty small and very friendly. Gareth knew the bar owners quite well as he had frequented the bar regularly during his time in Japan. The first band took the stage shortly after I arrived and jumped into very solid rendition of Jumpin' Jack Flash. They followed this with Like a Rolling Stone, I Shot the Sheriff and, for an encore, Wonderwall, which was sung by two of Gareth's coworkers. I thought the band was pretty damn awesome, and had a ton of fun. It was also an odd coincidence that one of the Wonderwall singers was in fact a former GEOS teacher who used to teach in my school and in fact lived in the same apartment as I do. This was about 2 years ago though.

I had to call it an early night though, and headed for home at around 11:30 after saying good bye to Gareth. Everything went fine and I was up and ready for teaching with plenty of time the next morning.

Saturday was, as always, busy at first but finished with a fun series of classes. One of my students is leaving for Sean's class in 3 weeks, which is too bad, cause it really is a ton of fun teaching her.

The last class of the week though, the Newsweek article, is turning out to have a memorable moment every time. This time the article we were debating was focused on the Environmental Performance Index. We happened to be talking about American energy policy and one of my students had been quiet for quite some time. I turned to him and said (name changed):

"What do you think Hitaro?"

"I think the Americans should eat less so they don't need such large cars to carry themselves around in."

I cracked up, needless to say.

Anyways, I bid a temporary farewell to the GEOS offices and hopped a train out to Toyoda with Kayoko in order to attend ANOTHER farewell party, this time for the manager at Sean's school. Her name is Erika or "The Gaffer" to Sean (see week #4). She is also headed to the frozen wastes of Canada, perhaps. Anyways, it was a huge party at an Izakaya. An Izakaya, by the way, is roughly equivalent to a Pub, in that it offers pretty substantial food, a lot of drink, and facilities for relatively large groups of people. I had my welcome party at a similar establishment, although my description at the time was a little off-base (see week #3).

This party was much larger then my welcome party. I think the total attendance was somewhere in the ballpark of 60 students, teachers and managers. It was pretty cool, I snacked on yakitori and had about five beers. There was a short section for speeches during which every teacher that was attending was asked to speak, including Kayoko who knows the students et all about as well as I did, which is to say barely. Unfortunately when I stood up to give my speech I knocked a beer over with my wallet as I was moving between two tables and doused the pants of Pat (see weeks 3, 4 and 5) who was also attending the festivities. The speech I gave ran something like "Erika, I've only met you a couple of times and I'm sorry that we're losing you so soon. Good luck!" Pat and I had had a long discussion afterwards about the merits of Japanese powder and I'm now determined to make it up to Sapporo for skiing at some point, most likely in the winter.

Unfortunately, I couldn't attend the karaoke that occurred after the dinner/drinking and had to head home in order to be up in time to meet Zoey, Rowena and Winny the next day in Yokohama!

Yokohama is renowned as a multicultural city in what is a very culturally uniform country. The became important shortly after 1854 when Commdore Matthew Perry (not the Friends actor) arrived and demanded that Japan open ports for commerce. Yokohama, which was a fishing village at the time, became one of those places. As such, it developed quite rapidly into something much more then its humble beginnings. It's fairly ethincally diverse and has a lot of interesting locations, including the foreigner graver yard, which I did see, but have heard is pretty neat.

The next day dawned with me on my way down to the aforementioned city. I arrived about 1/2 hour late and then got totally turned around because my train dropped me off on a different platform than normal. After wandering around a bit I found Rowena, then Winny soon afterwards. We meandered down to Chinatown past a rather upper class (I thought) shopping district.

The Chinatown in Yokohama is in essence the Chinatown for all of Tokyo and as such is pretty massive. We saw all kinds of really cool temples, shops and restaurants. Pandas were a central feature of many of the tourist shop one object for sale being a Hello Kitty doll wearing a panda costume. Kawaii, as they say.

We stopped for lunch at, gasp of surprise, a Chinese restaurant. The food here was much different than what I would call Chinese food back in Canada. It was pretty good, but just different. Not as sweet I guess? If we eat Americanized Chinese food, this was Japanized Chinese food. Also had a Chinese beer which is surprisingly similar to a soft drink. Not bad, and refreshing on a hot day.

Oh yeah, have I mentioned that it's like a sauna over here? I didn't believe Sean when he told me that some days you'd walk out the door of your house, turn to lock your door and by the time you took the first step on the way to work you'd be drenched in sweat.

Well, Sean is a spectacularly truthful fellow.

I've had days that have worked out exactly like that. It's been 33+ degrees every day for the last two weeks with mid to high humidity along with it. I've taken to jogging at night only, which is nice because it's a little cooler. Unfortunately, it also means that I usually end up bedecked in spider webs and have to dodge the odd bat. Oh, I've also been hit in the chest a few times by beetles/cockroaches and once in the tooth. That last one was definitely not cool.

Speaking of beetles, you know those National Geographic docs where they explore rain forests and whatnot? You notice how they always have that crazy insect buzzing noise going on in the background? Yeah, that's what it's like jogging in the park at night. I have noise canceling ear buds on my iPod and I can still clearly hear the sound the beetles make. Pretty crazy.

Anyways, forget about that, it's Chinatown. After lunch we walked at a leisurely pace towards Landmark Tower, which happens to be the tallest building in Japan, as well as containing the world's second fastest elevator.

We got a nice view of the city from the 69th floor before heading back down to a nearby shopping mall to pick out Yukata. For those who do not know, what we call a kimono in Canada is called a yukata in Japan, whether it is a men's yukata, or a woman's. They are most commonly worn by couples at summer festivals and in the spring during sakura (cherry blossom) viewing season. We figured it was appropriate for the occasion, so we all bought one, including Zoey, who had met up with us a few hours earlier. I refrained from putting mine on, due to the fact that I only had a pair of shoes to wear and there were no wooden sandals of the appropriate style available at the store.

So, appropriately yukata'd up we all headed out to the waterfront area (which was packed) for the primary reason that we came down to Yokohama for: the Port Opening fireworks display!

The fireworks were pretty cool...I guess. We didn't have the best vantage point and it was a LONG show. It started at 7:30 (I think) and lasted until 8:15. Apparently there was somewhere in the area of 6000 fireworks detonated, but I actually think I prefer the shorter, 20 minute or so displays. I found the latter half of the display to be kind of boring, and the finale to be underwhelming. At least it was pretty cool watching the massive crowds. Plus, we got a police officer to take a picture of us!

We filed out of the waterfront among thousands of other spectators to a nearby Izakaya and had some more very good food. Soon thereafter I was on a train home, exhausted but ready for one more day of sightseeing.

Monday started off with me heading straight for downtown Tokyo again. I bought a pair of sandals on the way out so that I could wear shorts without feeling like I look stupid. This was, in retrospect, a foolish idea as I ended up with some truly awesome blisters.

I made it there eventually after getting lost about three times, including one point where I had to transfer from a train to a Subway.

I was on my way to Asakusa, one of the oldest areas of Tokyo. It seriously felt that way too. There was a tangible difference in the atmosphere around this ward. It felt much older, although also fairly tourist trap-y what with all the various tchochke shops that were in residence around the place. I did buy a fan from one of those stalls. We also had this awesome dessert at one shop. It was a giant ball of shaved ice, covered in matcha syrup with a serving of soft serve vanilla ice cream, a few mochi balls (pulverized rice sweets) and, to top it all off, red beans. Very interesting, and actually pretty good!

The temples were pretty impressive in Asakusa although I'm already getting a little bit burnt out on temples. I've seen A TON since I got here already. I guess the temple capstone will be Kyoto and Nikko, whenever I get around to going there. What was somewhat less impressive was the Asahi Super Dry Building which has to sport what is possibly the world's biggest eyesore. (Edit: Upon closer inspection, it looks kind of like a giant glass of beer with a cup of miso soup beside it. The gold stuff is steam or something? I still don't get it.) See picture above. Asahi is a kind of beer in Japan, perhaps the most famous. Apparently that giant gold spermatozoa is supposed to represent the spirit of the beer or something. I don't really think so.

After that Winny and I pealed off from the others and headed to the drum museum, which was closed (I'll be back, mark my words! I feel I powerful urge to tap out the drum line from Maps on a massive Japanese drum). Sorry in advance for anyone who actually follows that link. Maps has an awful video.

After that we went somewhere that WAS open: the Imperial Palace! Well, partially open. You can't actually go inside, just look at the castle walls. There's only two days of the year when the Emperor and his wife make an appearance and they're both in January (one is for his birthday, I forget what the other is). Winny and I wondered around the grounds, which were quite surreal, if a little bit over engineered. The whole place had a bizarre feeling of artificiality to it. It didn't help that the whole place was covered in fairly uniformly placed pine trees that were almost all exactly the same height. Didn't look all that natural. Looking at the castle walls and the few structures that peaked over the top of the wall was very interesting though. This palace is, after all, the residence of the oldest continuous dynasty still in existence.

The gardens were also closed at the palace, so I'll have to drop by again some Sunday. Winny and I headed down to Shibuya and walked around a bit more before wearily heading to Shinjuku and parting ways. I was totally exhausted by the end of this weekend.

There we go! Another week in the history books. I may put a few more philosophical observations down in a separate post later in the week or next week. For now though I remain, as always...

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Dialogue Destruction - Week 10 (July 15 - July 21)

Dialogue Destruction

Week 10

Due to technical difficulties (internet problems at my apartment) my next post will be delayed indefinately. Should hopefully be posted within the next couple days.

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Animated Infection - Week 9 (July 8 - July 14)

I

thought

what

I'd

do

was,

I'd

pretend

I

was

one

of

those

deaf-mutes

Animated Infection

Week 9

Konbanwa!

Another night of blog writing ahead of me, although this week's should be relatively brief due to the lack of intensely interesting things that occurred this week, due mostly to me contracting a virus on Friday. Also, I just felt my second earthquake in the last hour. Unusual seismic activity! (edit: I think this still ended up being long)

So...the work week. The usual pretty much. Continuing to be very busy these days. I had 6 classes Tuesday, 3 classes Wednesday, 3 classes Thursday, 4 classes Friday and 7 classes Saturday.

The one exception was Thursday, when I took a little walk out and bought a couple of DVDs for the lobby of the school and, more importantly, a hibiscus plant for my house! We used to have one at my house in Wakefield way back in the day. I figure we took it out of it's native habitat, so I might as well have one here when the situation is reversed. It started blooming today, so I'm happy.

My unhappiness outweighs my happiness quotient because I got a cold on Friday. Nothing bad, but my colds always follow the same cycle and last about 5 days and I feel like utter shit all the way through the first couple and about 85% okay through the last three.

Day 1 and 2:

Sore throat, extreme weariness, headaches.

Day 3 to 5:

Extremely runny nose combined with intense sinus pressure. This somehow combines into an awesome phenomena where my eyes burn and water like goddamned Niagara. Basically, I cry a lot. It's a riot. Not really conducive to a professional demeanor while teaching either. I really hate it...a lot.

That kind of put a halt to my plans for the weekend. I was supposed to go out to another teacher's party on Saturday night, but that ended up not happening due to the aforementioned viral salient. I didn't really have anything planned for Sunday, so ultimately I just ended up hanging out doing nothing. Turns out there are also vitamin gel packs for vitamin C, which actually taste really good, so I sucked a number of those down on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday night actually I bought a liter of Orange Juice and drank the whole thing when I got home. I think my Vitamin C intake in the last couple of days was more then in the last couple of months.

I played Medieval: Total War all day on Sunday and had a good time, although I had to abandon the first game I played after putting a few hours into it. Maybe I'll pick it up some other time, but I had backed myself into a corner. Perhaps a couple months down the line.

Monday was much more interesting. I met up with the Fuji-Yoshida delegation comprised of two members of my training group (Winny and Kevin) as well as the former manager of my school (Chizuru) and their JET (Naomi), as well as one more manager from the region. Our destination was the Studio Ghibli museum.

*sound of a record needle being lifted too fast*

What's Studio Ghibli?

EDUCATE YOURSELF, FOOL!

Hayao Miyazaki is arguable the most well known anime director in Japan and his films are of consistently high quality. He's often called the Japanese Walt Disney. I've seen about 5 of his films, of which my favorite is Spirited Away. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes cinema, it really is quite amazing.

As was the museum. You wouldn't really appreciate it without having seen a few of Miyazaki's movies, as they figure prominently into the design of the Museum. Miyazaki has a fairly unified aesthetic through all of his movies. The best I can do to describe it is to say that many things in his films look very cobbled together. Architecture is layered on architecture, old mingled with new. This is a theme that I've noticed in a lot of Japanese pop art and I think it partially reflects the nature of Tokyo itself. Parts of Tokyo look like they could come from one of Miyazaki's movies. Or Mamoru Oshii's. More on that later.

The museum was really, really cool, primarily because it mimicked the aesthetic of the films. Lots of random staircases and tiny doors and multiple paths leading to the same place. Some of the exhibits were really neat too. I think Miyazaki likes projectors just about as much as I do. There was a section right at the beginning of the tour that basically functioned as a history of cinema, featuring all kinds of different optical illusions. For example, they had a series of different models posed in different ways set on rotating rings inside a glass partition. When these started rotating fast enough and were hit with a strobe light at the right speed, it looked like a living animation. There were also a number of projectors set up, all in such a way that you could see the internal workings. It was pretty neat being able to look these over and identify all of the individual parts. I was probably the only guy in the room more interested in the projectors then what they were projecting. Very cool stuff though.

The rest of the museum was also pretty neat. They had a small exhibit called "Le Petit Louvre" which was exactly what it's called, a small version of the Louvre with reproductions of some of the pictures. We finished off our tour by watching a Studio Ghibli short that was really awesome. It was about a Diving Bell Spider that fell in love with Water Strider. Miyazaki certainly knows how to make a spider cute. There was also a really neat section of the museum that attempted to recreate Miyazaki's work space. That section was fascinating, really gave you a look into his mentality.

That was pretty much it nothing else interesti-

*tires screech*
*door opens*
*rapid foot steps*
*knock on door*
*door opening*
*slapping noise*
*more rapid foot steps*
*door slamming*
*tires screeching*

Oh.

Right.

I forgot.

The Sky Crawlers

Those who have had the inestimable pleasure of knowing me these past 6 or 7 years may have heard me exhort the virtues of one Mamoru Oshii at one point or another. He was responsible for making the two Ghost in the Shell movies, the first of which is a masterpiece of cinema, while the second one is a little bit too cerebral for it's own good. My favorite works of his are, however, the Stand Alone Complex series of anime. It ran for two seasons and currently holds the coveted title of "Best Television Series I Have Ever Seen." It features exceptionally complicated storytelling, especially the first season, which has one of the absolute best payoffs I have ever seen. Just look past the jumpsuit the Major wears for the first season, it gets better in the second.

Let's redirect this tangent back into a segue way with the original topic of this blog. There was a section of the museum which contained a display for Miyazaki's next film as well as Oshii's, which is called The Sky Crawlers. I got extremely excited because I recognized the art style immediately. I can hardly wait to see it.

We left the Museum (which was in Mitaka) and took the faithful old Chuo down one stop to Kichijoji, which I'd been meaning to visit for the longest time but hadn't gotten around to it yet. It's the biggest city near my apartment, making it the theoretical focus for most of my more advanced shopping. We stopped for lunch at a small thai restaurant. Very weird aesthetic, kind of like a military base in Saigon or something (I'm aware that Saigon is in Vietnam). Lots of stainless steel. It was buffet style, which for some reason is called 'viking' in Japanese. I've asked a couple of people why that is, but they can't explain it.

By the time we finished lunch it was about 3 o'clock, and boy, was it hot. I think the temperature was 33 celsius before the humidity was applied, which was of course also extremely high. We went to the park in the middle of the city and walked around it, which was quite pretty. We also stopped by the requisite temple. We headed off to a cafe where I had a hibiscus jelly tea. After that it was off to Shinjuku.

While we were waiting for the last bus out to Fuji-Yoshida we took a little walk around Kabukicho, which is the red light district of Shinjuku. I wasn't really all that impressed, it was kind of small and not really all that seamy. I'll visit it again some other time, maybe see a movie at the theater there or something.

I headed home at about 7 PM or so when my cold started to act up again. The train was PACKED. Almost to the point that I couldn't move. I'd have enjoyed it if I hadn't been sick, but what can you do? Did some shopping on the way home, got home and chatted for a while before passing out.

Not the most impressive weekend, I know, but I still had fun. I'll just throw in this little fun fact: bus drivers and cabbies all wear white gloves in Japan. It's part of a uniform thing or something, tradition I believe. Pretty unusual.

Anyways, that's it for this week. This is Koganei, signing off once again...


Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Secondary Chronology - 2 Months, July 10th

Secondary Chronology

2 Months

Here's the promised Q&A. If anyone else wants to send in questions, I'll gladly answer them next week too. I didn't really give anyone much time to respond...

Q: What's it like teaching for GEOS?

A: I've found it's been pretty fun so far. There's a fairly large difference though from school to school in the atmosphere that you'll experience. My school is just about perfect for me. I have a wide breadth of students of various levels of competency so it's always interesting for me. I'm glad I don't have a ton of kids classes, because those require a lot of energy. I haven't experienced too much business pressure yet, but I've been doing fairly well outside of that.

Q: How does teaching work?

Well, GEOS runs two kinds of classes, Active and Sprint. Active classes are 60 minutes long and use text books much like the ones you might have had in high school for French lessons. They're more conversation focused and teachers often incorporate extra activities into the lesson. These classes can be difficult to plan for because the texts are taught on a page by page basis and don't have a rigid structure. Sprint lessons are different, and only 45 minutes long. Sprint, first of all, works on a calendar. The great part about this is that you teach the same lesson to every class of the same level all week. So, say I have 3 Sprint 6x classes in a week, I only build the props and plan it out once because I know that this week I'll be teaching only lesson 13. It also means that once you've done all of the lessons in the book you won't have to prepare any more. I should be done planning for Sprint 6 in about 3 weeks for example, because I have a number of private students that are learning the book at a different pace then the calendar. If a student misses a class, they miss the lesson unless they take it during another class of the same type later in the week. The content of Sprint is generally less conversational then Active. There's some conversation in every lesson, but also a lot of pure mechanical practice and whatnot. Sprint is much more focused then Active lessons. The kids lessons are called CoDoMo and they are also on a calendar. They're not bad, but require a lot of props and the text changes every year so you can't reuse your plans.

In reagards to time required to plan I'd lay it out like this, most time to least:

CoDoMo
Sprint
Active

In difficulty to teach, most to least:

Active (depending upon class)
CoDoMo
Sprint

I teach 3 levels of Sprint in theory, 6, 7, and 8, although right now I have no Sprint 7s. My coworker Sean takes care of all of those. In return he has few 6s and no 8s other then a couple private lessons. I teach A LOT of higher level active courses, especially a book called New Headways, which is very tough.

Q: How is working as a teacher different then working as a projectionist?

A: Quite. First of all, you can't have a shitty day. If you're feeling like crap you have to kick yourself in the ass and start smiling, because your students aren't going to respond well if you're bitching and moaning. Obviously, the work requires far less physical effort, and much more in the way of people skills. It was a bit of an adjustment from being a projectionist. I also can't afford to be late. At all. I've been between 1 minute and 3 hours early for work every day since I started this job and, barring typhoons and earthquakes, aim to continue to do so until I leave. I would liken this job, for me anyway, to making a presentation at the front of a class in University on something you really, really enjoy talking about for about 3-7 hours each day. Management wise, it's about the same level as that at Silver City, as far as I can tell.

Speaking of my school, here's the website for my specific school: GEOS Musashi-Koganei School. As you can see there's a picture of me and one of my students on the front page. The profiles should be updated (third tab at the top) but they aren't. I'll talk to my manager about it tomorrow.

Q: Do you find Tokyo much more accessible now then when you first arrived?

A: Yes. Especially since I have a cellphone now. I was a lot more worried about going around being unable to contact anyone if I needed a hand with something. Not so now, to Kayoko's eternal annoyance. Also, my cellphone has a utility that can chart a path from your train station to any other one in Japan, including trip time, last train and so forth. Very cool. I've always had a good sense of direction, so finding my way to things isn't too hard once I'm in the right city and on foot.

Q: Where are you buying books?

A: There's two English book stores I've been to now. One is Kinokuniya, in Shinjuku. It's about 5 mintues away from the station. I'll be buying guide books for Europe there around Christmas. The other I found is Tower Records in Shibuya. The top floor of the building is an English book store. Very cool. I even found Lovecraft there, which was difficult to find in Chapters!

Q: How's the attitude towards you as a foreigner?

A: Interesting. I think the most common thing that happens to me is that I catch people taking huge double takes, especially when I step off an elevator or something. Otherwise I haven't had too many troubles. There's a Circle K near my school where the employees are used to the English teachers showing up from my school. They're very helpful. I get the wide-eyed stare from kids everywhere I go. I haven't really had any negative reactions so far, although I'm sure those will happen. Drunk people in clubs seem happy enough to bounce around with me even though I dance like a lunatic. People haven't been overly helpful either. I do feel really bad when I inconvenience a store employee by not being able to speak their language. I'm sure things are much different for my compatriots outside of Tokyo and other cities with a large western population.

Q: How different are our two societies?

A: I won't know that for quite some time. I have an idea now, but I'd rather not put it to kilobytes yet.

And that's it for questions for now. 2 months! It's passed in the blink of an eye... To finish this post I'll just say that I think I might buy a hibiscus tomorrow in order to green up my apartment a little. We'll see. Maybe a small cactus too.

See you all next Tuesday!

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Rodent Afterimages - Week 8 (July 1 - July 7)

Ugh, I'm coming off of a bad day, let me tell you. Literally. I didn't mean that as a figure of speech. There's nothing worse then starting the week with 5 back to back classes that you have to build props for in an extremely rushed 1 1/2 hours leading up to it.

On the plus side, my jogging was pretty awesome tonight. There's something about running at night that makes it easier for me. Maybe the lower temperature or something. But I'm getting ahead of myself...Roll pretentious, mysterious title...

Rodent Afterimages

Week 8

And we're off.

As of Thursday night I'll have been here for 2 months on the dot. As a little celebration, I'm going to do an extra post that's all Q&A. A friend of mine already has a number of questions lined up, so if anyone else wants to get an answer to a question about my time here in Nippon, please either leave a comment here or on my wall at Facebook. You can also email me at melloyellocantello@gmail.com.

So last week was quite busy. I have a few students that are coming to class much more frequently then usual. This is causing me to be very busy, which really sucks, but makes the time fly, which is nice.

I think the best part of the week, in the classroom anyway, took place in my last class of the week. I finish the week, as I may have mentioned previously, with a couple of elderly gentlemen who are basically fluent in English. We discuss Newsweek articles, which makes for a pretty engaging class. This week we were talking about an article on the Sichuan earthquake and one of the guys told me a that the Chinese tell. It goes something like this (it might have been funnier at the time): The Chinese say "it's best not to tax the rich too much or we might end up Communists like the Japanese". Apparently the difference between the rich and the poor in Japan is one of the lowest in the entire world. Boy, that's ironic now, isn't it?

Outside of work I had an interesting interaction with my next door neighbour. He's a mysterious fellow who owns an Xbox 360 (which is a rarity in and of itself in Japan) and has a tendency to play loud action games at all hours of the night. This pissed off the former occupant of my apartment, who complained to Leo Palace about the noise level. Me, I don't mind so much. I'm used to sleeping with noise in the background from my many years living on Besserer street. The sound of spent brass hitting the ground is a hell of a lot less annoying then the incessant sirens outside of your front door. Last week I realized my neighbour was playing Half-Life 2, because, hey, I know the sounds from the game THAT well. The day after, I heard him playing Portal. This man obviously appreciates the merits of western game design.

And my computer just crashed. Thank god that Blogger autosaves your posts.

Anyways, I decided to leave a note in my esteemed comrade in Combine elimination's mailbox. It read something like this:

Half-Life 2 is awesome!

- Your neighbour.

About three days later I got a response in the form of the note at the top of this post. I'm going to leave him another telling him that I don't care about the noise and ask if Portal was a triumph and a HUGE SUCCESS.

I'll talk a little more about the week's activities in the Q&A post.

Saturday night, as per usual, was party time. This week the destination was Machida, a city about 30 minutes south of Shinjuku. The annoying thing for me was that, because of my location on the Chuo Line, I actually had to travel about 20 minutes in one direction before transferring onto another line and heading 40 minutes down to Machida. That wasn't so hot.

The party, on the other hand, was.

It was being hosted by a man of high character, my trainer, Ben. He and a few other teachers/acquaintances pooled their cash and rented the room above an Irish pub called the Covent Garden. It was a little tight because it was absolutely PACKED with gaijin, which was really cool! There was a fairly large contingent of teachers that I had previously met, including the woman, Karen, who escorted me from Shinjuku to my apartment all those 8 weeks ago. We joked a little about how messed up I was when I got off the plan (see post for week 1).

I also met my new Area Leader while being decidedly inebriated. Fortunately, she was too, so that's probably alright. I'll brag about my slick dance moves when she calls my school later this week. I was also surprised to see Ben DJing when I first entered the club. He didn't even inform us that this was his intention! He was pretty good too, kept the party hopping.

Oh I should mention that the players in this particular adventure, besides my intrepid self, were Don, Melissa and Yuka, who are all no less intrepid than I.

Mmmm, besides that it was the typical night out. I danced my heart out (although a little less enthusiastically then usual, after all, I might have to work with these people some day). The lowest point of the night was when I asked some guy what he did for a living. His answer was "I am a player." Dude then proceeded to hit on every woman in the club. That oozes class. It was the reject table for him later on in the night, which was damned appropriate.

I got home at my usual 7-8 AM and passed the hell out, exhausted but happy.

The next day rose to bad weather and not much in the way of plans. I bounced out the door at 4:30 on my way to Shibuya for a few drinks with some coworkers I had never met. We met at a British Pub called the Hobgoblin. I've been informed by Steve, who hosted the shindig, that it's a chain in Britain. They do make pretty damn good fish and chips. I also had my first Guinness here, and it was pretty good, especially with food. Also some of this bizarre Magner's cider stuff. It was pretty good, although I think Sean disapproves. The drinks were in honor of having bested all other comers in the field of Self Study Focus book sales, which I did very little to help with, having just arrived in country. Most of the teachers from my area couldn't come, unfortunately. It was still a nice, short day.

I got to bed early Sunday because Monday was a big day.

I was going to Disney Sea!

Yeah, I'm as underwhelmed as you are. I saw Disney Sea before I saw the Imperial Palace. I'm just complaining for the fun of it though. It was actually a pretty neat day. Disney Sea, which is right beside Disney Land on the bay of Tokyo, is a little bit more adult themed. It's kind of a weird mishmash of Epcot in Florida and maybe the Universal studios tour. Fairly impressive though. There were a few good rides, including Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull, which inspired the most recent movie. If it worked for Pirates of the Caribbean, right? This particular ride was remarkable for, while waiting in line, a westerner dressed up in an Indiana Jones getup escorted some Japanese park patrons to the front of the line and boldly proclaimed: "I'm Indiana Jones! Don't worry, I'm here to help!" He then promptly left, harried by a barrage of snickers from our expedition into the temple. I have since remarked about three times that this guy, in those five seconds of speaking, seemed more flustered then Harrison Ford did in all four movies that bear the Indiana Jones title. Tower of Terror, Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Things along those lines occupied the rest of the real estate in the park.

The weirdest thing about the whole trip was how I kept on getting really weird deja vu from almost every area we explored. I think it was the artificiality of the whole thing. I'll point out that, in particular, the section around the 20,000 Leagues ride, which was set in the middle of a Volcano, reminded me really, really strongly of Bioshock, a game I played just before coming to Japan. This game was also the one that prompted me to peruse the insane ramblings that occupy the pages of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The fact that it was one of the most uninterestingly written things I have ever had the pleasure of reading and it's length of (I think) 1,400 pages might give you an idea of how much I liked this game. This section of Disney Sea really struck me as similar, especially with the whole deep sea dive theme.

The other one that reminded me of a game was the Middle Eastern section which, although heavily Alladinized, was realistic enough to bring back a few fleeting images of Assassin's Creed. Oh, and Indiana Jones reminded me of Tomb Raider, but that's no surprise.

After pondering it for a few minutes, I think I figured out why I felt this deja vu in these sections of the park. I hadn't felt any deja vu for Tokyo itself, other then a few times in Shibuya because I've played a game that was set there. I think the reason Disney Sea reminded me of other things so much was that everything was artificial. The artists that designed the park and designed the games that I've played were probably thinking along similar lines when the sketched out their concept art. It made a lot of attractions in the park much more interesting for me.

Disney Sea was pretty un-Disney. There weren't many characters out and they didn't really occupy center stage anywhere except during the first musical show of the day that we witnessed. The narrative of this thing was bizarre...mostly because it was in Japanese and I couldn't understand any of it. What I do know is it was called "The Tale of Mythica" which is pronounced much different when spoken by a native Japanese speaker. From what I gathered it was some kind of underwater kingdom that was in trouble and which was subsequently saved by Mickey and Friends.

Whatever.

It was pretty impressive, I guess, until you listened to the lyrics of the song which were more sucrose-loaded then the finest of Canadian Maple Sugar. Capitalized. The nighttime show was much better and kind of looked like a boss fight from Final Fantasy. That was much cooler.

We ate dinner on board the U.S.S. Columbia, a fake ship built in a counterfit harbor in an artificial America. The food was pretty good, and the dining room was very art-deco. All the diners were very out of place in comparison to the clothes being worn by the waiters and everything. We did have a nice bottle of Robert Mondavi though.

Ultimately Disney Sea was, though I hate to admit it, a ton of fun. I stand by my general dislike of Disney due to their odious (yes! favorite word used! this post gains +50 bonus points) policy of focusing marketing at children who don't have the sense to say 'no'. It's all in the people that you bring really (Don, Zoey, Melissa, Ben and Rowena). Very fun day, especially since the poor weather kept most of the people away. We were later informed that Disneyland proper had 2 hour wait most of the day. I think we made the right choice. And that's that scratched off the list of things to do.

And that's also another post scratched off the list. Feel free to post a question on my Facebook, on this Blog or send an email to melloyellocantello@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading once again, stay tuned for the extra post on Thursday.

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Swallowtailed Shopping - Week 7 (June 24-June 30)

Swallowtailed Shopping

Week 7

Happy Canada Day everyone! I'll toast your Alexander Keith's or what have you with my Sapporo! I look forward to being present for all the Barbecues and merrymaking next year!

Now that the formalities of being a canuck are out of the way, it's down to business.



Last week was pretty much all around average. Nothing really crazy happened, just business as usual. Actually, really nothing at all remarkable happened during the work week. The most amazing thing that occurred was that I ate a nice Florida grapefruit on Friday morning. I guess that was unusual. You'd think you'd be able to grow em' in Japan, but I guess not. Lack of space perhaps? Nice to taste a bit of North America though.

Saturday.

Once again, a night for clubbing. Maybe it's getting a little boring at this point to hear about these trips out to the various establishments that offer drinking and dancing at a price that does not even inhabit the same galaxy as 'reasonable'. Here's at least one more for you though. The biggest one in Asia no less.

Side note: through speaking to a few people over the course of the week I've come to the conclusion that last week's club, Club Asia, may in fact be a Gay club. I don't really know what to say about that other then to shrug my shoulders. I had a great time, no problems and got free drinks. Sounds good to me.

This time, on our third attempt to make it to Ageha, our group finally made it. Only a small party headed out this time though, myself, Melissa and Zoey. We met in Shibuya at 11:30 and by 12:00 were on our way to Ageha via the shuttle that the club runs.

We all shared an amused look when, after the shuttle was full, about 10 more people got on and promptly folded down seats attached to the sides of the chairs in the middle of the aisle. That was one packed bus.

The trip to Ageha was really, really cool. It's a trip riding on those elevated freeways through all the neon. The best part of the trip was crossing Tokyo Bay though.

Wow.

Remember Blade Runner's opening? Well, subtract the flying cars and the belching pillars of fire, and there you have it. The view from the bridge was spectacular. I wish I'd had a chance to get off the bus and just soak it in, but maybe some other time.

We got to the club, but before we got in I got separated from Zoey and Melissa due to my quest for a washroom. I ended up pretending I was with a bunch of French gaijin. The guy closest to me gave me an odd look when I handed my ID over after him, but I used my good old Quebecois to thank him and tell him where I was from. According to him "Ah, Canada! C'est un belle pays!"

Merveilleux.

I made it into the club, after being searched for weapons and drugs. Also, no cameras allowed. I'm glad that my phone has a decent one, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten the two or three videos that I did.

So Ageha (which means swallowtail butterfly) is comprised of three main areas. The main floor itself is pretty large...Maybe about the size of a hockey rink. Insane lighting all over the place and a great sound system. The other two floors are not nearly as good. There's a tent outside that's still about the size of the dance floor at Club Asia, but a little bit rough-hewn on the inside. The last floor area surrounds the pool at the back of the club. Again, not that great. It's kind of small, but still pretty cool. The pool and deck looks out over Tokyo bay though, and that's very impressive. It was also pretty awesome to be dancing away at 5 AM in the morning in a light rain watching the sky brighten. Too bad that it was a little bit overcast. The club was pretty amazing though, mostly for the main floor. As has been my tradition so far, I worked my way to the front of each dance floor and danced for a bit.

Attention whore?

Maybe.

The music was the only real problem I had with the club. It was all techno, but good techno as far as I could tell. The problem was though that after 5 hours it all started sounding the same. I would have liked to switch up with some hip-hop or something. As far as I can tell the clubs here don't run themed nights like 80's night or Mod night at the clubs in Ottawa. Kind of a shame.

So there were three noteworthy things that occurred over the course of this night.

1. (one) I discovered that around about the time that I drink a Red Bull + Liquor concoction is also around about the time that I REALLY start dancing stupid. All that energy I guess? I have so much fun though, I don't really care. Makes for a really great night, but very painful legs the day afterwards.

2. (two) Towards the end of the night Zoey, Melissa and I migrated away from the main dance floor and hung out at the pool. I'm not entirely sure if pool is really the right name for this thing. Maybe "aquatic advertising billboard." For one, it's not very large, about the same size as an above ground pool back in Canada. Granted, it does have some vodka advertising at the bottom of it (which I'm sure was very costly to procure), which might be reason enough for it. The weirdest thing was, anytime that someone jumped into the pool, security immediately escorted them out of the club. Which is bizarre. I offered to help a guy out of the pool once and security immediately moved me away from him. It seems as though the pool is just really there to generate trouble, nothing else. Strange. The other unusual event was that for about the last hour of the night this gaijin with scraggly black hair who was quite skinny but still managed to have a pot belly decided that the best thing to do would be to pull off his shirt and stand around like he was a gangster or something. I don't know what he was thinking. What I do know is that that is one of the least flattering things I have ever seen.

3. (three) Around about 2:30 or so they raised a pair of poles in the middle of the main dance floor. These poles were soon occupied and put to good use by a quartet of barely clothed women. It was sort of like a half-assed Cirque Du Soleil mixed with a burlesque show. The girls did some pretty amazing things, but I couldn't really bring myself to stand there for too long, which was kind of funny actually. I was standing there beside Melissa and Zoey looking at this and all I could think about was how lame all the guys standing around in front of the stage looked with their heads craned up into the sky. I really found it objectionable picturing myself as one of those guys. Ugh. Maybe I was just uncomfortable because I was in the company of a couple of women? Honestly, I don't really know. I watched for a few minutes and went back to dancing. It just seemed like too much objectification for me. I did manage to record a quick video before security almost removed me for using a camera. That'll be up on Facebook. I guess it was a pretty spectacle though, and a testament to the size of the largest club in Asia.

We headed home in a gray Tokyo morning still laughing about the unfortunate fellow poolside. I was home by 8 AM and quickly feel asleep.

Sunday was crappy weather all day again. I spent the day doing not much of anything. The night was great though. It was Don's birthday party, about two weeks late, but just as awesome. We went on down to Naka Megura to a place called Junkadelic.

Oh man, you have no idea how good it was to eat quality Mexican Food.

But that's a cop-out, so I'll quantify it for you.

Over the course of a couple hours I had the following:

2 plates of nachos
1 Quesadilla
1 Chicken Chimi-Changa
3 Margeritas on the rocks
2 shots of Tequila.

That's a lot of food for me. And it was all EXCELLENT. I could have eaten more, but I think that's enough for one night.

This was also, coincidentally, my first experience with Tequila shots. How is that possible you ask? I've always been kind of against the concept of shots, and still am. I like to taste my alcohol, and shots really don't let you savor it at all. Still good fun. There were 10 of us there, I think, and the conversation flowed well. We all went our separate ways after dinner.

Monday dawned to pretty nice weather. I headed down to Shibuya for 2:00 and arrived there 1/2 hour late (sorry Melissa and Zoey!). We waited around another 30 minutes for Zoey's friend Becky to show up. Afterwards we ambled our way over to the 109 building and had a nice western lunch. Mine was noodles in a creamy sauce with crab and shrimp. Very good.

After lunch we made our way through the 6 floors of women's clothing stores that are in the 109 building. Really crazy atmosphere and all kinds of shops, from trendy hippy to crazy goth stuff and dress shops. It was really neat and the techno and hip hop pounding from everywhere made me feel I was in a club. Zoey found a great Engrish shirt. Not much else though. It's a pretty intense experience.

Our next stop was the 109-2 building which contains all the Men's stores.

The style here was...different...

I think the best way to describe the men's style in this particular store as Goth/Emo David Bowie circa Ziggy Stardust et. al. Also, I'm not a particular big guy, but I doubt I could fit into a single pair of jeans in that mall.

Pretty trippy to see though. The whole place was filled with fashionistas and whatnot. Very cool.

Our last two stops were the English Book Store at the top of Tower Records and a very cool T-shirt store. I bought some more books, including a new copy of Genki (thanks Bambi, yours was super helpful! I'll return it ASAP). I also picked up a number of T-shirts at the other store, all very interesting designs.

We finished off the day by stopping by American Apparel and discovering it was essentially the same as the stores in Canada. We walked up to Harajuku and had dinner at Shakey's pizza before departing for the homestead.

That was pretty much it for this last week though. Oh, there is this commercial for Triangle Smooth Vodka. I think it's amazing. It tends to play on trains and I crack up every time. In other news I almost had a file cabinet fall on me this morning. That wasn't too much fun. Other then that though, there's another week in the history books.

Talk to you all again, soon.

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello