Sunday, June 6

After three weeks in Japan, I finally got to take a trip to Tokyo. We left sometime around 9 to have breakfast and meet up with another Canadian intern in Yokosuka Chuou. We actually ate at McDonald's. It was the first American restaurant I've eaten in since I've been here. I had a McGriddle, which was no different than the ones back home, but one guy had a hot dog. Why? Because he could.

The train to Shibuya (prefecture in Tokyo) took about an hour and cost about ¥800 (we changed trains once in Yokohama), so including the bus to Chuou, it took about an hour and a half.

Here're Ken and Steven.

And here're Alan, Alice, and I (stupid English language requiring subject pronouns after linking verbs).

As soon as we arrived, Steven and Alice both split off to go shopping (separately) as Shibuya is a big shopping area. The three of us that were left went to get Ken a cell phone.

This intersection in Shibuya is the busiest in the world. Part of the cycle for the traffic lights includes all of them turning red so pedestrians can cross, not only all sides, but diagonally as well. ("An elevator can only go up and down, but the Wonkavator can go sideways and slantways and longways and backways..." "And frontways?" "And squareways and frontways and any other ways that you can think of.") Also, that Starbucks is one of the busiest in the world as well.

When fake black music just won't do...

Now we get into Harajuku. Harajuku is actually a train station in Shibuya, but the name is often used for the area around it. The nearby Jingu Bridge is a popular gathering spot on Sundays for young people involved in different fashions and subcultures. I was a little disappointed by the turnout (also, the bridge was much smaller than I had expected), but I was in a group and didn't get to stay long. Next time, I'll probably be by myself and will be able to take my time.

These two are sweet lolitas (Japanese: 甘ロリ - amaloli).

I completely forgot about the free hugs people.

The really weird part is that just past the bridge is the entrance to the Meiji Shrine. The shrine is in a large forest. Can you imagine stumbling upon a 175 acre forest in the middle of Tokyo? It's crazy. This gateway is called a torii. They mark the entrances to Shinto shrines (and occasionally Buddhist temples). Symbolically, they're supposed to mark the entrance to the spirit world.

Yeah, this place was huge. We didn't make it to the shrine. I'll have to go back again later.

We met back up with Steven (Alice just shopped all day) and took a short trip to Akihabara. The first stop was to a used game shop to look for more N64 games. I snapped a shot of some Famicon games (Japanese NES. Short for family computer).

We hit up another used game shop later that had a small arcade on the top floor. They also had this chair made out of Famicon games.

Akihabara is famous for two things: electronics shops and maid cafes. Sure enough, that's about all we saw. We also noticed that there were very few females walking around. Seriously. If I had counted, it probably would have been less than 10 and all of them were with their boyfriends. The only other women we saw were dressed as maids advertising for their cafes.

Ken wanted to buy a larger antennae for his wireless router, and after looking through at least 20 shops for it, I'd say you could probably find just about anything else except that (although, if I were a betting man, I'd say it exists somewhere; we just didn't know where). I have never seen so many specialized electronics parts in one place before. We were moving pretty quickly, so I didn't get many pictures. Next time I'll take more just to show the scope of what I'm talking about.

This, I was seriously not expecting. I'm not too sure about it, but I think the "Linux Cafe" is just the porch to an actual coffee shop where some people (read: men) hang around and, you know, talk about Linux. I saw three or four guys sitting around with netbooks.

When we finally gave up on Ken's Quest (TM), we headed back to Shibuya. Steven had previously made plans, and the rest of us went to an all you can eat pizza place. It was about $20, but I think I ate my money's worth, though, the other two ate more than I did.

Next time: an unexpected adventure in Yokohama.

Friday, June 4-Saturday, June 5

On May 30, I had ￥2500 left. On May 31, I was paid for 11 days of work, reimbursed for my plane ticket, and given my entire travel expenses from the dorm to work and back for the duration of my stay. I could finally afford to do something besides sit around in the dorm. Everyone else had plans to go to Tokyo on Saturday, but I wanted to play Go on Saturday, so I was trying to find someone to go on Sunday (yeah, yeah, a Go pun. You can't really avoid them. Get over it) so I wouldn't have to figure out the trains by myself for my first visit there. It turns out I didn't have to.

To begin Friday night, we went to get yakiniku (焼き (yaki) - to bake or grill; 肉 (niku) - meat. Not terribly creative). Someone told us about some place a few minutes away that was pretty cheap, so we went. We mostly just had regular pork and beef, but we had some beef tongue.

It worked out to about ￥1500 per person. We'll probably go back.

For the rest of the night, we went back to the dorm and played Super Smash Brothers 64. Someone had the great idea (read: awful) of playing 2v2 with the losers taking a shot at the end of the round. During this time, one of the Japanese residents came in and joined us. To make a long story short, the other guys drank a lot more than I did and were too hung over on Saturday to go to Tokyo, so they decided to go on Sunday instead. やった！

On Saturday, I went with two of them to eat lunch at Yokosuka Chuou. We had some Korean style spicy ramen. After lunch, they stayed around there, and I took the train towards the Keikyuu Kurihama station to play Go. When the train came to a stop at the wrong station, I knew something was amiss.

Some of the regular train lines (as in, non-express type) split at times. Part of the train will continue on the normal route, and part of the train will branch off to another area. The branch is usually only a few stations, and at the end of the line, it waits for a few minutes before going back in the opposite direction. If you're in the wrong section of the train at one of these branches, you have to get off and transfer to another train. I did not know this. Fortunately, it only took me about 30 minutes to get everything straightened out, and since the fare is only determined by your entry and exit points, it didn't cost me anything extra.

I made it to the Go club and played for 4 or 5 hours (it's ￥1000 for no matter how long you stay). I played mostly teaching games with the same guy from last time, but at the end, he had me play against someone who he said was also around 1 dan. It was really intense. I did really badly in the opening and was behind for most of the game, but I was able to start a really big fight that lasted for a large part of the game. In Go, black has the advantage of having the first turn, so white is given 6.5 points at the end for compensation (the number varies a little in different places). I won by 4.5 points. It was a great game. Afterwards, we took the train one stop over to YRP Nobi and walked to his house so he could drive me home.

Moving right along

The latest bus I can take and be on time for work leaves at 8:46. The earliest bus I can take from work to go home is at 6:28. As you can guess, this doesn't leave a lot of time for much else during the week. I mostly hang out with the Canadian guys. Sometimes we go out to eat, sometimes we play the N64 they picked up in Akihabara (a brilliant decision I might add). Most nights, we have dinner, and then we flip through the 8 or so channels we get in the dorm. I also go to Iroria (the restaurant nearby) a few times a week after dinner for a drink and to practice Japanese. All things considered, not all that exciting. To make matters worse, I didn't get paid until May 31, so I didn't do much on the weekends in order to save money. Since I already talked about my first trip to the Kurihama Go Club, that moves us up to June 4. And here we go.

Saturday, May 22

A friend of mine, Amir Sattari, has been studying at the Tokyo Institute of Technology since last September. We sent a few emails back and forth and decided to spend the day in Yokohama. See, Amir goes to school in Tokyo, but he lives about 20 or 30 minutes from Yokohama. In the 8-9 months he's been there, he has never been to Yokohama, so I decided we had to fix that. Unfortunately, he still has never been to Yokohama, because we didn't go.

As I got off the bus at Yokosuka Chuou, I couldn't help but notice the dozens of vendors selling different kinds of food or hosting different games. They were having a festival (Japanese - (お)祭り - (o)matsuri). I was at the station the night before and saw them setting up, but I asked someone when they were having it, and he said on Sunday. In retrospect, I think he probably meant that the parade part was on Sunday. In any case, I hadn't been to a Japanese festival before, so I called Amir and asked him if he wanted to come to the festival instead. I then had to endure seeing and smelling all the different foods for about an hour and a half until he finally arrived.

For those of you who don't know Amir, he is very soft spoken. And a ninja. We didn't know he was going to Japan until he was already there. Months after he left, we were still expecting to see him appear out of nowhere whenever we looked over our shoulders. When he was getting close to the station, I stood in an open area and watched every direction from which he could possibly appear. I'm not even kidding. He ended up not sneaking up on me, but I was completely suspecting it.

I should have taken more pictures of the food. This first one is probably takoyaki (たこ焼き). It looks a little big, though, so I may be wrong. Takoyaki is a fried octopus ball. They're really good, but the inside is really hot, and I always seem to burn my mouth on them.

The next is two are cartoon shaped pastries filled with a red bean paste (Japanese: 餡子 - anko). I should have taken a closer picture of the first one. They're shaped like Pikachu. In the second picture, they're shaped like Doraemon and Hello Kitty. Also, look at the little man in the middle of that banner (between Pooh and Pikachu). It took me a while to figure out that his name is Anpanman. Anpan is bread with anko inside, and Anpanman is just a cartoon version of it. You can even buy Anpanman shaped anpan.

Cotton candy.

Chocolate bananas (バナナチョコ - banana choco)

A few games.

A portable shrine

We stayed at the festival for a while and then walked around the area a bit. We ended up at Mikasa Park.