Adventures in Akiba, Horror in Harajuku, Heaven on Earth

Hello hello! Well to start off with I should probably share that I'm currently slightly buzzed off a bottle of sake that a random couple bought for me at my sushi restaurant. It is crazy how strong that stuff is, the bottle is smaller than a can of beer yet I am feeling loopy! I stole the bottle because I think it's pretty and would make a nice vase. Anyway, I have been meaning to post in my blog for the last few days because I visited a couple of cool places this past week.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had this past Thursday off because the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring) is celebrated as a national holiday in Japan... a holiday which the Japanese celebrate by going to parks and getting drunk. Unfortunately for them, it was sort of a crappy day, definitely not a good drunken park day. Jenn, her friend who was visiting, and I still decided to take advantage of our time off by going to the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Ryogoku. To be honest I'm not really a big museum person, but this one was pretty cool, they had full size models of houses from the Edo period and some cool life size dioramas. After we finished at the museum we decided to go to Akihabara a.k.a Akiba a.k.a Electric Town. The Japanese kids usually call it Akiba, so I'll stick with that. Akiba is basically the video game/manga/anime Mecca for all the weird Japanese guys who are completely obsessed with that stuff (they are known as Otaku). Upon entering Akiba we set out to find three things: 1) A maid cafe 2) Creepy vending machines that sold stuff like used underwear 3) Crepes. The first two were specifically related to Akiba, as Metropolis magazine explains "Tokyo's Electric Town is a place where dreams and fantasy become reality," now I'm not exactly sure if I would consider skanky maids and used underwear my "fantasy" but they did seem awfully amusing! For those of you who are wondering what a maid cafe is, well, it's pretty much what it sounds like. You go to a cafe and the waitresses are dressed in slutty pastel colored maid costumes. The maids are extremely accommodating, and will sometimes go as far as to mix people's drinks for them at the table and even spoon feed customers if asked! After a little bit of a search we arrived at a shop that was chock full of toy dispensers, the kind you would see in front of a grocery store selling balls and stickers for kids. These machines, however, were not selling stickers, instead they were filled with plastic figurines of female manga and anime characters. The store looked sketchy enough that we thought there was a possibility that they might sell used underwear in the back. We headed toward the rear of the store and the farther we went, the more risqué the figurines became. We did not find any underwear but we did find big chested naked figurines and weird model butts that were just 2 inch segments of the human body (from the waist to mid thigh) that displayed various types of sexy plastic lingerie. In addition to the crazy pornographic toys in the back we also discovered an elevator. We looked at the floor listings and discovered that there was a maid cafe on the top floor. We decided to check it out, but when we got up we were disappointed to find maids dressed in floor length black dresses in what appeared to be a very dainty and proper little cafe. That was far too normal and unexciting for us, so we left and decided to look for a more interesting maid cafe. After a short search we found what we were looking for, an entire building devoted to maid cafes! There was a different cafe on each floor, so of course we had to check all of them. The first one looked a little boring, so we headed up, when we reached the top we found the quintessential maid cafe but it was just too weird! It looked like a lounge with modern white leather furniture, it was very brightly lit, and besides the maids it was all young guys. Jenn and I felt like that was a little TOO sketchy, so we tried one that was sort of in between, but they wouldn't let us in. We settled on Royal Milk, the first one that we originally thought looked boring, upon a second look we saw a sluttier looking maid so we were satisfied. It was fun and our maid seemed excited to have Americans at her table. At one point she randomly drew a picture of a popular Japanese cartoon character for us on the back of a napkin and explained that his name was Doseisan (Mr. Dosei) and that he lived on Saturn. I kept the napkin as a souvenir. As we headed back to the station we were content to have found 1.5 of the things we were looking for (we figured plastic butts came close to used underwear) and as we talked we came upon a crepe cart! Crepes are quite popular in Japan and you can get them stuffed with basically anything, I like chocolate and whipped cream personally, but at some places you can even got lox and cream cheese crepes! They don't call it lox though... Anyway, it was truly a perfect end to the day.

A few days later after my play rehearsal I met up with Jenn and our friend Ivan for a picnic at Yoyogi Park in Harajuku. It was so cool because on Sundays there are all sorts of performers and people dressed in crazy costumes. My favorite is the Tokyo Rockabilly Club that congregates in the front of the park and dances to music from the fifties. All the guys wear black leather jackets and black leather pants or tight jeans, they have huge CRAZY hairdo's, and tons of tattoos. The women wear poodle skirts or fifties style dresses and cute little cardigans. There was also a group of people holding signs that said "free hugs" so I went and got a free hug, actually, I got two. Jenn took pictures, so I'll post them on my webshots once I get them from her. This was Ivan's first time in Harajuku so we took him down the main, trendy street, Takeshita Dori, that's very popular with the Japanese youth. I have never in my life been on a more crowded street. Getting down the street was okay, but coming back up to get to the train station was insane. We got to a point where we literally couldn't move... at all. We were just stuck in the middle of a sea of thousands of people who seemed to not know how to move and that cliché "I felt like I was in a can of sardines" never seemed more true. Sometimes people would try to push through and then you would hear screams and everyone would just go toppling into each other, I was literally holding up the girl in front of me. She was so short I was afraid she might fall down and get crushed by a stampede of people if we actually started moving. We managed to escape into a weird photo booth shop and when we emerged a few minutes later the crowd had thinned out a tiny bit and we managed to squeeze our way through to the station. Needless to say, I will not be going back to Takeshita Dori on a Sunday any time soon, being trapped in the crowd was fairly unpleasant.

One more thing before I go, the CHERRY BLOSSOMS ARE OUT!!!!!!!! I saw the first blossoms today and I got so excited! I'm planning a cherry blossom viewing party for my school, but unfortunately the only available date that we can do it is after they bloom, so I'm hoping they won't all be gone by the time we have the party. They are only in bloom for about 10 days, so I'm going to try to visit as many parks and take as many pictures as I can during this time. They truly are so beautiful, if I had my own personal heaven it would be filled with streams and waterfalls and cherry blossoms that were always in bloom.

Awesome Asakusa!

So for the past couple of weeks I had been meaning to visit Asakusa, the site of Senso-ji, Tokyo's oldest temple (side note, in Japan temples = Buddhism, shrines = Shinto). I had been putting it off mainly due to laziness and stinginess. I really hate spending money, but I am willing to let some of it go for stuff that's worth seeing or doing, and Senso-ji is one of the most flocked to places by tourists, so I figured it must be good. On Tuesday I finally dragged myself out there because I really did want to see what all the fuss was about. I am SOOO GLAD I waited!! I'm not sure exactly why this happened, but about a half an hour after I arrived I heard drums and gongs sounding from the front of the temple. I wandered over and discovered a parade of children dressed in robes and headbands carrying sticks with bells on them, behind the children were about 15 men carrying a giant golden dragon on poles, and behind them was a cart with about 5 geisha playing instruments like wooden flutes and shamisen (a stringed instrument). Everyone made a giant circle around the performers. First one of the geisha sang a traditional song and played her flute, then the dragon men made the dragon dance. I got some of this on video, but since I had no idea this was going to happen I hadn't left a lot of room on my memory card and ran out of space kind of quickly. The temple itself was also amazing. It was freakin' HUGE and it had a massive lantern that hung in the front entry way. Some of you may have seen pictures of this giant red lantern because it's "one of Tokyo's most distinctive sights" as my guidebook, Time Out: Tokyo, explains. After I looked around Senso-ji and watched the demonstration I walked down the main street in front of the temple. This was by far the most touristy place I've been to so far since coming to Tokyo. It had all the tacky souvenir shops that sold stuff like cheap unauthentic kimonos and those paper sun umbrellas that kids love (I know I loved the one someone brought back for me when I was 8 or so, I think I still have it somewhere!).

Tomorrow I have the day off because in Japan the vernal equinox is a national holiday. Yay Spring!!! I spoke to Jenn on the phone because we plan to do something together then and it turned out that she was actually in Asakusa at Senso-ji at the exact same time I was. We both watched the show and went up and touched the dragon afterwards (all the Japanese people were touching the dragon, so I guess it must have been for luck or something), but we must have been standing on opposite sides because we never saw each other once! I'm glad she was there though because it was a really cool performance and prior to discovering she'd attended I'd felt kind of badly that the rest of my friends had missed it.

Okay, enjoy the videos and check out my webshots http://community.webshots.com/album/562001252ChqhIm?start=120 because I added a BUNCH of new photos from Asakusa and Tokyo Daibutsu (Big Buddha from last post). Enjoy!

Lovely days with James Brown and Buddha

The last few days have been really good. On Saturday night I stayed with Jenn and we met up at her favorite place, K's American Cafe, a restaurant that is about as American as I am Japanese. This was my third time going to K's because Jenn loves it and has formed a friendship with K, the owner of the restaurant. While we were eating, some guys and a woman all came in together carrying instruments. They didn't talk to us at first, but right as Jenn and I were getting ready to leave they came and sat down next to us. They attempted to speak to us in their very limited English and we tried talking back to them in English and our even more limited Japanese. It turned out that these guys were in a James Brown tribute band and one of them actually did look slightly James Brown-ish. Despite the fact that "James Brown" was clearly from Japan, ethnically he was either not Japanese or only half Japanese, because he had rather dark skin and an afro. These guys, especially James Brown, were freakin' hysterical. They didn't exactly mean to be, but the things they said and did were priceless. The fun began when we introduced ourselves. Jenn told them her name and then I told them mine, when they heard my name one of them said "Like Eric Clapton!" and he and another one of the men simultaneously burst into song: "Raaaay- raaa, got me on my knees Ray-raaaa!!!". It was like something out of a stereotype filled sitcom. Somehow Jenn and I managed to keep semi-straight faces through the song and then steered the conversation away from my name. Later as we were watching a music video by George Michael, James Brown turned to me and said "You love the gay?", then after Jenn had explained the term "man eater" another member of the group proclaimed "I'm woman eater!" we told him he probably shouldn't say that any more. Somehow up until that point Jenn and I had managed to contain our inner laughter, but then James Brown (and maybe a few too many drinks) pushed us over the edge when he asked, "Do you like poo?" and then repeatedly started screaming "POOOO! POOOO!". I almost died... from laughter. Looking back I know it's not really THAT funny, but at the time I just didn't care because laughing that much felt good and I hadn't done it in a long long time. Jenn joined in and then we just couldn't stop, we laughed until there were tears streaming down our eyes, while James Brown said "Pooh, yellow bear, pooh". He also explained that he was screaming POOO because he thought that's what Michael Jackson was saying when he made that high pitched "Owww!" sound. Basically, James Brown and his posse made my entire weekend complete before it had even started. We also are going to go see them perform in April, so I'm very excited about that.

On Saturday I had my second rehearsal. I met two more members of the cast and they both seem very nice. One of them was the guy who is playing the lead role, which is actually two roles because the play revolves around a set of identical twins and he plays both of them. He works at some sort of private drama school and teaches mainly Japanese kids how to act, so I thought that was really cool. After rehearsal I met up with Jenn again and we went to Ebisu for lunch because when I was there the other day I found a tex-mex restaurant called Zest that we both wanted to try out. I'm all for trying new Japanese foods, and I do the majority of the time, but sometimes it's nice to eat something familiar and homey (or as homey as Mexican food gets). On Monday I pretty much lazed around, but I felt that I had been productive enough on Sunday that it was okay.

Today I had been thinking of going to Asakusa to visit the famous temple, Senso-ji, and see the massive lantern that hangs in the front gate. I decided, however, that it would be better to wait until the weekend so that I can take my time and explore the area. Instead I decided to do some local exploring and I'm so incredibly glad that I did! One of my students had told me that I live extremely close (about 5 minutes by bike) from one of the largest Buddha's in Japan so I thought that since it was so nice out I would try and find it. I looked up the name and address online and then set off in the general direction without knowing exactly where I was going but knowing I had plenty of time to figure it out. I asked about 5 different people for directions and eventually made my way to the Tokyo Daibutsu (Big Buddha). I was truly stunned by how beautiful the place was, there was a big gorgeous temple, a Japanese garden with a pond full of giant koi, tons of statues, and of course the giant black Buddha. I seriously feel so lucky to have found this place because it's relatively unknown, even by Japanese people who live in other areas of Tokyo, and it's practically in my back yard, or it would be if I had one. On my quest to find Daibutsu I also found two lovely parks/gardens, one with a quiet bamboo grove that you can walk through and another that I will visit later in the spring or summer because there were signs marking hundreds of different flowers that are planted there, they just haven't bloomed yet. I also explored a park right down the street from me that has a little forest on the side of it. Lately I've really been missing the woods and lakes of Connecticut, so all this exposure to beauty and nature definitely helped to lift my spirits. Hopefully the weather will continue to stay warm and I'll continue to find new and interesting things to keep me happy.

One more thing...

I entered my bunny, Dommie, and kitten, Doobie, into a cute pet contest that can win me about $200. So if you could click the link and vote for me I'd really appreciate it. You have to sign up to vote, but it literally takes about 1 minute or less to sign up. Plus, if you join any contests I'll totally vote for you! Thanks!

http://www.competico.com/photo/kitten-and-bunny-bff-s

Perfect Timing - A mid blog SURPRISE!!!

My working week begins on Tuesday and while I do have classes that day, they do not actually begin until 6:15 pm. As long as I log in to work by 1 pm I don't actually have to be at the school until just a few minutes before my lesson begins, so I decided that I should start taking advantage of all that free time during the day. Until recently during my Tuesday time off I had just logged into work a little before 1, maybe run a couple of errands, and then just hung out for a while back at my apartment. This week I decided that since I actually have quite a bit of time, all day really, it would be good to go somewhere new. I took the train to a section of Tokyo called Ebisu. I had never been there before, but I'd passed through it a countless number of times because it is just one stop after Shibuya and is on the way to Oimachi (where Jenn lives) and Yokohama (where the play rehearsals are held). I decided to visit Ebisu because my dad sent me some information about a second hand English bookstore that is in that district. I ran out of reading material a few weeks ago so I had been meaning to pick up some new books. It's not so easy, however, to find books printed in English around Takashimadaira so this was a good excuse to go somewhere new. I looked up where the store was located and tried to print out the map, but the printer wasn't working. I meant to just write down the directions but then I got distracted and forgot to write them down so when I arrived at Ebisu I wasn't exactly sure where the store was, even though I kind of remembered the map and knew it wasn't far from the station. I wandered around for a few minutes looking for it and then asked a taxi driver if he knew where it was. I figured if anyone was going to know where things were it would be a taxi driver. The name of the store is Good Day Books so I said "Good Day Books wa doko desuka?" - "Where is Good Day Books?" At first he seemed confused, probably because of my terrible pronunciation, but then he double checked my question and attempted to speak to me in English (I've found that a lot of the time if you try and speak in Japanese to someone they will try and speak in English back), anyway he was very nice and helpful and he even told me to wait while he went into a convenience store and asked for directions... unfortunately he pointed me completely in the wrong direction. I wandered around and around in circles asking every police officer I saw for directions to no avail, no Japanese person knew about it because it was an ENGLISH bookstore, why on earth would they go there? I was getting ready to give up when I passed an International preschool, in Japan if the word "international" is used it means they speak English. I stopped and stood in front of it, but I thought that because it was a preschool, and probably a snooty upper class preschool for children of ambassadors and the like, they probably wouldn't be thrilled about having a stranger walk in to ask for directions, but as I started walking away I saw a guy come to the entryway and look out the window. I think they may have seen me standing there looking bewildered. I waved at him and he came outside to see what I wanted. When I told him I was looking for the bookstore he went inside and checked to see if any of the other staff knew where it was, then he invited me inside and drew me a detailed map and gave me verbal instructions on how to get there. As I suspected I had actually walked right past the stupid store while I was looking for it, it was on the 3rd floor so the sign was kind of small. I was so relieved to get there and was quite impressed with the selection, but when they went to look for one of the books I requested they couldn't find it so I bought a different one. When I got back to my apartment that night I received an email from the store letting me know that they found the book after all and were putting it on hold for me. On Wednesday normally I have a student who comes at 3 pm, but he cancelled this week and I didn't have any more lessons until 8:30, so I decided to make the journey to Ebisu once again. I bought my book, wandered around a bit, and went to a really good Indian food restaurant for lunch.

After I had my fill of Ebisu I got back on the train and got off a few stops down at Harajuku to do some shoe shopping... I'M INTERRUPTING THIS BLOG TO SAY THAT I THINK I JUST EXPERIENCED MY FIRST JAPANESE EARTHQUAKE!!! I can't be sure because sometimes the trucks on the highway overpass make my apartment shake, but I'm pretty sure that it was an actual quake because the whole room shook and I could hear the stuff of on my shelves and walls kind of rumbling. It wasn't really that scary, but my heart did a little dance for a second, more due to surprise than fear I think. So there you go, just a little spontaneous excitement to shake things up!!.... anyway, SHOES! I know, I know, not nearly as exciting as an earthquake, but let me tell you, finding shoes in Japan is an adventure of its own! My feet are just about a half size too big for the largest size in most places. I only take between an 8 to a 9 so my feet aren't really that large by American standards, but apparently in Japan I'm Miss Bigfoot. Luckily in addition to looking for a new pair of heels which I eventually found, I also wanted a new pair of converse and they are normally sold in men's sizes so that didn't cause too much of a problem.

Last night I went out with the guy that I called over the weekend. We didn't have too much time because we met after I finished work and then my train was delayed so I didn't get to the station where we were meeting until around 10 pm. We went and got a drink though, of all places we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. We just went there because it was convenient (it was located inside the train station), but I still remain convinced that if you are traveling somewhere outside Canada or the U.S. it's pretty much a sin to eat at Hard Rock Cafe because there are about a thousand more culturally significant places to eat at. We weren't eating though, so that also made it a little less blasphemous in the eyes of the travel gods. Despite our lack of time and sickeningly touristy restaurant choice I did have a good time and I hope to see more of the guy. I'll keep you posted if things progress with the two of us.

It's funny, I always start my blogs thinking I don't have much to say and then the words just pour out of me. This was a pretty good week, hopefully things will stay good and the words will just continue to flow.

Living it up

This is one of the first times since coming to Japan that I've managed to have a fun weekend without depriving myself of sleep in the process. On Sunday I had my first play rehearsal in Yokohama. I met with my director and the woman playing the role of Madam Desmortes, because she is the character who I share the most scenes with. We read through our lines a few times and discussed our characters. I'm not going to lie, getting to Yokohama was a bit of a schlep and climbing up the gigantic hill to get to the country club where we met for rehearsal was no picnic, but it felt so good to be part of something that I love that the distance really didn't matter in the end. I really like my director, she's funny and creative and she cares about the actors. She said that she thinks it's important for the actors to be happy since we are the most important element of the show. Believe me, not all directors think that way, many believe that THEY are the most important element of the show. I am truly looking forward to working with her and really getting to work on the play.

After rehearsal I met up with Jenn at Yokohama Station and we strolled around a bit and found somewhere to get lunch. We ended up going to a Chinese restaurant. This was the first Chinese food that I've eaten in Japan and it was quite good. It's funny, before coming to Japan I never really noticed how extremely different Japanese food is from Chinese food. I was aware that there were differences and I knew that sushi was Japanese, but yesterday I walked into the restaurant and I could immediately smell the difference, let alone see and taste it! I'm sad to say though that while Chinese food restaurants are different from Japanese ones, they are also different from American ones... no fortune cookies at the end! I suppose it doesn't really matter anyway since the fortune would be written in Japanese.

After lunch we went to this enormous store named Tokyu Hands. The place seriously has everything you could ever need in life plus about 5 million random things that you would never need like natto (fermented soybeans) scented soap and 1 inch replicas of Redi Whip Cans. Jenn and I could seriously spend hours in that place, it took a lot of will power to force ourselves to leave. Every time we said we were ready to go something else would catch our attention and we'd spend another 10 minutes testing our favorite high lighter markers or searching for Hello Kitty vibrators (they had them at a different location we visited previously, Jenn wanted to send one as a gag gift for her friend). Eventually we managed to escape the clutches of that crazy store and I headed back to Takashimadaira for the night. I went out for gyu-kaku (the amazing cook your own meat place) with some friends. That's seriously my all time favorite place to eat in Japan. Sushi and ramen, yeah they're nice, but gyu-kaku rules over all! Plus my friend Ivan always talks about how gyu-kaku literally makes us high because of all the carbon monoxide from the smoke in the air. I know that sounds kind of unlikely, but honestly I think he's right, by the time we leave I always feel very happy and sleepy... more so than when I eat at any other restaurants.

Today was also a pleasant day. I slept in and then took the train into Jimbocho, the bookstore district. I actually wasn't looking for books, I was looking for air mattresses, and I found them! In addition to being the book district, apparently Jimbocho is also the sports/outdoor activity store district, there were tons of them! The annoying part was that all any of the sports stores sold was snowboarding stuff... not so helpful. Luckily I had done my research so I knew which store had camping supplies. On my way back to the station I passed tons and tons of book stores, they clearly weren't kidding about this being the book district, but I also passed something that I did not expect to see, I passed a bagel shop! This was probably the highlight of my day, I was seriously so excited. When I went in to buy some it was a little odd because each bagel was individually wrapped in plastic and I had to pick each one out and put it in a basket then ring them all up. Still, they were fresh and had I not just finished dinner I would have eaten one right then and there, I managed to resist the urge until I got home.

The grand finale of my weekend happened at home in my apartment. For the past week I have been working up the guts to call this guy who I went out with once, a while ago. I enjoyed our date but we just sort of lost touch after that, that is until he randomly called me at 10:45 pm a week or two ago. That ended strangely and I hadn't heard from him since then so I decided to take a chance and give him a call. I'm not exactly sure why I felt so nervous but it seriously was like something out of a corny TV show where they keep playing suspenseful music as the girl paces back and forth in front of the telephone. Well, there was no actual pacing involved here, but it did take me a good minute or two before I managed to press the send button on my cell phone. I was quite relieved to get his voice mail, on which I left an awkward, babbly (yeah, I know that's not a real word) message that vaguely conveyed the thoughts that had sounded so much better in my head. Apparently they were good enough for him though because he called me back a few minutes later and we're going to try and meet up sometime this week. I'm really glad, if anything I need a friend, it doesn't even have to go beyond that (though I wouldn't complain if it did). Living by myself is not terrible, but it is rather lonely and I find myself craving social interaction outside of the classroom, some days that barely happens. It's hard, there are times when I don't feel like dealing with the bikes and the trains and the constant language barriers, but I don't want to my waste my time here so I am trying my hardest to get out and see things and meet people and live the life that I know some people would die for.