Curry, Horumon, More Food, More Food...

So there's this curry place by us that's been hyped by various people. The problem is I don't know if you can say something's hyped if it's actually really good. Coco Ichi is one of those places. It's a curry chain and there really isn't much to tell you about it other than what I told V after the first bite, "This is damn delicious."

I would've posted a picture before it was eaten, but it didn't last. Sorry. That picture doesn't even make it look that great, but I tell you there is something very special in that broth. It also comes with something fried like a katsu on top of the rice. When we get a large, there's enough curry and rice to last two meals!

We've gotten to eat a lot of random things. In fact we see what they call "Horumon" all the time. Horumon is written ホルモン and katakana is usually reserved for foreign words, so we naturally thought it referred to "hormones." I'm pretty sure a lot of people make this mistake since Miwa is Japanese and didn't know any better either. I've probably told this story before, but I'll tell it again.

When we had Horumon last with yakiniku, we had to explain to Miwa that "hormones" were things like Testosterone and Estrogen. To which she naively asked if we were eating Estrogen. Miwa~ かわいい. Well turns out we were really wrong anyway.

The term horumon comes from 放る物 pronounced the same way. It's a Kansai dialect term literally meaning "discarded goods." Wiki tells me that horumon is equivalent to offal, so it's basically all the parts of pigs and cows we don't usually eat. This includes tripe, stomach, brain, etc. Good to know I think.

We grocery shop nearly every day, and the other day we finally caved into our ice cream cravings and bought some Haagen Dazs. There are a whole bunch of flavors, but we decided to go for Milk Classic and Cookies and Green Tea for now.

Milk Classic really tasted like milk; pretty good. Cookies and Green Tea sounded like a potential disaster, but I loved it. I mean you have to like green tea ice cream, but the cookies make a solid addition.

One thing that hasn't changed since coming to Japan is that we never know what to eat. We literally spend an hour thinking of things we might want to eat, getting hungrier and hungrier, then either not eating at all or pigging out on whatever we decide. Last night we did manage to decide on Freshness Burger.

Along with Mos Burger, it's the Japanese burger chain we've seen most often. We went with a mushroom vegetarian burger (I love mushrooms), a fish burger, and fried potatoes.

The burgers are pretty tasty and really light. In fact I would call them more light than fresh, but it's kinda nice how they don't weight you down. Then again, we didn't completely feel fulfilled either and proceeded to eat snacks and crap before passing out. Regardless, we both enjoyed Freshness Burger. Except the fried potatoes; didn't like those that much. It's nice that we've found both Coco Ichi and Freshness Burger as good takeout options. Not all places let you take things to go and you don't always feel like sitting down to eat.

I followed it up with this beer that I got suckered into buying via TV commercials:

OMG. So gross. Pretty much the same thing as really low quality beer in the US. Except Keystone and Milwaukee's Best don't go around pretending that they're really any good. I guess Miller High Life kinda does, which is why I hate High Life the most!

I anticipate the bulk of my posts are going to be about food or shopping. People have been telling us, "Oh, this place is good" or "Oh, this place is famous." Especially Izumi today; to her every place is famous.

I don't think it's worth talking about everything, but we basically went on an Azabu-Juban / Ginza field trip today and bought a lot of random crap to eat:

From left to right, there's famous taiyaki, famous Baumkuchen, famous karinto, and famous waffles and creme. All delicious of course. The taiyaki is from a place called 浪花屋総本店 - Naniwaya Sohonten. I read somewhere that they were the first to invent taiyaki in 1909, but to be frank I'm not sure. I would like to think it's true though. The place only has taiyaki and the taiyaki is very good. A lot of taiyaki is cakey, but this one had very little batter and was baked fairly crisp in a charcoal oven.

The end result is crispy, a little chewy, and filled to the brim with anko, red bean paste. I felt like the anko was not too sweet although V disagreed. Whatever, right? I really really liked these taiyaki. I had read previously that you should order ahead because the wait for them can be two hours long. We did order ahead, but after I ate two of the three we ordered, I managed to get three more after only a five minute wait. Yay.

Here's a gratuitous picture of Nenrinya Baumkuchen. A bit expensive but more than a bit delicious. Right after this picture, a lady came up and told me, "no pictures," but little did she know, it was too late! The chocolate one looks pretty good...hmmm.

Dinner was in Ginza and we wandered around looking at some interesting buildings, bought random food, and met up with Miwa. We went looking for the hole in the wall Thai restaurant that looked promising because of the long line:

Let's face it, you can never go wrong with a hole in the wall place with a long line. 30 mins later we treated ourselves to some delicious Thai food. The place had won an award called a Kitanachelin. The Kitanachelin is given out by this Kitana guy who has a TV show where he basically goes to eat at backwater restaurants and then gives out awards. I'm pretty sure if you make it onto the show, they're not cruel enough to not give you the award. It's still kinda fun and cool to show off the Kitanachelin.

Another night in Tokyo surrounded by good food and beautiful women.

Just kidding. I already have ma wife. Sorry girls.

Demystifying Trash

Monday was the first day of classes for me at Waseda. I headed to school on my bike in the rain to register for the term. My schedule is close to finalized and I've packed 11 periods worth of class on to three days: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Four day weekends!!! So I didn't actually have class on Monday, but I definitely wanted to try out the bike route before my real first day of class.

Waseda looks something like this when it's not raining, but so far this week it's rained every day. In fact it rained Friday and Saturday, stopped for a bit on Saturday when Jon arrived, and then started raining again late Sunday after he left. Jon clearly needs to come back; he's like the reverse rain god.

Biking in the rain is zero fun. I tried to do it Asian style (holding an umbrella in one hand), but biking up and down hills with one hand on a single speed bike with 14-in wheels is terrible! On my way back home, I just took the rain on sans umbrella because it was just too much of a hassle.


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It's probably a good thing I did a test-run because I got lost in that park.

I'm a bit conflicted about my class schedule. There are a bunch of classes I find interesting and I want to take a lot of language classes to work on my Japanese; however, the classes don't matter at all and I only need to take five rather than 11 classes and simply pass them as well. Part of me wants to take it really easy and another part of me tells me school is a piece of cake anyway.

Regardless, I felt the necessity to get a poncho and so we again headed to our favorite store, Daiso. While in the area, we checked out the crepe alley again to find that Angel Heart was still open. A custard + whipped cream + strawberries - whipped cream crepe (try saying that in broken Japanese) later, our verdict was the custard or ice cream just tastes better in crepes than whipped cream, but Marion Crepes tastes better than Angel Heart.

I've seen this chain called Momi & Toy's everywhere, and after we check that one out, I think we can settle on an official winner and then never eat crepes again.

Every time we hit up Daiso, we buy all sorts of crap. Went for a poncho and left with no poncho (they were sold out cuz it was raining, duh), a vegetable peeler, a laundry basket, a money book, and I forget what else. The whole way there V had been looking forward to stocking up on this 49 calorie peach jelly that she had previously had. Of course, they were sold out of that as well. As fate would have it, a drugstore on the way home had it on sale for 88 Yen! That's less than 100 Yen!

I really wish that stuff at Daiso only cost 95 Yen, so it would end up to be 100 Yen after tax instead of 105.

Today was my first class and I have this one class which is half Japanese students and half English-speaking students, the class is supposed to be a discourse on cultural differences and I found one on the first day, spelling. There is no "l" sound in Korean either, but the Japanese take it to a whole other level. Today, my professor was writing "Venezuela" and spelled it "Venezuera." Forgivable. A Japanese student was discussing toilets in China and wrote "No Rocks" on the board. When he meant was "No Locks." This is mind boggling.

The reason that this kind of stuff happens is that lots of Japanese words are Japanizations of Foreign words into katakana. So they call locks, "rokusu." They use this word all their life without realizing that it comes from the word "locks." Nobody had the guts to point out his mistake. Let's just hope that he never has to discuss rocks...er I mean locks with anyone ever again.

Afterward, I was talking to some of my classmates and they were having difficulty with the concept of burnable trash. Japan basically has no room for landfills, so almost all trash that isn't recyclable is burned. I had gotten fairly accustomed to separating trash in Taiwan, but I'm not even sure if it's incinerated or not. One big difference is that Taiwan separates out compostable trash.

The real question is, "What is burnable trash?" Trash gets separated into three categories: burnable, unburnable, and recyclable. Recyclable trash obviously gets broken down into more categories, but everything that can possible be recycled (and there's a lot of it) will be properly marked. This includes stuff like plastic wrappers, styrofoam trays, and basically anything foamy. Unburnable trash is only large items like TV's or bicycles or potentially hazardous items like batteries.

Everything else is burnable. This includes plastic bags, gum wrappers, scrap paper, receipts, floss, and food. It's a little weird to think of stuff like plastic wrap and aluminum foil as burnable, but I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong...soon.

One last random Japanese idiosyncrasy to discuss. I've been using the computer lab in the Graduate School of Commerce Building (also known as Building 11) and been trying in vain to get used to a Japanese keyboard.

It has about ten extra keys and the @ button isn't shift-2. ?!!! @ has its own goddamn button and a lot of the punctuation is mixed up. An apostrophe is shift-7. ?!!! If ever I'm chatting with you and fail to use punctuation, please forgive me...its the keyboard.

I think I forgot to mention we succeeded in time service: 400 Yen off this for 958 Yen. Yayyy.

The Calm After the Storm Part II

I should never ever organize events because I come up with the worst ideas. My idea on Friday night was to stay up til Saturday morning and go to Tsukiji Fish Market for early morning sushi. V and I made it there in time to catch the tuna auction (ticket #'s 66 and 67 out of 70), but everyone else missed out. I wasn't sure what to expect, but the tuna auction was actually pretty damn cool.

Sorry about the crappy cell-phone picture, but I had left the camera with the party at the club. The guy on the stool is the auctioneer and yells stuff out nonstop as he goes from fish to fish. People just put up gang-signs and that means something apparently. No flash is allowed because the auctioneer needs to be able to see everyone and, more importantly, their hands.. I have absolutely no idea what prices these things were being bought at, but each fish literally took about ten seconds at most to sell. For about twenty minutes before this, the wholesalers walked around the fish with small hand pickaxes and tested various qualities of the tuna by hacking at it and tearing pieces of it away. The whole thing was fascinating but doesn't require more than one viewing. Next time I'm in Tsukiji, it'll be just for fruit and sushi.

Because that's what we did Saturday morning anyway so successfully. We were in line for 大和寿司 -Daiwa Sushi, when we had to leave to meet up with everyone else. Daiwa Sushi and Sushi Dai are the two most famous places within the market. There is an outer market as well where we headed to meet up with the other clubbers. On our way there, we passed a fruit stand and couldn't resist its lure. This beautiful box of peaches was 1500 Yen and the huge bunch of bananas was 250 Yen. I just counted and the bunch had 21 bananas. Guess we'll be eating a lot of those.

We've had these yellow peaches before and they're amazing. You would end up paying the same amount for them in the States, so 1500 Yen in Tokyo is practically a steal.

Ok, so we had a bag full of bananas and a box of peaches when we found everyone else and headed to 寿司ざんまい - Sushi Zanmai. I found out today that Sushi Zanmai has expanded into a chain and they are very heavily tuna oriented. Kevin did it right when he went for the only o-toro and chu-toro. V and I each had an assorted set and everyone else ordered a variety of pieces.

Sushi Zanmai was very good, better than anything we really get in Chicago, but Sushi Dai costs 1000 Yen more and tastes twice as good. I really can't explain it; both of them should be super fresh, but there are a couple of shops that just deliver life-altering taste (after a two hour wait). Still I'll probably be back at Sushi Zanmai again, but more on that later.

Everybody scattered and went home, and I successfully gave Kevin the wrong directions back to Ikebukuro. Maybe I should have been more apologetic to him, but I hadn't slept and was not in my right mind.

10 AM: Sleep
2 PM: Awake

I had another friend, Jon, who was flying in late Saturday afternoon. He was stopping by after a business trip to Taipei and so I got up to be ready for his call/email. Sometime around 4 PM, he called me from his hotel in Shinjuku and we met up shortly after. I gave him my go-to Harajuku -> Cat Street -> Shibuya Crossing tour.

Kevin, Miwa, and Izumi had met up earlier to go to Indian Fest in Yoyogi Park and V went to find them. Jon and I waited in Shibuya while everyone else joined us at Hachiko before heading to shabu shabu + sukiyaki. The restaurant we went to actually had a whole bunch of different hot-pot type broths as well. I've heard of sukiyaki but definitely didn't know exactly how its eaten. Turns out sukiyaki is a nabe of a soy based broth which you then dip into raw egg. The hot boiled food cooks the egg slightly and compliments it pretty well.

The whole dipping into raw egg thing is not unweird, but the Japanese love their raw food. We've had way more raw eggs and raw meat than we're used to since arriving here. In general, nabe type meals are 食べ放題 - all you can eat and so I drank another glass of shochu instead of filling up on beer. I've been having a pretty good time with shochu on the rocks and くろうま - black horse, was both delicious and deliciously named.

After dinner, somehow Kevin and Jon owned the table at a pool hall. Izumi did pretty well for a beginner and the time to either stay out or call it a night quickly approached. The last few days have made me very aware of how important midnight is to Tokyo nightlife. I miss leaving bars satisfied and not hammered at 1 or 2 AM. In this city, a lot of people live farther away and actually need to leave at 11:30 PM in order to make their transfers. Of course there are also the random people you find just totally passed out at like 9 PM as well.

So last night, V, Jon, Izumi, Miwa, and I ended up heading home (hopefully on time) and the other three stayed out. After that I'm really not sure what happened to Los and Kevin. I hope they made their flight and everything...

I woke up pretty early and hung out with Jon before we had to go. We kind of just walked through Asakusa and Ueno before stopping for some sushi. I'll be back in that area of town to do it again like a proper tourist. While we took the train across town, I looked up sushi on my phone and found a decently rated place in Ueno. So we ended up going to no place other than Sushi Zanmai in Ueno, my second Sushi Zanmai experience in 48 hours. This time I asked to sit at the bar, and Jon went for the tuna set while I ordered piece by piece. The set cost 3000 Yen, but my eight or so pieces only set me back 1600 Yen.

I'm pretty sure that this is the way to go. Japan in general has been pretty bad at delivering value in quantity, and I'm going to make a point of ordering everything on an individual basis. Not only do I get to eat what I want, but it'll probably cost me less as well. I've been using the following example on everybody: Red Bull here comes in two sizes, 250 ml and 185 ml. The larger can goes for 275 Yen while the smaller can is 200 Yen. This means that the larger can costs 1.1 Yen per ml while the smaller is 1.081 Yen per ml. I looked up Red Bull on amazon.co.jp. I can get a 24 pack of the 250 ml cans for 6600 Yen, which is just 275 x 24!

This doesn't hold true all the time, but as strange as it sounds you can actually find value by buying small in Tokyo.

This last week has been way too crazy. Sure it was fun, but both we and the girls who live here spent too much money everyday. It's just really tough keeping pace with vacationers and it'll be nice to settle down and ease the burden off our wallets a bit. I'm sure Izumi, Miwa, and D all agree.

Actually, D is going to Cambodia or something tomorrow. Never mind.

The Calm After the Storm Part I

Didn't see Los and Kevin at all today (Sunday) and have no idea what exactly they did last night. I effed around online til about 4 AM, woke up at 9 AM, and hung out with Jon before he had to leave (more on this in Part II). The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity and although we'll all miss them, thank god the children are gone.

Apparently, I haven't posted since Wednesday, and I'm racking my brain trying to figure out exactly what happened.

Luckily, we changed our plan Wed night and instead of 飲み放題 - all you can drink, we went for fugu instead. I had been moderately nervous about eating blowfish as it takes very little tetrodotoxin to kill you, but the fact of the matter is that nobody dies from eating it in restaurants.

I did get pretty nervous though when my tongue started to go numb. The fish itself has a very delicate taste, not as tasteless as I had heard, and the several preparations of it were all quite good. Overall though, I have to admit that the meal was overpriced and perhaps not even worth the experience. Ah well...while in Japan, right? I felt really sluggish afterward and bailed on the ensuing party. Sounded like everyone had a pretty good time around Ebisu, but I spent the night and most of the next day with a really really itchy face. I'm not sure if I had a bad reaction or a more than normal dose of toxin, but chances are I won't be going for fugu again.

However, we did try some really interesting alcohol while at dinner. I think I might be developing a taste for shochu, which is basically Japanese soju. It differs from sake as it is distilled from rice rather than fermented like wine. Miwa ordered a glass for Kevin that had fugu fins inside and was lit on fire to bring up the temperature and burn off some alcohol. I don't think it sat quite well with him, so I ended up drinking most of it. Come to think of it, maybe that's what caused my reaction.

After dinner, Izumi came to Shinjuku and everybody was about to step into a sticker picture booth when I bailed. Apparently, they went to karaoke before going to a park and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. By the way, I still haven't karaoked.

Thursday, I didn't get out of the apartment until pretty late as I waited for our internet to get installed. Once we finally figured out how to setup the internet on our computers (first experience with PPPoE), we found that our modem only had one LAN output and we needed a router to split the internet to both our machines. ARGH! The English-speaking phone representative recommended I wait til tomorrow, to call the service provider and request a router. Customer service could then help me install the router in English, to which I said thanks but no thanks.

I immediately left for Yamada Denki, a big box electronics store, to purchase a router. I decided that it was worth the 2500 Yen investment to attempt to install a router in Japanese, and I was so right. I'm a goddamn genius and was about fifteen times more impressed with myself installing the router properly than I was about opening a bank account. I won't lie, I felt a bit like a deity bestowing internet to mortals and...myself. Well, to my wife I'm her savior anyway.

Dinner later that night was Korean nabe with another one of D's friends, Fuyuko. Is it weird that I want to spell Fuyuko with a "J?" I enjoyed my Korean food probably too immensely; it had been sooooo long. I don't know if you can really call 감자탕 - potato soup, nabe or not but that was one that we got. The other nabe we ordered was this awesome mix of ramen, rice-cakes, sausage, dumplings, and so much more.

We talked quite a bit about Korean food over dinner and it became increasingly obvious that we would hit some street stalls for 호떡. I'm not sure how to translate that, but I think it's basically a rice flour pancake, usually with a sweet filling. The red bean one we got was amazing, and the honey one was actually made with a combination of sugar and cinnamon, but also quite good. I'm telling myself that they're in walking distance right now.

What did we do afterward? Why go bowling of course! I'm not much of a bowler, but with Kevin and Los in town, every night was basically dinner + alcohol + some random activity. We played some pool as well as the Taiko drum game over some vending machine gin and tonic. This was my first real experience with vending machine alcohol, and it wasn't half bad. V got respectably drunk over some peach mixer. My wife loves her もも - momo - peach. Not sure if I'll find beer out of a vending machine, but Los did try some microwaved fries. They looked awful.

Didn't get to take any pictures of that night cuz the camera didn't have its memory card in it, but we called it a night and then proceeded to stay up until 4 AM catching up online. I make no apologies about how much of internet whores we are. Let's face it, you all missed us too.

With internet firmly in place, I unfortunately had to abandon it to go to immigration on Friday. The immigration office in Shinagawa was much farther than I expected. The office's website has a fairly decent map that doesn't really give you a good representation of how far it is from the train station. Did I mention that I hate how the up direction on maps is not necessarily North? The immigration office map had up going East. I figured this out eventually and a half hour walk across rivers and highways later, I ended up in the right place. I had targeted 1 PM as a decent time to go because the office closes from noon til then for a lunch hour, but unfortunately I was a little misinformed.

The line to get a re-entry permit for my Visa was at ticket number 435 when I drew 498. That wasn't too bad as there were multiple windows open. The line to apply for a part-time work permit was around ticket number 320 when I drew 565. So, I decided that I would come back for that after I gave part-time work some seriously thought. Also when I do come back, I'll be back bright and early.

I met up with V on Omotesando to hit up Daiso again. We finished almost all of our household shopping there. I also saw this guy in the most remarkable getup. He was impossible to miss because he had wooden clogs that went click-clack with every step.

His overalls were only tied on one side and he was carrying three wallets in his right hand. He had a pink cell phone hanging from his left hand, although he had another pink cell phone in his right back pocket. To top it all off, the blue blob hanging from his lower back pocket is some sort of oversized Stitch (from Lilo and Stitch) keychain. Look at his stance; I don't know if anyone could dare to question is awesomeness. Why Stitch?

Neither V nor I had really had much to eat that day, so we decided to try one of the crepe stands we had heard so much about. Two of the most famous ones on Takeshita-dori stand side by side.

We hit up Marion Crepes, saving Angel Heart for another day. Went with a very typical looking strawberries and cream crepe.

Honestly, I was kind of disappointed. I think I'm more of a fan of classic crepes, and I'm not exactly partial to whipped cream either. I probably would have enjoyed this more with ice cream, but I feel like a normal crepe sucree is still the best. We'll give it a few more tries probably, but I think Asian crepes are not quite my thing. I've heard of people going Paris and being disappointed by the simple and soft crepes, but that's how they're supposed to be, people!

Interestingly, the entire back alley of the crepe stands becomes a sort of crepe-eating alley. I think it's perpetually populated by a bunch of people eating crepes.

Yes, those girls definitely found it a little weird that I was taking a picture of them. For some reason, there were a disproportionate amount of Koreans in line for crepes as well. Not sure what the significance of that is.

After Daiso, we got our first ever McDonald's in Japan: french fries. Somehow, we both thought that they were blander than normal, but we've both been known to be insane from time to time to time.

I had been in contact with Los and Kevin all day, but we weren't scheduled to go clubbing in Roppongi until later, and it seemed like the girls, who all have real jobs, were working too hard and wouldn't catch up with us until around 11 PM. I decided I didn't want to track them down to get dinner together and instead enjoyed an easy dinner with my wife.

I had seen a 天丼 - tempura don place down the street and I actually managed to get some veggies, albeit fried, by ordering a vegetarian one. The place was pretty damn good. I don't know if our street, 小滝橋通り - otakibashidori, has any bad restaurants on it. And it's basically just all restaurants, too.

After dinner, it was time to go out, and the first club we went to in Roppongi was a bit of a nightmare. Creepy foreign guys were out in full force working their magic on pretty small selection of girls. A lot of the girls in The First Bar were actually some sort of Southeast Asian (I'm not even going to try to isolate which ones) and all of them were frightening. Kevin and I have seen some things before in Chicago, but never had we actually seen a girl put something pill-shaped between her lip and her teeth in front of us and then proceed to make out with basically the first guy she found.

She and her friend had tried to sit down next to us early, when I had pointed them to other side of the table. The whole experience was terrifying. The two of us just sat there watching a bunch of rejects getting stolen from. Takes the idea of gold-diggers to a whole other level.

F you creepy foreigner + gold-digger combo! Yeah!

Drinks were pricey at the first club, and I was super tired to begin with that day. Problem is that once you decide to stay out, you really have to commit to your decision. I spent the whole night keeping myself awake with red bull vodkas but being too tired to figure out exactly how drunk I was getting. Even now, I have no idea how drunk I was since I never really felt drunk all night, just tired.

We hit up the second joint, Feria, when Izumi showed up and things got more interesting rather than horrifying. I'm not sure, but I think that it had three floors of action, all of which required you to take an elevator in between each floor. Feria was 3500 Yen at the door, but this included two drink tickets, making the night not too bad by my standards. I wonder if there's anyway to get on some sort of list to make it cheaper, but the drinks at Feria were much better than the ones at The First Bar, anyway.

So between Wednesday and Friday, V and I pretty much stayed up late online and drank every night. It doesn't get any better in Part II, but take a breather and come back to it in a second. Thanks for reading!

First Hangover and More!

So the hangover was actually yesterday. Today, I'm in a cafe and I'm going to have to warn you that this post will be long. You have no idea how nice it is to use the internet from your own machine. Once online, I was greeted by the news that my portfolio has grown nicely in the last week and the Yen is getting a little weaker. The guy next to me is just staring at the cover of his TOEFL prep book in disgust as I type away. AHA! Take that Japan!

Internet comes tomorrow, but even having it now for the three hours my battery will last is pure bliss. I'm not exactly sure how to recap the last few days, so let's see what I can remember and work backwards. I got up extra early this morning to change my address at the ward office and the bank. I did this extra early because the wait yesterday was about 2.5 hours long. I waited so long to do random things yesterday that I didn't have time to go buy a bicycle, but fortunately I had plenty of time today.

Suginami Green Cycle is a bicycle recycling outfit. The city takes all the bicycles that get abandoned at train stations, picks the nicest, and sends them to Suginami for retrofitting and retail. If you have confidence in your Japanese you can read about it here:

http://www.sjc.ne.jp/suginami/NEWS/SGI1026_HTM.htm

For some reason, there weren't actually that many bikes available. They're only open for a few days a month, but I think that most people pick a bike and then wait a week for it to get cleaned up. The only real problem with Suginami is that it's kinda far from Shinjuku. I had little difficulty riding the train there, but it's illegal to take bikes onto trains without a bike bag. I basically had to ride for over half an hour on a single-speed city bike to get back home.

Did I mention that today was hot, too? But, I made it, and now my cute bike is safely registered in our building's little bike lot.

Yesterday was basically super boring as I walked around town dehydrated and a little hungover, trying to register for classes and register my new address at various locations. The best part of yesterday was reading about how hungover everyone else was from the night before on facebook. We did go try out pachinko last night and figured out very little by the time it was over. Clearly, we need more practice. Kevin looked right at home, but that just means he's accustomed to losing money...the poor fool.

Apparently, Kevin and Los came at the right time, because this entire week is called Silver Week since there are two holidays (Monday is old person's day and Thursday...I dunno). We are scheduled to go to an all-you-can-drink place tonight, but I'm not sure if people are mentally prepared to go through that again.

Actually, Monday was pretty uneventful until about 8 pm. V stayed home while I took the children to Odaiba Island. I met up with Los and Kevin a little past noon, and although it only takes half an hour or so to get onto the man-made island, we didn't make it there until 3-ish. This is because we spent exactly an hour and twenty minutes (Kevin apparently timed it) trying to convince JR personnel not to call the police on Los. The moron picked up a train card that clearly had someone else's name written on it. Used it multiple times, ran out of money on it, then took it to the station office to tell them that he had to refill it. Forget that he didn't even have the foresight to have enough money on it to actually pay for the train, he basically turned himself in.

*Newsflash* Los and Kevin just called to let me know that they're going to Akihabara to go to a maid cafe. Pictures aren't allowed there either, but I regret not being there to take them anyway. Back to regular programming.

I ended talked to about four or five personnel at that station, who all just said, "I guess we have to call the police." Eventually, I persuaded them to just call the person the card belongs to. That guy said it was ok if we just paid the difference on the card. So, after all this, we went to the office to get this all on paper. Los was supposed to write an apologetic letter, but he sucks at being apologetic. No seriously, he is so bad at it. The guys at the train station were on a bit of a power-trip, but they really really wanted him to be sorry. Los super sucks at being sorry. Here's his apologetic face afterward.

The irony of his t-shirt... Anyway, Los is an asshole, so I was trying to convince these people that he doesn't have anyone else here and they're going to need to take my cell phone number to reach him. I couldn't get that through to this guy and had to call D. Unfortunately, I didn't explain the situation very adequately to her and she basically relived the whole thing on the phone.

I understood most of the conversation and it went something like, "If I used someone else's credit card in the U.S., I would have to go to jail. If I ate at a restaurant and didn't pay in the U.S., I would have to go to jail." The guy really wanted us to be sorry and clearly was biased against Americans, but D and I didn't do anything wrong! Also, did I mention that Los sucks at being sorry?

Eventually, the phone got passed to Los where D taught him how to say "gomenasai." We paid and then were trying to leave the station when the guy needed to check my card to make sure I had paid before exiting the station...

After this, Kevin bitched about being in the dark and waiting for an hour and twenty minutes and we finally made it to Odaiba Island. I had actually be looking forward to this for a while, because of a Sasuke replica in Muscle Park. It's too bad that I didn't consider how my shoulder wouldn't hold up, so I failed on the whole thing. Kevin and Los didn't do much better, but I don't think anyone was that humiliated. I redeemed myself a little bit on the ledge climb, but the whole thing was really really hard. I guess I'm not ninja material.

I didn't make that gap by the way.

The rest of Odaiba Island is mostly a bunch of shopping malls and an indoor amusement park. We did go to the Toyota exhibition station where they had a lot of futuristic stuff and cars on display. They have this really cool test drive section for their single-manned vehicle. Unfortunately, they were shutting down by the time we got there and I didn't get to try it.

We met up with four women for dinner: V, D, Miwa, and Izumi. Dinner was okonomiyake and monjayaki at Okame in Tsukishima. It was also really really good. We ended up ordering yakisoba because the table next to us were eating it; we also ended up ordering way too much beer. Everyone was already a little drunk and very happy by the time we started to head to Roppongi to find a bar.

Miwa and Izumi always seem to be jumping. That's when the rest of the night went downhill and we started to do shots. Kevin pushed his shot to V, who in her own words "took it like a man,"and was of course punished with more shots. That'll teach him not to man up.

Drinking

Drinking

Drinking

V and I made everybody run for the trains when we realized it was about 11:45. We figured out that D and Izumi made it back safely via facebook the next day (real responsible I know) and made sure that Los and Kevin made their connection at Shinjuku Station. Finally, we walked back to our apartment and passed out.

T-minus three hours until all you can drink in Shinjuku. Here's to not repeating our mistakes. Kanpai!

Finally the Rockabillies

Jealous? You should be. I feel like I've been baptised or something; but to be frank, these guys are nice to everybody. They don't mind people taking pictures at all, but the one thing they do frown upon are video cameras. There were actually three groups there: the guys in black and denim, the guys only with black (also featuring a girl), and the swing dancers (lame). The history of these groups is confusing as a bunch of them were weeded out by authorities in the 80's. It's impossible to say who the originals are, but I didn't feel any real hostilities between them. No friendliness either, though.

Today was another muggy day, but these guys go on for hours by taking turns. I think I can understand the draw of this lifestyle. We did find cosplayers too and I cannot understand the draw of their lifestyle. Was totally not impressed by them. For the most part, I think that they're just high-schoolers who leave home with suitcases in the morning, change somewhere, and then hit up Yoyogi Park for some attention. They just sit around and chat.

Ok, so doing this completely out of order; we met up with Kevin and Carlos around 1 pm and found D and Miwa soon after. The plan was to hit up a Vietnamese festival and then have some lunch and beer in the park. The Vietnamese food was alright, but we're pretty used to that stuff in Chicago. I had never tried Vietnamese beer, but along with a Singaporean beer, it was all very unspectacular.

We hung out in Yoyogi Park for a while though and had a good time. There's so much random activity going on there. First thing was this guy practicing his Australian giant bong-shaped instrument. We figured out what it was called later when Carlos blurted out, "Didjeridoo!" Of course!

There was a guy practicing his whip cracking, a saxophone somewhere in the background, and plenty of bongos. On our way back we saw a couple wannabe comedians; one was doing a sketch in English that made no sense and the other was apparently playing Charades by himself. D described it best when she said people just come to the park to do whatever they want.

We left the park thoroughly amused. We wandered around Harajuku for just a bit and stopped for some takoyaki, too. While in line, Kevin was asked which way Omotesando was in Japanese and the look on his face was priceless. Why him? Least Japanese looking Asian ever. If Kevin read our blog, he would've known not to just wolf down the fresh octo-balls, but I think we all enjoyed his reaction to the liquid hot magma that oozes out of fresh takoyaki.

We decided to reenter Yoyogi Park to check out Meiji Jingu before heading to the Square Enix store. We trekked through the woods all peaceful-like and cleansed our hands before entering the premises. It just happened that there was a wedding procession going on at the time, so everything got super quiet.

It was universally understood that you shouldn't be loud as they pass, but everyone secretly just wanted to yell, "Congratulations!" at them. Something about being married does this to you. Before I could care less whenever I see a bachelor or bachelorette party, but now I always feel an obligation to wish them well. These guys will be fine cuz they're rich. It can't be cheap to do your procession at a famous shrine. Just sayin.

It had been around 1pm when we met up and it was 5:30 when we left Harajuku for the Square Enix store. Kevin was super excited about the whole thing and although the store was smaller than expected, I have to admit, some of it was pretty damn cool.

We successfully found where Sephiroth was entombed and I think everybody who enters that store wants to know how to buy him. We somehow left without buying anything, but I felt like I should buy something for Taeil. If you want, Taeil, you can smell like either Sephiroth or Cloud with special FFVII cologne. Would it be cool or way too nerdy if someone smelled you in passing and asked you what you were wearing, and you were forced to reply, "Cloud."

We ended the day with some kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi in Meguro. At this point in time everybody was pretty tired, but a few of us were ready to throw it down in karaoke. Still that was some of the most exhausting eight hours we'd all experienced, so karaoke has been postponed til tomorrow.

These kids have been ripping through Tokyo at a torrid pace. Let's slow it down a bit tomorrow.

いらっしぁいませ - Irrashaimase - Welcome

It's not like we're exactly natives, but it definitely felt like we were welcoming people in when buddies Kevin and Carlos came to town. They confirmed our belief that Tokyo is the most confusing city in the world by refusing to be found. I know they landed late and all, but Kevin's idea of getting around is to follow groups of people. This irritates me immensely. I'm not exactly OCD or anything, but I really like to know where the hell I'm going.

When we finally found each other that night, meat was on their minds, so we went for Yakiniku again. Found one at the edge of Kabuki-cho, and while it was cheaper than the one we had in Shibuya, it was nowhere near as good. This was also the closest we've gotten to the red-light district. There's a lot of restaurants and shops inside Kabuki-cho that have popped up in our google maps searches, but so far we've been avoiding it. Sooner or later, I guess I'll find out just how bad it is (word is that it's not that bad now).

Called it a night, woke up the next morning, met up, and took the children to Harajuku. The two areas we are most familiar with so far are Omotesando and Nishi-Shinjuku (with Shinjuku San-Chome and Shibuya tied for third). Our fourth time in Harajuku was a little different though, since we hit up Takeshita-dori in search of cosplayers. I found out later that many of them are migrating away from the tourists and that they mostly come out on Sundays.

Takeshita-dori was somewhat interesting, but way out of our age group. We kept walking down and cut through one of the side streets to Omotesando. On our way we walked by a whole bunch of small designer stores. Some I'd heard of, most I hadn't, and V and I will be back to check it out. Carlos and Kevin are less vain, so we moved on. They checked out Omotesando Hills and we continued down to Cat Street.

It was a pretty nice day out overall, but it was way hotter in the sun that advertised in forecasts. Let this be a lesson to you kids: dress light and just be cold if it's cooler than you thought. Well I take the cold much better than I take the heat anyway.

Not at all sure why Cat Street is called that, but we had to go since Kiddy Land opened yesterday. Despite Kevin's phobias, he had some errands to run in there so we tread onward. Of course, V was right at home. There's this Hello Kitty/Sesame Street special release going on. It's a Japan-exclusive, but isn't actually out until later this month. In fact, the only location with it so far is Kiddy Land. I'm seriously heavily considering a short-term business strategy of buying the whole stock and selling them on Ebay.

17 hours later, we continued down the rest of Cat Street to Shibuya. The rest of Cat Street was littered with awesome vanity. We'll be back. We hit up a tonkatsu place that we had walked into our first time in Tokyo and took Los and Kev through Shibuya crossing. Everyone took photos of the crossing and Hachiko like proper tourists. Everyone was also thoroughly impressed, but I've been there during rush hour when I crushed infants while rushing to the Shibuya ward office. So, instead of posting a mediocre representation here, one day I'll take the craziest picture of Shibuya ever and then post it. Til then, you get Hachiko.

After Shibuya, we took the Yamanote line alllll they way to the opposite side of Tokyo, Akihabara. Carlos and Kevin were immediately more in their element (also much less women for Kevin to ogle at). I felt suffocated by the overall otaku-ness. Kevin in fact repeated multiple times how he understood how people could spend an entire day there.

I knew two things before I went: 1. I was not going to spend money on anything anime related. I've been a big fan in the past, but I'm not going to waste my dough on that crap when I can buy *psht* clothes and stuff... 2. Nothing electronic would be worth buying. For bargain hunters like me and my resident deal filter, Taeil, everything in big box stores is too expensive. Things are even more inflated in Japan. They do have some camcorders and laptops that seem cutting edge, but also seem either no-name or two early gen to worth adopting early.

Am I a savvy consumer? Not at all. One of the big electronics stores was having a stereotypical Japanese raffle going on. I've dreamt of spinning the wheel and winning a trip to a hot spring. I'll buy something and come back to Akihabara just for that. We're all suckers. Of course, I expect the two visitors to hit up Akihabara again sometime next week again. Case in fact:

Kevin Kim inside Kiddy Land

Kevin Kim after receiving a coupon from a Maid Cafe advertising girl.

All I wanted to do was play my goddamn Bemani game, but none of the arcades had it. Instead, they were filled with machines and people playing games from ten years ago and even more people watching other people playing ten-year-old games. It's all a little bit sad. The top floor of most of these arcades are reserved for the super-nerds. The kids who buy card decks to stick inside arcade machines to play for 500 Yen a shot.

V mentioned to me today that D mentioned to her that she doesn't like Akihabara much. Just too otaku for her. That's just true for pretty much every girl (there were very few). I'm not one who's starved for female attention, and I can take my fair share of testosterone. But it wasn't testosterone that filled this place...it was...something else.

Tomorrow there will be some pictures of Los, too; I promise.