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!