What am I going to do instead of finishing my paper? Write about my break! Don’t worry, I’m on the conclusion, then I just have to edit.
My break started out with me doing absolutely nothing at home, which I think is when I decided to start reading these Stieg Larsson books. May I say that they are fantastic.
Last Sunday I went up to Kurama, that place where the himatsuri takes place, because the temple is actually very beautiful, and it’s a great place to look at the fall colors and such. So some friends and I went up there and got there around 3:30 or 4. By that time the sun was beginning to set (no daylight savings time for us) but we were able to catch it on the mountains a little, which was very pretty.
But, aside from that, something that bothered us were the crazy amount of people that were there. Kurama is not that big a town. In fact, it’s fucking tiny, so why are there so many people there all the god damn time? Probably the answer is that Japanese people love fall colors and all that jazz, and I guess Kurama is supposed to be a beautiful place so it attracts lots of visitors.
Anyway, we headed to the temple, which I forgot to mention is a complex of buildings that go all the way up the mountain. We started hiking after paying an admittance fee and saw a lot of cool buildings and hiked far enough up that we got a good view of the valley before it got too dark. Eventually we got to what looked like the main temple with a courtyard and what looked like monk’s quarters off to the side. We took pictures and admired it and I thought we would start heading down since I figured there was nothing else…when in fact we were only halfway up the mountain.
This doesn’t sound like a huge revelation for you, but trust me, we had been hiking for a good half hour or more up a really steep mountain and it was hard to believe that there was more. At any rate, I’ll have to go back later. Anyway, it was beautiful and blah blah blah.
Now, to the meat of the post: Tokyo. The trip started out with a buffet at a place called Chakey’s which does pizza. A great way to start out a trip right? Not when it’s followed by a night bus. The night bus has to be the least fun thing ever. It left around 11:20 or something, didn’t turn out the light until 12, and stopped every two hours for bathroom breaks. Buses are great for naps, but sleeping on buses is fucking impossible, and sure enough I probably only got two or three hours. We got to Yokohama at 6:30 or something in the morning…in the rain, and took refuge inside Yokohama station where we put our luggage and went looking for a cafe. That early in the morning all we found were McDonald’s and wandered around for a while. Luckily we found one cafe that was open, where we crashed for about two hours until stuff began opening up.
At this point we went to the Chinatown in Yokohama, which is huge. We walked around, got some food which was good, and took pictures of the gates and stuff. One thing about Yokohama chinatown? Everywhere we went there were stores selling giant anman and nikuman, albeit for outrageous prices, but still, it was quite something. The only other thing we did in Yokohama was go to Minato Mirai, a distrcit which is supposed to have cool buildings, but in actuality is pretty boring. We did find an amusement park there though, so that was pretty fun. The amusement park had a good system where you paid for rides, and not a general pass.
One of our group went to go see a friend before we headed to Tokyo, so the rest of us went to a cafe. Some of us passed out, others read and played cards. Eventually we all met up at Yokohama station, got our luggage, and headed to our hotel in Tokyo.
We got there after some navigation and found something that defied our expectations…in the bad way. Now, the hotel we stayed at wasn’t bad. It was more of a youth hostel than anything else, and it was tiny, but it was pretty clean and was a place to sleep, and that’s really all we needed out of it. Which is good, because I was sharing a double with a friend, and we opened the door to a room which had a double bed…and nothing else. The room was about 6 feet wide and long enough to house the bed, and that’s about it. Sounds horrible, but like I said, we just needed the room to sleep.
That first night we all passed out pretty early, which was good because the next day was THE GHIBLI MUSEUM. The Ghibli Museum is one of the most awesome places I’ve been to, because it’s a place that rewards exploration. There are tiny doorways, spiral staircases, and lots of cool little ways to get around and things to see. In addition to that they had some cool stuff on display, but in a format which was more interesting that most museums. Like, they had an exhibit that had concept art and storyboards for a couple Ghibli films (it was really cool looking at the storyboards for Nausicaa) and those rooms looked like real rooms, with chairs and desks and bookcases filled with books and sketches and stuff. It’s hard to describe the awesomeness of the Ghibli Museum, because it really is something you have to experience. You are not allowed to take pictures inside the museum, the reason listed being that they want to experience the world of the Ghibli Museum with your own eyes, and it sounds corny, but in a way it is something to be experienced, not seen. Although, I do have pictures of the life-sized Castle in the Sky robot that’s on the roof (fucking awesome. There’s real grass growing on it, too, just like in the movie!)
So, the Ghibli Museum was the best thing ever, and I got a cat bus (finally), some Ghibli Cookies (for america), and Ghibli candies (as omiyage for host family). After that we went to a place called Sunshine city, which is basically a big mall…which has a food amusement park. One of the first things that occurred to me is: why the hell hasn’t america thought of this yet? Basically in this place there were three different areas: an area devoted entirely to Gyoza, one devoted to desserts, and one devoted entirely to ice cream. There are games and such throughout the place and places to buy the mentioned foods. The first and most notable thing we did was eat weird-as-shit ice cream. We got tiny cartons of I think it was eight different kinds of ice cream. People chose various weird flavors, and I pride myself on choosing what I think were the weirdest.
Sadly I’ve forgotten what one of the flavors was, but I suspect it may have been green tea. At any rate, it wasn’t the weirdest, so have no fear. Some of the most normal kinds we tried were flavors like honey, and rice ice cream, which were ok, but nothing special. Going up a notch in irregularity, we had sake and sakura petal-flavored ice cream. The sake actually tasted like sake (which I don’t care for), and the sakura ice cream was pretty uninteresting. Moving up another notch we get to some very strange ice cream, the one I have in mind being Chicken Wing ice cream. The gross part is that it actually tasted like chicken. Now, I have nothing against chicken. In fact, I’m a big fan when it’s done well, which isn’t hard to do. However, there’s something extremely gross about eating ice cream that tastes like chicken. Luckily, we had the rule that everyone had to take two tastes of a single ice cream to make it easier on the person who bought it, so it was made easier on the poor soul who bought it, but she was struggling by the end.
Now we get to the strangest flavors, which would normally fall under the category of non-edible. The first was silk. I explained this to my okaasan when I got back, and she was confused, and for good reason. “But, you can’t eat silk.” Indeed, you can’t eat silk, and yet here we were with silk ice cream. Being the person who bought it, I took the first taste, and it wasn’t that bad. Reminiscent of vanilla, but different somehow, it was one of the better ice creams we had had that day. I was pleased with my selection and how well it turned out, but we were all anxious at my other choice.
What possessed someone to make an ice cream out of this? Who was having a barbeque and decided that they had just found the next best ice cream flavor? I am, of course, taking about charcoal. I opened the lid to the charcoal ice cream and displayed the grey ice cream to everyone at the table. With slight hesitation I took the first bite. Let me tell you right here and now, charcoal is delicious. First thing when I get home, I’m picking up a bag of charcoal briquettes. Best snack, or best snack? I was thoroughly satisfied that my choices had been some of the weirdest and the most tasty.
The day ended going to a book off in Ikebukuro (there were no headless bike riders, sadly) and looking for English language books, which I found quite a few of.
It was too early to go to bed, or so most of us thought, so we ended the night on a truly spectacular note. Back at the beginning of the trip, before the night bus, some of us stopped at another book off to look for English books. One of my friends found an awful book, in the truest sense of the word. I can’t remember the title, but it’s supposed to be about the true nature of women’s love and sensuality…written by a guy…
Now, when faced with anything of such…shitiness, there are two obvious choices: comment on its shitiness and condemn it to oblivion, or lampoon the shit out of it. We decided to do the second and my friend bought it for the measly sum of 300 yen with the express purpose of doing dramatic readings from it.
So, the night after Ghibli, we congregated in the larger room, and my friend and I switched off doing dramatic readings. This book is awful in every sense of the word. It’s offensive to women, men, and the English language. It’s offensive to women because it makes many a statement that spring from gender roles and stereotypes that were popular back in the 50s, and it basically insults women as a whole in various ways. It insults men, or at least me as a man, because it utilizes unflattering stereotypes of men as well, not to mention this whole piece of shit was written by a man, which doesn’t paint the rest of us in a good light. Finally, this man is an absolutely terrible writer. In the course of one chapter, which is on average about 4-6 pages long, and that’s being generous, he used variants on the word “open” a grand total of, and we actually kept count, 50 times. At least half of these times it’s in the context of “surrendering open,” a phrase he uses time and again.
What the fuck does “surrendering open” even mean?! He uses it so often and in so many contexts that it loses any sense of meaning or significance, if it even had some to begin with. I really can’t express how godawful this book is, and subsequently how fucking hilarious it to read it aloud…with an accent. I started out with a British accent, because I thought sounding proper was a good way to go. I had recently watched an “It Gets Better” video on youtube done by a Scottish guy who was a very powerful speaker, in the sense that he seemed down to earth and got the message across extremely well. Anyway, I was inspired by this video, and after a chapter and a half I switched over to the Scottish accent, which I had a little trouble with since my Scottish accent has always been pretty rubbish (I’m imagining this text in a Scottish accent so rubbish sounded more natural) and I was largely going on the intonation and accent of the guy from the video. Despite that fact, I was later told by my friends that my Scottish accent was good, which surprised me.
However, I think the funniest parts came when I switched to my southern accent. Now, I never think my southern accent is good, because I actually grew up spending Christmas with my grandparents in Texas, and they had classy accents. My grandfather was quite the southern gentleman, and his accent was super classy and awesome, and I have a really hard time replicating it. In addition, I never really knew anyone who spoke with a stereotypical hick accent, so whenever I do it it feels unauthentic. Despite this fact, one of my friends, who comes from the south and strangely lacks the accent for some reason, said that she knows people who talk like I did with my accent, so I guess I can use it and feel more genuine now.
Anyway, reciting this crap in a hick accent was quite possibly the greatest part of the evening, at least for me, and I’m gonna buy the book from my friend so I can share the enjoyment.
The next day was largely occupied by Kabuki. Kabuki is really cool. I like the presentation and the way everything is done: I like the music, the stylized talking, moving, etc. The other attraction is that you can see some really cool things happen on stage. The problem was that the play we went to see wasn’t great. It had some fun parts, but as a whole it was not fantastic and did not have a lot of cool stuff going on. The best parts were a tiger that was on stage, and the main character getting into a battle and throwing a straw man across the stage to symbolize his strength. Other than that there was a lot of story. Oh, you know how they say that only in opera someone can get stabbed and sing about it? Well, that’s true, but I think Kabuki can do one, or more, better. Only in Kabuki can you stab yourself in the stomach, remain offstage for a quick scene, a battle, a scene change, a short talk, reveal that you’ve stabbed yourself, wait through a comic interlude/costume change, wait while your mother stabs yourself, then flail around the ground for a few minutes before finally dying. That was probably the funniest part of the whole thing. But in all seriousness, I like Kabuki, and I want to see more, but it’s so goddamn expensive.
After Kabuki we went to the pokemon center! It was disappointing. Mostly because they didn’t have the plushie I wanted. Oh well. We headed over to Tokyo Tower and some of us were going to go up it, but it was pretty damn expensive to go all the way to the top, so we decided not to. It was evening, so what did we do? More dramatic readings!! While not as amusing as the first time, it produced some laughs.
Our last day was spent tying up things we didn’t get around to before. Like Akihabara and Harajuku. Akihabara is boring. Maybe we went at the wrong time of day, but it’s just not that interesting. After Akihabara we headed to Omote-sando, where I thought the restaurant that came recommended to me by a friend was located. Turns out it was in Shibuya, which is only a stop away from Omote-sando, but it was a long walk, maybe 20-30 minutes. We finally arrived at a place called Ichiran, a literal hole in the wall, where you can find some of the best ramen in Japan. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s so good about it, but you get to specify how the strength, fat content and other aspects of your broth, as well as selecting what will go into your ramen. It’s a pretty fantastic place, and luckily there’s one down in Osaka, so I don’t have to go all the way to Tokyo to get some.
After Ichiran we went back over to Harajuku where everyone else looked around while I went to the nearby Meiji Shrine. Not much to say about Meiji Shrine other than that it’s massive and very pretty.
After all that we walked back to Shibuya to get a picture of the statue of Hachiko, a famous dog. Back in the early 20th century, Hachiko followed his owner to the statue everyday when he would go to work, and he would be at the station waiting when his master got back. One day he saw his master off, but his master was involved in an accident and died unexpectedly. Hachiko would wait at the station every day for his master for the rest of his life. The station attendants had seen him so often that they knew what had happened, and after the dog died he became something a national hero for his loyalty, and his statue was put outside Shibuya station, presumably the station his master went to every day.
The final event of our trip was riding on the Shinkansen. It was fast, comfortable, and it had so much leg room you wouldn’t believe.
That was my Tokyo trip. I’m gonna stop now because this post was way too long.
