Obviously due to me packing and heading home all of the remaining days will be posted next week...or Sunday, when the plane lands. There's more to tell, and truth be told Friday is one of the more interesting of the days, so stay tuned to find out what happens.
5:06 AM
So it’s time to go to the bus station. We have five (heavy) bags of luggage to carry around. I’m sick, and this heavy labor isn’t exactly helping my immune system. What normally would have been a thirty minute walk turned into almost an hour. I had to stop multiple times because I was close to either blowing chunks or passing out. Frankly, I wanted to do both at this point, but if I did we would miss the bus. We make it in time and we are seated in the back, I’m sweating like a mop and on the verge of exhaustion. I feel a fever is coming on. I pray that the rest of my trip isn’t ruined as a result of this. It’s not, though the night is far from over. Shortly after the bus leaves it makes a pit stop. I take this moment to buy lots of grape and orange juice. It’s a good thing I did because I would find myself waking up multiple times in the night feeling sick.
The juice helped a lot though because Japan sells the most pure juice I’ve ever had. It’s literally the fruits crushed in a juice, and I can’t taste any preservations or anything (though the orange juice does have the most pulp I’ve ever had). The bus arrives at 7:30am and we start walking…again. Now we’re in Kyoko, and while I would love to say that there’s a lot to talk about, seeing as how it was the former capital of Japan, there really isn’t. Kyoto was built on the Chinese city models. That means that everything was planned out, it has mostly straight streets, and there’s a ryame and reason to the way everything is set up. Tokyo, on the other hand, was a fishing town that sort of boomed during the economic period, which made it the crooked mess it is today. That said, crooked messes tend to be more interesting in many ways, and Kyoko just came off as a foreign New York in comparison.
Anyway, we get to our guest house and are in for a rude awakening: The place doesn’t check in till 3:00pm, and if we want to check in early it will cost us $1000 per person. Well that’s well over five hours away so we pay him and get some sleep. We stayed in another cramped room, but at least the futons were very comfortable. Though a nice room, I can’t help but feel like this place nickeled and dimed me the whole time. Laundrey? $400. Early check in time? $1000. Use of towels. $200. It was crazy, but at least the guy was nice enough to give us a car ride to the bus station on the way home a couple days later…but I’m getting ahead of myself here.After we sleep for another couple of hours it’s time to go see a play entitled[insert name]. For obvious reasons I couldn’t take photos of the play, but I did sneak this one…
…as well as took a couple of pictures of the theater…
It was overall a very fun experience. Truth be told, it was like Japanese Broadway…only with an all female cast (something to do with tradition I was told). After the play I was feeling better, but I still wanted to get some rest. So we got dinner, went back to the guest house, and went to sleep. I know, it’s not a very exciting day overall, but just wait, the next day something even bigger happened.
5:19 AM
Today was intended to be a “take it easy” day. You know, the kind of day where it’s like “Okay, I know I’m in a new country, and I know I only have so much time to do everything I want to do, but darn it let’s rest.” So normally there wouldn’t be anything to really write about…except it seems my body was agreeing that I needed rest because I got sick. So now I’m writing about what it’s like to have a cold in Japan. Now, obviously, in a technical sense there is nothing different. When you’ve got a cold you sneeze a lot, have a runny/stuffy nose, and tend to be a bit of a grouch. However the Japanese are a working society, so you work when your healthy or sick. If you are sick though it’s considered rude to share your germs, which is why…
…the Japanese wear doctors masks when their sick. This is to help prevent sharing the sickness around. And judging from how many people I see with these masks everyday I’m figuring this is probably a good thing. Sometimes a couple of these people will be on a cramped train with me, and I’m thankful they are at least taking my health into consideration (even if they aren’t taking my personal space into consideration). I didn’t wear a mask because I simply didn’t have one. Not that it mattered much anyway; I couldn’t leave the apartment complex. See, my friend had to run some errends because he’s going to China after I leave, and there’s a lot of paperwork to fill out. Course, he has the key, so I’m stuck at home, falling in and out of sleep.
With the TV on. One of the strange things you will witness in the world is Japanese TV. And I’m not singling out a specific genre like anime, I’m singling it ALL out! Game shows, kids shows, soap operas, commercials, you name it, it’s weird. Chances are watching Japanese TV with a fever threatening to burst will go down as one of the strangest things I’ll ever experience. It’s so surreal, so bizarre, and such an acid trip, that words can’t possibly describe it. For example, here’s an average Japanese commercial…
…now imagine watching that while you, yourself, are feeling a little bit loopy. It would certainly be a one-of-a-kind experience. When my friend gets back I let him know that we need to go get some medicine. Sadly, convience stores don’t sell medicine, so we have to find an actual pharmacy. The second problem is that there is no NyQuil or Tylonal in Japan, so the brands are forgein to us. We ask the pharmisist what he would recommend and he gives me some pills. Y1350 gone down the drain. I don’t want to spend the money but what choice to I have? He has the advantage of knowing his way around a product that makes my head spin in my own country (no pun intended). This is not the worst of it though. No, the worst of it is that tonight is the night where we leave the apartment to go to Kyoko.
And this is where the trip turns sour for the first time.
The medicine is already starting to kick in, so as far as I’m concerned this is a good investment. The problem is my body is still weak, and we need to carry luggage to the bus station. Five suite cases worth. All of it very heavy. I carry two of the shoulder carriers and a roller, but five minutes into the trek my body is starting to hate me. We take breaks but the dilemma is clear: I’m sick. Carrying around so much weight is making me sicker. We can take breaks, but take too many breaks and we’ll miss the bus. Taxi’s are way too expensive (almost the cost of the bus fare). I push on though. We finally switch up some of the luggage and, while I’m not in a much better position, I’m at least in a position where I can safely carry the luggage the rest of the way.
When we finally get to the bus stop we have no time to rest as the bus is just pulling up. The driver loads the luggage while I look around for a nearby cooler to get some water or orange juice. For once none of these wonderful, glorious machines are around. I guess Newton’s Law has no boundries. We get on the bus and it leaves. By now I’m about to collapse and I feel a fever coming on. My first thought is that I may have potentially ruined the rest of my own trip. I certainly wouldn’t die from this experience, but did I just make my sickness so bad it could ban me to my bed for the rest of the trip? Would I ever get my orange juice? Tune in tomorrow to find the answers. Same bat time, same bat channel.
5:12 AM
It's the second day in Tokyo and it's been fun so far. Been eating lots of interesting food and seeing lots of interesting stores. I'm still not over how much the Japanese maximize their space. I've been in stores that are underground, on the second floor, I've even been to a noodle place on the seventh floor, inbetween a toy store and a store that sells tissues, tissues, and nothing but tissues. Strangely enough the tissue store was the busiest store on this floor. Go fig. On the way down the elevator though it stopped on floor five. We were hoping to go to the first floor but I'm glad we stopped as I stumbled upon...
...a Tower Records store. You can not imagine how excited I was to find this store. Tower Records was a great music store in the US, back in the days where people used to buy actual records. Thanks to a combination of the digital revolution and Wal-Mart selling CD's for less then $10, people didn't find the value of Tower anymore, and the company folded a few years ago. It's nice to see some countries still find value in these kinds of stores. Walking through the store itself though gave me a bit of a revelation: If I lived in Japan I'd probably watch less movies. See, earlier in the day Eric took me to see Hayao Miyazaki's latest movie "Ponyo on a Cliff." The ticket would have cost ¥2,100 (about $21), but since I had a student ID I got in for ¥1,580 ($15.80).Now the retail price for DVD's is ¥3,999 ($39.99), for one movie. Anime can easily cost ¥4,199 ($41.99) for two episodes of an anime. And (get this dad) a BluRay disk costs on average ¥7,230 ($72.30). Music CD's on average costs ¥3,999 ($39.99). No wonder people read comics here. A dictoinary-sized magazine with several different series for a mere ¥300 or less ($3.00). And when I say dictionary-size I mean it: The average comics anthology is six hundred pages or more. That's why the Japanese, even the elderly, buy the comics. That said there are still some bargains to be found. Going to a used comics place yielded some ¥105 ($1.05) comics and ¥200 ($2.00) CD's. Still, it was quite the shock to see one of the cheaper hobbies I have cost so much money. Aside from Tower Records though one of things I've been admiring the most is the advertising. America, forget pop-up ads, text ads, and pop-ups during TV shows: Japan has got us beating on advertising.
I've seen advertising on some of the strangest things. Big billboard? Got an ad. Train? Got several ads? The bottom of the toilet in the noodle shop on the seventh floor? Got an ad for a JPop singer. Ad's are everywhere. Even ads for things that may be familiar to us...
...like a certain Pixar movie I like that is being released in the states this Tuesday on BluRay. Advertising is such a big deal in Japan that famous actors will even travel to Japan to shoot commercials for some extra money. Like George Clooney...
...stating that he likes to drive a [brand] because "he's a real man." So far my favorite has been with Tommy Lee Jones advertising Boss Coffee...
...which aside from a billboard actually has a funny advertising campaign where an alien from outer space visits Japan disguised as Jones (known as Alien Jones). The commercials revolve around how much Alien Jones hates Japan with the exception of his Boss Coffee. Almost twenty commercials have been made, and most are available subtitled on YouTube. Here's one to start you out, and after that you can find the rest on your own:One thing I do miss about America though is the pets. America loves pets. Japan...not so much. I rarely see dogs or cats on the streets, and I'm sure other pets such asbirds and goldfish are much rarer. Once in awhile I do see a dog though, and I can't help but say hello.
Most of these pets belong to elderly people, who's children have moved out of the house and whose spouses have died. Usually with no work to attend and little to do, a pet is a logical thing to get. Walking around the streets of Tokyo you'll find various different shops that cater to American's. Some look familiar...
...some look too American...
...and some may be trying a little too hard and may want to practice their English more.
It was today I also visited Akihabara. The name means Autem Leaf Field, but the area is really known as the otaku capital of the world. This is the place where a geek can be a geek. Most of the stores don't allow photography, as otaku tend to be really shy (BTW, otaku is a term for "anti-social"), so I can't really show you any pictures of this place. But needless to say the San Diego Comic Con could learn a thing or two from this place. Many hobby stores are ten stories high. I went into a builing where one floor was dedicated to train models, and the next dedicated to nothing but Gundam models. Capsle machines were everywhere in this place, and I even got a few of them myself. And trust me, unlike the capsle machines we have in America, these machines give out toys worth having for less then ¥500 (most are ¥200).The next day we went to a museum of Japanase history. I took a lot of pictures during this visit, so I can't post them all. Instead we'll start with these:
The rest of the day was filled with train rides and Japanese food. Tonight we take a bus to Kyoko. Should be fun. Oh yeah, one more thing to make you cry...here's what the gas costs here...
...though considering very few people here have cars they probably aren't as concerned about gas as we are. And don't forget that Tokyo is up for consideration to host the 2016 Olympics games.
6:27 PM
Today is the day that begins my great adventure. I'm not going to start the post by saying "I woke up today" because I never went to sleep. I was just too excited. So the trip really began when I got on the plane. It was a fairly nice plane. I had the option to watch several movies for free, but I choose to sleep for ten hours instead. No, the story really begins here:
This is the first thing I saw when I got off the plane. Though that wasn't nearly as impressive as this:
This was proof that I was in Japan. And this...
...was proof that it was going to be a very interesting visit. After a minor incident regarding lost luggage I took my first "legal" steps into Japan. My ride was late in picking me up though so I decided to take the chance to explore my surroundings. Things like the mini-marts...
...were interesting, but the thing that stuck out to me were the cooler machines.
In Japan these things are everywhere. Everywhere. Walk into a big building? There's a cooler machine. Walk into a resteraunt? There's a cooler. Walk into a restroom? There's a cooler (so you can replace what you just got rid of I suppose). These machines aren't owned by corporations like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, so you get a variety of stuff. The above machine has some of the standards America is used to. This one had a more interesting selection:
...where canned coffee, milked tea, and Pocari Sweat are common. It was this machine where I got the best tasting grape juice I ever had. As in it tasted like actual grapes. With no preservatives. Pretty cool if you ask me. My friend finally arrived at the Meeting Point...
...which is a room designed with the idea that finding travelers would easier if you gave them all somewhere to go. Makes me wonder why American airlines don't have these. Anyway, after my friend arrived it was time to take a couple of trains home. Train transportation is everywhere in this country, and people fill this carts up like nothing else. For how polite the Japanese can be in the public, when it comes to getting on a train they seem to have no problem just shoving people back in order to insure they get on. This is actually the where the first major problem happened. See, I knew Japan was crowded. But I was also coming away from a sixteen hour flight and carrying lots of heavy lugage around. On top of that, my coat was extremely hot to wear on account that country is not exactly in a cold spell right now.When getting on the final train I was ready for rest. Yet the train was late. VERY late! By about an hour. All that time people kept shoving in the cart. I was hot, tired, and on top of that I had no elbow room. I couldn't even turn my feet there was so much people in the cart. When it finally did start I was sweaty and shaking. I've got serious person space issues when I can't move an inch for a long period of time. It was in this train though that I met a young man named Mr. Keiskei, who was actually an American born and raised Asian, who was now living in Japan because of his job. He gave me a few city tips and even let us know why the train was so late. Apparently someone killed themselves on the track. At that point I calmed down. Somehow being inconvienced about not moving felt very unimportant when stacked next to a guy who felt he had no reason to live. Well, the train finally brought us to our destination, where another five minutes of walking was in order. To my joy I'm staying right near a McDonald's...
...though I assured Eric that I'd go with him to his choice of food tonight. After dropping off our stuff we turned a corner to find a ranma place...
...and this was probably the most jarring thing about Japan (so far,considering I've only been here a day): There are businesses and houses around every corner. You can walk down a dark alley and there's a 24 hour convience store or something. This place was around a crooked back alley, easy to miss really. So as you might expect we had noodlesfor dinner. The store was owned by a very nice man named Kenji Isozaki, who was nice enough to take a picture of us:
Now I normally wouldn't take notice of this man's name, except he noticed the cross I had on my t-shirt, and wanted to know if I was a christian. When I replied "hai" he then went on to discuss how he became a christian himself. I couldn't understand what he was saying, but his emotions were so real I could feel the honesty behind them. As Eric told me later on he once worked for a big company that eventually went out of business. Shortly afterwards he ran out of money and, being that status is a big part of Japanese society, contemplated suicide. It was through this experience that led him to Jesus Christ. After he told this story he showed us his Japanese Bible, song sheet, and sang a few worship songs (all in Japanese of course). He told us how one day he wants to be a pastor, but for now serving people really good food is like serving them some of Jesus's kindness.He was a very nice man, and we stayed there much later then originally intended. Finally we get back to the small, cramped room. So on the first day I discover cool coin machines, a new country, and hear about a spiritual rebirth. I wonder what the rest of the week will be like. Oh yeah, before I log off I want to share this with you. Seeing as how most ranma shops only serve alchol I decided to buy a drink on the way home. And I found...
...Yogurt Pepsi. Yes, it's an actual carbinated drink. How did it taste? Well, it tasted like carbinated yogurt...and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
8:11 AM
It's 3:37am, California time. Just a few hours till I'm on the road to the airport, and shortly after that I'll be on the plane (hopefully getting some much needed sleep). I'm so excited I'm not tired. I've been packing all night, praying that I don't forget something important. I count the money I'm bringing with me. I realize that soon I will be heading to the other side of the world to experience another culture. And then it hits me...
Am I crazy?!
I'm the kind of guy who doesn't like change of any kind. Going to a hotel tends to be a bit of a stretch for me, as I'm much rather be in my home. This is the sort of thing I never do. And yet...I'm not sorry I'm doing this. This is the sort of experience that can break me out of my shell. And though I may starve (Japanese food is not a favorite of mine) I look forward to the experience. Keep an eye on this blog, for it's going to be updated on a (near) daily basis from this point on.
3:37 AM
Now you can donate some funds to me if you so feel inclined. Just a dollar or two could help a lot when I get back. The buttons on the right sidebar. In case you want to. No pressure or anything. Seriously, I'll survive. Maybe. I mean, you can't tell in this day and age, but no worries. I'll just make the money back during Christmas after having not worked for a few weeks. Oh who am I kidding: I'm broke. HELP!
8:43 AM
So the design is finished. Sadly, I couldn't figure out how to leave the comment feature on with the design so if you want to comment on a post you'll have to shoot me an e-mail. I figure this won't be a big deal though, seeing as how only friends and family members will read this. Anyway, have to go work on my other websites now.
11:48 PM
So I finally figured out the layout for this thing. I'll fill in the information later tonight. I'm leaving next week!!!
2:17 PM