서울! korean food!

나는비비안. 지금나는인천공항에 있어요. 하글 type uh… I can. 모르게서. 시발, 나의 책을 잊었어요. (XINLEI, YOU HAVE MY KOREAN BOOK! You’ll have to give it back to me sometime T__T)

와, 이거 “pear drink” = 너무 단것 (???).

Since my Korean sucks and I can’t type anything, really, that makes sense, let’s list what foods I had this time!

SIDE DISHES

김치 (Of course…)

MAIN DISHES

국밥 (Delicious……………..!!!!!!!!! I want to eat it now!!!!!!!!!!)

떡볶이 (Same ol’, same ol’ — didn’t actually see 볶이 anywhere!)

오뗑 (Meh)

버페 (Vegetarian buffet @ New Start — clockwise from top: eggplant, candied yam, spring roll, tofu, soybeans, weird apple cinnamon mash thing, vegan quesadilla, and in the center, potatoes and vegetarian flour pancake thing.)

된장지개
해물파전
김치순두부지개
빵
김밥

DRINKS

바나나우유 (Well, I’ve made myself sick of it. Naturally.)

“링빵” (Well, not in cake form, but doughnut form. )

햇밤우유 (So good, kinda tasted like coffee milk…)

아침햇살 (Some kind of rice milk, I think. YUM!)

민트초코레트
커피
허니레몬
맥주

SWEETS

와플 (Waffle with tiramisu gelato!)

바나나초코레트

More later, MAYBE. Flght’s boarding to go to Narita.

Dude, in other news, I’m pissed! Twice now I’ve paid for internet at Narita and it’s just fucked up! This time I changed companies, thinking maybe it would be better, but at the moment, I think it’s worse! Fuck this shit! For motherfucking $6 a day I damn expect it to work and to work awesomely. I mean, the Taiwan airport has free internet. Damn you, Narita. Damn you to hell. So ghetto. Still not fixed. Godamn it Narita; time’s a tickin’ and money’s a drainin’. Not that I can even complain to someone, cause the last time I asked for any kind of help in Narita (losing my jacket and trying to claim it from the ridiculously lost and found and then being utterly unable to communicate what kind of jacket it was that I lost) soured me in asking Japanese people for help in any capacity than looking for directions or something! It’s just too hard to communicate.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll just keep adding shit to this and hope that the internet comes back in time for my flight for me to actually post it, cause if not, that’d be stupid, too.

General observations about Korea, which is no doubt the weirdest freaking Asian country I’ve been to:

THE PEOPLE ARE HIVE-MINDED AS FUCK.
Everyone is the godamn same! They all wear the same kinds of clothes (the fashion is boring as can be, which was a huge disappointment), drink the same drinks, eat the same things, listen to the same music… it’s sooooooo boring.

THE SUBWAY 90%+ OF THE TIME SMELLS LIKE OLD PEOPLE AND KIMCHI.
It’s truly horrible. That’s all there is to that. The only times it didn’t smell like that was like, at 11:00 in the morning when no one was really riding the subway. It’s truly, truly foul.

SEOUL IS LIKE A CONFUSED WESTERNIZED COUNTRY.
Everything in Seoul seems to have a huge Western feel, which makes it a really weird place and really different from other “first-world” Asian countries I’ve been to (and even different from developing Asian countries I’ve been to). Nearly everything has English signs and a shitload of their signs are in Konglish or English — generally making pretty decent sense, even.

SWEET SHIT REIGNS THE FOOD MARKET.
If you look at Korean imported drinks in America, the ingredients are surprisingly similar to those in American soft drinks. If you look at the same drinks imported from Taiwan or Japanese, they are generally pumped with sugar, yes, but at least it’s sugar. Korean drinks, on the other hand, taste fake, even when they taste good. They’re pretty much all high-fructose corn syrup, and some have phenylalanine. As a drink whore, I still drank a good array of shit in Seoul, but I showed

ATTENTION TO DETAIL IS KEY.
All new restaurants, all tour book guides, all the subway messages, hell, even the airport shuttle bus… it’s all done very, very well, generally with an adorable flair of kid-like proportions. Attention to detail seems pretty immense.

THINGS ARE APPARENTLY BETTER NEW.
From houses to eyelids, all things seem better if newly renovated in Korea… including older neighborhoods, which are being demolished by the dozen to make room for newer condos.

MOST PEOPLE SPEAK AT LEAST A *LITTLE* ENGLISH.
As opposed to Japan where people will barely ever talk to you in English even if they know some, in Seoul, it seems like everyone speaks a little English, including old ahjusshis and ahjummas. And I find that even if they don’t really know English in Seoul, they will at least try and talk to you. Which is appreciable.

tokyo, japan.

So, we stayed the night in Hiroshima at the same hostel and then checked out in the morning to head back to Tokyo. YAY! Not much time in Tokyo, so we had to make the most of it.

The shinkasen trip back was like 3 and a half hours or something. We prepared by getting a lunchbox in Kyoto, since we had to go there to pick up our luggage anyway.

SushiMonster scared of shinkasen!! Seriously, though, the first time I rode the shinkansen it definitely felt uncomfortable. The feeling went away after riding it for the second or third time, though.

My lunchbox! Lunchboxes are definitely the way to go as far as variety goes. MMM! Too much of it was sweet, though. I was a little disappointed by that.

Lenny’s lunchbox!

SushiMonster likes this fake tamago thing!

The Tokyo portion of our trip was no doubt the BEST portion simply because there was so much going on, with so much of it going on by CHANCE.

We just went to Akihabara right away and walked around. Went to an arcade where some dude was playing this CRAZY game where there’s like a million things on the screen at once and you pretty much just have to dodge the flying shit. He totally must play that game a lot, because he could maneuver past every little bead and only died once. Tons of people were entranced by him.

I also came to conclude it must suck to be a woman in Japan, because in the arcade, there was ONE other woman, and she was there with her boyfriend. It is absolutely not culturally acceptable for a woman to really play video games, other than maybe some music games (the playful kind with taiko drums or something, not even like guitar hero) or those stupid ridiculous UFO games which I STILL don’t understand the allure of. They are a trip, those UFO machines. They seem so completely and utterly pointless and have such stupid prizes you think that there couldn’t possibly be anyone stupid enough to pay money over and over again to play. But there are people who do. TONS OF THEM! WTH.

We also checked out an old videogame store, which had an old console we used to have at our house. Hollar!

There were also penguins in this window… :/

This waffle covered chocolate ice cream bar Lenny bought from one of the ice cream vending machines. DELICIOUS!!

We spent FOREVER in Don Quixote. At least Don Quixote always results in some interesting photos, even if it’s boring after floor 3.

Takoyaki hat, courtesy of Don Quixote. Actually, I think they spell it Don Quijote.

Hitler Halloween costume. I shit you not.

I also suggested we eat at Yoshinoya since Lenny hadn’t had it before and I needed to show off the cheapness that is yakiniku in Japan. I was the only woman in there, again. I also suspect that’s not fully acceptable, either. WHATEVER. They were all lonely singular men, in there by themselves. Pretty pathetic.

Then we went back to our hostel in Asakusabashi. There was this totally sketchy playground with like two of those springy horse rides or whatever and a bathroom that was open. I totally saw an old dude pissing… like TWICE. He was pissing twice, in full view of anyone passing by because that’s how the bathroom was designed. It was pretty fucking sick, I must tell you. Sick in a bad way.

Anyway, at the hostel, there was an amusing lady manning the front table when we first checked in earlier in the afternoon. Hehe. She had a funny voice. Lenny liked to impersonate her. I can’t describe what it was like, though, cept really high pitched, friendly, and scratchy. Haha.

The next morning, we got up, and it was SUNDAY!! Sunday meant the day that supposedly, one could rent bikes to bike around the Imperial Palace with. Free bikes? SIGN US UP! Turns out it wasn’t as exciting as one might think, though, and the bikes were limited to a ‘track’ that was set aside for people. The Imperial Palace is also kind of a lame place that is completely not worth going to. You can’t even go in!!!

Before we got there, though, there was this antique garage sale in Ginza we passed when we were walking along. Weird. Didn’t know Japanese people were into antiques. Yeah, yeah, I like to generalize.

Bikes for rent! Guess we totally shoulda tried a tandem bike. DAMN!

“Booya. I need a haircut.”

After riding around the lame Imperial Palace and realizing there wasn’t much to do, we went to the Global Festa, which was this festival with some foods from represented countries (mostly African), and a lot of non-profit organizations. Cute event. Very cute.

See kid in orange on the right? Kid in orange was terribly scared of man and/or woman in robot suit. How can one be scared of that? Who knows!

Well, we didn’t really know what was going on at the event since mostly everything was in Japanese and pretty much everyone was trying to promote some non-profit cause like stopping world hunger and helping education in third world countries and blahblahblah. I settled on some food from I-forget-what-African-country. It was like this beef, potato, and carrot or something stew with couscous. Pretty delicious. Lenny got some samosas from Ghana. Mmm, food. He also got some beer which he thought was disgusting but felt obligated to finish anyway since he paid $5 USD for it. It was also expired. Haha!

After that, we headed on over to Harajuku, for the most interesting part of our entire trip!! We had only planned on going to see the dressed up women, but there turned out to be SO MUCH going on in Harajuku that day that we were extremely, extremely amused.

First up, at the Shibuya stop: weird man dancing with flag. YAY!

Then as we were walking down from the train station stop to the Hibiya Park where all the stuff in Harajuku goes down, we passed a SEAFOOD festival. Needless to say, Lenny was in lorv. There was a crab grilling area but the line was super long, so we didn’t try to go there… we would go back, we said.

Then there was some kinda taichi conference or something…

And across the street from the taichi conference, we heard the bustle of music. What is it? What was it?! ROCK MUSIC? OUTDOOR CONCERTS? SIGN US UP!!

The first thing we saw… greasers!!! TOKYO ROCKABILLY CLUB? WHAT THE FUCK?!!

There they had their boomboxes and they were dancing up a fucking storm. Poses, limber moves… some of these guys were fucking old, too! But one thing’s for sure: ALL OF THEM HAD FUCKING FABULOUS HAIR.

SUPERSTAR!

SUPERSTAR!

What else? Rice Riot was an AWESOME electro pop band.

These girls um, played these drums? It was pretty… but not that entertaining.

I forget the name of this band at the moment… Primal something… will update with their name later… but they had these fucking girls in the palm of their hands!!!

“We are robots!”

Headbanging women? YES!

White girl in maid outfit? YES!!!

Have to look up the name of this band too, but their guitarists were REALLY good… very reminiscent of old Incubus like during “Hilikus!” But the vocalist was just okay, unfortunately.

TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE girl band with a vocalist who wasn’t even REALLY singing. I mean, check it out. They have no amps. Their guitars are not plugged in. I FELT like something was amiss when we first walked by, and I said that, but when we walked by again, it became obvious. They weren’t REALLY playing their instruments at all. PATHETIC. I mean, REALLY pathetic.

When we finally finished looking at all the music, we finally headed over to check out the famous Harajuku girls. We were met by THREE!! OR MAYBE FOUR?!! BUT LAMENESS!! There was only one that was actually posing.

Went shopping for a bit. I bought a cool scarf and a cool pair of pantyhose. Lenny bought two fitted shirts and a tie! Good shopping, but lots of people!! And it started raining a little bit.

We then decided to go back to the seafood festival, but poopingly enough, most of the booths had closed and the crab Lenny wanted to eat was gone, gone, gone :[

We decided to go back to check out some more bands. Very good band, Stereo Lynch!! The drummer was AWESOME. Reminded Lenny of Lingo, I guess.

R&B group from America. Los Angeles area, to be exact. They were just OK.

Think we went home right after that… maybe ate some meals along the way. Twas a long day, twas.

—

The next morning, we thought about getting up at 4:30am to go see the Tsukiji Fish Market fish auctions, but then got lazy. That’s way too early. We woke up at like 8:00am instead and bummed around Tsukiji. It took a while to get there. It always does. More tuna than one could ever REALLY want to see…

Tank full of FUGU!!

They don’t REALLY take that kindly to tourists. Whatever, though.

I was slightly in love with these trays of blood and guts. Call me a sicko!

Check out that grain!

This guy was carving up the head of the tuna, and we saw him pick off a piece and eat it as he was cutting it. Haha!

Mmmm, bin of miscellaneous tuna parts. I’m fascinated.

More. Seriously, is there something wrong with me?

Let’s not forget that we had to try one of the dozens of sushi restaurants along the outskirts of the Tsukiji Fish Market. We didn’t want to wait, so we picked a small bar type restaurant with three old people working. It was a very small menu selection, and very very expensive for being so basic. I had wanted to take Lenny to a place like we went to last year, where there was HELLA selection, but this place catered only to tourists and ONLY had the basics. :/ Above is what I ordered… crab, scallop, and cucumber rolls.

Lenny ordered two very delicious toro, ama ebi, and salmon. Evidently the toro and ama ebi were amazing but the salmon was just okay, since that’s a Pacific Northwest thing anyway.

Knives on sale!

After that, we went back to the hostel to check out because it was still like 10:00am or something absurd. And then we were deciding between going to Asakusa to look at temples or to the Science Museum on Odaiba that I thought Lenny would REALLY like. Unfortunately, Odaiba is ass far from everything. So it took a while to get over there. It was worth it, though, and it cost only $5 to get in (it actually cost more than that to actually physically get there because we had to take the subway and then a new line that only services Odaiba).

Just some pretty ceiling decorations.

ASIMO, the famous Honda robot, happened to be there that day!

Giant cool glowing globe thing, plus walkway!

“A working model of the internet.” Kinda interesting.

Virtual videogame horseriding?!

Cool motion sensor thing, where the fish would be able to detect the pillows and would bounce offa them. COOOL.

Just another view of the globe.

An astronaut’s bedchamber.

An astronaut’s toilet.

Evidently all the components that make up the human body.

Toy that let people try performing surgery on their own. :0

Regular cup of noodle styrofoam cup versus styrofoam cup of noodle cup that has been brought into a submarine!!

Cool ass exhibit. Through the mirror, a face would appear in that blue circular thing, but when you just turned around and looked at the blue circular thing on its own, there was no face… just water. A total trip. AMAZING.

And this post is not done yet, but I’ll finish it later. Must go to bed now.

Lots to say about catching the flight back to Seattle, and about the crazy ass Chinese people on the plane. This photo is a partial note of what’s to come as far as crazy Chinese peoples go.

This guy was to Lenny’s right, and he seriously had his feet propped up on the TABLE while he was sleeping. How crazily unsanitary, man!!! And that is seriously only the beginning. CHINESE PEOPLE. THEY ARE INSANE!!!

miyajima island, japan.

After visiting the main Hiroshima sights, we took a ferry to Miyajima Island. First, we took the bus to get to the area where we should take the ferry. Then we decided to eat at some ghetto little cheap restaurant before we went on the ferry. Then we went on the ferry, where there was a baby with like the most hair EVER. He had such a huge head of hair. Or was it a she? We never could figure that out…

Well, Miyajima Island was only, like, a ten minute ferry ride away. We docked at the tourist station and then proceeded to walk around. Lenny figured out a route for us to go up (with some suggestion by me) and then we were immediately met with deer. MOO!

The deer wants Lenny! MOO!

Poor poor antlerless deer.

These deer will eat everything! There are notes EVERYWHERE telling people to watch their passports and tickets because the deer will eat them! I thought it was a joke… it certainly sounds like one… but one deer definitely ran off with one of Lenny’s flyers, and one can only imagine that it is really NOT a joke, and that it seriously happens ALL THE TIME!!!

The deer was totally facing Lenny til right before I took this photo.

“GIMMEE SOME!”

So we headed to the park first. Sorry, forget names of places here.

I scared of the scary horsey.

Dragonfly! Pretty cool when zoomed in. Unfortunately, this is NOT zoomed in.

Tree root!

One can take the gondola type thing up or hike up. We chose to hike up. Unfortunately, Lenny is much more in shape than I. He got kinda bored of waiting for me at times, I think, but shit, I needed to rest sometimes godamnit! I’m a weakling!

Cool flower I’ve not much seen before!

The view from halfway up. I have to admit, it’s pretty godamn nice.

Mt. Misen is the top. Supposedly, there were monkeys up here. I SAW NO GODAMN MONKEYS. Seriously disappointing. Seriously.

So there’s this guy with beads… but check out the little guys with beads!!!

One lone crane, in a thing of rock.

Not sure what this is for, but it looks freaking sweet!

I’m trying to look sexy. What?! This isn’t sexy at all.

His sexy pose is a little better.

His sexy pose is the best yet.

Again, the deer was looking at Lenny right before this photo was snapped!! REALLY!

A view from the top.

This raven was just chillin for a while.

Descending the mountain. It was getting late. Unfortunately, one of the shrines Lenny wanted to check out was closed ~__~

But at least we got to see the Floating Tori Gate at sunset, which was quite very gorgeous.

It also happened to be low tide, which means we could actually walk out to it. It was a helluva task getting photos where there were no humans around.

Sky and water blend into one.

Giant SPOON!

So on our ferry back, this younger hip-hop dressed type dude was sitting next to me. As it was time to get off, there was a bag next to me. Thought it was his, so Lenny ran after him and tried to return it. The guy ended up explaining that it was, “For you,” even though he seemed surprised by it at first and said, “Thank you.” So… I’m not sure if he intended to leave it there or if it was someone else’s, but we got a whole lot of momijis!! Which are these little cakes filled with different things. Flavors we got included the regular red bean, the green tea, and CHEESE! (Which we thought was cream cheese, but later found out was like… regular cheese… and it was hard whereas the other flavors were like, paste, so it was a little… odd.) I must say I was slightly scared of eating it initially and joked about it being poisoned! But hell, what’s the worst that could happen! Parents tell you not to accept candy from strangers?! We’re living proof that it’s perfectly OK!!!

That night, we ate at a sushi restaurant in Hiroshima, and next to us was this Chinese family. I decided to make conversation with them and ask them where they were from. They were from Northern California, of course. The wife was friendly but the husband pretty much like ignored my ass. The mom asked me if I was on post-graduation vacation, though, and I strangely (because I was nervous, I guess) answered YES. The answer was quite very much… NO. So, WTF.

hiroshima, japan.

We leave from Himeji and get to Hiroshima relatively late in the evening. It’s okay. People tell us there’s not that much to do in Hiroshima anyhow. We pretty much just get to the hostel and chill the first night. The hostel is within walking distance from the train station, so we walk. The map we have is a little shifty, but we make it without problems. It is K’s Backpacker Hostel. The front desk guy is so so so friendly, almost in a ditzy kinda way. Lenny lurvs him a lot. He’s Lenny’s favorite person on the whole Japan trip — tied with Shoji MAYBE. We originally have booked two nights at this place, but we’ve since decided to stay a night on Miyajima Island and decide to cancel one night at the Hiroshima hostel.

So we get our room, which is shared with two other people. They turn out to be two people from England, and they’re on a one year world trip. Just like everyone else, except for Americans. We head to the kitchen… just us and our food we got from a supermarket in Himeji! Yay! We had a whole smorgasbord of random foods to eat. Yay! Clean kitchen, and FREE LAUNDRY SERVICES! This place is crazay!

Bed bed.

Food food.

Left to right… Lenny, potato salad, crab legs (dammit, they turned out to be imitation! No wonder they were so cheap!!), croquette, and my autumn vegetable platter, which was delicious!!

Damn, that’s some real-looking imitation crab!

After eating, we decide we want to stay in Hiroshima after all, since ferries coming back from Miyajima Island run late. No need to stay on the island. So we get our second hostel day added back on… yay!

The next morning, we head out to explore Hiroshima. We start off by taking their local bus/rail thing. It’s $1.50 anywhere you go in the city center area.

We stop by the A-Bomb Dome first. It’s funny because the bus or whatever has all these stops, and all of them are only described in Japanese, except for this one, which is clearly a place only tourists go to… that stop is described in English and Japanese. Haha.

For some reason, birds seriously LOOOOOVED this godamn thing. I mean, like all kinds of birds. Cranes, pigeons, ravens, etc. ALL OF THEM WERE ALL OVER THIS SHIT.

There is a whole peace park in Hiroshima. For obvious reasons. This statue is based off that famous story of the girl who folded 1,000 cranes (yet still died).

Evidently this was also the week for remembering victims who died from the Atom Bomb. It was the anniversary of the bomb dropping.

There were all these colorful booths, filled with cranes from individuals in schools around the world. While we were there, there was a group of I think Australians who sang a song and then placed their string of cranes inside one of the open glass booths.

Monument with a perfect view to the A-Bomb Dome… planned, I’m sure!

We decided to go into the Hiroshima Museum because it only cost 50 CENTS. Which is like, the cheapest thing ever in Japan. They were really clever to make it so cheap, because that was pretty much the only reason we went in, and I’m sure that’s the case with many passerbyers. I didn’t think that the museum could possibly be all that interesting, but man. It affected me pretty deeply. It was definitely an amazing museum. Well put together, lots of useful information, etc.

Model of Hiroshima BEFORE the bomb. Japanese people fucking LOOOVE these godamn models.

Model of Hiroshima AFTER the bomb.

Well, there were a lot of disturbing things in the museum, and it made me feel really weird, frankly. The most interesting things in the museum were…

1) Letters written by the mayors? of Hiroshima to every country who ever runs a nuclear arms test or thinks about running a nuclear arms test, telling them that they should not.

2) The fact that they planned to drop three bombs but later whittled it down to two, and that Kyoto was on the list of places to possibly bomb. Lucky Kyoto and lucky Japan that it was not, but who knows just how many culturally rich places just like Kyoto were destroyed because of the bombings :/ Kyoto was also largely unscathed because all cities which they THOUGHT of A-Bombing were not regularly bombed, because they wanted to study the full effects of the A-Bomb.

3) The fingernails and stories of one boy who got bombed and then tried to suck the pus out of his own fingertips / fingernails because he was dying of thirst. Fucking. Worst. Imagery. Ever. ~__~

An image from a war or something protest in Germany.

Happy chair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

himeji, japan.

The previous night, the Indian dude at Shoji’s house told us that we should go to Himeji, since it was on the way to Hiroshima. We decided to go. It was just a simple train stop! And Indian dude told us… FREE BIKES!! SIGN US UP!! WE’RE SOLD! The bikes are available at the Info Center of the train station… you simply have to ask and then they give you a key. You exchange the key at the bike place, four blocks down the road at this bike parking lot area. We just had to go downstairs.

BIKES!! ALL FOR US!!

So we paid however much money and went into Himeji Castle, which is like… one of the best castles in Japan, I guess. Go here and you don’t really have to go to any other ones again, because they’re all the same really!

Geometric fancy wall!

Inside the palace All wood.

The view from inside Himeji.

Apparently, they had guns then! Fancy ones. I forget when this shite was built. But I guess it was pretty late. Actually, it was also burned down at some point, so it was rebuilt. Cheaters!

Low ceilings. High Lennys.

Yet another view! MMM!

Himeji Castle!

VICTORIOUS!

This wall’s special, cause it’s made out of a lot of stones lifted from other places, including from gravestones! YAY!

Supposedly, a woman lives in that well. Or a ghost used to haunt it. Or something.

So after going to the castle, we decide to go back to return the bike. The bike needs to be back at like 5:00pm or something, but Lenny thinks it’s 4:30pm. We get to the bike place and I say it’s still early, so we decide to ride back around the ring around the castle. It’ll be fast, we say! Unfortunately, we get a little lost and make a wrong turn, so we have to furiously ride back the way we came. We had like 8 minutes to get back and we actually MADE IT. Man, bikes are CRAZY! IT’S LIKE TELEPORTATION! INSTANT RETURN!!!! MEEEEEP!

On the way around the castle.

Yet another

And so we furiously ride back, return the bikes, and head off again… train station! Hiroshima, here we come!

The train station. BEAUTIFUL!

Goodbye, Himeji!

WE LOOK LIKE WE’RE 12!!!!

kyoto, japan.

We left Osaka early the next morning. Of course, we had to grab our baggage before we left. Unfortunately — and we did not know this — the lockers had a 24 hour reset, so we had to pay ANOTHER $6 USD to get our baggage back. BOO!!! Had we known, we would have… I don’t know what we would have done differently. Nonetheless, definitely worth bitching about

We headed one stop back towards Tokyo to go to Kyoto. GOOD STUFF.

First stop: dropping off luggage. We decided to ride the subway one stop to another subway station, where it would be easier for us to pick up our luggage later. Unfortunately, subways have smaller lockers than train stations do, and we couldn’t find one big enough for our luggage. So we had to ride back to the main Kyoto station again. There, we still had a helluva time and tried to stuff our baggage into a medium-sized thing because we couldn’t find a large one, but a couple elderly workers saw us and tried to tell us that was not OK. We didn’t understand though, and they left, and we kept trying to stuff it into the medium-sized one, and one came back and LED us to the bigger lockers. That surely helped quite a bit, because then we could drop off our backpacks, too. Ahh yes. So fresh and so free free.

Then we took some subway lines to Nishikujo Food Market. Or at least I think that was the name.

Here’s what it looked like. By now, it was around lunchtime, so what better to do than eat snacks from this place?! There were so many cheap, small, delicious things, after all!

Puffed rice cake covered with spices. Mmm.

Scallops, with spiced powder on it. Mm, not so worth it. Not so tasty.

After leaving Nishikujo, we saw this man. With cats O__O

Walked around the old town, and finally came to this area. We decided to start our exploration from here. There was a big park here, with lots of temples, but really, Kyoto has a million things to see and we only had one day to see it. So, we missed a LOT!

These girls were trying to feed these pigeons, but then were terrified when the pigeons actually started to fly around because, like, they’re birds. And birds fly. And stuff.

Caught some fake geishas on some of the narrower streets. Don’t believe they’re fake? One was talking on camera and a crew was filming her! What’s up with that!

This guy was making some snacks. I think made out of rice? Not sure.

CART MAN!

Gaudy temple.

Big-sacked cat.

Found some guy who loved feeding turtles. Don’t think he was too keen on us taking photos, though. ~__~

This was some palace or something in the outskirts, ish. We went here to kill time because it was nearby and we had to meet our CouchSurfing host in a little bit of time. Saw a lot of really cuteeeee doggiesssss! In particular a British Bulldog who was my homie. He liked me and didn’t want to leave! His owner was this old guy who was nice. Didn’t speak English really, though.

Lenny <3

After going to that place, we got ready to meet Shoji, our CouchSurfing host. We were supposed to meet him at the Rokujizo stop. But there was a JR stop (train) and a subway stop. We took the subway. Turns out we were supposed to meet him at the train stop… so there was some communication and confusion, but finally I called him (the first two times I called him, no one picked up) and he picked up. He came to find us. We followed him to his house.

Shoji is this like 40-something year old farmer with a family and kids. He also evidently plays bass? in a band and owns like 12? motorcycles. He has one house to live in with his family and one house, effectively dubbed the CouchSurfing House, in which CSers stay. That night, there were 3 other CSers. An Indian guy from Washington DC (I forget his name, unfortunately) who was traveling around Japan and then Taiwan, a French guy named Gael, who worked in this program in Korea and Japan, working on organic farms and in exchange getting free housing and such, and Rene, this Canadian dude from Montreal who I guess is like 35?! but looked quite young… to me, anyway. The place was NICE. It was like a hostel, but for CSers and for free! CRAZY. Shoji barely spoke English but he was still very kind and washed everything. Clean bedsheets, clean blankets, tatami mat sleeping arrangements. It was kinda in the outskirts but there was a 7-11 nearby, and that’s all you really need, I guess.

<img src=”http://lh6.ggpht.com/veez0ri/SOvcmCNa1eI/AAAAAAAAK4Q/KDN8UCd-9BA/s400/DSC_0220.JPG”>
The house!! People used dry erase markers to write on the walls!

The upstairs wall, right next to where I was sleeping on the floor! So comfy. So excellent.

My tempura udon from 7-11. It wasn’t very good. But it was CHEAP!

Bathroom at Shoji’s!

They don’t have hot water heaters. They just have instant hot water makers for the shower. Amazing! I forgot to turn it on when I hopped in the shower, though, but luckily Lenny saved my ass. I was wondering why it was only cold water!!

That night we had a good talk with the other CSers… and then we went to bed, comfortable, well-fed, and happy.

The next morning, we woke up, and Gael and the Indian guy were still sleeping. Rene had been long awake and gone. We packed up and prepared to leave. But not before watching some amazing kid show on TV!! Amazing!! Lenny’s favorite Japanese dance thing was on TV along with a song about onigiri. It was quite a catchy song. I sang it for a while.

We headed to Tenryuji Temple in the outskirts of Kyoto. Far, far from the heart. Here are some photos from it! Man oh man. Had we gone one month later, the trees would have been orange and yellow, and it would have been REALLY nice. :[ We got off the train and were walking around and came across a bike rental, so we rented one. YAY! I love riding bikes in foreign countries ^__^

Waited forever to take this godamn photo. People kept getting in the way. GET OUT DA WAY!

Geisha with a cellphone. SUCKA!

Bamboo forest

Spider may be larger than it appears. Much. Larger.

Cool ocean of these weird plants / roots. Not sure what’s going on with them, though.

And I will close with this pretty cool, albeit random, image.

osaka, japan.

The next morning, we get up early and go to Tokyo station. We take the train to Shin-Osaka, which is the Osaka city train station. I mean, way to make it confusing. Kyoto’s is called Kyoto station, Tokyo’s is called Tokyo station, yet Osaka’s is called Shin-Osaka station? I mean, come on! We’re foreigners! Make it easy on us, please!

So we each have backpacks and then we shared a suitcase. We aren’t planning on carrying that shite around, so we stow it in one of the larger lockers at the train station. 600 yen / $6 a pop. We keep the backpacks. By the time we get to Osaka it’s kinda afternoonish, and we just walk around aimlessly.

Even their subway doors are exciting! YAY?!

Lenny’s a giant when compared with THIS subway door. ^__~

After dropping shite off, we decide to find some food in the subway. Oh, this is after I go to the Ladies’ room and find out that it’s gross ass squatters and that there is NO TOILET PAPER! So I decide to hold it and save some paper from lunch to wipe my cooch with. LOL. We walk down this aisle of relatively typical Japanese food and finally decide on this place with DORIA. MMMM. Only the plastic food doria outside the shop doesn’t really look like the doria I get inside the shop, but nonetheless. Shit was tasty. People were smoking inside that restaurant, and the restaurant had air filters throughout it. The air filters had three little bars… one for tobacco smoke, one for pollen, and one for something else. The pollen filter was at low. The something else filter was similarly at low. The tobacco smoke was in the red, completely full. This was the case for every filter in the place. Kinda amusing.

Lenny’s food at the place in the thing.

Some wooden boards at some temple right near all these shopping strips.

Find a lot of long, indoor shop type places such as shown in this photo below.

Those are expensive mushrooms! $580 – $600 USD a pop!! There was a “NO PHOTOS” sign right there, but I took a photo without noticeing, only to have a dude come by and point at the sign right after I took the photo. LOL.

What’s this? MINI FISHIES!

Tied to a chair. A fucking prisoner.

Poster on a sticky photo thing, where the girls look plastic. But wait, what’s this? ACRYLIC NAILS THAT LOOK LIKE HELL!!!

In this arcade, there was this ‘ride’ that looked scary. Had to do with puppets and mannequins and shit. I woulda liked to go on it but they only played it certain times of the day and there were all these warnings!! DUN DUN DUN!

For those who have not been to Japan, the convenience stores have pretty much anything you could possibly want.

ICE CLEAM!

Oh colonel… I heart you.

Shit, even their manhole covers are purdy.

Porn theatre in Osaka.

Frankly, though, there was not that much to do in Osaka, so we pretty much just walked around. There was a Universal Studios there, but that’s kinda expensive at $50 USD a ticket, and was also kinda in the sticks, so we didn’t go there. Instead, we did random walkings and also went to a mall. The mall was sooo expensive, but at least most of the malls have a top floor that is nothing but restaurants. That’s kinda exciting sometimes. Unfortunately, no clothes to buy, and we came to the conclusion that it was a bit sickening that EVERYONE and their MOMS in Japan gives a huge fuck what they look like. EVERYONE seems to feel the need to dress up and look nice. We probably only saw like 2 dudes in t-shirts. Lenny’s conclusion was that you can always pick out who the tourists are, because they actually wear t-shirts, and it’s pretty much true. And that’s a little freaky.

Hot vending machine! WEE!

As we were walking around frustratingly, I got cranky because I was hungry since we hadn’t eaten in a while. We finally stopped into one restaurant. BEST MEAL OF THE WHOLE TRIP. Here’s what we ate.

Takoyaki, with egg and green onion. SO GODAMN DELICIOUS. Like seriously. I wasn’t a fan of takoyaki before that, but man. That takoyaki. DELICIOUS.

Okonomiyaki. ALSO DELICIOUS. I was also using the hot plate to make our own mini omelettes and okonomiyakis from the leftover egg and green onion in the takoyaki dish. IT WAS AWESOME!

By the way, we didn’t book a hostel this evening in Osaka, because we wanted to find a sex hotel. Osaka supposedly has the best ones, but they’re pretty expensive. And really, we couldn’t figure out WHERE they were… and with the lack of internet access, we REALLY couldn’t find out. So we actually asked a couple English-speaking dudes in the restaurant we were at if they knew of a hostel we could go to, and they gave us really terrible directions, but somehow we found it (it helped that it was on the map in the subway… evidently Hostelling International has some… tricky mainstream shit going on… cause well, I guess Youth Hostels are more state-sanctioned than other hostels… SHIT, I DON’T KNOW!). The hostel was really nice, but I personally had to sleep in the ‘Japanese-style’ section (AKA NO MATTRESS) for the same price as the regular beds. I guess there were roll-out mattresses in the closet, but I didn’t know that, so I just piled blankets up and it was quite an uncomfortable sleep the whole night. Also, the hostel was kinda weird and no one — even residents — could enter after midnight or whatever. WTF. Weird. Youth hostels. Must do more research. But they’re weird. The whole place was also EXTREMELY clean but only had ONE shower in the WHOLE place for guys AND girls, and also, the whole place smelled like CHEESE. Would not go there again. Would NOT.

Common room.

Bedroom. Lenny’s, not mine. Oh yeah. No co-ed rooms. Everything was separated male / female. There were also a shitload of New Zealand kids there, some of whom apparently went to some music cover band show where some Japanese band covered a Saosin song of all things… amongst other things. I only eavesdropped a little bit. And I was blind at the time (no contacts), so I didn’t bother making conversation. And they were like, 12. Okay, maybe 14. Or 15. No idea.

SUSHIMONSTER LOVES SUSHI!!!!

tokyo, japan, day one.

We arrive at the Narita International Airport late in the afternoon, and then pick up our Rail Passes and exchange money. By the time we finish doing that stuff, it’s around 7:30pm. We have to check in at our hostel by 9:00pm. Will we make it?!!!!! Well. It seemed like an easy task (taking the subway is easy), but trains are way confusing. The train from Narita to Tokyo station, in the heart of Tokyo, takes an hour. By the time we get there, it’s around 8:30pm, which gives us only half an hour to get to the hostel. Not really possible, considering it takes two subway line changes because I thought the hostel was in ASAKUSA. Turns out we could have taken the train directly from Tokyo station to Asakusabashi station, because that’s where the hostel REALLY is. We stayed in Asakusa last year and I thought it was a good spot. Asakusabashi is decidedly LESS exciting of a place. ~__~ Close, but not close enough to walk to. We call the hostel from the train station at 9:00pm on the dot, and they say that they will have a note for me on the door. Thank GOD. There was lots of frustrations and bad attitudes and freaking out from my point of view, because I had to figure out all this directional shite and it was just a MESS! We end up not getting there until 10:30pm or 11:00pm, because there were all types of confusions with maps and subways. Bah. Japan. Confusing. Quite the foray into terribleness, especially when considering my relaxing time in Spain. Japan is GO GO GO GO GO all the godamn time.

The view from the Asakusabashi station… or was it Asakusa station?

We get to the hostel and then decide to go out for a meal at some ramen place. Luckily, in Japan, there are a lot of photos so you can just pretty much point at what you want to order. Quite helpful considering Lenny can barely read Japanese and I can’t really read it at all! We ate and ate and all there were were dudes and businessmen… and then we went back to the hostel and slept. YAY!

seattle, on the way to tokyo!

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28TH – SEATTLE

Posa drops Lenny and I off at the SeaTac International Airport, and we head over to Japan! Only our flight is delayed two hours, so really, we wait for a couple hours. turns out someone clogged the toilet in the front of the plane. As a result, United gives us each a $250 voucher… (this was after we returned from the trip, but still!) SCORE! One un-score thing is that the airport totally is lacking in fucking electricity plugs. Why would anyone do such a thing?! The guy on the plane in front of me has an Asus EEE PC too. I borrowed my parents’ again for this trip. On the flight, there were some movies playing… yayeer. There were also MANY MANY babies, and one in particular would not stafu… and the mom babied the shit out of the kid, which probably added fuel to the fire.

tokyo, japan 2007!!

march 26th to april 2nd, 2007 (nippon!)

11:32 pm — before i start, some conclusions:

1) japanese women cannot walk with heels on.
2) japanese people don’t fucking eat vegetables other than regular salad (which, nutrition-wise, doesn’t really count).
3) japanese food you can think of off the top of your head (teppanyaki, sushi, yakisoba, tonkatsu, ramen, etc.) pretty much is japanese food, period.
4) japanese women say “gozaimasu” as a kind of formality meaning thank you or whatever, and say it SUPER nasally. amuse.

i’m not really all that impressed by tokyo, actually… although it is a great place to hang out when you’re young and robust, i imagine it’d be kind of boring when you’re older. and… there really isn’t that much to do anyhow. i think we only had fun cause yuki was there and his friends were there and miko’s friends were there… had we not known any japanese people there, it’d probably have been a helluva lot lamer…

now for recaps… oh my god i am so tired. this will probably have to be finished later since there’s so much shit to say.

monday, march 26th
lingo picked me up in the morning… i basically stayed up all night. slept like 3 hours. maybe. this pattern will soon be repeated, as you will find out soon. we headed over to tony’s house in issaquah and tony had JUST woken up basically and was not at all ready lol. nor had he really planned anything for us to do… lol. so we left in a hurry to go to the airport. got on the plane. “the fountain” was on as well as “stranger than fiction”… i was super excited to watch “the fountain” but unfortunately the audio on lingo and i’s consoles were not working. motherfuckers. united gave us some form we can fill out to maybe get some miles. but yea.

taking pics in the seatac airport… why not!?

sleeping in the seatac airport… why not?!

sleeping on the plane!!!

gag…

wednesday, march 28th — akasuka


got off the plane at like, i dunno, 3pm or something, and we had slept a lot of the plane ride and were mostly rested up. took the overground train to our place in asakusa… khaosan tokyo akasuka annex hostel. it was kind of hard to find at first but was then okay. the overground train seemed like the longest ride ever. seemed almost longer than the plane ride to japan lol. also, like, i kept sleeping with my head resting against the window behind me, and unfortunately, every time the train from the opposite direction passed by it’d scare the shit out of me and wake me up heh, cause it’d make the window rattle. anyway, we got to the hostel, put our shit down, and decided to go cash in on one free drink that our hostel offered daily at the location of their other akasuka hostel (khaosan tokyo smile). i got a white russian or whatever. it was good, as there was like no alcohol in it. lol. we were like the only people in there at first, although some people showed up later!

afterwards, went to eat some ramen at a corner shop in akasuka. had to cross a bridge to get there, and saw lot of dinner boats that people ate on. ramen was okay. we were the only tourists in there. tonkatsu ramen — i had miso-flavored one, and mine was the best. everyone else just got plain meat ones… and mine had like veggies and corn and stuff, so it was automatically better :0

after we ate it was like eight and we just walked around akasuka at night and looked at all the temples that were lit up by lights. looked good. yeahp. then we went back to the hostel and went to bed essentially. cool place. note: these photos are a culmination of everyone’s photos, so… yeah. i cannot take credit for most of these.

everyone else got a kick out of this. i actually didn’t even get it at first. lol?

our roommates for that night were a couple from australia and they were both graphic designers who had huge packs that were like, as big as me. they were going to india afterwards, and the girl had just come from china. lucky.

thurday, march 29th — akasuka, ueno, and akihabara



the next day, we all woke up at like 5am and decided to go rent bikes at 7am. had a difficult time finding the bike rental place at first, because we found a bike parking garage and assumed it was NOT in there even though it was. the bikes you could rent cost only 200 yen to rent a day (like, $1.50), and had these cool ass locks. if your key wasn’t in, you couldn’t rotate the bike tires. it was neat… the tourist map we had also had this giant pagoda logo which was an “information center” so we were looking for a big ass pagoda building — in reality, it was this little tiny thing that was like 10 feet tall only. lol. godamn tourist maps…

got our bikes and biked around the area cause lingo and i were super fucking rusty. scary man… very scary… to bike in the city cause there is just so much fucking shit around all over the place.

it was still early and nothing was open yet.

porn movie theatre in asakusa!!!!

anyway, ate lunch at yoshinoya, which is a cheap chain store type place that sells basically beef dishes with cooked onions over rice. pretty good and definitely cheap. everyone says shit in japan is sooo expensive, but it’s not really — maybe if you compare it to like, china, but compared to the u.s., not really.

after eating there, i had a massive nosebleed in their bathroom and was in there for fucking ever, bleeding all over the chair and floor and crap like that. after that day my nose pretty much hurt like a bitch :/ like, up in the nose cavity, not on the surface…

went to an arcade we found and allllmost beat “time crisis 4″, because i had exchanged $10 USD for 1,000 yen. unfortunately, though… i lent tony a couple hundred yen to play, and he died real fast, and so i was halfway through killing the final boss when i fucking died. godamnit. and no more money to beat it. UGHHHHH.

after that, we got our bikes which we parked on the side street and biked over the ueno. about a… 30 minute bike ride or something. it was kind of scary because of the huge amount of people X___X massive dodging required… almost killed myself and a few pedestrians um, a couple of times.

walked over the land bridge in ueno and went to this six story anime store (unfortunately, it had no naruto stuff — tony and lingo were looking for it, and i was looking for a rock lee to buy lenny since he looks like rock lee — or any katamari stuff, which was super sad!). yeah.

ueno

walked over to ueno park afterwards where there were a lot of cherry blossoms and stuff, but we were a week early for the cherry blossoms to be completely bloomed… lots of people and lots of of stairs, and i was quite sore the entire trip.

saw some kids being attacked and swarmed by pigeons and all that good stuff…!! lingo and miko got some good pics of that shit. lol.

after that, it was about, like 4pm and we had to meet yuki and miko’s friend tetsu at akihabara at 5pm, so we rode over there. took forever to meet up with both of them cause it was a crowded station and yuki was late and stuff, but yeah. this chick in this photo up here was promoting for a maid cafe!!!

went to eat at some nice restaurant and tetsu treated us. the place was nijumaru, and was a izukaya, which serves drinking food and snacks…)

walked around and went to don quixote, which at the upstairs of it (well, 5th floor or so) had a maid cafe, where girls dress up and talk to lonely guys. you pay them to talk to you. pretty fucking stupid. anyway. 6th floor had some weird thing where you can dress up and they take pics of you. i have no idea. japan is fucking weird, man.

random girl singing. not sure where!!!

after that, went to tully’s and met up with yuki/lingo’s friends from the united states. tetsu treated us yet again to ice cream and coffee. their ice cream had hot coffee on the bottom of it. kind of interesting…

it was interesting to see the shift between customs for the japanese dudes who had lived in the u.s. — they lived there for like 5 years so they had like really good english and not even their accents were too bad, but like… they would be talking to us and it’d just be like, what’s up, yoyoyo… and then they’d introduce themselves to tetsu and would all of a sudden be super formal, with like bowing and giving him their business card with two hands and stuff… lol. most amusing.

one of the guys who was there drove the jr transit trains. lol. he’s not a conductor, though! apparently conductors do the announcements over the intercom. hm, that’s news to me!

headed back to asakusa in a hurry so that we could return the bikes by 12am. got stopped by the police. they started off by asking me if i was okay or something and i obviously didn’t understand, so they talked to tony. and said some shit. and they looked at our passports and stuff. and we barely made it back in time.

went to bed after we got back to the hostel. i bought some towels from 7-11 prior to coming home and FINALLY took a shower for the first time in three days. it was a nice push-button shower that saved water and shit. wee!

attempted to sleep and COULD NOT SLEEP. AT ALL. the new roommate that night was from singapore and he slept right next to me in an upper bunk and was SO LOUD. it was INSANELY loud.

went downstairs for a while cause tony was down there and looked at some pics of tokyo, but then tony wanted to go to bed so i went too. there was this super fucking annoying guy downstairs who was talking about fucking his girlfriend in the hostel beds, in the shower stalls, in the toilet stalls, etc… when she came to town, and the same guy like, hit on every fucking girl around. he was annoying as SHIT. anyways.

went back to sleep at some point, and i spent the whole night up wishing to die or wishing it was morning so it would all just fucking end lol. at some point, tony started snoring too, and would basically snore at the intervals the other guy was not snoring. there was quite a pattern going on, and i remember thinking that compared to this guy’s snoring, tony’s was hella soothing, lol, cause it was like 1/3 the loudness.

i usually clap loudly to make people wake up from snoring, but with this guy, it was unpossible. lol. he would not even fucking stir. asshole.

woke up at 5am after a night of NO SLEEP AT FUCKING ALL. wee!

friday, march 30th — tsukiji, ginza, shibuya
once again, got up at 5am and got ready to leave to the tsukiji fish market sometime soon. a guy from the hostel, sarub, went with us. he had gone to the fish market the day before (wednesday), but the fish market was closed on wednesdays, so pwn the noob!!!!!

anyway, took most of my pics at the fish market because i’m weird, and SQUID ARE SO CUTE!!! there was lots of cutting of giant tunas.

we had lunch at a sushi place, and looked around for a place that had a line with japanese people, but not a HUGE line like some places had. i had whale nigiri, aji, anago, amaebi… anago was OK, not as good as unagi, and aji was kind of good… amaebi was eh, okay… whale was fucking nasty… kujira, it’s called. anyways. i also had a cooked tuna shioyaki that was pretty not good and looked nothing like its respective photo.

afterwards, we walked to ginza and looked at buildings there, in an attempt to find a citibank. sarub had a book which detailed where all the citibanks were, which was helpful, as citibank was like, the only bank in japan that allowed atm withdrawals from mastercard and visa.

lingo and i were in desperate need of a toilet, so we walked into one tower and happened to explore it. downstairs had some genmaicha soft-serve ice cream there, MMMM! tried toilet with ass spray action, and it was okay i guess, but couldn’t figure out how to FLUSH the toilet, rofls. lingo loved the ass spray cleaner and got addicted to it, rofls.

ginza sucks. these statues were the only fucking good thing about it.

okay fine this clocktower is KINDA cool but all these things are situated in the mall so that makes them lamer.

anyways. went to shibuya to meet up with yuki and he took us to a korean-influenced restaurant with small dishes again. sarub came with us, and then left to go meet up with other people afterwards (from some website called sofacrashers or something, which basically allowed people in foreign countries to go online and say, hey, i’m alone in this city for a week, who wants to show me around?). interesting.

afterwards we went to some department store or something and came across these weird exercise machines that were supposed to simulate horseback riding when really they were nothing like that… didn’t feel like a workout at all, really. interesting. lingo got addicted to these too. rofls.

then we went to karaoke at big one — two hours of karaoke at 1,000 yen an hour each for all you can drink. i was drunk after three. lol.

after singing, we went out to the hallway where lingo was talking to people, and joined in, kind of. lots of random shit was talked about, like…

- fat girls and pussies.
- homo! homo! homo!
- miko’s bus announcer voice.
- “funniest shit ever…”
- took lotsa videos…

videos sum it all up better, though, so yeah. no need to write about all this, as it is quite difficult to capture the greatness with just writing.

we had to hurry to leave to catch the subway, since it closes @ 12:30 or whatever. this is soon to be a pattern.

at this point, lingo was like a walking zombie… lol. ALSO soon to be repeated.

got back and hung in the hostel living room lounge for some hours, talking to some swedish people and stuff. they were watching south park. and they looked super old but were only like 20 and 22 — one guy had been there for like a year. tony was like, “don’t swedish people make awesome watches and stuff?” and i was like, “dude, that’s swiss not swedish!” and a bunch of european dudes had a real big laugh about it. lol. but apparently it is a common mistake lol…

we went on a midnight 7-11 run so miko and tony could get more beer. lingo passed out early and before we left tony went up and threw a tripod at lingo LOL in an attempt to wake him up. then threw everything in his pockets at lingo trying to accomplish the same. rofls. i bought a hentai mag at 7-11. tony and miko didn’t even remember going to 7-11 in the morning. lol.

went to bed and got about three hours of sleep. the roommate was still snoring loudly, but this time it was somewhat tolerable.

thursday, march 29th — mizue, shinjuku, akasaka
woke up at like, 8 or something ridiculous. i woulda slept more, but tony had told me to keep my key outside the door so they could pick it up before they came to bed, but they weren’t in bed in the morning, so i figured they never got the key. so… i kind of freaked out in my head because i was wondering if it was lost or not, so i had to wake up… turns out tony was passed out on the sofa downstairs and he HAD picked up the key — lingo and i spent two hours watching bad music videos on tv instead.

it was raining this morning really heavily and we were like super bummed, because we had to check out this morning. rain would have gotten us and our luggage soaked. luckily for us, however, when we were ready to leave, the rain stopped. we subway’d over to our new hotel in mizue (which is between the airport and asakusa… and btw, NO ONE knows were mizue is)… and we couldn’t check in until 3 because they were cleaning, so we walked around and explored the area.

went to eat italian food at some restaurant because italian food there is different — like, they put seaweed or salmon roe or random stuff on some dishes to make them more japanese. all italian restaurants have tabasco sauce readily available as well. i got doria. it was good. this restaurant had a cool self-service drink area and a buzzer that you could press when you were ready to order.

afterwards went to a ghetto ass fucking arcade to play the lamest fighting game ever (forget the name). mostly, we went there to kill time. it worked, i guess!

then we went to eat dessert at some cafe, and it was good times.

then we checked in, some people took showers after not taking them for so many days, and then we went to shinjuku to like, go clubbing. met up with yuki and walked around for a while — miko and i were going to fob it out on sunday, so we bought some socks, but no luck, cause there was no time to buy any other clothes :/

we went to eat teppanyaki / okonomiyaki and stuff…

then went to don quixote to buy lingo a sweatshirt since he was freezing his ass off. lol. he bought one and then takeo showed up. they all bought some sake at the store and drank it up in the street. drank up A LOT.

then we went to 747 karaoke to pre-funk it up for an hour. they sucked. didn’t give us more than three rounds of drinks. they were stingy! left quick since they no like us, and everyone else bought more sake for more prefunk. BAD IDEA.

we went to mcdonald’s to eat some food and drink. everyone was okay at this time. yuki treated us all. sat downstairs in a corner, and got soooo many looks! takeo sang happy birthday a few times to tony, and that was the start of having people stare at us. then we like, poured sake in a mcdonald’s pudding cup and made chairs fall over, and were loud and english-speaking, etc. got ready to leave and people were STILL staring.

but then tony started talking to some autistic-type girl and we stayed longer. she had pics she took from turkey or something. while waiting, we met a guy who had won a million dollars (USD, i think), and had given it all away to charity. he showed us photos of him next to the money.

he kept talking to me and i didn’t understand. made yuki/takeo translate. the dude drank 20 cups of coffee daily and he was droolmaster flex :0

lingo left after going to mcdonald’s since he was like, a zombie… lol. we met with raver richie around 11:30pm to go to ageha, and when we got out of the first subway train, yuki puked when we were coming up. he started not walking very well. lol. and it took forever to get from train to train since takeo and tony had to carry him!!

then yuki got on a train and puked all over the place (it was HUGE) and fell in his own puke :/

then at some point we ended up somewhere weird, and all the subways were closed. we talked about taking a cab, but yuki could not be moved, and the place we were standing just so happened to be a place that made it “illegal” to hail a cab.

first yuki passed out, then as tony was having some heart-to-heart with me, he passed out.

and then takeo passed out. lol. before that, though, takeo was trying to hail a cab while half asleep and it was quite scary. his eyes were like, closed as he was trying to hail the cab. lol.

then like… we tried to get tony and takeo up at the same time, and they were both like hella out of it, and just both were like, “okay! let’s get up!” although they had been like passed out, and both stood up all of a sudden together and ended up stumbling all over the place. but they were like, excited to get up, although they seemed not to know what to do with themselves after getting up, lol. eh, hard to explain. had to have seen it!

miko, richie, and i stayed there for forever, til like 4am. then we moved the three of them to a different corner where we attempted to hail a cab. sat for a while cuz it was hard to hail cabs, and yeah. takeo woke up at some point but was like a zombie! he kept saying, “samui! samui! samui!” then would go inside the store to get some food. then would come back out, eat the food, and keep saying, “samui! samui! samui!” then go back in the store. he tried paying for two empty bags of food at some point. HAHAHAHHAHA.

at 4am, some security guard dude helped us hail a couple cabs. the first said that he could only seat 2 people and that no one could sit in front. i think he was lying. then we got 2 other cars, and tony, takeo, and yuki took one to yuki’s apartment, and me, miko, and richie took the other to “shinohashi” (#4 bridge or something, where yuki lived, across from the iranian embassy, lol). suddenly, when we got out, yuki and tony were both all full of energy, lol. wth. we went to yuki’s and it cost about 2,000 yen, and everyone was confused. it was cheaper than we had expected.

tony and yuki had thought it was still like 12am and had no idea why we didn’t go to the club. lol. motherfuckers. yuki had a mean anti-social cat that hissed at epople. anyway, some people played on the computer but i went to bed pretty early and slept on yuki’s bed… there was some down blanket and i wrapped myself in it. at some point tony woke me up and carried me to sleep on the couch for some reason, and the down blanket was still wrapped around me (above and below). when i woke up, i was sweating like hell. lol. hot as balls. went to bed at 6am, woke up at 9am. gg.

saturday, march 31st — shibuya, mizue
called lingo when we woke up in the morning and said we were almost leaving. what a lie. lol. we were watching tv for like, ever, and basically left in like, an hour and a half. lol. takeo came with us. we got back to mizue and showered, got ready, and ate lunch at some french-influenced restaurant, then left to meet yuki in shibuya at hachiko. also met up with miko’s friend, yuji!

tony’s finger was rotting off from infection!

i had to go to citibank in shibuya to pick up some cash for miko and tony, since none of them had any money.

yuki took a lot of long exposure pics with all of us in that shibuya intersection (the busiest intersection in the world?) and it was quite boring…

then we all went to eat at a restaurant, kinda americanized again… i had some spicy chicken, miscellaneous asian stuff. kind of good.

after that, went karaoke yet again, at a new place… for 1,000 yen an hour. we stayed an hour and a half. again, there were limits to drinks, but it was better than yesterday. probably cause there was no crazy drinking today — it was fairly reserved.

it started raining when we left, and there was a guy pissing in the corner near hachiko. yeah. we waited for there a little bit. met up with richie and had to take a shuttle bus to go to ageha. takeo went home because he had to dj in the morning.

loud guy on the bus was screaming about being a gai-jin and a teacher in japan, but i guess he had pretty good japanese.

got to ageha. tony lost his wallet and found it. 35,000 yen cover. hi-tech lights, sound, and good music… reggae room — first time i’ve seen such a thing in a club!! it started out good then turned super bad. all the “hot girls” were there, i guess. tony almost got beaten up i think, cause he was freaking some guy’s girl.

richie kept saying something about how since we candywalked, we danced like we weren’t from japan. i don’t see why it matters, though — not everyone needs to look the same.

yuki lost his locker key cause he was breakdancing for a little while, but he found it because someone turned it in. karma, i say, because tony had found someone’s lost wallet and was trying to find a credit card in there to use it. grrrr.

also, ageha had like, a side room that had food vendors!! nice touch! yuki bought some stuff that was like jambalaya. it was kinda good i think. we fell asleep outside for a little while, waiting for the club to close at what we thought was 5… turns out it closed at 6… we ended up leaving at 5:30 because tony wanted to dance for a little longer. haven’t seen tony dance like that in, like, forever?

walked to some convenience store where some african dude offered to carry my food, saying that i was too small to carry it all. and one reached for my money, but i was like, “that’s my money!” i don’t know what that was all about, but then they bid me good day and left…?!

then we went to eat at some place where you pay first in a vending machine… had some curry stuff and some lady who worked there was incomprehensible. spoke in mumbles and crap. even japanese people didn’t understand her!

after that we went home because the trains were open, and slept in for the FIRST TIME! til 1:30pm.

there were so many people getting on the trains at 5:30am… asked yuji where they were going / coming from, and even he had no idea! and he is japanese!

sunday, april 1st — harajuku



went to harajuku and met with nanako. went to park, and there were some guys there with “free hugs” signs. one of the guys with the sign was talking to someone, so i hugged him from behind. lol. he was super surprised, and in america, people with that sign probably would have been like! hi! and hugged me back even though it was surprising… but this guy didn’t, lol. yeah. he was just kind of awkward about it.

soo… i made up a sign that said, “hugs, 1 yen,” and lingo held up a sign above me saying, “and herpes.” i got two people willing to pay one yen each, and two who didn’t have money so lingo “loaned them money”, and one which was tony, and two who were two cheap to pay one yen (which is 1/100th of a penny!!) bitches!

harajuku was kinda disappointing because i expected it to be a helluva lot bigger, but it was actually kind of small and restricted to just one small park section. some girls with costumes and what not.

afterwards, went to eat tonkatsu ramen. lingo and tony got spicy ramen and put a whole bunch of garlic in it. sounds good.

went shopping afterwards — there were some places with cool punk/goth clothes, but they were expensive. and there was one that was cheap, but it was for skinny people only :/

after that, we walked over to shibuya because tokyo tower was closed (yuki had wanted to take us there). we met up with yuki halfway and then went to the same ol’ familiar area in shibuya where we decided to go karaoke. takeo showed up too. some place where they filmed the karaoke scene in “lost in translation” tried to rip us off, so we went to big one — the same place as the first night we went karaoke. it was 25,000 yen a person for all-night karaoke, til 5am!!! same cost as 2 and a half hours lol. awesome!!!

only richie, lingo, and i stayed up the ENTIRE night. miko stayed up most of the night. takeo passed out first, then yuki, then tony. same ol, same ol. as we were leaving, i rubbed yuki’s head to try and wake him up, and he hated it, apparently — i didn’t see his face, but miko said he looked pissed lol. then i rubbed takeo’s head to wake him up, and his reaction was funny because instead of doing nothing like yuki, he started slapping the chair next to him hahaha. lol…

anyway, at 5am we walked to the place by hachiko and the busiest intersection in the world or whatever was now basically deserted!! everyone went home and took naps and left individually.

monday, april 2nd
left to go to the airport. thought our flight was at 5pm, but really, it was at fucking 1pm. so we sat in the airport forever. since we never really had time to go shopping, we talked about going shopping at the airport, but there really wasn’t anything to buy. had risotto at the airport. tried massage chairs with lingo at the airport. they were mostly fun but made me kind of sick afterwards. watched part of “stranger than fiction” on the plane, and it seems pretty good but i didn’t get to finish it — did, however, watch parts of “the good german” with george clooney and it seems dumb… and watched the whole of “curse of the golden flower,” which VISUALLY is AWESOME but everything else about it is fucking terrible. ick. ICKKKKKK.