I'm off!

So, I'm off on a nine-day jaunt with Kori through Japan- Kyoto, Hiroshima, and maybe a few other places. We don't know yet- we're just going where our whims and the trains take us. So, no posts during that time (sadly) but when I get back there will be pics and words aplenty.
Huzzah! Adventure awaits!

I'm So Moved!

Wow. There was just an earthquake. Right now. While I was eating ramen. Sweet!
Nothing big, nothing fallen over- but I've finally experienced my first instance of Japan's geological shuffling. Woo!
Back to ramen now.

Tanuki on the Shore: Stumbling Drunk Through Takamatsu

Tanuki are mythical raccoon tricksters with giant magic balls. This sunday, there was a tanuki festival in Takamatsu, and by total chance I ended up in the middle of a big public square where everyone was wearing racoon hats. Also, I ended up completely drunk and wandering around a bunch of castle ruins. It was cool.
Sort of on a whim I ended up going to Takamatsu this weekend. No real reason- I just felt like I'd hop on a train to Shikoku and see what was there. Takamatsu is a decently sized city, and I thought I'd give it a look. Hip Hop asked me what I was doing this weekend, and asked if he could come along.
We got on an early train, and moved south through all manner of rural hills and ricefields. I'm continually surprised by how much "country" Japan seems to have. Sure, it's crowded country, with towns every ten minutes and rice fields clumped together, but it's rural nonetheless. We passed over the Honshu-Skikoku bridge, and I was quite taken with my first real view of the Inland Sea. I'd been to the Inland Sea before, of course, but only at night. Here, though, I was able to take in the full size of it, see it extending out in two directions and dotted with all manner of tiny islands. It was as if Honshu and Shikoku were dissolving, and little bits of them still floated in sea.
At the tanuki festival, of course, there were all manner of food vendors. Hip Hop looked at me rather sheepishly and asked "Do you wanna beer?" I felt a bit reticent- it was only about twelve thirty, and I didn't want to slide into some sort of reverie of daytime drunken degeneracy. But, I think that tanuki would have approved of my actions when I said "sure."
I still think it's weird to drink outside, but it's all legal here, so I guess it's not a problem.
We sat down and watched some kids doing taiko, which I'd never seen before- the closest I'd come was playing a taiko-themed arcade game (which I did quite enjoy, I might add).
Taiko is fairly neat to watch. Granted, we were watching kids, but the mixture of drumming, choreography, and shouting all makes it very much a performance, not just music. Really- if you were to listen to a recording of taiko drumming, you'd be losing about half of the experience of it. The kids had some decent chops, but I'd like to see a proper adult taiko performance sometime.
After that, a bunch of high school girls did a "raccoon dance." They were all dressed up in ears, tails, and makeup, and had I been a pedophile with a fur fetish I would have been pleased with it to no end.
We stumbled from the square, and made our way to the ruins of Takamatsu castle. The ruins (well, mainly just the base of the castle) were situated in a rather pleasant traditional garden with all manner of rocky steps, stone lanterns, and arching trees. It was nice. Hip Hop and I stumbled a few times as we drunkenly walked over the uneven stone steps, but managed to avoid falling like idiots.
Now, I don't want to sound like a total degenerate, but...
I'm quite glad that I'm now living the sort of life wherein if I find myself drunkenly stumbling about a bunch of castle ruins after watching a bunch of dancing girls dressed up as raccoons, I think that's more or less normal. I mean, it's not like I do that every day, but that's the sort of thing that being over here is all about- gallivanting around and doing random stuff like that.
We got some Udon (a Shikoku specialty) and looked at the Inland Sea for a while as we sobered up before catching a train home. I had a social engagement in Kurashiki later that night. There, I contented myself with oolong while everyone else got tipsy, and I splayed out in the wonderful sensation of knowing I'm somewhere else.

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Springtime Snowblood: In Which I Lose All Feeling In My Legs

In John Dower's Embracing Defeat, Dower describes how during WWII, the sakura was appropriated as a propaganda image. The Japanese government extolled their citizens to die like gracefully falling cherry blossoms, likening carnage to a gentle spring.
Riding around on sunday I couldn't help but think that this was a wholly ridiculous image. Cherry blossoms are about as threatening as marshmellow peeps. Damn pretty, though. The flurries and waves did sort of resemble a bloodstained snow, though- a storm of capillaries and veins.
Monday, a student invited me to a Japanese tea ceremony. I was actually sort of leery about this- I was worried about whether or not I'd commit some huge breach of etiquette at the tea ceremony. and also about the professionalism of consorting with students outside of class. My company doesn't care about this sort of thing, but while I want to be friendly, I don't want to be too friendly- I always want it to be a teacher/student relationship.
The particular student who invited me along was an older lady who's learning English because both of her kids speak it. I also suspect that she just sort of likes foreigners. She was very "buddy-buddy" with my predecessor and I think she wants to find something like that again. She also seemed to be trying to foist her daughter on me, but more on that in a bit.
I met my student, her friend, and her daughter on monday morning, and was initially surprised to see that they were all wearing kimonos. Then I thought- of course they're wearing kimonos. If you own a kimono, I think, then you probably crack that sucker out whenever you get a chance- such as going to a tea ceremony.
My student's friend spoke no English, however her daughter was very high level. I have to confess that when I meet new people, I unconciously start gauging their English abilities. She was quite good- I'd put her in a high level class if given the option.
Then she asked me my most hated question here in Japan-
"Do you have a girlfriend?"
"No, I don't."
"Really?"
"Really."
This was followed by second most hated question-
"Do you like Japanese girls?"
"Sometimes."
Oh how I loath this question. Loath it. Loath it on an HunterSThompsonian scale, in fact. I usually want to respond with something like "Do you like American boys? How about Chinese boys? What about boys from Portugal or Mozambique? How about them? How about Mongolian, Egptian, or Brazilian boys? How about them? Let's fetishize nationality more! Yeah, baby- that funny passport totally revs my engines! Oh yeah! Your cultural background is different from mine- HOT!" Such sarcasm would probably be lost on most Japanese people, and in the interest of politness I usually just say "sometimes."
But, I digress.
My old lady student and her friend were doing the whole "let's hang back several feet and let them talk to each other alone" thing, leaving me with the daughter. She kept asking me all about America, and I kept telling here stuff. I sort of got sick of the whole "Woooo! You're from America!" conversation, but tried my best to be pleasant.
When we got to the garden where the tea ceremony was to be held, I was surrounded by several very short old ladies in kimonos, sort of milling about and chatting with each other. So, picture this: A bunch of short old ladies in kimonos milling about in a pleasant little garden. Sticking out of the geriatric, silken-clad throng is a six foot tall white dude in a leather jacket with dark stubble. I was really, really intimidated and self concious. I asked my student if it was okay that I wasn't wearing a kimono or a suit or anything and she just laughed at me and told me it was fine. We milled about in the garden for a while, and evntually went into the tea house.
Now, try this-
Get on your knees. and make surt that your feet aren't crossed. Now, sit back so your ass is directly above your feet. Try to keep as upright as possible. Put your hands in your lap. Try to look all calm and whatnot. That is how one has to sit during a tea ceremony. It's called seisa, and it's quite painful over a long period of time.
So, I was sitting there with all sorts of interesting pain going back and forth in my legs, and I can say pretty confidently that the only thing that kept me from changing my posture was pride. Pure, stupid, pride. The Pride that Marcellus Wallace described as a "sting."
Surrounded by little old ladies who seemed quite comfortable sitting that way, there was no way I was going to change my position. If lots and lots of tiny grey women could endure that, then sure enough, I could, too.
So, I just let my skewed sense of pride do it's work while I sat there in a bamboo-matted house bowing a lot while various tea bowls were passed around. The tea itself was actually quite tasty. In fact, it was incredibly tasty. I want to learn how to make green tea like that, such was its niftyness.
The tea ceremony itself was neat, though I didn't know what was going on as it was all in Japanese. My student's daughter explained to me later that it was all about spring, and the wonderfulness thereof. The teahouse was a quite nice space- it used a lot of polished branches in its timbers rather than worked beams, which was nicely naturalistic. There was also a heavily stylized calligraphic banner that was written in such rapid-seeming brushwork that I couldn't pick out even the radicals (i.e., component parts) of the Kanji.
When the ceremony was over, my student' daughter asked me if my legs were in any pain. I said yes, I couldn't feel them at all. It was a weird mixture of pain and non-feeling. My student and her daughter laughed and, much to my surprise. Immediately started massaging my feet and calves. I was sort of taken aback by this- it's not every day that one gets a leg massage from a mother and daughter simultaneously whilst in a tiny, traditional Japanese tea house. It was sort of weird, but they seemed to think that it was the most hilarious thing ever. I struggled to get up with my non-feeling legs, and sort of wondered what all the old ladies in kimonos were making of the scene.
I had a Japanese lesson later, so my student and her daughter were sad to see me go. It was fun, definitely the sort of cultural experience that I wanted to have. Now I just need to find a good gree tea recipe...

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I Swear, I Only Listen to Bright Eyes Ironically. Really.

I really like Irony. I like it so much, I just capitalized it.
Back home in the Usa, sarcasm was basically a constant fixture of my speech- and working in a dysfuntional (but charming!) local bookstore with a bunch hipster/geek types was exactly the environment where this sort of thing flourished. I don't think I went a whole day without making fun of Nicholas Sparks, James Patterson, or Nora Roberts. No, I've never read any of them- but we mercilessly skewered them anyway, even as we sold half-priced copies of their paperbacks.
Here, though, things are different. Obviously they are, otherwise I wouldn't be writing about it.
Many people mentioned that most Japanese people don't have much a sense of sarcasm, culturally. I sort of thought that this was some sort of fatuous generalization- I mean, who couldn't have a sense of sarcasm and irony? It's innate, right? Right?
Well, no. It's not. Being perpetually sarcastic and ironic, it seems, is basically the province of snooty effete intellectual types and cantankerous old people. My old job had both, and I include myself in the first category.
Here, though, my sarcasm runs right into the face of my job- I mean, I'm dealing with people who need to be introduced to basic stuff like the passive voice. My most advanced students struggle with euphemisms. Sarcasm is so high up the communicative ladder (especially my own style of dry sarcasm that sometimes even confuses other native speakers) that I need to turn it almost completely off when I talk to students.
Broad stuff is okay. Really, really broad stuff- like claiming that it's a wonderfully sunny day when in fact it's raining outside. That works. However, subtlety doesn't really make it's way through the communicative wall.
I've resorted to (gasp!) having to say exactly what I mean without resorting to wit, euphemisms, guile, or intonation. My words have been forced to, as directly as possible, correlate precisely to what is going on in my head. While this may seem intuitive to some, I find such unshaded and direct communication to be exceedingly strange. Even though I've gotten much better at it, I'm still not used to speaking without my old friend Irony.
I'm sort of worried about this.
I mean, it's bad enough that I like Belle and Sebastian and U2, twin pillars of rock-'n-roll earnestness. It's worrisome to think that perhaps when I get back I'm going to be this overly earnest, utterly sappy, irony-free bag of sincerity. I imagine myself as going from this smiling, funny, occasionally witty guy to the worst sort of overly earnest "sensitive" guy. You know- the sort of person who listens to Bright Eyes. I think of myself soulfully, earnestly, and humorously pouring out my feelings without a white of self-awareness and I sort of cringe a little.
Though such a thing is not likely. If anything, this is probably a good thing. Perhaps, sometimes, I was too ironic, too sarcastic. Perhaps, sometimes, it was a crutch and now I'm learning to walk without it.
When I speak with native speakers I'm still the same old sarcastic person that I always was- mostly. I still love irony dearly- and I mean that sincerely.

Seduced by Distance

"Is this your cup of tea?"
Yes
"If you weren't adventerous, you'd never see shit like this."
I've gone batshit insane.
I'm afraid of heights. But, there I was, on top of a concrete wall, creeping along ninja-commando style. On my right side, rocks and water. On my left, only some concrete a few feet down. If I fell, the close concrete would have been massively preferable.
Mr. Ecuador and I were trespassing at some sort of industrial fishing facility, and it was perhaps 11:30 or so at night at that point. We were bicycling around a lake near Japan's Inland Sea, and had gotten somewhat lost. The water blurred into the night in the distance, and bird disturbed the surface. Along the way, we stopped several times to check out things of interests- fishing platforms, staircases, bits of rocks, etc.
We eventually got home at perhaps two in the morning. I was sore from so much biking the next day.
Last night, I went out to Karaoke with British Girl, two students, and two of British Girl's visiting friends. I was in a somewhat expansive mood, and tried to speak as much Japanese as possible with the two Students and British Girl. Now, my Japanese isn't anything brilliant or coherent. I speak like a drunken monkey, for the most part. But, I was iin such a mood where I didn't really mind sounding like a moron, and I realized that British Girl's two friends couldn't understand me at all.
That was, seriously, awesome.
While I was able to make pronouncements to myself and exchange rudimentary things with my coworker and students, it occured to me that while I sounded like a drunken monkey, at least I could speak some Japanese. Meanwhile, the two visitors didn't even know how to get the little karaoke song selector thing to type in English. I was reminded of what a gawky beginner I was five months ago, and that I actually have learned something here. I have learned things about the language, the world, myself, etc.
I occasionally get frusturated with the job (I still like it, for the most part) so it's nice to be reminded, be it on a concrete ledge in the middle of the night, or being able to compare yourself with complete beginners, that my time here actually has been worthwhile. Combined with the mind-expanding niftyness that was Tokyo, I think I'm being seduced by being abroad...
I'm considering staying on.
I have no idea whether or not my company will want me around for another year, but I've been considering staying in Japan perhaps for another six months or a year. I'm almost halfway done with my initial year commitment, and looking back everything has seemed to have happened rather rapidly. I know there's more out there to see and do- I'd very much like to see and do it.
On one hand, though, I don't want to turn into a tumbleweed. I don't want to find myself eventually looking at thirty (oh, how old that seems!) with nothing nailed down, nothing stable. On the other hand, I figure that now is the time to do crazy stuff, to travel and learn new languages, to trek across the globe.
I have fantasies about circumnavigating the globe or trekking through weird areas. I think of such fanciful things as happening upon giant stone Buddahs in the jungle or walking or driving over the whole of the former Silk Road.
I know, I know- it all sounds very improbable and self-indulgent. But, I keep thinking... Wouldn't it be nice to try the Trans-Siberian Railway? Wouldn't it be cool to sail through the Greek isles? Wouldn't backbacking across the Great Wall be a good story, trite though it may sound?
I'm going to stop, otherwise I'll be given to histrionics. But, it keeps nagging at me...

Also-
Apparently I accidntally disabled comments on the last post. I did not mean to do that. I like hearing from you all, so if you wanted to add anything please do! Your words are made out of awesome!

And...
Kori was the best part of Tokyo. I sort of skirted around that in the post, but holding her and gazing at the skyline was a big part of why I had such an amazingly wonderful time. Ok... I'm really going to stop now before I get too cheesy.

Edo Euphoria: Elvi, Celtic-ness, Buddah, Tokyo Tower, Sleazy Hard Drive Guys, Cherry Blossom Simulacrums, etc.

I've allowed myself to be unrestrictedly and self-indulgently long winded in this post. You have been warned.

Douglas Adams (a very smart man) once said that space is really quite big. Space, he said, is really unimaginably vast. Huge. Breathtaking. Everyone knows this, and everyone talks about it, but no one really appreciates how mind-bendingly huge its proportions are.
Tokyo is kind of like that. So, I've decided, is the rest of the world.

Day One
There's a certain amount of weird adrenaline one gets, I think, being awake at an unusual time. As difficult as it was to peel myself out of bed at 5:30 A. M., once I was out and about in the cold sunrise, I was what one could call "psyched." Making my way to the station, various taxi drivers were asleep behind their wheels and a few people filed out of seedy sex shops, the last dregs of a saturday night. On the shinkansen, I attempted to sleep a little. Mostly, though, I just gazed out at the landscape.
After Tokyo's Shinigawa station, I tranferred twice and met Kori. It was unusual seeing someone from Eugene- So far, everything here, the language, my job, the people, has been new. Other than online communication, I really don't have any remnants of my "old" (or maybe "real") life around here, so it was both jarring and nifty to see someone from that life.
We dropped off my stuff, and headed out to. First stop: Meiji Jingu, rock 'n roll, dancing elvi, and weird goth girls.
We ate lunch in a Yoyogi Park near the Meiji Jingu, and I was struck both by the sheer amount of people and the rather large number of foreigners. In Okayama/Kurashiki, seeing more than four foreigners outside one of the gaijin bars is something of an event. In Yoyogi Park, there were swarms of them. I actually tried to count them- and couldn't. We watched a rock band play in the park for a bit, and I was reminded that I missed live concerts. Around here is where I started gawking like a wide-eyed country boy, and didn't really stop for the duration.
The Meiji Jingu surprised me for the sheer amount of green space around it. My mental image of Tokyo was that of a huge, gleaming, neon metropolis. And Tokyo is that. But, there's a lot more than just that- the Meiji shrine is a shaded, wooded area that reminded me a bit of Portland's Forest Park. Several people were out strolling, and I couldn't help but rather shallowly think of what the real estate value of such open space was in one of the world's biggest cities.
There was a wedding going on at the shrine, and given the huge mob of Japanese people who were taking pictures, I didn't feel particularly voyeuristic about snapping a few of my own.
Coming out of the shrine, we saw a clutch of Harajuku girls flocking and posing for pictures, many of them with quite elaborate plumage on display. Whilst we were snapping pictures of the sundry quirkily-adorned goth girls, a crazy man started talking to us.
I'd sort of forgotten about crazy street people. In my time in Okayama, I've met not a one. Back in Eugene when I worked at a dysfunctional (but charming!) local bookstore, I had no shortage of colorful characters who would come in looking for, say, books about making bombs or crystals. You know- standard paranoid hippy stuff.
But this guy, though, randomly walked up to us and launched into an invective against the various fashion goths around us.
"There is nothing intellectual here," he said, gesturing at the crowd of preening youngsters. He then proceeded to rant to us about his, shall we say, concerns about the prevalence of Japanese girls dating western guys (I've yet to see such a thing in Okayama- so I imagine this might be mainly a big city thing). This guy wnet on for a bit about how shallow such pairings were, about how the people in them really couldn't communicate well, and how dating in general was dangerous. He asked me if I had a Japanese girlfriend ("No") and if I liked Japanese girls ("As much as any other girls") and was just another crazy weird guy until he started talking about how he was once brought up on rape charges in LA.
You want to make people feel really, really weird in a conversation? Say, "I was brought up on rape charges." It basically kills whatever talk is going on. The crazy street rapist then attempted sell us some of his haikus. We made our excuses, and met up with another English teacher, a rather jovial friend of Kori's.
Strolling in Yoyogi Park for a bit longer, we saw Elvis. Lots of him.
They appeared to be some kind of Tokyo rockabilly club- about ten or so guys (as well as two women in poodle skirts and one in leather like the guys) were blasting old style rock-'n-roll into the park, each taking turns to dance about in the middle of the circle with a collection of breakdancy/rock-esque moves whilst the others gyrated hips and shoulders to the guitar-laden beat.
I found myself summoning up a weird amount of respect for these guys. They had moves. They pulled off leather pants. They were strutting about in huge sunglasses and getting people to applaud them. The three of us decided that "Elvi" was a suitable plural for "Elvis." So, I can say unquivocally that these guys were the best Elvi I'd ever seen.
Here's a video, courtesy of Kori-


Next Up: The Tokyo St. Patrick's Day Parade!
Yes. There was a St. Patrick's parade in Japan. Probably just one, in Tokyo, but nevertheless it was there. It was pretty much what you'd expect a St. Patrick's Day parade to be like- all manner of Celtic regalia and heraldry brought out to on display- but with more Katakana. Also, there were several bagpipers. "Nothing says 'Ireland,'" said our jovial companion, "like 'Scotland.'"
"True," I replied, "much like nothing says 'England' like 'Wales.'" He and Kori actually laughed at that. It was a relief to hang out with people who appreciate that sort of humor. After the parade we wandered a bit through the Harajuku and Shinjuku areas, espying all manner of weird shops and outlandish fashion places. Regrettably, many of the shops in Harajuku had approbations against cameras, so I don't have much in the way of pictures from there.
Then, in Shinjuku, my brain had an orgasm.
Like many a brain-gasm, it came along because of a bookstore. A really, really big bookstore. A bookstore where the English language section was larger than some bookstores back home. There were even non-manga comics, something that the local Maruzen in Okayama sorely lacks.
I could have spent the whole day and all of my money there. I wanted to make an impropmtu list of all the books I planned to read in Japan, I wanted to raid the Japanese history section for Samurai tales, and I wanted to get just one more Japanese language book.
There was even an English manga version of Hamlet which tempted me for a few moments.
Somehow, I managed to keep myself from blowing my entire Tokyo budget on Japanese history and language books, and settled for a copy of Embracing Defeat by John Dower to fulfill my Japanese history lust, and well as House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski as a fun read. (So far, Embracing Defeat is highly nifty.)
After getting books, wandered around a bit more and Tokyo turned from day to night. Around us, crowds of people in suits emerged from their offices and began to fill out the street, and above us the various sign and buildings began to glow with neon. Gigantic screens filled with advertisements, news reports, and bits of anime. The archetypical image that I had of Tokyo, that of a neon-lit megalopolis, was confirmed and surpassed.
I was sort of in bliss.
Our jovial companion said something interesting- He said that in a way he was glad that he couldn't understand Japanese, because that way he wasn't able to understand all of the various advertisements around him. Without knowing Japanese, the ads were just abstract images, just glowing things on the skyline. But, if he was able to understand the language, he'd be able to divine every bit of consumerism around us, and that it would be even more obnoxious than the constant press of ads in the U.S. I thought his opinion a rather interesting one.
Our jovial companion left us, though, and we proceeded to find a rather nice Thai restaurant where the main centerpiece was a giant golden Buddah in the main room. Or rather, it was painted gold. I imagine that if it was actual gold it would have crashed through the floor. In any case, we were eating dinner, and there was a giant golden Buddah.
Now, I'm pretty sure that the proprietor or founder of the restaurant found the Buddah first, and then decided to build the place around it. I can imagine the thought process- "I have a big, gold, Buddah statue... What can I do with that? I know! Buddah bar!" Seems logical to me.
The rest of the restaurant was lit up in a way that was simultaneously gaudy and nifty, with all sorts of candles, chandeliers, and mirrors bouncing red, flickering light around the room as we devoured (no nearly spicy enough) Thai food.
I wondered where the other bars with giant golden Jesus, Moses, Mohommed, and Confucious were. Surely Buddah can't be the only regligious figure with his own flickery Thai restaurant? Now that I've had curried chicken in the shadow of Buddah, can I have pad Thai at the feet of Jesus? I think Jesus would like pad Thai- he seems cool like that.

Day Two
So, we tried to go to the Imperial Palace, but apparently it's closed on mondays. Disappointed, we walked away.
We did walk around the city for quite a while, though, including Ginza. Ginza seems to be the type of place where people with boatloads upon truckloads of money go to have fun- Nothing quite like says "decadent" like multistorey Ralph Lauren ads, methinks. So, we wandered through streets and parks, saw a cool science exhibit, and in the evening I looked out across the Tokyo Bay.
Now, there's this certain style of writing that I really, really, hate. That's the style of writing that takes something really trivial and particular (like, say, a view of Tokyo across the bay) and tries to apply it to something big, interesting, and complicated (for instance, Japan). I'm going to try to avoid that as best as possible here.
But...
Looking out over Tokyo Bay, out over the skyline and the rainbowbridge and the replica of the Statue of Liberty, I couldn't help but think how very, very different this all was from Okayama, and what that said about Japan. Actually, nevermind that. It doesn't say anything about Japan, it says stuff about my perception of Japan.
Okayama is a city, certainly, but it's also sort of in the middle of the sticks. Okayama has a population of 676,283 and Kurashiki 433,477, according to Wikipedia. Plus, there are several small towns and such scattered about these two towns. So, I definitely live somewhere urban, but Okayama is by no means a reflection of the shiny, bustling Japan that one sees in popular media. It's just a normal, modern city.
So, I sort of had this impression that various American perceptions of Japan- as this big, insane, crazy, consumerism-drenched, place- were overblown and inaccurate. I was, for a while, mistaking Okayama with the rest of Japan, and I was beginning to slide into the misapprehension (even though I knew intellectually that it was incorrect) that Japan is this nice rural place with rolling hills and efficient trains. Really looking out at the Tokyo Bay, and seeing the Rainbow Bridge lit up in the twilight blew all of that away. Tokyo, if not the rest of Japan, really is that enormous, insane, futuristic city. It shines and gleams with technology, it fills your eyes as you try to look at it all from a distance, it's full of crazy shit that will make your brain explode, and it seems endless.
And with good reason. Greater Tokyo has a population of 35 million people- that's like three Belgiums, or half of all France. That's about 2 million more than California. Looking at the Greater Tokyo area is like looking at an entire country's worth of people all at once.
Do I sound like a complete wide-eyed country boy yet? Okayama seemed damn puny in comparison.
We got on the train, crossed the Rainbow Bridge, and I saw from each side the massive skylines facing each other. It was like someone had taken a pair of Chicagos and put them on opposite sides of the water. I think that Kori was a more than a little amused at me marvelling at the scale.
Then, we got to Tokyo tower.
Sure, it's a big, shiny, tourist trap. But it was a fun big, shiny tourist trap. And, being up there was no shortage of continued mental overstimulation. We could see, all around, the various buildings and and streets lit up. Their lights blocked out any view of the stars, and below the streets gave an appearance of a bright, electric day.
I just sort of reeled, and was reminded why I'm here in Japan- I'm here to see things that I've never seen before, do stuff that I've never done before. I'm here for the adventuresness of it all, or the "adventure-gasms" as Kori liked to call them. The whole time had been a really, really big adventure-gasm- really. The whole time had been a really, really big adventure-gasm. The kind of adventure-gasm makes you forget about five minutes ago and five minutes from now, the kind that demands all the attention possible from your perception. I think I went through a hell of a lot of seratonin.
Later, there was sushi. It was awesome.

Day Three
Kori had to work out in country, so on day three of my wanderings I was left to my own devices. She'd been basically the best tour guide ever, but I was also looking forward to wandering about one of the biggest cities in the world by myself. I dropped my stuff off at my hostel, and decided that I'd see the Imperial Palace, as it should have been opened on tuesday.
First, though, I stopped for a bit in the Ueno district, and strolled for a while in Ueno Park. I really wanted to do this for a really dumb reason.
On one of the Japanese language CDs that I have, the segment about asking where things are is a dialogue between two people asking where Ueno Park is. "Ueno Koen wa doko dessu ka?" goes the dialouge. "Koko dessu!" (it's here!) "Asoko dessu!" (it's over there), etc. So, for the entirely stupid reason that I learned about locations in Japanese using Ueno Koen as a reference point, I really wanted to actually see it. "Koko dessu!" I thought to myself as I walked towards it. It's a nice park. Like Meiji Jingu, I was again surprised to find so much green space inside Tokyo. I hung out there, read for a while, walked next to the water, and then got on a train for an entirely different, but nearby section of Tokyo- Akihabara.
Akihabara, "Electric Town" is a big, sleazy, geek-pit. It's the sort of place that I could probably only enjoy when I'm in a certain mood, but I did like it. I spent most of my time searching the various electronic stores for a cheap external hard drive, something that was harder to find than I initially thought.
I eventually found one in a makeshift-looking storefront with the rather simultanerously promising yet weirdly inauspicious name "English Computer." The guy at the store was this sort of hurried-looking nerd type, and when he said "I can't give you a receipt," I was very, very suspicious. But, the thing was cheap. I thought that maybe it was a bit too cheap at the time, but I was feeling adventurous and decided to go for it. (The HD is fine- it's now humming beside me.)
I made it back to the Imperial Palace, hoping to get a dose of history and culture. In front of me various crowds of people, both foreign and Japanese, walked up to the gate and turned back. I was wondering if the place was closed yet again.
It wasn't. Instead, one of the gaurds in a snappy uniform said to me, "Hello."
"Konichiwa," I said, "is the palace open to the public today?"
He informed me, in perfect English, that any tourist who wants to see the Imperial Palace must fill out an application and have a background check. He also mentioned that it was mostly a formality, and took about two days. I thanked him, the guard did mention that the palace's eastern garden was open to the public, and, he added smiling, that it was free. He'd probably given this speech to loads of people that day, and probably some people complained about it. I think I'd hate his job.
The garden itself was nice, though not as picturesque or as large as the Korakuen. Neverhtheless, it was nice to sit and read for a while in the greenspace. I cracked open the Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura and sat for a good hour or so.
I left, and winded my way back to Asakusa, where my hostel was located. In the evening, I took some time to wonder around Asakusa as it was a well known tourist stop.
For a tourist trap, Asakusa has all the trappings. While the Thunder Gate was indeed nifty looking, as was the Sensoji Temple, the path between them was lined with several shops selling various cheap souvenires, the path above them decked out with artificial cherry blossoms. Between the gate and the temple, everything was red paint, cherry blossoms, Hello Kitty, inexpensive Japanese robes, and silk prints. It all seemed to scream "Holy shit! Look how Japanese this is!!!!"
Now, there were plenty of westerners (including myself) strolling along and looking at stuff, but it seemed that there were far more Japanese people engaged in the buying of cheap plastic crap than anyone else. So, this got me thinking- how much BS must a given thing have before it's rendered "fake?" I mean, Asakusa's a real place- That's a real, live Buddhist temple there, and the Thunder Gate is a real, live piece of nifty architechture. But, both of them are surrounded by sleazy stalls selling cheap shit and decorated with plastic cherry blossoms. Does that make the temple and gate any less real? Does that render the whole thing into a simulacrum and mockery of itself? Or is it merely that something real and cool has vestigial bullshit, but is real and cool nonetheless?
Or am I just a big, pretentious wanker for asking questions like this?
I found what looked to be a cheap restaurant and ordered some udon. The waitress looked at me incredulouly- "Udon," she said as if I'd said something wrong, "It's thick, it's white."
"Hai. Wakerimas. Kare Udon o kudasai."
"Ok," said, with a worried look on her face. It wasn't like I'd ordered something off-menu. It said in a mix of katakana and hiragana "kare udon" (curry udon) right there on the wall. But the waitress seemed to have an attitude that udon was something so weird and Japanese that a westerner would hava hard time enjoying it.
But I did- I love curry, love udon, and the combination thereof. I sat there for a while, finished Okakura's book, wandered about for another two or so hours, and headed back to my hostel.

Day Four
The next day, I had to be checked out of my hostel by eleven, so I didn't have too much time to do things in the morning. I did content myself with a walk through Asakusa, and I regret that I didn't bring my camera. I found, of all things, the corporate headquarters for Ban Dai.
Given that there's a shiny Ultraman statue out front, it was kind of hard to miss. In addition to the big red and silver dude, there were a few other statues of Gundam, sentai, and sundry other anime and superhero characters.
There were also several toys and products on display in their window, though the office was closed as the 21 (the spring equinox) is a national holiday here in Japan. It was sort of odd to look inside and see how many things I recognized from when I was a kid. It was also sort of odd to think "this is where the Gundam guys work." Or, at least the guys who produce and distribute Gundam stuff.
I don't want to go too much into the realm of generalizing about the general from the specific, but it occured to me that Sentai and Kamen Riders are sort of like salarymen. Think about it- salarymen all wear more or less interchangeable suits, work in groups, and oftentimes seemingly subsume their identity in favor of their job. Japanese superheros, also, wear more or less interchangeable suits (seriously- you try to tell the Kamen Riders apart), work in groups (which sometimes turn into giant robots), and subsume their identity in favor of their job (do you know what the Green Ranger does on his off days? Does it matter?)
I eventually had to make my way back, get my stuff, and catch a Shinkansen for Okayama. I sat on the bullet train, ate a bento box and read Embracing Deafeat. I was, as the hippies say, blissed out. It's a big, nifty world out there.
I want more.

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