hawkeye’s thoughts of tomorrow

and my feet and everything else. Here’s how today went. Woke up around 12:30…yeah, I really slept that late. I probably would’ve slept later but housekeeping called to see when I wanted my room cleaned. Talked to some of you lovely people then headed out about 13:30. I’d pretty much planned to start at Shinjuku today and wander till I got where I was going. I followed my whims and found some really neat stuff (follow the Flickr). Had some great food, a typical Japanese style meal is about $5-6. And even picked up a few more presents. Found a gorgeous park named Hibya right in the middle of Tokyo. Words cannot describe it so I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Long day, lots of walking (~6 hours by my count), very sore, had a good time though. I’m even starting to be able to use passable Japanese, or at least I can order food without making a total fool of myself, had some lovely noodle dish for dinner…couldn’t tell you what it was though… Finally got home ~21:00, took a long bath, read some of Eldest, and drank some Chu-Hi (pronounced chu - hai as I found out) at Achim’s request. It was delicious. Chu-Hi has about the same or a bit less alcohol content as a standard beer (5-7%) and much tastier, they make it in a multitude of flavors (mine was pineapple) and it might be the one drink where even Dan’s pickyass couldn’t taste the alcohol. Now comes the time for sleeping.

And here is your moment of zen: CRABS! (he’s moving though you can’t really see it that well)

Headed out to meet Benji. Just a quick little train ride to Ginza station then like 2 hours waiting for Ben (I left too early thinking I’d probably get lost…surprisingly I didn’t). While waiting I got to people-watch quite a bit which made me notice miscellaneous things. People in Tokyo are extremely image concious. We’re talking Gucci, Prada, Coach, etc EVERYWHERE. And makeup, lots of hair/makeup styling going on. They’re also incredibly diverse in their stylings, you’ll see gummi-goths, fashionable 80’s/90’s/00’s, skater-kids. You’ll even see the greatest fashion idea I’ve seen yet…black thigh-high stockings with sandal high heels…*shudders*. I also noticed that I seemed to keep seeing really beautiful asian girls everywhere. Which at first I attributed to Tokyo, but then started thinking it’s true of most big cities I’ve been to (in the fashionable areas at least). Though I’m still not sure if it’s just that big cities attract more beautiful people or if you just see more people so you think there are more beautiful people but the percentages really stay the same (that sentence had legs!)

So anyway, met up with Ben and wandered around till we found some food…some kind of beef/onion thing with an egg on top, quite tasty really. Food’s pretty affordable here ~8-10$ on average for what back home would be a 16$ japanese dinner. Then we went to Akihabara…basically mecca. They have more electronics and electronics stores than the human mind can concieve of. Every street corner and alley is a discount electronics shop, and unlike Orlando/Vegas/etc they actually are a reasonable price relative to online stuff. I didn’t find any super unique items but I also didn’t take alot of time to browse, I’ll probably head back there sometime tomorrow and take a more through look. Ben also showed me Yodobashi-Akiba. It’s a six story electronics with some other misc stuff thrown in (stationary, bikes, a few other things) they have every type of electronics gadget, gizmo, and nick-nack imaginable. They even have decent prices, about what alot of it is online at least. They have cellphones that put the Motorola Q and RAZR to shame. Most impressive though?, I didn’t buy anything (well I got a mic…because my laptop doesn’t have one and I’m stupid).

Once we left Akihabara we headed towards Ben’s base, stopped by in Yokohama for awhile. A bit younger crowd, more high-school and early college kids. Found some arcades which had such games as Pop Star Frenzy (think DWI with 8 buttons) and Beatmania 13IIDX (watch this video). If we ever get into a war with Japan they will completely and utterly destroy us. Then we decided to get some good old fashioned American food so we headed to Atsugi and ate at one of the resturants on base and had some pasta, hung out with Ben for a bit, played ping-pong and pool. Then headed back home, talked to Achim for a bit and now I shall sleep because I’m extremely tired.

More of the Flickr

Kinda bored waiting for time to pass figured I take some pics of the misc weirdnesses of Japan, and more specifically my room.

Flickr

I survived the flight. Strange thing about 13 hour flights, the first couple hours go fine…then you realize you’re only to about…Alaska…OMG. I was so bored I actually watched The Pink Panther, which surprisingly wasn’t awful. It had like 5 mins of Kristin Chenowith to redeem it, and of course she was absolutley adorable. Watch Glory Road too, which was quite good. Josh Lucas proved he can act. I also read about half of Eldest…which is a thousand page book.

But then the plane landed and all was well…ok, not quite. Customs/Passport Checkin was pretty clearly labeled but I stood in the wrong line for about 15 mins. My baggage survived though so that’s ubercool. Finding my hotel was way harder than I thought it would be, and Narita airport is alot farther away from Tokyo and by extension my hotel than I thought it would be (about an hour and a half from Narita to Shinjuku station). Once I got to Shinjuku I had to take a cab. Lauren I’m sorry I doubted you, people driving on the wrong side of the road freaks me the hell out. Probably doesn’t help that everyone drives absolutely nuts and they’re all driving cars the size of scooters with more electronics than my room. The room’s kinda neat. It’s a really tiny but extremely efficient little room. And they give you a hot water maker and green tea packets, which I am currently drinking (the tea, not the packets). Oh! and pajamas, the room comes with pajamas. So yeah, really aside from my shoulder being kinda sore and being really tired, things went quite well considering I did almost zero planning for this trip.

Back on the topic of Shinjuku. It’s the Border’s of Tokyo. All the gummi goth’s, well the japanese equivalent, hang out there. And that’s all they do, hang out with their friends. I’ll take pictures tomorrow, it’s really quite spectacular. So tomorrow I do some real exploring, today was unfortunately taken up completely with trying to get where I was going, but now I’m free of my confines and can literally walk around all day if I want, and I fully intend to (ok, I’m gonna ride the train a little bit…cause trains are cool)

P.S. It’s true kid’s, over here (where it’s currently “the future”) they do indeed have “lasers” and “magnets”.

If this line wasn’t so long that picture would almost look like progress. Made it to Chicago ok though and better than that my ears didn’t implode during the landing
Also, and I know I’m stupid for not realizing this, but there’s alot of asian people going to Japan