i see who my real friend is...

so casey came to visit me on june 24. we met at narita airport before venturing into the city. we scoured the streets looking for the hotel I’d reserved on the recommendation of a friend. [it was a bargain at $100/night to be right downtown in Shinjuku.] as we were walking down a busy Tokyo sidewalk, I was surprised to hear my name called out in a distinctly Japanese accent. how bizarre to bump into someone I know from joetsu, a teacher at a neighboring school, while 4 hours away in a city of 12 million people. casey and i headed out for beers and dinner in a narrow alley packed with closet-size restaurants. we passed the noodle shops…

and opted for fresh grilled meat and veggies on sticks.

we did a bit more bar-hopping before retiring.
up early the next day to explore.

we made it to asakusa shrine in the northeast part of the city for our dose of sacred culture .

o-mikuji are Japanese fortunes available at many temples. you shake the canister until one chopstick falls out of the tiny hole in the end; it has a kanji character on it.

you find the corresponding symbol on one of the many drawers and, voila, your fortune.

there was a bit of English translation although it seemed bland and generic. then you tie the slips on branches or lines near the temple so the gods can look over your fortunes and fulfill them [well, this is what I gathered].

considering the seriousness with which this tradition is regarded, the looks on these girls’ faces as a maintenance man clears away old papers isn’t surprising, he’s trashing someone’s dreams.

it’s surrounded by kitschy shops selling all sorts of touristy stuff..

alleyways of food stalls…



and performers. this man is playing the shamisen, a traditional 3-stringed instrument.

cute eh?

we grabbed some yakisoba for lunch from a market we stumbled upon.


then we headed to akihabara, the electronics mecca, to treat ourselves to some adult toys [not the vibrating kind]. casey found a nice camera and I splurged on some new speakers [rationalizing them as a birthday present to myself]. there are also many stores in this area hawking figurines, models, books and play sets featuring some incredibly popular comic book characters. most of the customers here are adults which explains the outrageous prices on some of the toys.

I just learned that the akihabara district of Tokyo is nicknamed ‘otaku town’. ‘otaku’ refers to a subculture of geeks obsessed with anime, comics, video games, figures, technology, computers and idols. many of these people are middle-aged men, which gives the phenomenon a creepy feel as much of the electronic culture is heavily laden with sexual overtones to suit the consumer demographic. the explicitness of some of the videos and figures is a bit disturbing considering their ineptitude towards dating and sexuality when it comes to contact with real people.
to be a conservative, rigid, traditional society, the prevalence of sexuality is quite surprising. even i, an open-minded liberal woman, question the way sex is integrated into the culture at times. a street-side advertisement for a porn theater available for everyone to gawk at.

it isn’t even confined to shady parts of the big city. in my video store for instance, they display the porn knock-offs of blockbusters right beside the originals. any kid looking for ‘lord of the rings’ will undoubtedly find ‘whores of the rings’ with its oh-so-explicit cover.

another vice which many Japanese mindlessly engage in for hours and days on end is pachinko. I hear rumors about many of my coworkers and how they are addicted to the game, or how they lost their whole paycheck playing which is saddening. these parlors are bright, smoke-filled, noisy distractions from the hum-drum existence of a salary man’s life.

we goofed for a bit…


then headed to the all-the-food-on-a-stick-you-can-fry-and-eat restaurant.


and then it was on to a some clubs, one of which I’d been meaning to check out for ages. the music was great, from contemporary Japanese dance music to 80’s classic hip-hop.

I couldn’t resist snapping a shot of this pseudo-road worker. these robots stand guard all over the country and are incredibly realistic when you are driving because they are dressed in the standard uniform. they also perfectly mimic the monotonous, pointless flag waving that many real workers engage in.

we walked through yoyogi park…

these large gates are called tori and our found in various colors. they mark the entrance to a shinto shrine. shintoism and buddhism are the two main religions here.
a wall of sake [known here as nihon shu] casks in the park.

on our way to harajuku.

every Sunday hoards of people gather to stare at the teenagers dressed in outlandish outfits. the harajuku girls, as they are known even though they aren’t all female, are a fairly recent phenomenom that has come onto social scientists’ radars. the theory is that these are the suburban kids who are bullied or picked on and their lashing out and rebellion manifests itself in this type of socially frowned upon behavior.

on the other side of town a different sort of cos play [costume play] is really popular. people gather dressed as their favorite video game characters and spend the day parading around and posing for photographers. as casey is into video games, he was able to easily pick out who they were dressed like and what game they hailed from, like these two combatants from soul caliber [I think].

I have no idea about these girls…

these kids gather near Tokyo dome where we had gone hoping to score tickets to the evenings shoot boxing match. it turned out to be easier than we expected so we had time to wander and watch the hundreds of people, mostly older men, gathered at a neighboring building. they were crouched on the sidewalks clutching crumbled newspapers in one hand and pens in the other or crowded around television screams excitedly watching horse races. turns out it’s a huge betting ground. I thought the building looked big enough to actually house the racetrack but it’s just a meet and bet kind of establishment.

the fighting was great, although the main event was a slightly mismatched quicky. we had great seats.

afterwards I made casey eat at a Mexican restaurant even though he lives in California and can get tacos on every street corner. I’m lucky he’s a nice guy.

we then boarded the overnight night bus bound for my town.