Lets Get Physical Physical!

Alright, so my camera has filled completely for the 3rd time since my stay in Japan, so you know what that means! Time to update the blog! Let's just dive right in, shall we?


Ah yes. So you may have noticed that I haven't posted any pictures of the apartment I'm staying in. Yeah, well...it's still kind of a fucking disaster. So once it's cleaned up I might take a couple shots of it. I am proud to report that Jesse, my newest roommate (Emett left a few days ago), gave me a hand and we bagged up all the crap in the apartment that we wanted to throw out. As you can see in the picture above it came out to about 14 garbage bags, 6 old futons, and 2 big boxes worth of computer and sporting shit.
This place hasn't been cleaned in at LEAST 5 years!


Amongst the trash I found this amusing pamphlet on household safety. As you can see it's kind of effed up right from the start...


Here we have the washing machine making it's standard "Co Co Co Co Co" noises?


Yeah, by the 3rd page I had no idea what the hell the pamphlet was trying to teach me, so I gave up.


Oooooh yeah! Yeah, I was reading a magazine on the plane from L.A. and there was this article in it. It's a documentary based on an art teacher from UB who was arrested as a terrorist for having chemicals in his basement (used on recent art projects).


The teacher's name was Steve Kurtz. Basically, soon after the 9/11 attacks Steve had found his wife passed away in his house. Naturally he called an ambulance, and when they came to collect his diseased wife they also noticed some suspect chemicals inside the house, which in turn exploded into an over-reaction from the police department and federal agents. Steve was then put in jail and the entire village block was put into quarantine.
Not exactly what you want to have to go through when you wife passes away.


So it seems that someone had eventually learned about this story and decided it was worth making a documentary about?


Although it appears that it's being shot with a DVX-100...so....I can't imagine it's going to hit mainstream too hard...but I figured that fellow UB graduates might enjoy this article, take a little trip with me down memory lane :)


Alright, back to Japan! So Jesse (remember, he's the new roommate?) hot purchased a hot plate for our kitchen table, so that we could sit around and drink beer while cooking. We went to the store to buy some stuff to cook on it, and amongst the vegetation we decided to purchase were these "carrots."
I use "carrots" with caution because there were quite a few things that raised my green thumbs suspicion.
A)Each carrot was individually wrapped.


B)Each carrot was the size of my freaking hand!
Now, imagine a mountain of these carrots stacked within a Japanese grocery store. Also imagine that every single carrot looked identical. IDENTICAL. There were none that were longer or shorter than the others, none of them had wrinkles in them, none of them were skinny or stout. Hell, none of them were even crooked, which is NOT RIGHT if you've ever had a garden.
Conclusion: Genetically Modified Disney Carrots. (Seriously.)


While I'm in the kitchen I might as well show you another view of our garbage stack (there's another stack behind me too)!


Carrots aside, we also purchased a pumpkin (the size of a squash), some chives, and BEEF! But the beef had this label on it.
This is because up until VERY recently American beef was banned from Japan. I THINK it's because of the whole mad cow scare, but I'm not definite on that. So I found this label amusing, it's intention of course is to ease the mind of the Japanese consumer that is hesitant to buy American grown beef.
I've talked to some of my students about this and they claim that they are still hesitant to trust the meat. Then I bring it to their attention that I'm sitting in front of them, perfectly healthy (as far as I know), and that I've probably eaten 20x more beef than the average American!
Then I invite them to a 48-hour BBQ in NY and they say, "Hra Hra Hra! Sank you! Sank you!"


Ok, so this is the layout Jesse and I had going. Basically a hot plate, vegetables, meat, beer, dipping sauce and of course chop sticks. It turned out to be a pretty chill meal, I think I may invest in one of these puppies when I get back to the states. It's extremely relaxing to just chill out, sippin some beers and cookin some food, while talkin to the home boys.


I bought these chips because I wanted chips. OOOOoooookay! AND because it had a picture of a potato with a top hat on it.
Also note that my new cigarette case has unintentionally made it's way into this photo. Now I can finally store my cloves in a place where they won't be absolutely squashed by the end of a couple weeks (yeah, I don't smoke them enough to even go through a pack a month, so they always end up crushed before I can smoke them).


Oh man! This was the next night. And WHAT a night...shit...
Ok, so this is a picture of when you come straight out of the Shibuya Train Station. Shibuya. Shibuya. Does that word sound familiar? Come on, think hard! Ok, here's a hint: "Lost In Translation."
Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of the film, but I've definitely identified with it since I've been here. There are many many things about Japanese culture that are so hard to explain in English, aside from the language obviously.
Anyways, yeah. This is the busiest intersection in Japan, which is defining location in "Lost In Translation." It may actually be the busiest intersection in the world, but I can't confirm that. I do know that roughly (if not more than) a million people cross this intersection a day.
This is NOT hard to believe considering when I was standing there, watching, every time the light change about 1,000 people crossed.


Here's a better example. See the people across the sidewalk from me? There were groups that size on all 4 corners, PLUS people lined up ready to cross diagonally as well.


I took this picture for Kai. So Kai, you better be reading this! That is a picture of the single highest grossing Starbucks in the world. YES. Be amazing by it's awe and wonder. They make more in a day than like, 80 other Starbucks combined. Or something. I kind of made that part up. But obviously it wouldn't be surprising if they are making a cool million a day (they really are the highest grossing Starbucks).


Oh boy...
So Tim and I wandered to a 300 yen bar, basically a bar where all beer is $3. I embrace this concept whole-heartedly. So we were there for Nat's going away party, if that helps clear up anything.
When we first stepped in Tim had to hit up the lou, so I ordered up a couple beers and hung out next to this table- occupied by three blatantly Japanese girls.
So I'm just kinda chillin' there. Hangin' out. Ok...now I'm getting bored. The one on the far right, with the pink shirt, keeps looking at me and smiling. OK, it's worth a shot. "Do you speak English?" (Haha, yes. A classic pick-up line.....)
"A little bit."
SHIT! Alright...."Cool, my name's Derek."
"Kumiko." (A common Japanese girls name)
And I think you know where it goes from there. Eventually Tim came back and was talking with the girl on the far left, who had recently spent a year in Australia COINCIDENTALLY right smack dab in Tim's home town.
So further conversation reveals that the girl I'm talking to is twin sisters with the girl Tim is talking to, both of which are 28. It's hard to tell in one dimly lit picture, but in person they didn't look a day older than 20. God bless you Japan.
The girl I'm talking to is skinnier than me, just to give you some reference on the standard Japanese girl body type. And lucky for me, Japanese girls like super-skinny foreign guys. SWEET.
Later discovered they ESPECIALLY like foreign guys that are from L.A. and work in the industry (Tim had clued me in on this when I first met him, but I'm always pretty hesitant to start the whole name dropping thing, I try to not become that cliche). So Don!!! DON!!! I know you're looking through these pictures and not reading this! DON READ THIS!!!
READ THIS DON!
READ THIS DON!
READ THIS DON!
So I'm talking with Kumiko about her favorite movies, which are like, fucking American classics (Godfather, Reservoir Dogs, Donnie Darko, etc.) along with foreign classics like Old Boy, Stacy, and every anime I've ever watched. Eventually the conversations shifts to favorite TV shows. Right off the bat she's dropping shows like South Park, Upright Citizens Brigade and then out of now where goes,
"Oh my god! The BEST! SHOW! EVER! Have you seen Trailer Park Boys!?!"
Goddamn it Don, thanks to you I'm pretty sure when I related to that reference it sealed the deal for the night. I owe you ONE Japanese girl Don.
We also talked about Lost, 24, tattoos (which are pretty taboo in Japan. She had one, so that was neat. Obviously my Yakuza, i.e."back tattoo," is always a lady killer since tattoo shops here won't even put a tattoo on your back unless you have "connections."), food....whatever. She was adorable, older than me, tiny, and an authentic native Japanese- it's not going to take too much to win me over.


Oh yeah! So we're fucking "pissed" (I seriously use more Australian phrases now than American ones) by the time Nat and her entourage of friends show up. I break my way away from our table of 3 new friends to say hi to Nat and her gang...so this is a picture of Nat and I (remember her from the Mt. Fuji pics?)


So after about another hour at the 300 yen bar, the place is freaking PACKED. So Tim convinces the 3 asian girls we met earlier to follow Nat and her gang across the street to a quieter, sit-down bar- where this picture was taken. So basically that's Myself, Nat, some dude, and then in the back row in the middle that is Kumiko (girl I was talking to before, in case you weren't paying attention).
NOTE: Notice the girl way off in the back to the left of Kumiko's face? Make note of her, because as of the time I'm currently typing this blog (which I suppose would be in the blog FUTURE!) that other girl has been txt-ing me quite frequently the past couple days (I got her number later in the night). Tomorrow after work we're gonna go get pissed in Tokyo. Then the day after tomorrow she's going to help me "study." Well, sorta, she's going to help me book a flight back to America (I'm not sure what date, but I want to book it now so it's ahead of time). To make a long story short- American websites/travel agencies are all quoting me $1,600 for a one-way ticket to the U.S., and I guess if you use Japanese-only websites you can get deals for flights within $600. So this girl (Yuri) is going to give me a "hand" with that, before she goes to Mexico next week.
Hey, I know some of this shit is long-winded, but remember that this blog is for Old Man Derek to reflect back on, not your stupid bored ass!!! ;)


So we're in this bar now, and I go to stand in queue for the lou, and when I get inside it's the super-swank bathroom. It has mood lighting, some techno music goin, the sink is a bowl that emits ambient changing color light, the floor is marble, and the toilet has a million and a half buttons. So I piss in the toilet, splash my face with some water, and when I turn around the toilet is doin' some pretty funky shit! So I ran and grabbed my camera and took a video of the above.
Hey, when your piss drunk things like that are pretty fucking fantastic. And if you've been in Japan for more than 2 weeks and something surprises you, then you know it's something pretty fucking strange.


After that bar everyone wanted to go to a club down the street ("Club Atom"), but Tim, John (Tim's friend that I've briefly mentioned before. Essentially he is our couch guy! Because he is waiting to move into his new apartment in Osaka.), and myself were more interested in getting food first. So Tim and John lead me to this Japanese classic fast food chain, I forget it's name but it's like "Moyushi's" or something. I don't know, all these fucking Japanese words all start to sound the same after a while!
Basically this chain restaurant is Japan's McDonalds (yet I've definitely seen more McDonalds than any other chain here, it's EVERYWHERE!), you can find it everywhere you go. You walk in, after the door slides open of course, and there is a machine to your left. You put money in the machine, and push a button with the picture of the meal you want. The machines dispenses a ticket for you, along with your change. You then give the ticket to someone behind the counter, and they prepare your meal. It's what Japan refers to as "cafeteria style."


We ordered this bad mother fucker. I forget what the meal's name was, but I do remember it only costing 530 yen. Basically it was a big ol' bowl of sticky rice, a bowl of salad, a bowl of misu soup, and a bowl of a burger patty slathered with a curry/bbq sauce concoction- topped with a sunny-side up egg.
I know it doesn't look too thrilling, but when being PISS drunk it HIT THE EFFING SPOT! And seriously, it was "most delicious!" I know it doesn't look it at all, but it seriously was incredibly tasty.


So after loading up on that slop, we trekked our way to the club. UGH. I HATE clubs. But what the hell, I'm in Japan, I'm hittin it off with that chick still, and the train stopped running hours ago.
So we wait in line, get frisked (oh yeah, it's THAT kind of classy club), shove all our shit in a locker (which is pictured above, but got very dark after compressing the photo. I took the picture so if my life turned into one of those movies where you do tons of crazy shit and wake up wondering where the fuck you left your stuff I'd be able to backtrack myself to that locker. Hell man, my passport was in there!), piled into a teeny tiny elevator (as usual) and went up a couple floors.
Once we went up there we had to pay 3,000 yen to get in. UGH. I fucking HATE clubs.


So we walk in, and it's a room full of fog and loud techno. We were given a drink ticket along with our wristbands, so I got myself a gin and tonic (mmmm, first one since I've left the states), and started glaring my way through a crowd of short asian dudes.
When I walk through clubs I don't smile. I glare.


Eventually we found the girls, but some of them were too drunk to stand up, and obviously that turned into a whole fiasco. Basically we left about 10 minutes later, as machines shot bubbles all over us and the dance floor...

The rest of the night is something I'll never forget, and something you'll never know unless we have a discussion about it.
By the time I went into work the next day it was 10:00 am and I had gotten one hour of sleep. But I felt like a million bucks ;)
This night was potentially crazier than the night I meant Monty.


Oh man, alright. So this picture was the next night, which was only a couple days ago from when I'm typing this! WOW! We're almost caught up!
So after work Rachel and Dave wanted me to come out for Aki's going away party. Aki is one of the secretaries at the Kinshicho branch I've been helping out at, but she's re-locating to a new branch (in Tokyo). So we all went to this izakaya to drink and eat in...celebration?
If you look back to one of my very first posts when I got to Japan you'll see that I mentioned an izakaya that Tim and I were pointed to by one of the black dudes that tries to sell drugs and girls, this is the SAME exact izakaya that we had ate in that night!
Considering how many izakaya's you can choose from, this is pretty coincidental!
In the picture above you can see the back of Rachel in the middle, with the teal shirt.


To her left is the back of Tim (who everyone was making fun of, because he called in sick for work that day. I don't blame him considering the night we had before in Shibuya), and then in-between them in the back against the wall is Dave and his Japanese girlfriend.
Obviously every guy that comes to Japan is just coming for Japanese girlfriend. (Hell, my roommate Jesse already had one waiting for him from his last trip in Japan! ((he was studying abroad for 4 months)))
Eating while sitting on the floor is awesome. I want to open a Manga Cafe in America, that would have internet, manga, porn, etc. as well as a izakaya in it where people can eat on the floor. And of course the main doors would all slide open!


This is what was off to the right in the izakaya (we were in a back room). Oh, you can see our shoes in the back right of the picture. When I took mine off I went to put them in that shelf, and a waiter grabbed them from me and INSISTED he do it, it was hilarious because I was so close to having done it myself and he REFUSED to let me do it. They're so humble here (plus you absolutely can NOT tip the Japanese, they'll throw the money back at you before they'll take it, even the taxi drivers)!
The front section of the izakaya has some booths, but most of the place is split into areas where groups can sit around tables.


This is one of my all time favorite pictures. I dunno about you, but to me it looks like it's straight out of some weird magazine ad for some obscure alcohol.


The girl in the center of the photo with the polka dot skirt is Mikki. Um...that's about all I have to say about this picture.


Hi Mikki :)


The back of the girl in the center of the photo, the one holding the white bag, is Aki. She's pretty freaking cute, but unfortunately I don't have any good pictures of her :(
After we ate everyone went to the train station to go to the Crazy Cactus (the place with the lobster fishing pool). Tim and I went to go with them, but then once the train came we looked at each other and were like, "No. After the night in Shibuya, this can't be a good idea." So we decided to grab some beers and wander around.


While wandering we found this quaint little izakaya. You can tell a place is an izakaya if it has red lanterns hanging from it. YUP! That's what those lanterns means ;)
This place in particular had an interesting izakaya, nautical, rope light theme going on...


This is a picture of your standard-size Japanese train station. Again, I opted to take this picture because of the lack of people standing around, believe you me these stations are usually BRIMMING with people.


So I was doing a help shift in Asakusa, an extremely popular tourist area, and decided to wander around and take some pictures when I got out. I have this thing for taking pictures when no one else is looking...but hey, I enjoy it more when I feel like I'm the only person that's around.
I took this picture for Zak because this thing is RIGHT up his alley.
Look Zak!
Look Zak!
Look Zak!
It was this creepy-cute owl/hampster/beaver thing...with boobs.


This road is a pretty generic looking Japanese road. It's just that I haven't taken many pictures of these, but I walk down them all the time. So, there it is.


Walking down these alleys is so...euphoric. It's hard to describe...but the lantern light is so comforting, and there are just Japanese folks drinking in all the little izakayas. People are wandering around, and because it's Japan you don't worry about crime or theft or anything. It's just very...peaceful feeling, walking down these streets.


This road is typically bustling with tourists, the whole wall on the right is lined with little tourist shops. Of course any path that is this straight and long, lit by this many lights, has to lead somewhere important...


And it does indeed. It leads to one of the larger temples in Japan, which of course is surrounded by tons of little shrines and statues. These ones in particular were pretty neat.


So these are the smaller temples that surround the large temple (shown soon). Even though they are "smaller" temples, they're still larger than most buildings you'd ever see in a park.
They reminded me of the big wooden lodges you can sit in at upstate New York adirondack campsites (Old Forge in particular), or the similar type you find at larger ski resorts.
Except these buildings were a million times more intricate.


Same picture, but with more magenta?


This was the big park opening between these smaller, flatter temples. The park is filled with gravel, and people just kind of sit around or wander through it to get to main streets (this whole park is located between two very busy streets).


There's the big ol' temple! But it's out of focus...


'rubs eyes'
There we go.


It's hard to describe how large this thing was in real life. But yeah...it was fucking TALL. And look at the detail they put into the design. Fantastic...


This was just a more lit portion of one of the smaller temples. I still can't get over the amount of detail they pour into these things, and how well maintained they are. Keep in mind these things are OLD.


There's the big guy again. Man, how does that thing hold up during earthquakes!?


Mmmmmm long shutter length. Alright, so see that cement rail across the path? It's almost as tall as me, probably about 5' tall, just to give you a point of reference as to how tall the big temple is.


Another smaller temple. There were about 4 or 5 of these throughout the park.


This is a little shrine filled with water, for the cleansing.


It's freaking tall! I swear!


Zoomed in a little.


Yeah, I just thought this looked cool, with the flare from the park lights.


60 second shutter of the park I was in, with the big temple in the background left. I think this gives you a better idea of the type of area I'm playing in right now. But basically...I've almost never wandered around in a place that has felt so old and peaceful as this place. It was extremely surreal to be there alone at night. During the day it has to feel completely different.


This is a stream running through the park, I left the shutter open for a good 10 seconds, but I didn't have anywhere flat to set the camera down, so my hands were a little shaky.


Little wooden shrines, they're about 2' tall. Like shrine doll houses! (I hate using the flash...)


More of the stream flowing through the park (picture is taken from a bridge going over it).


Big Guy.


In this long exposure you can see the 4 light beams shooting off the ground that are lighting up the temple. You can...also see the clouds in the sky.
I'm not sure what the coil at the top of the temple is. I'm guessing it's a tesla coil used to zap the NOD soldiers that try to attack (I hope SOMEONE gets that Command & Conquer ((video game)) joke).


Alright, I'm almost out of memory on my digital camera, so this can't last too much longer, I promise!


Pictures really don't justify the real thing.


So here's a neat fact. Every decade or so it is common for the Japanese to take a temple apart, move it about a 30 meters to the side, and re-construct it. Then a decade later they will disassemble it again, and re-construct it back in the original spot.
I'm not sure why they do this, I think it's linked to some sort of meditative buddhist act of symbolism. So these temples are built almost like Lincoln Logs, where you can stack all the pieces together, and then just lift them apart.


Back down the road from whence I came.


This is just a standard alleyway, it looks like it's aimed more towards tourism. See the boxes on the ground? Homeless people lay boxes out like that, then sleep in them, long-ways. They are extremely peaceful, but this is a pretty uncommon sight in Japan, hence why I took a picture. Japan's government is pretty good at creating jobs for people that need them, you almost never hear about a family that doesn't have enough money.


Haha, this sushi bar was close by. The blue neon lights flashed so it looked like fish that were swimming, and squids that were bobbing up and down. It was pretty sweet, I should have took a video.


This bad-ass with knifes is guarding the path the giant temple. The chicken wire that's protecting him is a recent addition...that thing is OLD!


You walk under this ENORMOUS red lantern, which leads you down the path to the temples. It's pretty amazing that this stuff was built hundreds of years ago. Much much older than America is.

And so concludes this blog! Alright, I'm spent, I'm going to work. Look forward to when I fill my camera up again in a few days ;)