Round 2. FIGHT!

Updating my blog from Japan is proving harder than expected. Not only because it's a bitch to find any free internet outside of the Apple store (I could use a Manga Cafe but the Japanese keyboard adds to the difficulty...and I need to justify having a laptop), but also because all websites display Japanese characters when accessed from a Japanese IP address.
Blogger just so happens to be one of these sites. And I just happen to have a Japanese IP address assigned to me right now.
So all attempts to update are based on partially memorized actions along with random button clicking.

Well since I last posted I've out-grown the insatiable desire to taking jet-lag naps...which for a time being were my new version of sleep.

I've also developed strong oppions such as:

Decision #1)
Izakaya's are better than anything America has to offer (as far as cross-bred bars and restaurants go). So like...they have cheap beer and cheap food...and you still get the pleasant Japanese authenticity of sitting on the floor without shoes, while leaning against the wall...and eating meat on sticks...and smoking if you choose...and being served by cute asian girls...

Decision #2)
It will be very difficult to re-accustom myself to America's lack of vending machines.

Decision #3)
Very attractive Japanese girls sporting school girl outfits to hand out club fliers is an effective marketing technique.

Decision #4)
Dirty panties are at the end of the Tokyo rainbow...as decided by my aussie roommate (trying to compare the myth of panty vending machines to irish pots of gold). UPDATE: Since he quoted this we have successfully located a store that sells pre-wrapped used panties. So the used panties exist, just not in vending machine form!

Alright, well once again I slacked so bad on updating the blog that dates are but a mere faded memory. The following is a recount via photographic memory retrieval analysis...or something.


THIS is a picture of the amazing-ness that comes from a Japanese 7 Eleven. Now, if I was in America you couldn't pay ME to eat a pre-wrapped sandwich from a convenient store, many of us recognize such a proposition as a death wish of sorts. BUT in Japan, where everything is safe and honest (seriously, it really is...it's quite amazing) even convenient stores have high quality shrunk-wrapped food. So it's not uncommon for me to duck into a 7 Eleven (where you can also pay your bills and purchase airplane tickets) after drinking at an Izakaya and getting some delicious sandwich variety packs...yeah...it's never just one type of sandwich. I typically opt for the pack that has a ham and mustard sandwich, a cucumber and mayo sandwich and an egg and mayo sandwich. Yup, you get three half sandwiches per pack.
The other item is a waffle and custard sandwich pack. It's the first time I had seen it, I was really drunk so it looked amazing...and it was!


Ah yes! So remember how I said I'd post pictures of my phone? Well this is her. She's quite the 'bute. (They didn't have green so I went with black) I picked her up for 250 Yen, which is precisely $220.00, which was a marked-down price for new members (the original price was 350 Yen). Either way that's stupid cheap for what this puppy can do!


This is the startup screen I choose. There were a ton of tripp-y Japanese-y ones to choose from, this one was the craziest.


After the startup screen I set it to give me a random FlashTM background, so all of the backgrounds it cycles through have moving animations. It's pretty stylish.


This is the main menu...in all it's main menu glory.


This is the media player. I can connect the phone to a computer (via USB) and load it with movies, music, pictures and data. It holds up to 1 gig, and can hold an addition 2 gigs via a MicroSD card. The battery also can charge via the USB (the battery lasts on average 1 week, even including phone calls and TXT messages, it's AWESOME).


The standard tools screen. Notice it's in English. Yeah. That took a little bit to figure out...it was Japanese by default.


These are the camera options. Notice the media player in the top portion keeps changing colors. That's because I told it too. Biatch.


This is the digital camera feature.


The phone has a 3.2 mega-pixel camera on the back...I'm assuming so all of my voyeuristic schoolgirl photos can have extremely high detail?


And even better, it has a 3.2 mega-pixel camera on the front as well! This is because video-chat is all the rage in Japan right now. America is so, SO, far behind with cell phones! (or "mobiles" as every other country seems to call them)


The phone slides open (up-wards), in Matrix-esque fashion, to reveal the keypad. I love opening and closing it, it never gets old. Ever. (Notice the FlashTM background changed?)


This is the other media player function the phone has. It's essentially the same as the other menu, except it's displayed sideways, and for good reason!


Because the phone is also a FREAKING TV!!! Yeah, Japan, like America, has set their HD standard so that anyone that buys a HD airwave frequency also has to broadcast a mobile/broadband signal on their 3rd channel (HD signals cover 3 simultaneous channels, hence why when you have an HD TV when you switch to ABC you get regular ABC, ABC HD, ABC HD Alternate ((which is usually music videos or weather)), and then a 3rd HD channel is intended for this mobile use). So the newer mobile phones have antennas that pop out to capture this signal, and display it in handheld glory!


A different, less absurd, TV channel. Mind you, this service is completely free- the phone is simply receiving a signal that's already being broadcast for everyone.


This is the animation screen I get when I turn the phone off...which is basically never. There's a few other cool functions I've discovered after I downloaded an English manual for it (it only came with a Japanese one), but I'm too lazy to get into those right now or take pictures of them.
NOTE: The phone is made for Soft Bank, an enormous cell phone company in Japan that competes with other companies like Au. While trying to find the English manual I discovered that Soft Bank is actually an American investment company based out of NYC, that bought Vovaphone WHICH WAS a Japanese cell phone company. So now Soft Bank, the American company, is a huge mobile phone presence in Japan...and I suspect will soon be breaking into the American market, for their corporate goal is to be a "competing investment company and mobile/broadband provider."
ALSO NOTE: The cost of a cell phone plan in Japan is roughly 980 Yen per month. That's roughly $9.80 per month. The plans have free calls from 1am to 9pm within the provider, free txt messaging within the provider, and outside the provider calls along with E-Mails cost $0.03 per minute/e-mail. So in conclusion: cell phones and cell phone plans in Japan are STUPID cheap.


Alright, moving on! You may also remember my previous mention of the Ken-do, students that looked like bad-ass grim reapers, who you can watch/hear screaming from the park near my house? This is a series of photos I tried to capture of them (it was a bit tricky, the move quickly and the shutter is wide open because it's so dark out).


So here they are, in all their creepiness...being...creepy...in their dojo.


More of them.


More of them.


A 60 second wide-open exposure of the park (in this case it was directly behind me if I was facing the dojo). It is legal to drink in public in Japan, so we often come here and drink Hi-Chu (it's like delicious flavors of vodka in a can).
Kids also come here to set off fireworks, or shoot roman candles at each other, because fireworks are also LEGAL in Japan. Yeah. I know. This place is pretty much just all-around amazing.


Annnnnnd back to more bad-ass Ken-do students.


More of them.


More of them.


More of them.


So facing into the park (the shot with the 60 second exposure), off to the right there is a baseball field. Baseball is HUUUUUUGE in Japan. HUUUUGE. I'm serious. They know more about American baseball than most American's I know.


Some up-close Japanese baseball action. I've been told by various locals and students that baseball has easy out-ranked Sumo Wrestling as Japan's favorite sport.


30 second exposure of a shrine in the park. These little shrines are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. People don't use them often, but you can go to them and splash around some water, say some prayers or meditate. It's your basic multi-purpose one-stop shop for Nirvana...and...stuff.


This shrine in particular has some little fox statues. They're pretty cute :)...I mean...bad-ass...


This is Kinshicho at night, it's the closest area to my apartment, where I go to catch my train every day. I've talked about it before...and I think I've posted some pics of it during the day time. So yup, here it is at night. (The other area near my apartment, in the opposite direction, is Kameido. Kameido is pretty cool too.)


Once you cross that other busy street this stuff starts popping up on the right hand side. It's hard to describe Japan, but there are so many little clusters of "city" that extend about 20 city blocks, then just dwindle into residential area. So you constantly feel like you are just visiting little square cubes of city whenever you get off the train. I'm not sure if this is actually true or not because it takes too long to walk far enough to find out!


More buildings off to the right. (All of this stuff is within a 3 minute walk to my house, and ALL of Japan seems to look like this so it's hard to decide where to take pictures, there's just tons of bright weird signs EVERYWHERE.)


Big Pichinco parlor, there are millions of these.


This is my train station, the Kinshicho Station. It's definitely one of the smaller train stations, which is crazy compared to most other countries, because the bigger stations basically have underground malls in them (not unlike some bigger airports).


These are the ticket purchasing machines. I intentionally waited for it to clear out as not to appear to be a stupid Gaijin tourist, so usually these are packed with people.


Ah the McPork. There are tons of little signs for this all over the subway, but the subway is the one place I can't muster up the courage to pull out my camera, it's just TOO touristy! So FINALLY McDonalds started putting these larger versions of the sign in their windows!
I asked some of my students why they think it's an effective marketing technique, because there's no way something like a McPork would fly in the U.S., they all answer with "The pig drawing is cute!"
Great.
Yeah...the Japanese are such an honest culture that if you try to explain to them that McDonalds is one of the most evil corporations that ever existed, they simply CAN NOT grasp the concept. They think it's just an innocent piece of America that their kids enjoy.


Yodobashi Akiba.
Oh Yodobashi....
This is the same company I bought my cell phone from. I'm not sure how to properly explain this building, but I'll give it a whirl. Basically it's in the heart of Akihabara, the anime/electronic district I keep talking about. You walk into the building and it's separated into 9 floors. Each floor is dedicated to a certain genre of product. So for example:
Floor 1- could be all DVD's, and CD's
Floor 2- could be all manga, action figures and capsule machines- machines that you put yen in and they dispense plastic bubbles of schoolgirls or cat girls or pokemon figurines...
Floor 3- could be all musical instruments, headphones, speaker systems, etc.
Floor 4- could be all tv's, dvd players, video games, etc.
Floor 5- could be all home appliances such as washers, irons, etc.
Floor 6- could be all digital cameras and memory cards
The list just goes on and on and on, but it's difficult to explain the sheer volume and size of this building. I spent 4 hours in it the other day and made it through 4 floors. I intend on going back, not only to take pictures of the interior (secretly!) but also because being in a store that so well fits me makes me YEARN to max out my credit card on a bunch of stuff I didn't absolutely need until I saw it.
And there's a LOT of that.


The Akihabara Station is a main hub for a lot of other train lines, so it's easily one of the more massive stations. The map above the machine is an extremely dumbed down map of the JR Train Line (one of 3 main train companies...yeah, because things can't be simple in Japan), which you reference to figure out how much your ticket is going to cost.
Once again I went there close to midnight, when the trains almost stop running, and took this picture when no one was around. During the day there would be about 80 people in this picture, and about 20 of them would have schoolgirl skirts on.


Speaking of schoolgirl skirts! This building is 9 stories of outfits to buy your girlfriend. I'm DEAD fucking serious. I purposely went back to this place at night to take a picture, figuring most people would think I was exaggerating (the glare from the windows during the day made shitty pictures that were hard to make out). You go in and have a plethora of maid outfits, cat outfits, schoolgirl outfits (obviously), S&M leather outfits...the higher you go up the weirder it gets. And I SHIT YOU NOT, there is a plushy costume at the top with some tentacles coming off of it.
The zenith of Japanese sex culture.


Oh man...this was a fun night. Ok, so after I left Akihabara (when I took the pictures above) Tim called me telling me I should meet him and his buddy in Ueno to see a band at a cool bar. So I take a train from Akihabara to Ueno, meet up with them, and just like every other goddamn place in Japan- ducted into a small alley lined with elevators and took some strangely marked elevator to the 4th floor. Just like everywhere else there is a door that you touch and it slides open, but for the first time I've been in Japan the door lead to a dive bar.
Dive bars are EXTREMELY UN-common in Japan.
In the corner there is a 5 piece Japanese jam band, stand-up bass and all.


THE STORY OF MONTY:
So we're drinkin some brews, and at midnight Tim goes, "Shit...fuckin' 30." I look at him and say "Huh?"
"Ugh, I just turned 30."
"It's your FUCKING BIRTHDAY!?!"
So of course this lead to even heavier drinking.
Ok, so this is where it gets kind of bizarre, so I'll try to keep it short and sweet. Basically there's a very American guy in the corner with long hair, a complete metal head kind of guy. So he's nodding his head to some music with a cute Japanese chick, and I walk over and ask him where he's from. This isn't strange when your in a land of so few foreigners.
After some conversation and some drinks the guy (who's name is Monty) is telling me that he's from the States, won the Florida lottery when he was touring with Slipknot (as a roadie), ended up with $2.5 million after taxes, moved to Japan, found his wife (who's this Japanese chick), and started his own record label/recording studio. In the mean time, he claims, he buys little bars, builds them up, and sells them. The bar we were in being one of them.
At first I wasn't sure if I should believe him, but it did explain why he would just wander behind the bar and make us some drinks.
When he wasn't looking I asked the bartender who the previous owner was, and he pointed to the guy I was talking too.
Shit.
So I keep hanging out with the multi-millionaire metal-head and he's buying me drinks and telling me about bands he's found and promoting in Japan, along with his grandiose plans of booking shows in major Japanese venues. Shows involving Korn, Slipknot, MegaDeath, etc. along with the bands he's trying to build up on his label.
Towards around 2:00 am the bar is empty except for Tim, Tim's friend, metal dude and his wife, the bartender and myself. The bartender is finishing up telling me a story about how Southern England-ers call the Northerners "Northern Cunts" and how the Northerners call the Southerners "Southern Monkey Hangers." Being from England himself (which he definitely was), his explanation was that at one point in England's history a rogue army invaded Souther England with some monkeys amongst there supplies. The army was defeated but the monkeys were help captive. The Souther Englanders believed the monkeys were spies that were speaking a secret code, which they tried to crack through torture techniques. When the monkeys refused to speak anything other than the secret code the Southerners got frustrated and hung the monkeys in a public square.
Now the story sounded completely outrageous, but then again I was drinking with a man who claims he's a Florida State Lotto millionaire. Just as I start to question the validity of the English bartender's story a man walks in the bar, the bartender says "Hey ya Souther Monkey Hanger!" and the man replied,
"You fucking Northern Cunt."
Huh...
The next few days when I went out drinking with co-workers and friends I made it a point to ask the English natives if they had heard that story. They all replied with "He was probably trying to pull your leg." But I insisted that even if that was the case it's a great fucking story and that they should try to spread it anyways.
Ok. So anyways. We're still at the bar, and now it's pretty fucking late. The metal-head is asking if anyone has rolling papers, and he wasn't trying to make his own cigarettes.
Now I KNOW this guys either loaded OR associated with the Yakuza.
Weed in Japan is EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY illegal. ALL drugs are, mushrooms being the last ones to be criminalized as of two years ago. When someone gets caught with drugs in Japan they either A) go to jail for a minimum of two years, whether they are a foreigner or not, or B) if they are foreigners, extremely fucking lucky, and have some political friends, they can get deported back to their home country.
So I cock my head at him, KNOWING that this is a very questionable way to be acting (in Japan) and he says "Fuck it, want to come back to my place and smoke up?"
I look at Tim for some excuse not to get roped into this mess. "Go for it man, I'll see ya' in the morning."
Thanks Tim.


So I head to the bathroom to take what could eventually be my last urination outside of a Japanese prison, only to see this very sign hanging above the urinal. A picture seemed justified.
So we all say parting words, including a last Happy Birthday to Tim, the millionaire metal-head's girlfriend hails a cab, a very expensive way to travel in Japan, and the three of us ride to his house a mile down the road. This I figure is a final determination if this fucker is telling the truth about this lottery shit.
Low and behold he has a house in the middle of goddamn Ueno, Japan (Ueno is a VERY busy area, and coincidentally mostly under Yakuza control). We go into his place, which is enormous, and...the rest is up to your imagination.
I will tell you, he played a couple CD's of his biggest bands right now and one of them, "Dazzlevision" is pretty fucking awesome. He properly describes it as, "A little Japanese chick with the pipes of Britney Spears, expect in a metal band." He also clued me in on all of the major metal musicians from America that lived in Tokyo (in fact the lead singer of MegaDeath, I'm pretty sure that's the right band, has a kids show- something Ron told me back in college), and how it's very easy to hang out with them since there are so few of us Americans to bond here (there are MUCH more Aussie's and Englanders).
We'll see what happens between him and I in the future...
So after that night wore thin, he hailed a taxi for me and made sure the driver would take me home to the right place. 3,000 yen later ($30) I was home and asleep.
That night will be VERY hard to ever top.


This is my power attire. Black shirt. Black pants. Black belt. Black shoes. Black socks. Black eyes. And a blood Red tie.


It just so happened that I wore my power attire on a day I was doing a help shift in Kinshicho (instead of at my home branch in Asakusabashi). Rachel, Dankia's (girl I trained with) roommate works at that branch, so afterwards her, co-worker Dave, and I went to check out a festival that was going on in a nearby town. We met a little Japanese girl there, who Rachel knew, who showed us around, told us what food to get, and eventually her mom ran into us and started buying us lots of food and beer.
At one point her mom left and came back with the 13-year-old daughter (sister to the girl we were with) who was one of the most adorable little Japanese girls I've ever seen. Of course they were all wearing kimonos, so that just magnified the cuteness.


After the festival I went back to Rachel/Danika's place and hung out with them and their 3rd roommate, Tracy. Tracy is from Canada, and is pretty fucking awesome. I think she's the only person, girl especially, that has ASKED ME if I've ever heard of "Clone High." She was instantly one of my new best friends.
Oh, so yeah, the above picture is their toilet. It's one of those ones that heats up, and sprays water at your junk, and stuff. Figured if I'm going to Japan I should at least have one picture of these notorious Japanese wonder-toilets of the future.
Later in the night a bunch of guys that live above the girl's apartment came down to drink with us, and then some other girls showed up- one of them, Marina, having a newly pierced tongue :)


Eventually the whole party turned into a parade of drunken nomads in search of The Crazy Cactus, a the girl's favorite local watering hole.


It was decked out with X-mas lights, palm trees, a soccer game being projected on the wall, and some mexican beads. Essentially it was the Japanese interpretation of a mexican bar/restaraunt. There was also a free pool table, and darts, too boot!
But that wasn't the best part...


There was a lobster-fishing pool. Basically a chopstick with some fishing wire tied to it, with a sinker on the end (for the lobsters to get angry at and pinch).


There have been few prouder moments than when I was meditatively fishing for lobsters, in a Japanese mexican bar, while wearing my power attire and sipping a delicious Asahi beer.


The lobsters weren't too big mind you, pretty much just large crayfish.
Crawfish if your nasty.


Blurry picture that Rachel took of me.


Rachel holding a lobster.


Me trying to show the lobster a good time.


So the next day I made an epic trek to the Apple Store in Ginza. Up until this point I haven't had internet since my old roommate Emett had checked out, cutting off his internet subscription on his way. So the very first update you saw, this is where I uploaded the pictures from. Later on I tried to finish the post at a Manga Cafe, which in turn fucked it all up because the keyboard was too Japanese for me to figure out.
Anyways.
So Apple still has the same obnoxious dancing iPod people ad campaign in Japan as well. The store itself was pretty fucking cool though. MUCH cooler than any of the ones I've seen in America (including NYC's). It had creepy glass elevators (with machined metal bolts and rails) with big screen plasmas displaying the blueprints of the building, and it would flash sections and floors of the building, zoom in on them and then describe what products or services were in that exact location (first in Japanese, then in English). The majority of the staff was well educated in the art of the English language as well, which I thought was somewhat interesting...and gave me an eerie feeling that the Apple Store was as close as I would get to an U.S. Embassy.
Annnnnnd! Hold your breath Emily...........


This is what Apple's Japanese keyboard looks like. Basically it has the hiragana and katakana alphabets on the respective English alphabet keys, so if you type "Ah" it will give you the Japanese symbol that makes that sound, the same with "Co," "Si," "Ba," etc.
Then there are buttons next to the space bar that allow you to switch it so that you can type in Kanji- what I believe is the world's most complicated alphabet (seriously, I'm pretty sure it is), which was first developed in China and then spread it's way to Japan. It's the third Japanese alphabet, where there are 6,000 symbols, all of which represent a whole word or phrase.
Most Japanese adults know 2,000 Kanji. (I'm eating a bowl of sticky-rice while I type this, I'm feeling quiet worldly right now)
If you hit the button next to the space bar once again it allows you to type in the English alphabet. So basically, the keyboard can handle 4 alphabets, not including French, Spanish, German, etc. which basically use the same latin alphabet as English.
Does that answer your question Emily?


On this day I was doing a help shift in Oshiage. When I got off the train and walked out of the station I passed this cluster-fuck of a parking lot. I told you the Japanese have really embraced the whole "bike" thing. (As mentioned before, not a single one of these bikes will have a lock on it. The Japanese culture is entirely trusting, so bike theft is not even a concern.)


Cock your head sideways. That's basically what I did when I saw all these fucking bikes! (Plus, a diagonal picture was the best way to fit as many bikes as I could into one picture) Remember! This is only one station. Imagine how many people use the train each day, every day.


Ah the Big Echo. This one in particular is right near my house, across the street from the park I took pictures of earlier (the same park with the Ken-do students). Big Echo is a karaoke franchise. You basically see these huge towers, with strobe lights embedded in the rigging at the top, head towards it, walk in, order the size room you want, pay about $10 per person per hour (which includes all you can drink alcohol) and sing to your little J-Pop hearts content.


This sign is right to the left of Big Echo, I pass it on my way home from work EVERY day. And EVERY day it never gets less funny. (In case you didn't catch on, it says "reRaxation and refreshment") And if you didn't guess, it's a "massage" parlor.


Haha, oh man. Ok, so I'm at a point now where I can make a pretty decent Japanese meal from scratch, but I bought one of these bad boys when I first arrived in Japan, simply to see if was anything like the Ramen we had in college. It actually turned out to be, as my students would say, "most delicious."


Just like with Ramen, you boil water.


Take the packaging off.


Peel back the seal and remove the seasonings.


Fill the container with boiling water.


Close the lid and let the noodles soak.


Open the opposite end of the lid, to reveal the cleverly pre-installed strainer!!! God bless those Japanese.


Drain the water. (And marvel at how awesome having a strainer built into it is!)


Remove the lid completely.


Dump on seasoning.


Stir.


Get ready to add this mysterious concoction, later discovered to be a spicy mustard and mayonnaise packet.


Apply liberally.


Stare in horror and wonder what the hell it's going to taste like. Then stir in the mustard mayo combo.


And basically it comes out exactly the same as the yaki-soba I made from fresh noodles and seasoning. Seriously...you could barely tell the difference between the two.


I had also purchased delicious looking "Green and Red Apple" juice, which was the best apple juice I've ever had. A box of vanilla cookies with a vanilla filling, which were also "most delicious." And a bottle of tsu-chu. It's the Japanese equivalent of vodka, except that you can mix it with water and barely taste it at all.
YEAH. Potentially VERY dangerous!!!
As mentioned before liquor in Japan is about HALF the price as it is in the States. You can literally go to the store and buy the biggest bottle made of Captain Morgan for $10 (1,000 yen), Bombay Sapphire gin for $15, Makers Mark whiskey for $12, etc.
It's DIRT cheap in Japan.
There's also a crazy-good tasting drink call chu-hi. It's tsu-chu mixed with a fruit flavoring, my personal favorite being green apple, of course. UGH! It's SO good.


So this massive 2.7 liter bottle of tsu-chu cost about $10. Imagine the amount of chu-hi I can make with some apple juice!


This is the udon cart that is near our apartment. I think I mentioned it before, but basically this dude (who we call "Udon Master") makes us a curry-udon dinner, and serves us glasses of tsu-chu. Udon is the Japanese equivalent to the Chinese ramen, except the noodles are MUCH thicker. So he serves the noodles, in very large bowls, floating around with various vegetables in a soup with a curry seasoned base. It's AWESOME.
Then Japanese business men will stop in and eat and drink with us ("Udon Master" pulls out a little folding table, and pop-up tent, and sets them up right alongside of his cart, then he drapes the tent with bead walls so that you feel like you're in a little restaurant. If you don't feel like sitting in the tent you can sit on stools along the bar that's on the other side of the cart. This atmosphere is perfectly completed when it is raining outside and you are sitting in the tent smoking, drinking and eating awesome Japanese food.).
The COOLEST part is that the business men get so excited to practice their English with us, that they typically insist on paying for our food and drinks!
The only questionable part is how Udon Master is able to serve food and alcohol, from a cart, in a parking lot, in the middle of a residential village. Tim's Japanese girlfriend (who refuses to talk about things that are Taboo to Japanese culture, such as gangs and drugs) caught us completely off-guard when she told us that Udon Master had mentioned he pays off the Yakuza to keep his cart in operation.
The Yakuza is VERY real. And it's MUCH more efficient and well-layed out than any mafia that's operated in the U.S. since the 80's, in my opinion.
I'll have more pics of the Udon Cart later, I took some with my cell phone but I still need to dump them onto my computer.


Oh Manga Cafe. Alright, well this is the interior to one of many oh-so-infamous Manga Cafe's. This one in particular is very very close to my apartment, and is pretty ghetto compared to the swanky ones you can go to in Akihabara (which I WILL visit later, and photo document).


So basically you pay 400 yen per hour ($4/hour) and you wander around (most Manga Cafe's have at least 4 floors) until you find an empty cubby. The cubby is equipped with a comfy chair to lean back in, a computer with a flat screen, another flat screen tv connected to cable and a PS2 and Xbox, 2 pairs of headphones (in case your with a friend), and two sets of curtains- one to form a wall behind you, and one to form a ceiling over you.


Usually between the hours of midnight and 7:00 am you can pay a flat fee of around $15 to sleep in these cubicles. This is an EXCELLENT alternative to a love hotel or capsule hotel (god forbid you go to just a regular hotel), especially since the trains stop running at midnight. :)
I'm telling you people, Japan has it fucking FIGURED OUT.


So as you can see, this cafe is pretty ghetto. But notice you can see into the other cubby's? That's why there is a curtain that folds over the top to form a ceiling. Not that any Japanese people would bother your privacy (that's way too against their culture), but because they leave the lights on 24 hours a day.
Smoking is also accepted in all cafe's and they also all provide free coffee, tea and energy drinks. BITCHIN'.
It's rumored that some of the cafe's in Akihabara have glass floors/ceilings, so that when the Japanese waitress girls bring you drinks, the people on the floors below them can look up their little cos-play (costume play) skirts. This will be investigated. (The cubby's still have wooden floors, so you'd still have privacy within your cubby)


HEY EMILY! Here's another keyboard for ya! This is the one that fucked me up when I was trying to post that blog!


There's some of the keys all up-close and personal.


This is the screen that Windows boots to when you turn the computer on. So, it's not so much the keyboard that was screwing me up, but that I was using it in combination with a Japanese version of Windows, and a Japanese version of Explorer. So every single site I was visiting was being converted to Japanese, and whenever I switched the keyboard to English something the system was running would randomly set it back to Kanji.
So the window that's on the right side of the screen is a program that the cafe installed. This is extremely common. Basically it's shortcuts to popular anime and manga sites, youtube, etc. as well as shortcuts to some games on the computer such as Everquest, Final Fantasy 11, and World of Warcraft.
You may also notice that one of the shortcuts is for a program called "DVDShrink 3.2." This is a very popular Windows application used to copy DVD's. Not...that...I know anything about it. You can bring blank dvd's into the cafe, rifle through their enormous selection of anime and porn, and simply make a copy to take home. Or so that's my theory...I shall test it at a later date. For...scientific purposes.


Yeah...try navigating that freggin' menu. I mean, I've got Windows pretty well memorized, but DAMN, this doesn't leave much room for error!


Alright, so there are about 10,000 dvd's that look like these. PER floor. Now imagine the hundreds of Manga Cafe's in Japan. Yeah. YEAH.


And that's not even including the other 10,000 dvd's of actual REAL porn. We've barely scratched the surface with how comfortable Japan is with porn.


Alright, let's clean things up a little! This is a picture I took while visiting Ueno Park. Ueno Park is essentially Tokyo's version of NYC's Central Park.


So from the edge of the park you can look out to this Japanese monstrosity.


Or turn 180 degrees and look into this gorgeous Japanese forest.


Of course the whole place is littered with little shrines.


Along with some smaller-sized tradition style temples. Yeah, walking among these things was pretty Japanese feeling. Especially when you see these temples with that distinct Japanese architect/curvature to them.
Unfortunately at this point my camera was completely full, and so I couldn't take any more pictures of this amazing park :(

BUT! Lucky for you! That means you're finally reading this massive blog post! UNTIL NEXT TIME.....

DUN DUN DUN!!!