shitona stick
Doug's bro Ian just got back from Japan
14/01/2000
Can you dig it? Last Wednesday at Canadian Airlines, after coffee, I headed up to the airport with Grant (co-worker) and got on a plane bound for Japan. Now for those of you who don't know how I got the ticket here's the deal: Liam a co-op student that was working here when I first was at Canadian had a 8 month co-op term. During the summer he won 2 tickets to Japan on JAL. He didn't have a chance to use them because he broke his leg, and well, walking around Japan all busted up sucks. So Grant and I got the tickets. Now you may ask why did I go with Grant and not anyone of you nice people? The tickets had to be used by airline employee's only, or spouse. Since I'm not married, Grant got to go. So, as I said, we left Wednesday at 11am and would you believe we arrived In Japan at around 4pm Thursday. We were able to discuss some things with the customs guys, mainly where we were going to stay, since we hadn't filled that portion of the customs card out because we really didn't know where we were staying. After lying are way through about some hotel we had reservations at we went over to information. Now of course information expected us not to have a place to stay. So what have we learned, lye to the customs people. They don't care. We got reservations in a little Ryokan in Nippori. So our next step was to get on the train and go get settled. The train ride was un-eventful. I thought of a really good story to tell you guys, but it was all un-true. At the Ryokan we spoke to the woman who ran the shop and she showed us our room. Two mats on the floor. Total Japanese. We had one of those crazy toilets that's not actually a toilet. It is more like a hole in the floor. Nice. The shower was down the hall, with a little bath that was way too hot most of the time. We went for a walk around the area. Got really hungry. Decided we should eat. Then thought, "what? how are we going to order?" Well we finally just picked a place that looked ok. The dudes inside welcomed us in and were very pleasant. They gave us the menu and we instantly knew what we wanted. Or not. There weren't even numbers on the menu. Ok so we looked around and Grant said, "that looks good." Um... well it turned out Grant had actually picked deep fried chicken skin. Now most of you know that white people in general TAKE OFF THE SKIN before eating the chicken. And if you've ever wondered where that skin goes? Japan baby, Japan. Chicken skin, a little salad, 2beers and 40 bucks Canadian later, we left. Went to bed early. Early the next morning we went for a walk through the cemetery that was right next to our place. There I learned that Japan has big crows. Bigger than our ravens it seems. I don't know what they were, but damn they were big. After the walk, it took us about 20 minutes to figure out how to buy a tickets for the subway. This might seem easy to you. But may I remind you that we were in Japan. That's J A P A N. Japan. OK so finally we got a day pass for like 20 bucks. Ya. Down to the station. Well, we got on and the train was full. I mean there were lots of people. At the next stop about 634 more people wanted to get onto out train. In Canada, we'd say, "Sorry trains full." In Japan you get the train drivers and helpers to push and shove and squeeze and ram and push some more and stick and kick and pound and force you on. They are wearing white gloves at the time though. But man you don't need to hold on to anything, cause there ain't anywhere to go. We got out at Tokyo station and had breakfast, of course this time we pointed to the plastic food out front to order. Then we walked over to Ginza, it's some sort of area in Japan. Whatever, I don't know what sort of area, I'm not Japanese. We walked over to the largest fish market in the world, and saw lots of fish. Dead fish. Some live fish. Squid. Fish. More fish. And fish. Guys were racing around on their little motorized carts, missing hitting people by millimeters including me. People were yelling. It smelt fishy. Crazy. We went to get something to eat at a near by restaurant and on the way I talked to a man who was very happy that we were from Vancouver, and he was very happy to tell me that he had been to Niagara Falls. Then he disappeared. We started walking again and all of a sudden he came back with this rolled up piece of paper. Then he started unrolling it... can you guess what it was? That's right a Sumo Calendar. Big giant men in diapers, wrestling each other. I thought it was weird, but cool. So I thanked the man and off we went to eat a bowl of beef and rice. Mmmmm beef. Now you always hear stores of how hard they work over there. But it's not in the retail department. Nothing opened until like 10 or 11am. But when it opened we went to the Sony building. We saw the robot dog that is supposed to have emotions and other junk and be your new pet. The way I see it, is now you can kick your dog and no one can say, "Hey don't kick your dog." After we headed back to the Ryokan and sat down for a short time. We probably did some other stuff I just can't remember it. For the evening we went down to Roppongi, the good night club area. The first place we went to had beer for 10 bucks Canadian. Yum. Beer. I only had one. Then we went walking around and met up with some Californian named Dave who was in Japan teaching English. He didn't know any Japanese, hardly. It was weird. Anyway we went with him to another bar that still was having happy hour. We ordered a bunch of beer. It was still expensive, like 4 bucks a glass (not a pint). Then we went over to a dance sort of place, which had signs saying, "No dancing" and something to the effect of if you aren't drinking, we're going to kick you out. Dancing is illegal in Japan. Don't ask me. But we were only there till about 11pm because the subway stopped running around 11:30pm. We ran, and ran, and ran, with all the other Japanese people that were out drinking. Got back, went out to a bar near our hotel and drank some more. Then we went to bed. The next day we went out to some area, I can't remember the name of. But it was cool, we went to a temple, and then another temple. At the second one we sat down and listened to the monks chant away for about 45 minutes. Super cool. The temple was super done up with cool ceiling action and all the junk at the front, see my pictures for a better idea. Then we went to the electric district. Man that was cool. Computers, lights, neon, washing machines... everything electric. We wandered for a while and then had some Tempura for lunch. Grant and I then split up cause he wanted to go back to where the temples were to buy a kimono for his mom. I didn't have enough money so I stayed and wandered the streets looking at everything. Afterwards we met back up at the hotel. Then we went over to Ikeburkoro, or something like that. That was where the Toyota building was, where they showcase all their new cars. It was super cool. Toyota has a whole ton of cars that are not released in North America, so it was neat seeing all the different models. While we were there we got a woman to help us use the phone to phone JAL, because we were leaving the next day and wanted to make sure everything was ok. Previously we had tried to use the phone but couldn't. She helped out a huge amount. Very shy to use English but she would get along fine over here. After the Toyota propaganda was over we went to Burger King where while we were eating our burgers, saw a woman with a lint brush, lint brushing the floor mat at the entrance to the place. The entire time we were there she was lint brushing the floor... Here maybe once a week it would be vacuumed. Weird. Ikeburkoro was super neon land. But I think we went over to Shinjuku after Toyota. We wandered around there just looking at the mass of people everywhere and all the neon. We got suckered in to going to some little tiny club, which cost us 14 buck to get in and we were supposed to get 2 beers. We only got one and we were two of 5 people in the place. So we left. Yeah. 14 dollars for one beer. It was getting late and Grant headed back to the hotel, and I headed back down to Roppongi to visit the only place I knew of that played punk rock. I got there after getting all screwed up with the subways and they wanted 28 bucks to get in. I talked to the guy at the door for a while inching my way further in until he asked for money. I got a pretty good look at the place, small, few people, but good music. I didn't stay however. Our last day we went to the Emperial Palace. We walked around the whole thing, and lied down on the grass for a while and just hung out. After we went back to Shinjuku and went up some building to the 52 floor. The view wasn't very good. Smoggy and the better viewside of the building was all restaurants, that were way expensive. So anyway we eventually got back on the train for the airport and got there with an hour to spare. The flight over 10:30 hours. The flight back 7:30 hours. And I learned that if you ask for wine twice, they just keep bringing it! That's about it. Would I go back, Yes. Should you go, Yes. Should you eat the sushi with a yellow thing in the middle, No. Should you eat the chicken skin, only if your totally mental. Was there ANY Pokemon, No, well hardly any compared to here. Are the Japanese planning another Pearl Harbor? Yes. But this time they're just coming for the macadamia nuts. Have Fun. Ian
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