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Japan trip
Day 13 - 18th June - Tokyo (Part 2)
I'd had a Shaka Chicken and McPork for 'lunch' to keep me going. For the former I chose the lemon pepper flavour, but couldn't taste anything.
I then went to Shibuya.
Political campaigning for "People's New Party". 2 hours later at 7:10pm the people were still on the van shouting through loudhailers.
Hordes. This was 5:20 on a Wednesday so it wasn't as busy as it could've been. Apparently this 3-way crossing is famous.
Line for Baskin Robbins. This was curious because of the 10 people in the queue, ALL are women - and they are not famous for their low fat flavours. Even more surprising was later, when 3 schoolgirls walked in front of me - 2 had 2 scoops of ice cream and 1 had 3. Wth. Note also the butch schoolgirl looking at me - I didn't know they had butches there (maybe she was from the Japanese CHIJ).
Someone: eh gabriel, she's aware of u taking e pic
did anything interesting happen?
Me: [...]
Someone: no, she called her yakuza bf
haha
"A lit cigarette is carried at the height of a child's face"
I like the helicopter. Maybe it's for gunning down smokers.
International curry: Indian, Sri Lankan, Bhutanese, Malaysian, Thai, British and Indonesian.
I was trying to look for the Love Hotel hill. It took me a while but eventually I found it; I knew I was getting close when I saw:
"New Style Wild One Adult Shop... Rotar only Y180- So Fucking Cheap!!"
I also saw an information centre. Again. I was quite sick of getting into red light districts, but I guess it was inevitable to have such facilities beside Love Hotel hill.
One love hotel. Most of them are plain from the outside.
Lobby
The rooms didn't look that exciting either, but maybe that's because the really funky ones were already taken (the darkened ones)
"Casa di Due". Frigid Girl informs me that it means "House of Two" (or "House of Dice" - go decide which it is)
"Rental Goods" presumably doesn't include vibrators or that kinda stuff.
"Sweets Menu: Moffle"
Y320 is really cheap for a waffle with ice cream. It must be the same reason why buffets are cheap in Vegas.
"Presenting New Cosplay
[kawaii!][sexy!][Plenty of variation cosplay]"
There was one hotel called "Name of Love". It was full, but I noticed that there was a machine dispensing free drinks. I pressed a button to test it, but then heard a characteristic artifically high female voice, and ran away before I got a yakuza knife through my guts, happy for the configuration of love hotel counters (the receptionist can't see you - this minimises embarrassment).
Another love hotel had cheap drinks (Y100 for a can of drink, Y200 for Asahi Beer), so I got a Kirin Lemon Drink (with no lemon juice) and ran off.
"Hotel Beat Wave"
"Alcatraz E.R."
More information:
"Upon arrival, you have to state your blood-type to enter (I don’t know mine, which made things confusing.) You are then handcuffed by girls in nurse-outfits (mmm, kinky!) who lead you to your “cell”- a dingy room which resembles a medieval dungeon.
Cocktails with names like “Influenza” and Acute Mental Stabilizer” are served in test tubes, or you can even drink from a hospital drip. Meals are delivered in those metal dishes surgeons use during operations. The food isn’t so tasty but presumably it’s better than actual prison food...
While I was there, an unsuspecting birthday girl on another table was thrown the over the knee of a maniacal doctor, who prodded her arse with a giant syringe while she squealed."
More love hotels
Kebabs have invaded Japan
For dinner I ate at a place called "Little Spoon".
Special Katsu Curry. Limited to 20 orders a day.
There were 3 levels of spicyness: "甘口" (mild)， "幸口" (spicy) and in between. I was annoyed because the young waiter serving me obviously knew what I was saying, but was unable to reply in English. Gah. Maybe Japanese takes up so many brain cells that it's hard for most of them to use anything else.
Dinner
Curry, rice and tonkatsu with tonkatsu sauce. The cherry tomato was damn sweet - the first I had I'd call sweet.
The curry was very smooth and better than any other Jap curry I'd had (the lack of spicyness to obscure the taste didn't hurt). The tonkatsu sauce wasn't very good though - it was very one-dimensional and astringent.
Pickled onions and radish and mushrooms. The latter was nice, the former not so.
Damn cheap food. At Y190 for a small udon, I was almost tempted to eat some.
I wandered into some food alley (2-3 levels of a building with restaurants). This plastic food display seemed the most interesting of the lot.
I then wandered into HMV. It didn't look or sound Japanese - the big signs were 100% in English, and only the smaller ones were in Japanese.
However, once I saw this, I was suddenly reminded again that I was in Japan:
????????
Someone: "it mentions Jap athelethics av is thriving in response to beijing olympics
e vertical words in white
crap lar...no relevance"
[Addendum:
Speculation about the gender of the model:
"it is inappropriate for a guy to have boobiez"
"i don't get it. guy or girl? i am drawn to this picture like moth to flame... the breasts are a bit weird? like one nipple pointing up and one pointing down? this leads me to think they are fake and thus it is a guy. who is "tucking it in"."
"I think it's a girl.
No prominent bulge below :P"
"i hear taking steroids does that to u"
"No cameltoe also"
"i think i spot an adam's apple on the chimera, and that pelvis looks distinctly male..."
"the boobs look like they've been glued onto the person's chest
and that person is not fully naked. not 全裸. he/she is wearing underwear.
i have a hunch this is a guy"]
They were also selling "Nuts Magazine" and "Britain's best new boobs" which had a line: "my boobs often pop out to say hello when I'm out". Erm, right.
The classical section was large and really well-organised: it was divided into early music (5 shelves), orchestral, concerto, opera, vocal & choral, symphonic, brass & winds, contemporary, crossover, SACD/DVD audio, DVDs, great singers, new, chamber & instrumental, piano, light classical, recommended and healing (?!). On the flip side an infuriating number of discs had no price tag.
They also had a section with LPs (wth), and one of the Glenn Gould LPs had him doing early music (I learnt something new).
Over at the Sentai DVD section they had Denjiman (!), JAKQ (!!!), Jetman etc.
40 Year Old Virgin poster
Really bizarre video.
This is from "The World of Golden Eggs". This football player has discovered a bra that this girl left behind. He uses it as a skipping rope he is naked. One of the manifestations of his soul (him in drag) tells him that if he smells it, he can reach "a new level". Then his coach's thought bubble shouts at him to be decisive or be a loser football player forever. He then says to the girl that her bra is important to her "next to her life"
One rave review of the series:
"It contains all the attributes of what you definitely wouldn’t see in good animation. The voice acting’s anything but professional, and so is the animation quality. Furthermore, it lacks even the slightest shred of intelligence. In fact, I am simply unable to describe it, so you’ll have to watch it for yourself to find out what I mean."
I find the juxtaposition of a safe sex exhortation and palm reading very
At a McDonalds, I finally had my Milk Tea McFlurry. For some reason they put in Oreos - I thought they didn't go.
I paid Y30 more (Y330 vs Y300) for the privilege.
There was a cute Firefox ad I saw where the fox ran around a boxing ring, but I only saw the last bit.
"Although I smoke, I hate other people's smoke"; "I carry a 700°C fire in my hand with people walking all around me"
"No!!!!!!!!! Drugs. Be Poisoned. Flashback. Be Broken. No Future!!"
I hope they weren't referring to pot, but I see green leaves.
"Flashback" is their translation of "attacked by hallucinations". A full translation:
"Be Poisoned - After being poisoned, you rely on drugs to live
Flashback - Attacked by hallucinations
Be Broken - Brain and organs are destroyed
No future!! - You are no longer what you used to be"
I saw one candybar phone, but it slid open to reveal a keyboard so that wasn't quite counted.
The map to the hostel had helpfully marked a "liquor shop" so I stopped by there to have a look.
Liquor in 2.5l tetrapaks
Liquor in 4l and 5l PET bottles. Hoho.
Food that probably goes well with 5l of 25% liquor (well, they sold snacks, cigarettes and sacks of rice as well)
A drink I got from the shop. Supposedly it's cider, but it tasted quite vile. Maybe it's meant as mixer.