Korea
Japan
Hong Kong
But there are so many other places I may wind up... (hopefully not jail or dead).
I am using this space as a blog, and as a way to dump the dailies I take from my camera (Panasonic GH1 and Samsung TL320). I want those who are interested to get a daily-updated, unfiltered view of my crazy Asian adventure.
Tokyo I love you again, Japan - Day 8
Like, are you fucking kidding me?! That’s so fucking beautiful!!! (more on this later…)
The day started out like any other badass day should, with a ROTATING SUSHI BAR.
Eat up motherfuckerrrrrrrrr!!!
I only managed 10 plates, I felt so weak. It was all cause I ate this nasty stuff:
Anyone know what it’s called? It’s hella gross. Its like…all creamy inside, it made me think I was chewing through a spider’s butt or something. So nasty!! I hella lost my appetite after eating one. …but that doesn’t explain why I ate two….plates.
After incredible sushi explosion time, David and I set off for Ueno Park, hoping to get some good hanami action going.
Upon arrival, the bartender from Oath (where we went two nights ago) hella recognized me out of the crowd, came up, and said whats up! So awesome! Like I tell everyone, my favorite thing in the world, more than ice cream, pizza, money and dreaming, is running into people I know, unexpectedly. So…yeah cool!
He pointed us in the direction of hanami, and off we went.
Holy shitballs there were so many people!!! Fuckers, get out of my shot! ARG!
Dude, there were so many people with DSLRs there. Like, everyone in Asia owns one, but I’m not sure they all know what they are doing. I’d see random people here and there holding a full-frame, $2300 Canon 5DmkII (or 1D) with a shitty 18-55mm kit lens that sells new for $115. Why would you do this?! How about you spend $1500 on a 7D, and you’ll have $800 left over to buy two good lenses! It’s really the glass that matters, not so much the camera. And beyond that, it’s the photographer that matters, not the lens nor the camera. I’ve seen stills by a good photographer taken from a disposable camera that look better than the majority of pictures I’ve seen from amateurs with DSLRs.
Ok, rant aside!
We wandered around some more, and came across a cool little market smashed between some trees.
And here’s some wooden blocks with blessings or wishes? There was a temple nearby.
I hadn’t seen many white people that day (surprisingly!) until we found this temple area. Then they swarmed from all angles! Here’s one of them now. As you can see, it’s an old British grandmother teaching a small Asian boy the proper way to fondle a breast.
He seems intrigued.
Dude, there was this badass tower chillin in the distance, but David and I couldn’t find a way to get to it. There was always a building or a gate blocking our path. We hella wanted to check it out! Oh well. So we turned the other way….
And found this really pretty area! Love the green and the pink combo, TOP STYLE!
But then I became distracted by this badass old Asian lady.
She was lighting and maintaining a fire, for some reason I dunno. I couldn’t capture any good angles of her and fire cause I spent most of my time recording video of it. She looked hella hardcore in my video, pictures don’t do her justice.
LASER EYES ACTIVATE!!!
After I got tired of her, David and I did more walking. We came across these stairs that led down to a street and…some water? Lookin’ pretty badass, lets keep going…
Dude, shooting from the top of these stairs, at sunset, was just so freaking cool. Too bad I’m a shitty photographer and couldn’t get any good pics (plus, my lens is hella slow, and the GH1 is no good after ISO 800). Blah…
At the bottom, by the water, we were greeted with this.
Like, are you fucking kidding me?! This looks surreal!! Like a shot from a video game. It was so damn pretty!!
Bah I suck at taking pictures of people…
Oh man, I took so many cool pictures at this spot. I wish I had time to go through and process them (all the pics you see here are straight out of the camera), cause I bet I could make them look even better! Oh well, kudos to mother nature for being so damn SEXY.
Dude, and the ducks playing in the water around this time? OHMY GOD SO AWESOME! Seriously, these pictures are straight out of my camera. It actually looked like this, in real life. OH MY FUCK THE COLORRRSSS!!! Too sexy.
This is how much the colors changed in just 10 minutes. From orange to blue. It was so beautiful. And….and black ducks!! So pretty.
We walked through this other marketplace, and were taken to this road that cut through the water leading to the other side of the lake.
It was fucking stunning. The sunset, the trees, the water, oh my god… My pictures don’t do it justice.
You know what sucks (but made me laugh)? I told David last night to charge his camera. He responded with “ah, I got enough batteries, don’t worry about it..” Yeah well guess what. His camera died before we even exited the park. He missed the sunset, the ducks, the trees, everything. He was so angry at this point. I did feel sorry for him…BUT THEN I LAUGHED BWAHAHHAHAH
Since it is hanami season, that means all of the Japanese people go out, find a nice sakura tree, thrown down some blue tarp, buy a shitload of alcohol, and drink themselves into oblivion. DAMNIT! I so wish I could have done that while I was there, instead of casually observing. I’m such an asshole for not contacting my Tokyo friends.
Here’s the view from the other side of the lake. It was getting really dark by then, and my poor, slow lens couldn’t keep up. Still, it was an incredible view. I’d fly to Japan again in a heartbeat if I could experience one more time the beauty I witnessed on this day.
————
For the last two hours David and I hella needed to pee, but we were so overwhelmed by the things we saw, we forced ourselves to just deal with it. Alas, at the end of this road, we both turned to each other and said, literally at the same time, word for word, “Dude, I hella need to pee.” And when we say hella, we mean it’s a fucking la emergencia.
We ran from convenience store to convenience store desperately trying to find one with a bathroom. None had one! WTF!!! I HELLA GOTTA GO FUCKER!! We ran down the street, across to another, here, there, everywhere, but found nothing! We were so damn close to just peeing right there in the street (there were no alleyways WTH MAN!) Our last resort was to bolt for the nearest train exit, and hope we could find something there. I sprinted down the stairs while David waited above, not ready to jiggle his bladder that much for a lost cause. Frantically searching, heart racing, genitals aching, the most beauty I had seen all day revealed itself before me; the men’s bathroom. “I FOUND IT!!!” I yelled at the top of my lungs at the staircase hoping the sound would travel up enough to alert david of my discovery, as I leaped like a gazelle for the nearest porcelain sanctuary.
AAAAAAAHHHhhhh……
With bodies renewed, we decided to explore some more this area we ended up in. There were a buncha massage/beauty parlors on thus street. One sign stood out from the rest:
Uh, I only know enough Japanese to make out the words “10 minutes” and “have the ability to.” So if i am reading this sign correctly, you can apparently get a sex change, via facial massage, in only 10 minutes. Oh Japan…
After more wandering, David and I decided it was time to head back to Shinjuku and maybe call it an early night. We had at 9:30a flight to catch TO FUCKING HONG KONG the next day, you know.
When we arrived in Shinjuku, we realized that we had barely eaten a thing all day. We were starving. So began the search for food.
I mentioned before that I suck ass at searching for food places in Japan. I just don’t know enough kanji, and I think that finding decent food places is really hard to do here, in general. You just gotta experiment. Problem is, David wasn’t feeling that adventurous, with his palette, nor his wallet. I can’t blame him I guess, Japan has been hella expensive.
I found a Haitian place that looked really bomb, but David didn’t want to spend 900 yen on dinner. He wanted somewhere cheap. Well, all we could find were pretty much izakayas, and at places like those, the bill racks up quick. So, bust.
We walked around and around these 3 streets, going in circles for almost an hour, indecisive and hungry. I didn’t want to go to a really cheap place cause I didn’t want to eat crap food, David didn’t want to go to the hella expensive place cause he didn’t want to spend money.
At this point we actually started getting really angry at each other. We both just wanted food, but no one would compromise. David, when he gets hella angry, just gets quiet, and boils. Me, I’m more open about it, but neither of us were doing anything for each other, we just got more and more pissed off.
I told David before this trip that he had to promise me something - that we’d never wander around, indecisive, looking for food. It creates anger and wastes valuable adventure time. It divides people. It happened real bad when I was in New York for the first time with my good friends. We were all hella pissed by the end when it took us a full hour to find a food place that everyone was satisfied with. I don’t want that to ever happen again. I just want the trip to be happy!
Well, it happened again. And David and I were at each other’s throats, silently.
We finally decided to go to a Salzeria (spelling?). It’s a chain restaurant that offers a lot of different, poorly-made foods; salads, hamburgers, spaghetti. It actually was a fairly decent compromise between price and selection, if one ordered right. But fuck that, I’m eating hamburg.
It was actually really tasty, but you can tell that the ingredients are hella shitty. David and I talked it out for a while. Yeah. Good man-talk. No more anger. Hos and beer and shit. And meat.
After food we went back to the apartment. I had heard from the bartender/manager at Oath that a really good place to go for house music (and possibly house dancers) would be Loop, which was not too far away from the Shibuya train station. It’s supposed to be a really popular spot.
David didn’t want to stay out all night, so this is where we parted ways. Around 10:30p, I set off for Loop!
First order of business was to get money, cause I was all out. The ATMs weren’t working in Shinjuku, so I tried some around Shibuya train station. Again, none of them worked.
I went to a few convenience stores and again none of the ATM machines would give me any money! I was getting worried about my card. Finally some dude helped me and told me I should try the 7-11 across the street; how their machine should work with my card.
It was starting to get late, and I didn’t want to arrive at the club too late, lest it be packed. I heard it was quite tiny and can fill up really fast. House girls, house girls, yes!
So I ran across the street, dodging traffic like a fool, trying to get some damn money so I can get on with the rest of my night! Tired and angry from the search, I just pushed random buttons on the ATM machine, I just wanted some damn money, I didn’t care how much! Just give me something!!!
And then it did. 50,000 yen to be exact. HOLY SHIT I DIDN’T WANT THAT MUCH!>!! Fuck fuck go back in!!!!
Damnit. That’s a ton of money to be carrying around. And the exchange rate is soo bad… ahhh…..
Oh well, on to the club, and the best night of my life!
The directions I wrote down were pretty specific, but I still got lost. I wandered up and down this street looking for the club, but I couldn’t find it at all. I asked at many convenience stores, and no one knew where it was. I asked people on the street, and again no one knew where it was. Finally, I remembered I wrote down the number of the club. Finding a phone booth was another challenge, but eventually I found one.
I called the club, and I actually busted out some pretty decent Japanese explaining to the dude I was lost, what was around me, and how to get to his place. He gave me directions, and said it was right next to some university. So I asked around for the university until eventually I was pointed in the right direction. But, again, I still couldn’t find the place.
After more wandering and more asking, I finally popped into a different 7-11 and asked a dude where Loop was. He told me it was pretty much right next door, just a few shops down. He said find the stairs and walk down.
Problem is, there were no stairs!! And no sign anywhere for this Loop. No people queuing outside, no nothing. I ran back inside to 7-11 thinkin the dude was crazy or I was crazy that I couldn’t find it. He said it was literally less than 20m down the road.
Oh my God. It was.
There was no sign outside. And in order to see the sign from the street, you’d have to be standing at the door, eyes squinted, focusing on the 12-point font sign that says “Loop.”
Through the door and down some stairs was a dude sitting at a podium, collecting money. I told him about how much trouble I had finding the place. He laughed. I didn’t hear much noise coming from behind the door, so I asked him if anyone had shown up just. “Just you” he said.
WHAT!?
JUST ME!?
The hell, the dude at Oath made believe that I was going to go to the most poppin’, insane-awesome, you’ll-never-forget-this-place-in-your-life type of house club. What a liar!
The bouncer told me that it could pick up later on in the night, around 3 or 4. Huh? 3 or 4 you kidding me? ….GAH!!!
Anyways, I came this damn far, I wasn’t about to leave without going in. I paid the entrance fee (sigh…) and went forth.
Sure enough, it was empty. Actually, there were two older Japanese dudes talking to the bartender, and that was it.
They were all really nice people, and we all talked about some stuff in mixed Japanese and English. So reminiscent of many of my bar interactions the last time I was in Japan…
One of the guys was actually the DJ, DJ Nori. He was really cool and was happy to hear about my passion for house dance and house music.
To ease my disappointment of not seeing any house girls like I had fantasized, I decided it was a good time for a drink! Started off with a gin and tonic….
Then I had a gin bear (?) I don’t remember, it was recommended by the bartender, and was some other kind of gin drink. Cool.
Then I had another gin drink. Downed it real fast.
Then DJ Nori went up and I danced, by myself, to house music for a few songs.
Then I went back to the bar to order another gin drink, but then I saw this sign:
OH HELL YEAH FRESH BANANA JUICE!!! ….and liquor!!? HOW CAN I GO WRONG!!
BAM there it was. It looked and tasted exactly like my mom’s banana drinks, only with alcohol. It was sooo delicious!
As I was enjoying my banana drink, this sloppy white girl and her flamboyant friend came stumbling in. They started talking to me, telling me how they were from New York, on vacation, getting drunk every day, went to jail earlier that day for stealing bikes, fuck the cops, blah blah blah. Wait went to jail!?! Stealing bikes?! In Japan?! I wanted to punch them. They are the worst kind of tourist, despicable humans, treating the country they are traveling in like some personal playground, an outlet for all of their hedonistic, repressed desires. You want to go to a place like that? Try Thailand or Mykonos. In those places, it is encouraged. In fucking Japan, you are supposed to show respect. Don’t fuck with the locals, don’t fuck with the cops, don’t fuck with their system, because if you do, then nice caucasians like me get persecuted for your mistakes. The Japanese are such nice people! They won’t steal your shit, they won’t get in your way. Why would you fuck with them?
I wanted to slap them both.
Then the sloppy girl starts smoking in my face talking blah blah blah about I can’t remember/don’t care what.
I wanted to throw my chair at her.
After what felt like forever, her talking about herself and the dude and all the trouble they get into and something about a DJ she met last night dropping her off at Loop, and not having a ride nor a place to stay (and wanting to come back with me?) I don’t know. But after all that talking, she starting hating on my banana drink.
Hell fucking no, woman. That’s the last straw you cheap whore.
Every fiber of my (then intoxicated) being wanted to jumpkick them in their stupid faces. I wanted to at least tell them off. I certainly wasn’t going to waste my banana drink by pouring it on her. So, I found my composure, finished my drink, interrupted her in the middle of her retarded, self-absorbed story, and told her, “I’m going to dance, bye.”
So then I danced.
I hadn’t noticed, cause that sloppy girl was taking up my space, that a few more people had wandered in, and were dancing on the floor…mostly girls. Hmm…
I had a blast dancing to some really good music. When the DJ started playing this, I nearly shat myself. This song was so big when I was dancing in SD, it felt so good to hear it, thumping through some bigass speakers, mixed with tribal beats, underneath a disco ball, on top of some good, dark floor. Holy crap I felt free.
After a ton of dancing, I headed back to the bar for another drink. This time, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted, but the DJ’s friend whom I spoke with briefly earlier recommended to me a China Blue.
It had pineapple juice, lychee liquor(!), and some other other stuff and holy crap it was good! I mean damn!
I sat and spoke with the DJ’s friend for a while. He had some good insight on Japanese culture.
Somehow I struck up a conversation with one of the girls at the bar. Her and I talked for a good while about a lotta different things…it was really fun!
I went back to the dance floor to dance it out a bit more. She joined and some other people did too. All in all….like 5 people, hahhahaha.
By this time I was pretty damn intoxicated.
None of the pictures really came out that well. It was just about pitch black in the dance area. I was only able to snap one decent pic
The vibe, I gotta tell you, was hella strange. And this is kinda how it goes down in a lot of Japanese clubs (except for the crazy, big, westernized ones). People just kinda dance, by themselves, in their own space, never intruding in on other’s spaces. No interaction on the dance floor. No vibing. The feeling was just so awkward. I could hear the lonely shuffles of people’s feet between thumps from the speakers. They all dance, looking lost, lost in some emotional purgatory between happiness and sorrow. What is with that? It was so troubling to me. I tried dancing near some girls, tried putting some smiles on their faces. They laughed, sure, but I didn’t feel right trying to make them smile. Argh, I don’t know how to explain this situation any better! It really is something one would have to experience for themselves in order to truly understand.
But, in my memory, that shuffling stands out more than the music itself, its empty echos as close at the feelings seemed distant.
So, that was my Loop experience. Talking to the bartender revealed that it’s packed on the weekends and certain days. On days like today however, it rarely finds crowds larger than 6 or 7.
I left the club around 5ish, and took a cab back to the hotel. I arrived around daybreak, just as David was getting up.
We packed our things, printed out our e-ticket, wrote down our landlord’s contact info, and bolted for the train station. Oh yeah, we were late. We had 25 minutes to run a 15-20 minute walk, uphill, with full luggage, buy a train ticket, find the express train to Narita, and make it to the platform before it left.
We barely made it, yet again.
On to HONG KONG!!!!
