Japan Day 4
Japan what a beautiful country. But with beauty comes price. Everything is so expensive here for Frugal Ron. Doing anything fun costs lots of money, so I just dont do anything. I woke up at 2, and surfed the internet until 6. At 6 I went outside and played video games at the arcade until 10 then came back to my hotel.
I really need to find things to do. Today was a wasted day. Tomorrow I will go to Shibura which is the fashion capital of japan. I will probably buy some clothes or something.
I did some thinking today and realized that I have picked up some bad habits from living amongst chinese peasants.
Some of the habits that I have picked up and hope to abolish while in japan:
Spitting everywhere
Crossing streets without waiting and without crosswalks
Throwing trash/food everywhere
Talking very loud
Showering only once per two weeks
Shoving people out of the way in a line
Walking to the front of a line without waiting
Eating sunflower seeds constantly and spitting them everywhere
Wanting to punch everyone who makes me angry
and a few more on the top of my head.
I realized that what I want in life is very simple compared to most people. I just want to survive the winter and train my mind/body/spirit.
I really need something to do in Japan. I want to go visit a Hakkyoku Ken school and I would like to see some sumo wrestlers and geisha. I wish I had some kind of guide to help because by myself I am a bit shy. Since I am pretty much bilingual now, it freaks me out that I cant understand japanese. I communicate with japanese people by writing characters. I will start learning the japanese language seriously now and maybe in the future I can find a job here. Japan is what I thought china was going to be.
Kormiku on 08.15.06 @ 01:47 AM China [link] [No Comments]
Japan Day 3
Japan Day 3:
Woke up at 2pm and quickly got dressed and ready to go out. By 2:30 I was walking to the train station and quickly figured out how to take a subway across the city. The goal of today was to go to Akihabara and see as many cute school girls as possible. Akihabara is the electronic and videogame nerd center of tokyo. Arriving in akihabra we decided to keep track of how many school girls each of us had seen and have a little competition. We had only seen one from the day before and danny had spotted her, so he started with the first point. Andy forgot his glasses and wasnt able to see anyone today so it was just me versus danny. Right out of the train station, danny spots two girls in sailor outifts and jumps up to 3 points.
We first go to visit booktown where the most books are for sale in tokyo. The first store we went into looked like a book shop, but as we entered we realized it was a porn shop. Looking around a bit we decided that the whole section of town was just a bunch of porn shops. We also werent seeing anymore schoolgirls so we headed to musictown. At musictown I was interested in buying a trumpet so I went to look for one. Trumpet prices are skyhigh. Ukeleles cost 1500 US dollars, and trumpets are about 5000. Ridiculous. So i ended up not buying a trumpet.
Deciding musictown was lame, we headed to the electronics district and the main reason that we came to akihabara. In the electronics district I spotted at first 3 school girls and ended up tieing with danny. Then I spotted two more wearing very slutty outfits but realized that they were being filmed for porn. Since they were just actresses, I didnt get the points for that one and no one claimed it. We entered into a sword shop and realized it was a front for a child pornography store. I didnt realize that anyone took pictures of 8 year olds in swimsuits and sold it. Ridiculous.
We quickly left, feeling like scum and went to a video game store. This store had a bunch of cool stuff but everything was in japanese and I didnt want to buy a videogame in japanese, so I didnt. Amazing.
Akihabara was overrated and we left to go back to the hotel. Arriving back at the hotel, I spotted 5 more schoolgirls putting me at 9.
I love japanese food, I think I will get fat while I am here. In china I have no problem losing weight because the food sucks, but here I have been eating cheesecake with every meal :]
Kormiku on 08.15.06 @ 01:39 AM China [link] [No Comments]
Japan Day 2
Day 2
Woke up at 2PM and went to buy some cheesecake and sandwiches at the AM-PM. Bummed around until 8 o'clock. At 8, we got picked up by my dads friend: Inanobe. He took us to a small chinese restaurant in Kobukicho. At this restaurant, we realized that Inanobe doesnt speak a word of english and we have no way to talk to him. So I ask if the people at this chinese restaurnt speak chinese, which of course they do. I used my chinese to talk to someone who would talk to Inanobe and then translate it back to chinese. I was actually utilizing my chinese to translate japanese. It was a weird feeling. I feel my fluency of chinese pretty good now :]
My dads friend asked what we wanted to do, and since we had no idea of what there is to do, thats what we answered back. He said okay then called my dad. I talked to my dad on the phone and he told me who Inonobe was. Excellent, we are with a celebrity.
After eating, Inonobe took us to a friendship bar. We sat down on stools and they gave us drinks and girls came and sat next to us. It is their job to pretend to be our friends. We talked for an hour and a half while sitting on some giant moving stage that did a full circle around the bar after some time. These girls did some cabaret dancing then talked some more. I spotted a girl wearing a schoolgirl sailor outfit and told inonobe that I like that outfit a lot. He then arranged for that girl to sit next to me and talk to me for the rest of the time that I was there.
Leaving this place, we went to a karaoke which gave us some refreshment and we sang two songs and left because it was boring.
Walking around kobukicho, we found an arcade that had a punching bag game to test how hard you punch. My punch is 350 pounds per square inch. It isnt that great, but we spent a lot of time at this game punching it over and over to get high scores.
Inonobe then took us back to the chinese restaurant and we were taken to a back room and told to sit down. The owner came out, and gave us tea then introduced a guy named Toshio to us.
This toshio was a martial artist and wanted to talk to us about taichi. He said that when he was younger, he was a japanese karate champion. After winning a major competition, an old man, 64 years old, came up to him and challenged him to a fight. Toshio being a young cocky fighter took the challenge. Toshio threw his strongest punch to the face of the oldman but was destroyed by the oldman's power. Toshio immediately bowed and called the old man, "master". This old man taught him fighting taichi.
Toshio said that being a boxer is only as good as long as you are youthful. You start losing your power as you become older. However with taichi, you only get stronger when you get older. You will continue to get stronger even until the day you die. He also said it doesnt matter what style you learn as long as you learn it from a real master.
He then offered to teach us real taichi and said he will take us to the mountains in a week for a 3 day camping trip to show us the secrets of taichi.
After talking with Toshio for a few hours, we came back to the hotel and I am writing this email now. It is 5am and the sun is up. Time for bed.
I cant wait to see what tomorrow brings. We have plans to go to alikahabra, which is electric town. It has all the coolest gadgets in Japan and is apparently where ALL the schoolgirls go.
Kormiku on 08.15.06 @ 01:35 AM China [link] [No Comments]
Japan Day 1
Wake up at 4 am, and drink some coffee-coke. It tastes like crap just like I thought and was enough to wake me up. At 5 I get a taxi to the airport and pay 10 bucks for the hour and some minutes drive. At the airport we get news that some idiots tried to send some kind of liquid bomb on the airplanes in england the day before and we had to go through extra security to throw away our drinks, deoderant, cologne and even pills. Once through the security we board the plane and it had a TV built into every seat with video games. The plane ride went very smooth. Upon arriving in japan, me and my friends had a competition to see who would see the first school girl. We were all nervous about getting through customs and finally seeing some japanese people. However, once we get through customs, everyone looks just like chinese except for the way they talk. At the main airport terminal I had to take a piss and went to the toilet. Arriving at the toilet looked like I was entering a space ship. I pressed a button and the door opened by itself and I entered. There was a space toilet with a space urinal and a space drinking fountain with a spacey looking wash basin. Freaking weird i tell you.
Leaving the airport we get on a bus called the Airport Limosine and ride two hours to downtown tokyo. The whole car ride looked like I was in Washington again and traveling around Seattle. It was an enjoyable ride. The trees here look just like washington trees.
Pulling up to the bus stop in Shinjuku, I heard cries from my friend Dan. "Look look! LOOK! A real live school girl!!!" And boy did I look. It was made of dreams, that girl. She was wearing a perfect outfit and was so cute and had knock-knees and everything. And to make it better, the bus stopped right next to her and let us off at the station. Excellent. We take our bags and walk up to the girl and stare a few minutes then find our hotel.
The hotel was about a 10 minute walk from the bus station and very easy to find. On our way there we almost get hit by cars because we didnt realize that japanese people wait at every single crosswalk. I was used to china where it is Dog Eat Dog and everyone crosses the streets at any time. A bus almost hit us.
At the hotel, the staff was very super friendly and gave us excellent service. At that point in time I had an epiphany: "There is service in japan!", unlike china.
The toilet in the hotel room has buttons and shoots warm water at you when you finish. My friend andy wrote a haiku about the toilets:
Japanese Toilet
Really you are a robot
I love Tokyo
In the hotel, I hooked to the internet and checked my email and stuff then at 10pm explored the city. We got nowhere and returned by 11:30pm. My dad called me at midnight and said, "You know, you are in the skyscraper part of Tokyo, if you go down the street and cross the train tracks, you will be in the sleaziest part of tokyo." Upon hearing these magical words, I got up, called my friends and we all went exploring again but this time with a purpose.
We quickly crossed the train tracks and ended up in an area with no people. Eventually we saw some people and went towards them. It was a bunch of guys who looked like they were all having fun. Upon approaching them, we realized that they were all gay. We were in fag-town, tokyo. After hightailing it out of there, we quickly lost all bearing of where we were.
About 5 hours of wandering later, we come across the party town. We made it to Kobukicho! But it was 6 in the morning and we were tired as rabbits because of walking for 6 hours. We tried to get back to the hotel but realized that we had no information about where the hotel was. GREAT. No one spoke english. We walked into a convenient store and the guy spoke chinese. EXCELLENT! I asked directions in chinese and we made it back to the hotel by 6:30am. My chinese paid off.
End of day 1.
Kormiku on 08.15.06 @ 01:26 AM China [link] [No Comments]
