Of Tokyo Sentai Drunken Ausie throwing Pirates Karaoke Pt.1
So this was a weekend for the fun books. I seriously have trouble knowning where to start this, but let us begin on my arrival in Jimbocho, which is right of the physical epi-center of Tokyo proper. It was where my hotel was. This entire weekend was to be spent in Tokyo, since I was involved in a Charity Scavanger Hunt throughout it. The money went to poor kids in Cambodia. Or something. I'll be honest I don't know who gets my money but I do wonder if it's tax deductable... So a Hotel was arranged for Friday and Saturday. To be honest, overall the weekend drained the pockets a bit, but being that it was Tokyo for another non-stop weekend, I was not going to complain.
So Friday night I met Dan and Del Rel in the Sakura Hotel. It was pretty much a dorm style room for 4 people shared by myself, Del Rel (Ivan), Jon and myself. The hotel was well, your average hostel, abed a bit cleaner, since everything is cleaner in Tokyo. Also, at about 40 bucks a night, one could not complain.
So Dan, Ivan and myself head into Jimbocho to eat and have fun. We end up at some Chinese food place that was full of business men. I ate some chicken balls (literally, large balls of chicken), some gyoza and we had some beers. Being that we had to be up early and ready to scavange the next day, we opted to stay local for fun. We quickly found that Jimbocho lacks fun. We ended up having a beer in front of a convenience store and heading back to the hotel for some decent sleep before the hunt.
We woke up and began prepping. Dan and I would wear costumes. Turned out that it was going to be furiously hot in Tokyo, so Dan still dressed up, but a little less than planned. He ended up ripping apart a white tee shirt, throwing on a head band and wearing odd mesh shorts with mismatched socks. He looked retarded. Mission accomplished. I on the other hand decided I would go Sentai again. I pulled my red suit out of the plastic bag I kept it in since the last party I wore it to. We were all taken back by it.
It reaked something terrible. I mean really, if you got a foot near it, you could smell the old sweat and beer and cigs from it, having mated and mingled into a new type of rayon stench. I am pretty sure putting it on like this would have given me a combination of Herpies and Cancer. Maybe Hencer. Or Canpies. It was not cool. Solution? Since Dan was going to the conbini quick, I told him to pick me up some febreeze. They had none, only Axe Body spray. It would have to do. I coated the suit with a thick layer of smelly mist (It was Axe "Dimensions" so who knows what a dimension smells like?) and smelt it. Now it was stanky enough of the Axe effect to fight off the sweaty cigarette smell. I win. Sort of. I dawn the suit and head out.
Here is the thing; wearing a full body spandex/rayon whatever suit in Tokyo on one of the hottest days yet was probobly not smart. I was literally sweating all the time. I stopped about every hour to drink a water out of a vending machine. My body was just processing the liquid in, using it to cool the body, then getting sweat out. This damn suit will probobly not be able to be disposed of boy normal means now. I am sure throwing it out is illegal. It's is probobly radioactive. I think we have to hurl it into the Sun.
Anyway, so we all meet outside and the teams get together. Dan, Ivan, Jon, Bri and myself would be team "The Del Spambrosio." We opted for just yelling out "Go Team Venture" for fun. We start chatting up other teams, talking to some new girls we had just met from other places, namely Mary, Tonya and Cian. They were on another team and a crew of sarcastic, drunken nuttos. Future Wives Club pretty much. Tonya was from all over the states, she moved a lot. Mary was, well who knows, drunk all the time and I am pretty sure she had pierced boobies but never had imetus or interest to ask.
Cian was possibly the coolest of all. Originally of Australia, her parents did the JET program while she was in her young teens. She ended up going to Junior High and High school in Japan. She basically lived the fantasy of some State-Side fan girls. Her encapsulment of the experiance is that she was hung over all the time. This girl was going to Clubs at 14, since well, no one gives shit to foreigners. She would go drinking with her parent's JET friends since she didn't know the language right off. She would go to school reaking of beer and cigs in a school girl outfit in Junior High. She sounds like some sort of twisted Manga character but in fact she is real, her stories are scarily real, and she is pretty much cooler than any of us will ever be. Let me be clear, this girl was cooler than anybody reading this blog by the age of 15. I am pretty sure she is in her mid-twenties. She is now an editor at a publishing house here in Tokyo. She is a person who probobly never had to struggle with the concept of individuality growing up; it was handed to her in heapfulls. It should also be mentioned that she was cute and funny as hell.
So yes, still all this prep and the story has yet to really launch. We have yet even to taste the meat, we may have just broken through to the bread and tasted a topping or two.. Moving right along...
So it should be mentioned that the entire time I talk about my day in Tokyo, it should be assumed that everyone around me is staring at me, since I am in a skin tight red suit and my balls are startlingly visable. I walk out of the hotel and pretty much out of the gate people knew it was me since I wore it last time. Even Japanese people could tell on site that I was not Japanese, due to my height and since my nose protruded out of the mask so much. So inside the hotel the rules of the game are laid out. Apparently we are trying to find Carmen Sandiego, and to find her we have to collect clues, report back to people in a coffee house, then get hint to her location. It was a deep, fun, well thought out game. If you had 5 days. For 5 hours, it was complicated, over-wrought, and confusing. Whatever, this was not going to stop me and my team from having fun.
So we are let out and told that all the hints are in Shibuya and Harajuku. My elite squad hits the Subway and we are in Shibuya minutes later. (Side Note: Due to some sort of cool agreement, recently my Suica pass now works on the Subways, so there is no longer buying any tickets for Subway/train change. That could have saved the Japan trip team some cash, eh? Oh well, such is progress; always welcomed but never as prompt as we would hope.) So we exit the station and meet near Hachiko to plan out our attack. Now as we do this, there is a crowd around me. I find it interesting that in Tokyo, people have hair that obviously has glue in it, and wear skirts that are not skirts, just cloth belts, but I wear some Spandex and all of a sudden I am a spectical. It's funny, some people were shocked, some people could not give a shit, but everyone looked at me. I mean here I was at that huge crossing, and literally people were just staring at me, and about 3 men with Giant cameras starting taking photos of me over and over again. I felt like I was in some Movie premiere or something. So it goes.
So we begin taking pictures of random things with us in it. We stop by a travel agency so Dan can pay off one of his trips. We then go back to taking more pictures. People are taking pictures of me. Little kids are waving at me. School girls were chasing me. My ego was the size of Mexico. Fun stuff.
So an hour or so in Bri shows up. He was missing since the morning. Once he joined it was me and dudes in Odd tee shirts (Ivan felt left out and bought one, wore it like a girl. Way to take one for the team Ivan) running around taking pictures. Here it is though; the hints were vague and we did not know what we were doing. We went to Love Hotel Hill. We took some pictures. We then cut straight through the heart of Shibuya back and towards Yoyogi park. My team, frustrated over the clues, decides to shotgun some beers. This is amazing. 4 guys in odd looking white tees shotgunning beers in the streets of Tokyo with a Sentai Character looking on. I opted out since I was having trouble keeping hydrated as it was. In hind sight it would have been fun to though.
We keep running into Eric's team with Sherley, Laura, and er.. them. They were doing better than we were. We started to care less about eh contest, and decided to walk through Yoyogi park. This was fun. People running around, frisbey, Rock and Roll, etc. The Rockabilly people were not there. There was also a distinct (and happy) abesance of Basketball man. I may have hit him if he was there, being all you know, incognito and all.
So we walk from Yoyogi now and into Harajuku. I have decided to just wave to all hot women, and to my absolute pleasure they all smile super big and wave back. When wearing a full body costume, you cease to be who you are and become something else, obviously, but even I get more ballsy and just start having way too much fun. There is an on-air radio/TV broadcast in Harajuku. I walk by and try to make one of the people fuck up, but it is useless, I got a quick shocked look from the guest on air, but she did not skip a beat. Oh well.
So we check in at the Coffee/food place to see if we can get any clues/points for what we did so far. Turns out our team was doing relativly horrible. We were pretty much in last place, and to earn a "clue" we needed to go back to Shibuya. "Funk That" was the concensus of our team. We decided to throw out the point sheet and go shopping/drinking until the award ceremony. Once again of note, walking into a Gap in a costume is a great experiance in Japan. The people working there have no idea what the hell they should do. Help him out? Is he really gonna try something on? They get very confused.
In the next Episode we will End the Hunt arc and begin the Drinking Arc. In the next episode look for :
Hot Drunk Japanese Girls!
Your how old?
Wrestling in the Street is FUN!
This table can only hold so much Karaoke.