(no subject)
So - Friday morning, yet again work takes one for the team since its time to go to the Ward office and pick up my official suspicious immigrant card! So there we went - back to Tokyo tower to the Minato office. It was totally fast and totally painless naturally - so now I’m officially a legit gaijin. EXCEPT - since then I’ve moved out of that ward. So tomorrow morning there has to be another field trip to the Shibuya ward office (where they just apply a change of address sticker - NJ DMV style). After such an easy time in line 1, we moved over to line 6 - where I get HEALTH INSURANCE! I John Hancock two documents, and about 45 seconds later I have an insurance card - giving me full access to the modern health care system of a G8 country for the princely sum of 10$ a month. Yeah. Works like this, it’s pegged to income (since I don’t have any, I pay the 10$ floor) and it pays 70% of all medical expenses across the board. Mwuhahaha!
The rest of the day was inauspicious, went back to school, did a modicum of work - then class till 9:30. Normally it would be till 7, but we had a finance make up class. (WARNING Finance follows) Again it was excellent; in that time we covered the entire dynamic interplay between Fed interest rates, inflation, and currency values, and the cycle that results. The class was punctuated with a concise, clear overview of the derivatives market - fun with swaps, options, puts, and calls. The currency thing naturally hits pretty close to home, because since November, the yen has gone from 125 yen to the dollar - to 105 yen to the dollar. So basically the depreciation of the dollar is kicking my ass. Those interest rate drops (which push the dollar down) hurt me directly. 10 dollars in my pocket just became 8 dollars in my pocket. So, I reiterate - no Roppongi. That said, I’m pretty confident that the Japanese will depreciate the yen to catch up; they'll lose a mint in the US market if increasing prices cost them market share. (/END finance)
Anyway - nothing interesting to say about Friday night. To my profound disappointment it was a complete wash. No wanted to do anything, since they were all out until 5….that’s right, 5 - on a weeknight in Roppongi Thursday night. I’m not going to say I backed the wrong horse per se - because I was the only one who wasn’t painfully hung-over all day. A few people bailed, and the only plan that seemed to gel didn’t do so until after transit stopped running, and half the city away. So stayed in, gave Jess a call, and all was well.
Saturday, however was a different story. Some LLM students invited me out to Asaskusa with them. Now this supposedly was a cool part of town. It’s across town, and its axiomatic of the Tokyo merge of old and new. In addition to being east-village artistic and hip, it also has a few famous shrines and a 9 story pagoda.
We were actually going to be shown around by a former LLM who just graduated and his wife. I had actually met them in Philly in the fall. They were Tokyo natives and wanted to show us some sights. So I finally arrived and……..time to leave. Turns out - since they had been out till 5 Thursday, they went to sleep early Friday, and had been up since 7 - whereas my schedule is consistent sleeping at 1 or 2 and waking at 9. This isn’t a problem though.
From there we took the neat water taxi / bus down one of Tokyo’s rivers.
Ultimately arriving at Odaiba! Now, I think I’m right in saying it’s a landfill Island, its pretty big, and I think Haneda airport (their domestic airport) is on it. Now along with some high end shopping (where ISN’T there high end shopping here?) It has that HUGE Ferris wheel:
And some bizarre details. What is wrong with this picture (NOT A PHOTOSHOP):
Not to mention Tokyo Big Sky:
Which is a really neat bizarre building. That top orb thing is an observation deck with a 270 degree view of Tokyo, and since it’s so far East, it actually IS a full view of Tokyo. Behold - Tokyo:
Tokyo (shrunk from its actual 10 megapixel glory to manageable size):
Keep in mind that this isn’t actually all of it. Tokyo’s not like New York, where all the tall buildings are concentrated in two big centers, lower Manhattan and Midtown. Toyko has about 6 of these centers. None are as tall, none are dense - but this place is huge and sprawling its RIDICULOUS. This is the most interesting of 3 shots which make the full panorama. This just shows Minato which has some offices, the Tokyo Tower, Rainbow Bridge, and the Mori building aka the Roppongi Hills building, which I keep referring to. If you look - faded way in the background - you can see the separate Skyline at Shinjuku. Downtown Tokyo, and Ginza not pictured. Shibuya is in this shot, but it’s not so tall and is obscured (probably by the Mori building).
This building’s ACTUAL function is the HQ of was one of Japan’s TV stations - Fuji. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuji_Television You may remember this as the station behind Iron Chef. Quite likely - Kitchen stadium is in this very building. Even the observation place itself was set up for an obnoxiously bright Japanese TV show:
So we after proceeded down into the TV museum - for a good old dose of weird:
(not shortage of these pictures) See I’m big in Japan (like Godzilla big)
We even got to see about 10 seconds of a taping of Best House (I have no idea - it seemed like just a talk show and pictures were prohibited) Then time to head back. On the MONORAIL!
So there we went - back to Shimbashi for some food. Good stuff - more Yakitori. Bust I must confess…..I had horse again. I didn’t WANT to! The hosts ordered a piece for each of us! I like horses! (delicious). Also Umeshu - its Plum wine, and it’s a good time.
That was about that. The night was inauspicious. We were trying to gather people for a hookah bar (don’t get any Cheech and Chong ideas - this is a totally innocent Turkish thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooka) I’ve never tried it, and there is one in Shibuya. But - people couldn’t be bothered to leave Roppongi - they said they were tired and wanted to stay in. By providence, we actually ran into a couple of already drunken peers on the street in Shibuya. They were interested in a club called Camelot. We then proceeded to wait in the absolute freezing cold for about 45 minutes for their friends. I’m blasé about clubs, and all this waiting in the cold was starting to fray my laid-back mood. I wanted less sober-cold and more drunk-warm. You can imagine the effect it had when it started to rain.
One interesting thing while waiting, is that we were reflecting on our time here, and I made my standard clutch of observations - the very busy information siege aesthetic, the cultural propriety, and the mutually condescending attitudes between locals and tourists. But mostly how we had high expectations - and it was about 50% BETTER than that, it was totally clean and safe, and instead of having to look for interesting things to see, it was more an exercise in bizarre crazy input management. About every six seconds you have a ZOMG! / WTF? At the time we were at that crazy times square intersection. We looked at the dog statue landmark - and at its feet were 5 yen, a flower, a sausage, and a letter….addressed TO the statute. We waited six seconds - looked up - the Jumbo screen had a giant - 30 foot diagram of a manatee. Six seconds later a giant Samsung billboard exclaimed WORLD IN HAND! Six seconds later a drunk Japanese teenager mounted the statute and yelled “I AM MOTHER-FUCKER!” The madness. The madness.
Finally we met up with the others - and they were keen clubbers by looks of their tight expensive un-tucked shirts and judicious use of hair-gel. We finally went, and it was actually an excellent club: plenty of room, cool layout, cheap drinks, and a healthy majority of locals. This Shibuya club beats any Roppongi Club I’ve seen by a huge margin. Of course the music was the same 4 songs I’ve been hearing non-stop at every other club and bar regardless of what hemisphere I’m in. If I hear “T-Pain Ft. Flo Rida - Low” one more time……….. Anyway, the drink they gave me was Tequlia cheap enough that I’ve never heard of it - and I got a headache instantaneously. So I called it a night. I called the guys from earlier who said they were staying in - turns out clubbing in Roppongi.
The rest of the day was inauspicious, went back to school, did a modicum of work - then class till 9:30. Normally it would be till 7, but we had a finance make up class. (WARNING Finance follows) Again it was excellent; in that time we covered the entire dynamic interplay between Fed interest rates, inflation, and currency values, and the cycle that results. The class was punctuated with a concise, clear overview of the derivatives market - fun with swaps, options, puts, and calls. The currency thing naturally hits pretty close to home, because since November, the yen has gone from 125 yen to the dollar - to 105 yen to the dollar. So basically the depreciation of the dollar is kicking my ass. Those interest rate drops (which push the dollar down) hurt me directly. 10 dollars in my pocket just became 8 dollars in my pocket. So, I reiterate - no Roppongi. That said, I’m pretty confident that the Japanese will depreciate the yen to catch up; they'll lose a mint in the US market if increasing prices cost them market share. (/END finance)
Anyway - nothing interesting to say about Friday night. To my profound disappointment it was a complete wash. No wanted to do anything, since they were all out until 5….that’s right, 5 - on a weeknight in Roppongi Thursday night. I’m not going to say I backed the wrong horse per se - because I was the only one who wasn’t painfully hung-over all day. A few people bailed, and the only plan that seemed to gel didn’t do so until after transit stopped running, and half the city away. So stayed in, gave Jess a call, and all was well.
Saturday, however was a different story. Some LLM students invited me out to Asaskusa with them. Now this supposedly was a cool part of town. It’s across town, and its axiomatic of the Tokyo merge of old and new. In addition to being east-village artistic and hip, it also has a few famous shrines and a 9 story pagoda.
We were actually going to be shown around by a former LLM who just graduated and his wife. I had actually met them in Philly in the fall. They were Tokyo natives and wanted to show us some sights. So I finally arrived and……..time to leave. Turns out - since they had been out till 5 Thursday, they went to sleep early Friday, and had been up since 7 - whereas my schedule is consistent sleeping at 1 or 2 and waking at 9. This isn’t a problem though.
From there we took the neat water taxi / bus down one of Tokyo’s rivers.
Ultimately arriving at Odaiba! Now, I think I’m right in saying it’s a landfill Island, its pretty big, and I think Haneda airport (their domestic airport) is on it. Now along with some high end shopping (where ISN’T there high end shopping here?) It has that HUGE Ferris wheel:
And some bizarre details. What is wrong with this picture (NOT A PHOTOSHOP):
Not to mention Tokyo Big Sky:
Which is a really neat bizarre building. That top orb thing is an observation deck with a 270 degree view of Tokyo, and since it’s so far East, it actually IS a full view of Tokyo. Behold - Tokyo:
Tokyo (shrunk from its actual 10 megapixel glory to manageable size):
Keep in mind that this isn’t actually all of it. Tokyo’s not like New York, where all the tall buildings are concentrated in two big centers, lower Manhattan and Midtown. Toyko has about 6 of these centers. None are as tall, none are dense - but this place is huge and sprawling its RIDICULOUS. This is the most interesting of 3 shots which make the full panorama. This just shows Minato which has some offices, the Tokyo Tower, Rainbow Bridge, and the Mori building aka the Roppongi Hills building, which I keep referring to. If you look - faded way in the background - you can see the separate Skyline at Shinjuku. Downtown Tokyo, and Ginza not pictured. Shibuya is in this shot, but it’s not so tall and is obscured (probably by the Mori building).
This building’s ACTUAL function is the HQ of was one of Japan’s TV stations - Fuji. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuji_Television You may remember this as the station behind Iron Chef. Quite likely - Kitchen stadium is in this very building. Even the observation place itself was set up for an obnoxiously bright Japanese TV show:
So we after proceeded down into the TV museum - for a good old dose of weird:
(not shortage of these pictures) See I’m big in Japan (like Godzilla big)
We even got to see about 10 seconds of a taping of Best House (I have no idea - it seemed like just a talk show and pictures were prohibited) Then time to head back. On the MONORAIL!
So there we went - back to Shimbashi for some food. Good stuff - more Yakitori. Bust I must confess…..I had horse again. I didn’t WANT to! The hosts ordered a piece for each of us! I like horses! (delicious). Also Umeshu - its Plum wine, and it’s a good time.
That was about that. The night was inauspicious. We were trying to gather people for a hookah bar (don’t get any Cheech and Chong ideas - this is a totally innocent Turkish thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooka) I’ve never tried it, and there is one in Shibuya. But - people couldn’t be bothered to leave Roppongi - they said they were tired and wanted to stay in. By providence, we actually ran into a couple of already drunken peers on the street in Shibuya. They were interested in a club called Camelot. We then proceeded to wait in the absolute freezing cold for about 45 minutes for their friends. I’m blasé about clubs, and all this waiting in the cold was starting to fray my laid-back mood. I wanted less sober-cold and more drunk-warm. You can imagine the effect it had when it started to rain.
One interesting thing while waiting, is that we were reflecting on our time here, and I made my standard clutch of observations - the very busy information siege aesthetic, the cultural propriety, and the mutually condescending attitudes between locals and tourists. But mostly how we had high expectations - and it was about 50% BETTER than that, it was totally clean and safe, and instead of having to look for interesting things to see, it was more an exercise in bizarre crazy input management. About every six seconds you have a ZOMG! / WTF? At the time we were at that crazy times square intersection. We looked at the dog statue landmark - and at its feet were 5 yen, a flower, a sausage, and a letter….addressed TO the statute. We waited six seconds - looked up - the Jumbo screen had a giant - 30 foot diagram of a manatee. Six seconds later a giant Samsung billboard exclaimed WORLD IN HAND! Six seconds later a drunk Japanese teenager mounted the statute and yelled “I AM MOTHER-FUCKER!” The madness. The madness.
Finally we met up with the others - and they were keen clubbers by looks of their tight expensive un-tucked shirts and judicious use of hair-gel. We finally went, and it was actually an excellent club: plenty of room, cool layout, cheap drinks, and a healthy majority of locals. This Shibuya club beats any Roppongi Club I’ve seen by a huge margin. Of course the music was the same 4 songs I’ve been hearing non-stop at every other club and bar regardless of what hemisphere I’m in. If I hear “T-Pain Ft. Flo Rida - Low” one more time……….. Anyway, the drink they gave me was Tequlia cheap enough that I’ve never heard of it - and I got a headache instantaneously. So I called it a night. I called the guys from earlier who said they were staying in - turns out clubbing in Roppongi.