SHINJUKU, JAPAN. May 16th (15th U.S time)
Day 1- Shinjuku, Tokyo
I’m writing this post right after the last one I wrote when I was woozy and sleepy. This means that I am still woozy and sleepy. Why am I doing this rather than sleeping? It’s because I don’t want to forget to do this or get too lazy and decide I don’t want to anymore. It’s also because I’ve been sleeping off and on all day and I’m really freaking tired of it already.
If it weren’t so late I’d take a walk. Despite all the complaining we did about constantly moving up and down stairs and having to run from this place to that place… my legs have gotten used to a certain amount of exercise. They feel like they’re turning to concrete from all the sitting and NOT running around I’ve done today. Oooh- Eel says that the pool might be open! Could be that I leave this post in favor of rushing off to do that. Don’t look all hurt and abandoned; You won’t even notice my absence if I do. PROMISE.
PART 1- All MY other friends drive Gundams
I don’t know how we managed it. I really don’t. But the very first flight to Tokyo? We got on it. And we got seats in Business First- a distinction from Business class and First Class that I don’t actually know because I’ve always sat Plain Jane Economy in the past.
We were given these BIG sections to sit in. I don’t really know how to explain it. There was a HUUUGE tv in front of each of us that we could watch for free (tons and tons and tons of stuff on them). There was a little cubby hole in front of us where we could rest our feet (that they provided slippers for) when we leaned back our chairs all the way into BED position. Man, I’m sort of at a loss for words here. It was amazing and absurd. Business class is apparently about being in a hotel that feeds you too much. OK. I like eating and sleeping. Carry on then, Business class.
First things first, they provided us with a free drink. Any drink. Including a long list of fancy schmancy alcohol with names I couldn’t pronounce so I just nervously said “Ice water, please?” instead. I was nervous about it because I got the sense that because I wasn’t ordering Le FanchSchmancemay Chardonnay that people would realize that I was a phony and kick me off the plane. “THERE!”, they’d declare in the Queen’s English accent, “Imposter!”. We’d have a tense chase scene featuring a lot of running up walls, crazy flipping over other people drinking fancy drinks, and I’d make a bunch of panicked Jackie Chan faces. I’m glad none of that happened though given that I’d exhausted my Fat Girl rushes around as I was trying to get to the gate. Also Jackie Chan is Chinese and I was going to Japan. And at any rate, I actually just wanted ice water because I thought maybe it was being dehydrated on the last flight that had made me so sick. The flight attendant poured the ice water without fighting at all.
Next they presented us with menus. We got assorted nuts in warmed dishes. Then we got an appetizer of sushi, sashimi, a piece of meat and a salad. Next we picked our main course: I got some fancy seafood meal and Eel got a fancy steak meal. We got bread and a little dish of butter. I noticed that some people got a tiny jar of jam and though I did not want jam on my bread I was annoyed that I was not given any so that I might take the tiny sized jam bottle with me off the plane. SOUVENIR. From the United States. Whatever, to me it was still like a vacation and you get souvenirs from vacations and I wanted a tiny jam bottle! Then we got ice cream sundaes with our choice of toppings. Eel and I shared a chocolate, fresh strawberry and mixed nuts sundae that was the most delicious thing I’d had since the last delicious thing they’d fed us. Later we got assorted cheese, crackers and grapes. Way later we got our choice of breakfast foods. I… just don’t even.
Lending more to the “I don’t even…” experience was that I was sitting next to a lady who I could tell really did not want me near her. She gave me and my Okami t-shirt a stern looking over (screw you, lady, Okami is awesome!), got on her phone and started talking to some friend she had been visiting in Seattle. Somewhere near the start of the conversation she sighed blissfully and said: “Thank you SO MUCH for letting me ride in your car too. All of my friends only have Lexuses.”
Oh, man. That is rough, buddy. How does she manage to get through her everyday knowing that she might have to ride in a Lexus? More importantly: what did she ride in when she visited THIS friend?
I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction (or irritation) of asking. I decided then that she and I would not be able to overcome our lifestyle differences and imagined a wall between us for the rest of the flight. But a see-through wall. Because I couldn’t help glancing over to her giant tv screen every now and then as she sporadically watched 10 minutes of several different shows on it. Cloud Atlas, Moulin Rouge, Law and Order, Les Miserables, some random documentary, back to Les Mis, some random tv show, back to Les Mis… It was very strange and fascinating to me. Maybe she was faking being a business class person too! Maybe she thought: “I need to get my money’s worth out of this experience. WATCH ALL THE SHOWS!” Maybe she was weird. It’s probably that she was weird. I can respect that.
Eel and I decided to try watching a movie together the best that we could while writing notes to one another on a notepad about it. We chose Cloud Atlas which I feel we absolutely should not have chosen. It was long, rambling, disconnected and weird-like me… but less charming. Tom Hanks played a thousand roles and I think we were supposed to take it seriously, but I couldn’t! “Now Tom Hanks is an over-acting caricature of a thief!”, “Now Tom Hanks is a serious faced peasant man hounded by barbarians and new fangled technology”, “Now Tom Hanks is behaving in a strangely offensive manner!”. The plot of the movie sort of got lost in all the “Oh! Is that Hugh Grant being someone else now?” and “That lady can’t act in any of the twenty roles she’s doing in this movie!” moments. But that’s Ok. The plot was also summed up in the first 20 minutes of the film and then rehashed over and over and over and over again inexplicably. It was so incredibly disappointing because there were storylines in the movie that I actually liked and themes in the film that I also really enjoyed. The visuals were also cool. But it just was NOT a good movie. I think it was even less a good airplane movie. But we soldiered through it and I fell asleep during storylines that I didn’t care about. It seemed the right response. All my notes on the film were just pictures of me making faces and saying “What?” and “???” and “That lady really can’t act.”
After that we watched together a documentary on forests that seemed to have been edited for content. Every time a cool animal tried to bite or maim another cool animal the film suddenly switched to a different animal all together- making the documentary feel just as disjointed as Cloud Atlas (which was NOT edited for gore and was just disjointed). I’m never sure what emotion to feel when I see an animal kill another one. I sort of quickly represent both teams with my emotions to make sure that everything is accounted for. “RUN, MOUSE, RUN!”- “GET IT, OWL, GET IT”, “OH NO, CUTE MOUSE FACE, HID OVER THERE”, “OWL, YOU ARE THE COOLEST. DON’T LET THAT MOUSE GET AWAY. IT’S HIDING OVER THERE”. “Ooooh… poor thing…”, “GOOD JOB, OWL. YOU ROCK.”. So maybe I should be happy that the documentary kept me from going through split personalities. Or maybe that is precisely why I was sad that it kept switching. Maybe there is something truly rewarding about not knowing who to root for and just rooting for both sides. Or maybe there is something really wrong with me as a person.
We were also given forms to fill out before landing: a customs form and an immigration form. A rather snotty flight attendant asked if Eel and I were family because then we’d only need one of the second and I first said “yes” and then called her over to explain that we might not actually be (my life is complicated). “We’re married”, I explained, “But I kept my last name. Do we both need the forms after all?” She looked annoyed and responded with: “You made a mistake” and handed me an extra form. I’m guessing she thought that keeping my own last name was a mistake. I said: “I think you wearing that super cute scarf around your neck was a mistake because now I’m going to choke you with it!” Only I said that in my head so that she couldn’t fight back with an actually funny insult that would put me to shame or perhaps throw me in jail.
The forms were weird. There were two spaces up at the top to write our full names which meant that I wondered: “Which one do I ACTUALLY write my name in??” and then worried “If I put my name in the wrong one will all other information be in the wrong space?” and this panic led me to not filling the form out at all until half-way through the flight when everyone was asleep and all the lights were off. I used my iPod as a guide which allowed me to see two spaces at a time and fill them out in a truly terrible handwriting which I was sure that the customs and immigration people would really appreciate.
But eventually Eel and I filled out half of each form badly and then the plane landed in Narita, Tokyo!
PART 2- Bathroom Sentinel
The first thing we did was take pictures of the airport welcoming us to Japan. We were in the way of people that had actual important things to do like get outside and not use any of trashcans that Tokyo doesn’t have, so we had already marked ourselves as tourists. That’s fine. We were tourists!
The second thing we did was to sit against a wall and fill out the rest of our paperwork that we were supposed to have filled out on the plane. It turned out that Tracy, who has visited 800 bajillion other countries also wasn’t sure what the deal was with the two lines for the name and didn’t fill out parts of her stuff either. HIGH FIVE. The Japanese security guards watched us from afar but said nothing- perhaps terrified what the larger, stinkier Americans might do to their size 0 forms if they upset us.
Then Tracy and Eel used the bathrooms while I stood guard right outside and looked like a massive creeper. “Don’t mind me”, I might have said if someone asked, “I just like the sound of toilets flushing! I like it way more than going through Customs!”
When the two of them came out they had insights for me. There are buttons all over Japanese toilets. Tracy noted that she could make the toilet make a toilet SOUND without actually flushing (to save Japanese women the embarrassment of people hearing that they were pooping by making constant flushing sounds that make it sound like they poop a LOT). Eel found a button that sprayed a puff of fragrance at your butt. Both of them found bidet options. Eel found his, didn’t know what it was, and experienced startled and hilarious surprise when the mystery was resolved with water being squirted up his butt. ADVENTURE!
Since I didn’t go into that bathroom I don’t have much more to say about that experience.
PART 3- A girl named Fred
We mostly got through Customs and Immigration unscathed. My only real strange encounter was that we walked by a health area with pamphlets on what to do if you are sick. I tried to take an English language pamphlet out of curiosity and the Japanese security lady, wearing a mask over her nose and mouth (as we’d see all through-out the trip), sternly told me: “NO THANK YOU. No. NO THANK YOU” which I eventually realized meant: “Put down the pamphlet. It’s not for you. Get a different souvenir.” This reminded me a lot of the time I went to the Scientology church… but that’s a different story. At any rate, I felt no need to upset authority before I even stepped outside so I put the pamphlet back (and did not say: “FINE. Then NO, YOU’RE WECOME).
We didn’t see Fred, my friend from when I attended Beloit college in 2002 and 2003, immediately, so we did the currency exchange. Real quick, I’ll explain something that becomes important and amazing to us later:
Japanese yen to American dollar conversion is really easy. Basically you just take a zero off and you’ve got it. 100 yen= 1 dollar. 1,000 yen= 10 dollars. 10,000 yen= 100 dollars. Easy peasy one two threesy (Did I really just write that sentence?)
Afterwards Fred appeared like a ninja before our eyes- which makes sense since she’s been living in Japan for three years now. Seriously, even with her brightly colored hair, none of us saw her appear. She was just THERE. And hugging me! She and I babbled nonsense to each other about how long it had been since we’d roomed together in Beloit and Tracy and Eel politely let us do so. Then she escorted to us to the trains so that we could get to our hotel in Shinuku- a prefecture that we discovered was FOREVER away from the airport (about an hour) and cost a lot more than we expected.
PART 4- INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALS
Fred has lived in Japan for three years, but only recently moved to the Tokyo area. So she was confused by the rail system there too. She knew we had to board a specific train to get to Shinjuku, but wasn’t sure which. We boarded a train we thought was right only to discover that it absolutely wasn’t.
“Um”, she said with embarrassment, “I’m very sorry. This is… oh god… this is the wrong train. We have to get off at the next stop.”
Tracy and I weren’t sure how to respond. How big of an offense was this? Was it a big deal that we’d gotten on the wrong train? Eel knew how to respond though. He gleefully questioned, “Wait wait wait? Is this a CRIME? Are we INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALS now? Please say we are!”
Fred assured us that it wasn’t actually a big deal at all and then, seeing Eel’s crestfallen face, his ambitions of being an international criminal dashed before their time, she said “Oh. Ok then. Yeeeeees. It’s a big deal. You are DEFINITELY an international criminal”. Eel decided to happily believe her even though it was obvious she was just sparing his feelings.
So we got off at the next station and onto another train with big comfy seats. There was a woman in Fred’s seat. They tried to suss that out when it became clear. This was a more different wrong train. Fred was incredibly embarrassed. Eel continued to enjoy his International Criminal status. I wondered if it meant we’d have to get off again since we’d be sitting in people’s seats. The ticket checker dude came by and Fred talked to him and he decided it was OK that we stay there. Japan is sometimes very nice, and always very tolerate, of confused foreigners.
The seats were super comfortable. Being a criminal has it perks.
PART 5- Where my butt will never be cold again…
There’s going to be a lot of talk about bathrooms in my blog. I think I should feel weird about that or apologize, but instead I’m going to do nothing but warn you about it. So again: There’s going to be a lot of talk about bathrooms in my blog.
We got to the hotel and I asked Fred and Tracy to hide to the side while Eel and I checked in (apparently I could have made him lose his comp nights by having a third person with us so…um… I had to be careful). I went up to the counter and confidently checked in… in JAPANESE. I was pretty fantastic if I do say so myself. He said a thing. I said a thing. We had a thing going on, me and that Japanese hotel clerk. Then he said, full of confidence in my Japanese ability, “????????StuffSTUFFstuffSTUFFstuffSTUFF?????” What the heck, dude!? Why did you say all of that so fast? WERE YOU RAPPING AT ME IN JAPANESE? ARE YOU A FAMOUS JAPANESE RAPPER!? WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THAT THE HOTELS WERE RUN BY MUSIC SENSATIONS IN JAPAN!?
I asked him in Japanese if it was OK to speak English again. He laughed, agreed and told me that he was sorry- it was just that my Japanese was very good. I like being complimented. That bolstered my ego despite my knowing that he probably just said that because I said any Japanese at all. If I had only enthusiastically said: “TAMAGO!” at him upon arrival (that means “egg”, btw) he might have expressed how impressed he was with my accent.
A nice lady led us up to the 24th floor of the hotel and showed us the room. Beautiful room. It had a room of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building across the street and then I died inside from happiness because, uh… a lot of things take place at the building in one my favorite manga series. Why pretend I’m not a geek? I was super stoked. After she went away, I went down to collect Fred and Tracy so that we could make plans in our room.
It turns out… our room ate internet connections. There was no WiFi. And Fred couldn’t even get on her Japanese phone to use 4G. It just didn’t work. When I looked up how to get internet it said that we pay by device but did not say how much. Since I wasn’t even sure that my card would work in Japan or how much was in the account at that time- I didn’t feel comfortable purchasing internet for us all. So we didn’t have it, ever, in Tokyo.
So I used the bathroom instead of using the internet. I sat down and “WHOA, WHAT!?”. The toilet was super warm. Dude, it was heated. The toilet had a heated seat. Also, the toilet was in its own room as is the custom in Japan. Also there was a phone in there. And a bunch of buttons. This toilet had 3 different bidet options and you could change the pressure from low to high on the bidet. There wasn’t any way I wasn’t going to try it out. So I pushed: “Oscillating bidet” and then declared “ACK! AHAHAHAHAHA” after it did its thing with amazing accuracy. I stared curiously at the phone though. What is the phone for!? Do I lift it and someone at the front desk answers and brings me toilet paper if I run out? Do I make calls to my friends on the phone while doing my stuff? If I do that do I have a sound machine make flushing noises the whole time so that they can’t HEAR me doing my stuff? What is bathroom phone protocol??
There was a cute little sink in there too and no soap. So I walked to the actual bathroom to wash my hands (the toilet room is called ‘Toire’ or ‘Otearai’. The BATHroom is called ‘Ofuroba’).
Incidentally, when I buy my first house at the age of 234 I want it to be set up that way. I really really really like the toilet being in its own room and the way Japanese baths are… which I’ll get to now.
In Japan there is a separate area to wash your stinky body and then a 2 foot deep bathtub to soak yourself in. Because alone time is hard to come by in such a crowded country, having 15 minutes to just sit in a hot bath is an important and glorious part of the culture. In the hotels we stayed at there was a shower to wash in with AMAZING water pressure and then the bath. I cannot explain how wonderful it felt to shower and then relax in the tub.
After using the toilet I came out and we all decided we’d just wander around Shinjuku the rest of the night. Fred found us a place to eat where we ordered four meals and appetizers for around $40…total. Not each of us. Total. And it was a LOT of food. We got edamame, sushi, sashimi, chicken, onion rings, squid, tiny shrimp with their eyes still in, etc… Eel was surprisingly adventurous when it came to eating! He had one of everything (except the natto sushi, I think). He also ate the sushi and sashimi on the plane! We had flying fish which tasted just fine but was REALLY pretty. Someone should make a hairclip that looks like the fin of a flying fish. Seriously, it was lovely. I had remembered that in Beloit I tried natto and IT WAS THE WORST THING I EVER ATE EVER (which makes sense considering that it is very very old fermented beans). But still- I thought I should try it again. Scared, Tracy and I decided to go for it… after dipping it into soy sauce first. We took a bite aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand… it just tasted like soy sauce. Haha. Oops. It still had a slimy texture we didn’t like though. Fred had never tried it before (I think?) and she went for it too. No problem. It was nothing like my first experience with it.
We also tried the shrimp- but we could feel the little legs and the eyes in our mouths so Tracy and I swallowed it down while making hilarious, uncomfortable faces. The squid was fine, but rubbery. But the rest of the food was like THE BEST FOOD I HAD EVER HAD IN MY LIFE. It was GOOOOOD. The different kinds of tuna sashimi were amazing. The sushi, obviously, was the best sushi I’d ever had. Thumbs up, man, thumbs up.
AND IT WAS CHEAP. Eel, Tracy and I thought it was a fluke but Fred said it wasn’t really. NO WAY. Japan is an expensive place. No way that it was so cheap to eat that much food. NOT. POSSIBLE.
Spoiler: Super possible. Somehow food was always cheap. Wait, almost always.
PART 6- “It’s a MUSHROOM, OK!?” “No.”
Then we found a convenience store and bought a lot of random snack foods. All of them delicious. Nothing really more to report there. Japan has the best food in the world. I can declare this having been to exactly two countries in the world.
Next was an arcade!! There were UFO catcher machines like I’d seen in every anime ever (basically- claw machines in the United States with actual CUTE stuff in them). I tried to win a cute teddy bear and failed. Then I tried again and failed. Then again and… THAT WAS WHEN TRACY WON SOMETHING! She got a bear in a skeleton costume for her niece and we were so excited about it that we squealed our delight, danced around, high fived each other and said “YAAAAY!”. There was an older Japanese man standing nearby watching and once we did that he bust out into the happiest grin I’ve ever seen. He looked truly, truly, truly happy about our victory. I didn’t think it was possible for a person to actually make this face: ^_^ in real life… but he did. He chuckled and said something happily that we didn’t comprehend but we all understood. It was: “Way to go, you silly foreigners, you!”.
Then Fred won something from a machine. Eel tried to win me a cute kitty from another machine but I beat him to the punch- winning my own super cute kitty from a machine (with one beefy arm like Trogdor).
Fred had us try out a super fun drumming game that she watched, with increasing frustration as Tracy and I played it badly. “NO. KEEP DRUMMING” she kept saying as we grinned like idiots and forgot to drum. “KEEP DRUMMING, GUYS”. “SERIOUSLY. WHY AREN’T YOU DRUMMING?”
And that was basically that night as we wasted away our night eating and playing video games in Shinujuku. Fred had to leave and we hugged each other and promised to keep in contact and meet again. “One day….” We said dramatically as the wind blew, “We’ll be together again”.
OH. It’s important that I mention that maybe not EVERYTHING in the UFO machines was adorable kitties and bears. There were also snacks you could win and electronics. There were anime figurines you could get too- including gundams and scantily clad women including Rei and Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion (which is apparently still INSANELY ridiculous in Japan despite being like 20 years old). Also this stuffed mushroom dude that looked like… well, you know. Tracy was all “WHAT, NO? Why is this grinning penis everywhere? I don’t WANT a grinning penis! I don’t want a stuffed penis at all!”. Fred politely corrected her that “It’s a mushroom”, but Tracy was having none of it. “I hear what you’re saying” she said, “But I can also plainly see that it is a penis.”
That thing was ALL over Japan. Everywhere we went, in every machine, in every souvenir shop- you could get a grinning penis mushroom toy. I kept threatening to get one for Tracy and she kept threatening to exact revenge upon me should I do so.
Just you wait, Tracy. Just you wait…
We went back to the hotel and watched a few extraordinarily weird Japanese tv shows on the television before falling blissfully asleep.
NEXT TIME: The trio eats more cheap food and visits Ueno Park and Akihabara. You’ll be at the edge of your seats as you learn about vending machines, panda butts, monkey balls, renting maids and other very classy topics. Oh. And bathrooms. You’ll learn even more about bathrooms. ARE YOU READY!???
Also... Pictures to come SOON.
I’m writing this post right after the last one I wrote when I was woozy and sleepy. This means that I am still woozy and sleepy. Why am I doing this rather than sleeping? It’s because I don’t want to forget to do this or get too lazy and decide I don’t want to anymore. It’s also because I’ve been sleeping off and on all day and I’m really freaking tired of it already.
If it weren’t so late I’d take a walk. Despite all the complaining we did about constantly moving up and down stairs and having to run from this place to that place… my legs have gotten used to a certain amount of exercise. They feel like they’re turning to concrete from all the sitting and NOT running around I’ve done today. Oooh- Eel says that the pool might be open! Could be that I leave this post in favor of rushing off to do that. Don’t look all hurt and abandoned; You won’t even notice my absence if I do. PROMISE.
PART 1- All MY other friends drive Gundams
I don’t know how we managed it. I really don’t. But the very first flight to Tokyo? We got on it. And we got seats in Business First- a distinction from Business class and First Class that I don’t actually know because I’ve always sat Plain Jane Economy in the past.
We were given these BIG sections to sit in. I don’t really know how to explain it. There was a HUUUGE tv in front of each of us that we could watch for free (tons and tons and tons of stuff on them). There was a little cubby hole in front of us where we could rest our feet (that they provided slippers for) when we leaned back our chairs all the way into BED position. Man, I’m sort of at a loss for words here. It was amazing and absurd. Business class is apparently about being in a hotel that feeds you too much. OK. I like eating and sleeping. Carry on then, Business class.
First things first, they provided us with a free drink. Any drink. Including a long list of fancy schmancy alcohol with names I couldn’t pronounce so I just nervously said “Ice water, please?” instead. I was nervous about it because I got the sense that because I wasn’t ordering Le FanchSchmancemay Chardonnay that people would realize that I was a phony and kick me off the plane. “THERE!”, they’d declare in the Queen’s English accent, “Imposter!”. We’d have a tense chase scene featuring a lot of running up walls, crazy flipping over other people drinking fancy drinks, and I’d make a bunch of panicked Jackie Chan faces. I’m glad none of that happened though given that I’d exhausted my Fat Girl rushes around as I was trying to get to the gate. Also Jackie Chan is Chinese and I was going to Japan. And at any rate, I actually just wanted ice water because I thought maybe it was being dehydrated on the last flight that had made me so sick. The flight attendant poured the ice water without fighting at all.
Next they presented us with menus. We got assorted nuts in warmed dishes. Then we got an appetizer of sushi, sashimi, a piece of meat and a salad. Next we picked our main course: I got some fancy seafood meal and Eel got a fancy steak meal. We got bread and a little dish of butter. I noticed that some people got a tiny jar of jam and though I did not want jam on my bread I was annoyed that I was not given any so that I might take the tiny sized jam bottle with me off the plane. SOUVENIR. From the United States. Whatever, to me it was still like a vacation and you get souvenirs from vacations and I wanted a tiny jam bottle! Then we got ice cream sundaes with our choice of toppings. Eel and I shared a chocolate, fresh strawberry and mixed nuts sundae that was the most delicious thing I’d had since the last delicious thing they’d fed us. Later we got assorted cheese, crackers and grapes. Way later we got our choice of breakfast foods. I… just don’t even.
Lending more to the “I don’t even…” experience was that I was sitting next to a lady who I could tell really did not want me near her. She gave me and my Okami t-shirt a stern looking over (screw you, lady, Okami is awesome!), got on her phone and started talking to some friend she had been visiting in Seattle. Somewhere near the start of the conversation she sighed blissfully and said: “Thank you SO MUCH for letting me ride in your car too. All of my friends only have Lexuses.”
Oh, man. That is rough, buddy. How does she manage to get through her everyday knowing that she might have to ride in a Lexus? More importantly: what did she ride in when she visited THIS friend?
I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction (or irritation) of asking. I decided then that she and I would not be able to overcome our lifestyle differences and imagined a wall between us for the rest of the flight. But a see-through wall. Because I couldn’t help glancing over to her giant tv screen every now and then as she sporadically watched 10 minutes of several different shows on it. Cloud Atlas, Moulin Rouge, Law and Order, Les Miserables, some random documentary, back to Les Mis, some random tv show, back to Les Mis… It was very strange and fascinating to me. Maybe she was faking being a business class person too! Maybe she thought: “I need to get my money’s worth out of this experience. WATCH ALL THE SHOWS!” Maybe she was weird. It’s probably that she was weird. I can respect that.
Eel and I decided to try watching a movie together the best that we could while writing notes to one another on a notepad about it. We chose Cloud Atlas which I feel we absolutely should not have chosen. It was long, rambling, disconnected and weird-like me… but less charming. Tom Hanks played a thousand roles and I think we were supposed to take it seriously, but I couldn’t! “Now Tom Hanks is an over-acting caricature of a thief!”, “Now Tom Hanks is a serious faced peasant man hounded by barbarians and new fangled technology”, “Now Tom Hanks is behaving in a strangely offensive manner!”. The plot of the movie sort of got lost in all the “Oh! Is that Hugh Grant being someone else now?” and “That lady can’t act in any of the twenty roles she’s doing in this movie!” moments. But that’s Ok. The plot was also summed up in the first 20 minutes of the film and then rehashed over and over and over and over again inexplicably. It was so incredibly disappointing because there were storylines in the movie that I actually liked and themes in the film that I also really enjoyed. The visuals were also cool. But it just was NOT a good movie. I think it was even less a good airplane movie. But we soldiered through it and I fell asleep during storylines that I didn’t care about. It seemed the right response. All my notes on the film were just pictures of me making faces and saying “What?” and “???” and “That lady really can’t act.”
After that we watched together a documentary on forests that seemed to have been edited for content. Every time a cool animal tried to bite or maim another cool animal the film suddenly switched to a different animal all together- making the documentary feel just as disjointed as Cloud Atlas (which was NOT edited for gore and was just disjointed). I’m never sure what emotion to feel when I see an animal kill another one. I sort of quickly represent both teams with my emotions to make sure that everything is accounted for. “RUN, MOUSE, RUN!”- “GET IT, OWL, GET IT”, “OH NO, CUTE MOUSE FACE, HID OVER THERE”, “OWL, YOU ARE THE COOLEST. DON’T LET THAT MOUSE GET AWAY. IT’S HIDING OVER THERE”. “Ooooh… poor thing…”, “GOOD JOB, OWL. YOU ROCK.”. So maybe I should be happy that the documentary kept me from going through split personalities. Or maybe that is precisely why I was sad that it kept switching. Maybe there is something truly rewarding about not knowing who to root for and just rooting for both sides. Or maybe there is something really wrong with me as a person.
We were also given forms to fill out before landing: a customs form and an immigration form. A rather snotty flight attendant asked if Eel and I were family because then we’d only need one of the second and I first said “yes” and then called her over to explain that we might not actually be (my life is complicated). “We’re married”, I explained, “But I kept my last name. Do we both need the forms after all?” She looked annoyed and responded with: “You made a mistake” and handed me an extra form. I’m guessing she thought that keeping my own last name was a mistake. I said: “I think you wearing that super cute scarf around your neck was a mistake because now I’m going to choke you with it!” Only I said that in my head so that she couldn’t fight back with an actually funny insult that would put me to shame or perhaps throw me in jail.
The forms were weird. There were two spaces up at the top to write our full names which meant that I wondered: “Which one do I ACTUALLY write my name in??” and then worried “If I put my name in the wrong one will all other information be in the wrong space?” and this panic led me to not filling the form out at all until half-way through the flight when everyone was asleep and all the lights were off. I used my iPod as a guide which allowed me to see two spaces at a time and fill them out in a truly terrible handwriting which I was sure that the customs and immigration people would really appreciate.
But eventually Eel and I filled out half of each form badly and then the plane landed in Narita, Tokyo!
PART 2- Bathroom Sentinel
The first thing we did was take pictures of the airport welcoming us to Japan. We were in the way of people that had actual important things to do like get outside and not use any of trashcans that Tokyo doesn’t have, so we had already marked ourselves as tourists. That’s fine. We were tourists!
The second thing we did was to sit against a wall and fill out the rest of our paperwork that we were supposed to have filled out on the plane. It turned out that Tracy, who has visited 800 bajillion other countries also wasn’t sure what the deal was with the two lines for the name and didn’t fill out parts of her stuff either. HIGH FIVE. The Japanese security guards watched us from afar but said nothing- perhaps terrified what the larger, stinkier Americans might do to their size 0 forms if they upset us.
Then Tracy and Eel used the bathrooms while I stood guard right outside and looked like a massive creeper. “Don’t mind me”, I might have said if someone asked, “I just like the sound of toilets flushing! I like it way more than going through Customs!”
When the two of them came out they had insights for me. There are buttons all over Japanese toilets. Tracy noted that she could make the toilet make a toilet SOUND without actually flushing (to save Japanese women the embarrassment of people hearing that they were pooping by making constant flushing sounds that make it sound like they poop a LOT). Eel found a button that sprayed a puff of fragrance at your butt. Both of them found bidet options. Eel found his, didn’t know what it was, and experienced startled and hilarious surprise when the mystery was resolved with water being squirted up his butt. ADVENTURE!
Since I didn’t go into that bathroom I don’t have much more to say about that experience.
PART 3- A girl named Fred
We mostly got through Customs and Immigration unscathed. My only real strange encounter was that we walked by a health area with pamphlets on what to do if you are sick. I tried to take an English language pamphlet out of curiosity and the Japanese security lady, wearing a mask over her nose and mouth (as we’d see all through-out the trip), sternly told me: “NO THANK YOU. No. NO THANK YOU” which I eventually realized meant: “Put down the pamphlet. It’s not for you. Get a different souvenir.” This reminded me a lot of the time I went to the Scientology church… but that’s a different story. At any rate, I felt no need to upset authority before I even stepped outside so I put the pamphlet back (and did not say: “FINE. Then NO, YOU’RE WECOME).
We didn’t see Fred, my friend from when I attended Beloit college in 2002 and 2003, immediately, so we did the currency exchange. Real quick, I’ll explain something that becomes important and amazing to us later:
Japanese yen to American dollar conversion is really easy. Basically you just take a zero off and you’ve got it. 100 yen= 1 dollar. 1,000 yen= 10 dollars. 10,000 yen= 100 dollars. Easy peasy one two threesy (Did I really just write that sentence?)
Afterwards Fred appeared like a ninja before our eyes- which makes sense since she’s been living in Japan for three years now. Seriously, even with her brightly colored hair, none of us saw her appear. She was just THERE. And hugging me! She and I babbled nonsense to each other about how long it had been since we’d roomed together in Beloit and Tracy and Eel politely let us do so. Then she escorted to us to the trains so that we could get to our hotel in Shinuku- a prefecture that we discovered was FOREVER away from the airport (about an hour) and cost a lot more than we expected.
PART 4- INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALS
Fred has lived in Japan for three years, but only recently moved to the Tokyo area. So she was confused by the rail system there too. She knew we had to board a specific train to get to Shinjuku, but wasn’t sure which. We boarded a train we thought was right only to discover that it absolutely wasn’t.
“Um”, she said with embarrassment, “I’m very sorry. This is… oh god… this is the wrong train. We have to get off at the next stop.”
Tracy and I weren’t sure how to respond. How big of an offense was this? Was it a big deal that we’d gotten on the wrong train? Eel knew how to respond though. He gleefully questioned, “Wait wait wait? Is this a CRIME? Are we INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALS now? Please say we are!”
Fred assured us that it wasn’t actually a big deal at all and then, seeing Eel’s crestfallen face, his ambitions of being an international criminal dashed before their time, she said “Oh. Ok then. Yeeeeees. It’s a big deal. You are DEFINITELY an international criminal”. Eel decided to happily believe her even though it was obvious she was just sparing his feelings.
So we got off at the next station and onto another train with big comfy seats. There was a woman in Fred’s seat. They tried to suss that out when it became clear. This was a more different wrong train. Fred was incredibly embarrassed. Eel continued to enjoy his International Criminal status. I wondered if it meant we’d have to get off again since we’d be sitting in people’s seats. The ticket checker dude came by and Fred talked to him and he decided it was OK that we stay there. Japan is sometimes very nice, and always very tolerate, of confused foreigners.
The seats were super comfortable. Being a criminal has it perks.
PART 5- Where my butt will never be cold again…
There’s going to be a lot of talk about bathrooms in my blog. I think I should feel weird about that or apologize, but instead I’m going to do nothing but warn you about it. So again: There’s going to be a lot of talk about bathrooms in my blog.
We got to the hotel and I asked Fred and Tracy to hide to the side while Eel and I checked in (apparently I could have made him lose his comp nights by having a third person with us so…um… I had to be careful). I went up to the counter and confidently checked in… in JAPANESE. I was pretty fantastic if I do say so myself. He said a thing. I said a thing. We had a thing going on, me and that Japanese hotel clerk. Then he said, full of confidence in my Japanese ability, “????????StuffSTUFFstuffSTUFFstuffSTUFF?????” What the heck, dude!? Why did you say all of that so fast? WERE YOU RAPPING AT ME IN JAPANESE? ARE YOU A FAMOUS JAPANESE RAPPER!? WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THAT THE HOTELS WERE RUN BY MUSIC SENSATIONS IN JAPAN!?
I asked him in Japanese if it was OK to speak English again. He laughed, agreed and told me that he was sorry- it was just that my Japanese was very good. I like being complimented. That bolstered my ego despite my knowing that he probably just said that because I said any Japanese at all. If I had only enthusiastically said: “TAMAGO!” at him upon arrival (that means “egg”, btw) he might have expressed how impressed he was with my accent.
A nice lady led us up to the 24th floor of the hotel and showed us the room. Beautiful room. It had a room of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building across the street and then I died inside from happiness because, uh… a lot of things take place at the building in one my favorite manga series. Why pretend I’m not a geek? I was super stoked. After she went away, I went down to collect Fred and Tracy so that we could make plans in our room.
It turns out… our room ate internet connections. There was no WiFi. And Fred couldn’t even get on her Japanese phone to use 4G. It just didn’t work. When I looked up how to get internet it said that we pay by device but did not say how much. Since I wasn’t even sure that my card would work in Japan or how much was in the account at that time- I didn’t feel comfortable purchasing internet for us all. So we didn’t have it, ever, in Tokyo.
So I used the bathroom instead of using the internet. I sat down and “WHOA, WHAT!?”. The toilet was super warm. Dude, it was heated. The toilet had a heated seat. Also, the toilet was in its own room as is the custom in Japan. Also there was a phone in there. And a bunch of buttons. This toilet had 3 different bidet options and you could change the pressure from low to high on the bidet. There wasn’t any way I wasn’t going to try it out. So I pushed: “Oscillating bidet” and then declared “ACK! AHAHAHAHAHA” after it did its thing with amazing accuracy. I stared curiously at the phone though. What is the phone for!? Do I lift it and someone at the front desk answers and brings me toilet paper if I run out? Do I make calls to my friends on the phone while doing my stuff? If I do that do I have a sound machine make flushing noises the whole time so that they can’t HEAR me doing my stuff? What is bathroom phone protocol??
There was a cute little sink in there too and no soap. So I walked to the actual bathroom to wash my hands (the toilet room is called ‘Toire’ or ‘Otearai’. The BATHroom is called ‘Ofuroba’).
Incidentally, when I buy my first house at the age of 234 I want it to be set up that way. I really really really like the toilet being in its own room and the way Japanese baths are… which I’ll get to now.
In Japan there is a separate area to wash your stinky body and then a 2 foot deep bathtub to soak yourself in. Because alone time is hard to come by in such a crowded country, having 15 minutes to just sit in a hot bath is an important and glorious part of the culture. In the hotels we stayed at there was a shower to wash in with AMAZING water pressure and then the bath. I cannot explain how wonderful it felt to shower and then relax in the tub.
After using the toilet I came out and we all decided we’d just wander around Shinjuku the rest of the night. Fred found us a place to eat where we ordered four meals and appetizers for around $40…total. Not each of us. Total. And it was a LOT of food. We got edamame, sushi, sashimi, chicken, onion rings, squid, tiny shrimp with their eyes still in, etc… Eel was surprisingly adventurous when it came to eating! He had one of everything (except the natto sushi, I think). He also ate the sushi and sashimi on the plane! We had flying fish which tasted just fine but was REALLY pretty. Someone should make a hairclip that looks like the fin of a flying fish. Seriously, it was lovely. I had remembered that in Beloit I tried natto and IT WAS THE WORST THING I EVER ATE EVER (which makes sense considering that it is very very old fermented beans). But still- I thought I should try it again. Scared, Tracy and I decided to go for it… after dipping it into soy sauce first. We took a bite aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand… it just tasted like soy sauce. Haha. Oops. It still had a slimy texture we didn’t like though. Fred had never tried it before (I think?) and she went for it too. No problem. It was nothing like my first experience with it.
We also tried the shrimp- but we could feel the little legs and the eyes in our mouths so Tracy and I swallowed it down while making hilarious, uncomfortable faces. The squid was fine, but rubbery. But the rest of the food was like THE BEST FOOD I HAD EVER HAD IN MY LIFE. It was GOOOOOD. The different kinds of tuna sashimi were amazing. The sushi, obviously, was the best sushi I’d ever had. Thumbs up, man, thumbs up.
AND IT WAS CHEAP. Eel, Tracy and I thought it was a fluke but Fred said it wasn’t really. NO WAY. Japan is an expensive place. No way that it was so cheap to eat that much food. NOT. POSSIBLE.
Spoiler: Super possible. Somehow food was always cheap. Wait, almost always.
PART 6- “It’s a MUSHROOM, OK!?” “No.”
Then we found a convenience store and bought a lot of random snack foods. All of them delicious. Nothing really more to report there. Japan has the best food in the world. I can declare this having been to exactly two countries in the world.
Next was an arcade!! There were UFO catcher machines like I’d seen in every anime ever (basically- claw machines in the United States with actual CUTE stuff in them). I tried to win a cute teddy bear and failed. Then I tried again and failed. Then again and… THAT WAS WHEN TRACY WON SOMETHING! She got a bear in a skeleton costume for her niece and we were so excited about it that we squealed our delight, danced around, high fived each other and said “YAAAAY!”. There was an older Japanese man standing nearby watching and once we did that he bust out into the happiest grin I’ve ever seen. He looked truly, truly, truly happy about our victory. I didn’t think it was possible for a person to actually make this face: ^_^ in real life… but he did. He chuckled and said something happily that we didn’t comprehend but we all understood. It was: “Way to go, you silly foreigners, you!”.
Then Fred won something from a machine. Eel tried to win me a cute kitty from another machine but I beat him to the punch- winning my own super cute kitty from a machine (with one beefy arm like Trogdor).
Fred had us try out a super fun drumming game that she watched, with increasing frustration as Tracy and I played it badly. “NO. KEEP DRUMMING” she kept saying as we grinned like idiots and forgot to drum. “KEEP DRUMMING, GUYS”. “SERIOUSLY. WHY AREN’T YOU DRUMMING?”
And that was basically that night as we wasted away our night eating and playing video games in Shinujuku. Fred had to leave and we hugged each other and promised to keep in contact and meet again. “One day….” We said dramatically as the wind blew, “We’ll be together again”.
OH. It’s important that I mention that maybe not EVERYTHING in the UFO machines was adorable kitties and bears. There were also snacks you could win and electronics. There were anime figurines you could get too- including gundams and scantily clad women including Rei and Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion (which is apparently still INSANELY ridiculous in Japan despite being like 20 years old). Also this stuffed mushroom dude that looked like… well, you know. Tracy was all “WHAT, NO? Why is this grinning penis everywhere? I don’t WANT a grinning penis! I don’t want a stuffed penis at all!”. Fred politely corrected her that “It’s a mushroom”, but Tracy was having none of it. “I hear what you’re saying” she said, “But I can also plainly see that it is a penis.”
That thing was ALL over Japan. Everywhere we went, in every machine, in every souvenir shop- you could get a grinning penis mushroom toy. I kept threatening to get one for Tracy and she kept threatening to exact revenge upon me should I do so.
Just you wait, Tracy. Just you wait…
We went back to the hotel and watched a few extraordinarily weird Japanese tv shows on the television before falling blissfully asleep.
NEXT TIME: The trio eats more cheap food and visits Ueno Park and Akihabara. You’ll be at the edge of your seats as you learn about vending machines, panda butts, monkey balls, renting maids and other very classy topics. Oh. And bathrooms. You’ll learn even more about bathrooms. ARE YOU READY!???
Also... Pictures to come SOON.