Hostile Traveler

I haven’t written anything for the past couple of days because, well, nothing that exciting is going on. I’ve been teaching class during the day, grabbing some dinner, then crashing. It doesn’t help that the remnants of jetlag are on the periphery of my consciousness, and that it’s been raining off and on so I’m not that inclined to go out anyways. Still, that’s likely to change tomorrow, which is the last day of training, and a half day to boot. Then Friday I’ll have the day to do some exploring, which I’m still figuring out.

For the foodies out there, I’ve been eating local as much as possible. For example, last night I went to an all-you-can-eat sushi and shabu shabu place. I’m not a sushi fan, but I love shabu shabu, which is basically a boiling pot of broth in which you cook paper-thin slices of meat and an assortment of veggies. Everything is very fresh and it’s a fun social thing to do. I also tried a kind of Japanese-French bistro place yesterday for lunch where I had a pork loin stewed in plum sauce and a kind of pasty risotto. Today was slightly more traditional Japanese - tempura in a bento with miso soup and steamed rice. The nice thing about Japanese food is I always feel good after eating it because it tends to be so light in comparison to Western food. Or it could be that I’m eating with sticks which slows my gluttonous ass down to more human levels.

Lately, I’ve had people ask how I find things to do when I travel to different places. When I first started doing this sort of thing, I did what everyone else does - pick up a travel guide and read. The thing is, youre typically getting a very sterile view of the area you’re going to be visiting. You get all of the “standard” attractions, places to go, and so on. It works, but it’s not a good way to get a true feel of where you’re staying.

For that, I’ve become very dependent on blogs and message boards. Blogs written by expats living in an area oftentimes don’t intend to provide travel information to visitors, but they do as a side effect of talking about ther lives. They may talk about something cool they visited, or a great place they ate, and for someone coming from the outside that may be a place that they would never have found on their own or by using a travel guide. The same goes for message boards, which are often congregation points for expats and can provide a ton of information - restaurants, attractions, and so on. Really, they’re a great way to see some of the grittier bits of a city that are off the beaten path.

In preparation for this trip, I looked back on some resources that I had found on previous trips to Tokyo. Alas, my favorite site MasaMania seems to be updated only infrequently at best lately. MasaMania is a Japanese photographer guy that does the most bizarre Engrish commentary ever but shows some interesting cultural phenomena at the same time, maybe inadvertently. The site now is just a shell of what it used to be.

So, I had to rely on some more standard resources, such as Metropolis, probably the largest Tokyo expat magazine and message board out there. There’s also a slightly more offcolor forum called Fucked Gaijin that is quite good. Quirky Japan is a listing of some of the stranger sights to see, and Japanmanship is a sometimes funny, sometimes bitter blog that has some gems in it. There are numerous other blogs out there because the expat community in Tokyo is so large, so just looking through some of those tends to be a bit of an adventure.

The other bit of “research” that I did was to watch a BBC series called Japanorama which is a BBC series hosted by Jonathan Ross. For those who don’t know him, he’s a talk show host in England that has a speech impediment like Barbara Walters where r’s become w’s. Think ‘Barbara’ becoming ‘Bawbawa’ and you’re on the right path. Anyways, each episode focuses on a theme (cool, geek, cute, tribe) and shows a bunch of stuff related to it. So, for example, in the zoku (tribe) episode, they covered Cosplay, which is where people dress up like anime characters and such. They also covered a wrestler called “Hard Gay” that is straight but plays a completely over-the-top gay leather type. If you have a few minutes, the YouTube vids the link point to are pretty funny. Think of ‘Party Boy” from Jackass and you’re on the right path.

So that’s my kind of alternative guide to discovering new places. It’s not quite as straightforward a path as looking through a travel book, but I can guarantee you’ll find something unique every time.

(Quick announcement - I heavily edited the last post because it wasn’t complete and I had done it on a PDA. Should be more complete now if you read it before.)

After the interesting portion of the flight, the next 6.5 hours to Tokyo was positively boring - no naked crazy chicks or anything. Pity…that sort of stuff should be standard. But I digress - 1 hour bus ride from Narita to Tokyo Center, a quick cab ride to Roppongi, and I’m at the hotel.

The hotel that I use isn’t really a hotel - it’s a managed apartment. They’re designed for long-stay travelers, but I like them a lot because you wind up with what amounts to a small apartment. You give up some services, but they’re things I don’t tend to use anyways, like hotel restaurants, room service, and that sort of stuff. Instead, you get a nice apartment with a small kitchen, maid service every 2 or 3 days, and a generally very quiet relaxed atmosphere. I’ve stayed at this place before (though under a different name - Mansions at Roppongi) and I really enjoyed both the location and the rooms. Oh, did I mention hardwood heated floors? Nice. Oh, and the best part is that it’s a lot cheaper than a standard hotel is, so I win and the company wins.

Here’s a couple of pictures of the room. They’re taken at night, so a bit dark, but you get the idea. Also, for those of you that have looked at the Tokyo gallery posted, some of these will look familiar. Same place, plus I’m going to steal one or two pics later.

You may be wondering where the title came from. Well, the Japanese have taken the toilet - a simple, practical device, and made it into something rather unholy in its complexity. I admit there are some nifty bits, like the heated seat and the little sink above the tank, but from there it just gets kind of odd.

This is the control panel for the toilet. The top buttons are for flushing. I’m not sure what the kanji means, but I think the one on the left means ‘tsunami’ and the one on the right means ‘better grab onto something or you’re gonna get sucked in’. Agressive toilet. The rest of the panel is for various adjustments for a nozzle that will come in to wash you up and hot air to dry you - that sort of stuff. The thing is, I can’t read Japanese, so I’m not about to start screwing around with this stuff. The last thing I need is to have a power washer come out and assault my turdcutter.

Really, my main fear is that the Japanese are putting far too much technology into household items. Maybe we need to screen ‘The Terminator’ again so that people understand what might happen if machines become sentinent and decide to take over. The last thing I need is to get violated and killed by a smart toilet. The washing machine/dryer combo thing scares me too:

Quick view from my hotel this morning. Yeah, I know - not much to look at. Take note of the Eiffel Tower ripoff on the far left. That’s the Tokyo Tower, which is taller than the Eiffel, but far far uglier. The gallery shows pics from the top that I took last trip.

If you decide to go to the Tokyo Tower, beware of this idiot. It’s the mascot, and for some reason I want to punch it in the head worse than Barney.

I’m staying in Roppongi, which is were most of the gaijin (foreigners) seem to wind up. It ranges between very cool and seedy depending on where you go, but it’s absolutely packed with places to eat and drink, and everyone can speak at least a bit of English. Though, walking by all of the African touts saying ‘Yo - tittie bar?’ with various accents is actually kind of funny.

Roppongi is called the ‘High Touch Town’, which may be because of all of the hostess bars and strip clubs and such, but really, it’s a lot less seedy than the serious red-light district in Shinjuku. It has its flaws, but in all, it’s a very cool place to use as a home base.

Today was spent wandering around the area mostly. It was very nice for the afternoon, and walking in the sun makes the lizard brain happy. One of the things you see on almost every street are vending machines of all sorts, though occasionally they tend to group them together, as in this pic:

…and before anyone asks, yes, there are vending machines where you can buy used schoolgirl panties. I’ve personally only seen one, and that was a few years back, so it may not be the case anymore. Understand that the Japanese fetish culture knows almost zero bounds, and there are entire books written on the topic.

Speaking of dark, seedy places, I wandered into a local arcade to check out what was new. This goes to all of my fellow otaku(nerds) out there. First up, a pic of a giant horseracing game that people were betting on.

The second pic is of the machines, which are all equipped with HD displays, decent sound, and so on. not too shabby. Tekken and Virtua Fighter 5 see to be the games of choice.

OK…enough nerdiness. To balance that out, I wandered around Roppongi Hills, which is a new development with a multitude of restaurants, shops, an art museum, and a hotel, amongst other things. There was a spring festival going on to celebrate the cherry blossoms and such. The thing is, I’m in the middle of the city, so the closest I can see right now are what line the street. Pretty though…

I wanted to swing by a store and pick up some water and snacks to put in my room. The snack section of the local store had some interesting options, to say the least. I think I might have some sort of natural ability when it comes to finding tentacles.

The same store (a giant place called Don Quixote in Roppongi) also had one of the greatest Engrish signs I’ve ever seen. Good luck making sense of this one.

After the days wanderings, the weather got much wetter, and my colleage Ken from Seoul Korea arrived, so we went out to dinner in Roppongi Hills. We found a fantastic Tonkatsu (breaded fried pork cutlet) restaurant, and I had an amazing meal of tonkatsu dipped in fresh spicy toasted sesame sauce, shredded cabbage, and miso soup. Yummy.

Tomorrow I teach yet another class. I’m a bit afraid of what the English level will be because my previous trips to Japan have been for classes and projects where people don’t know what the hell I’m saying. Maybe we’ll do charades or something.

So I’m in Alaska. Specifically, Anchorage. I’m not supposed to be here - I should be continuing on what was supposed to be a direct flight from Newark to Tokyo. But, I have bad travel karma, as you may have figured out already.

Basically, a woman in the section in front of me lost her freaking mind. There was an asian woman (I later learned she was Singaporean) hanging around the galley in between the two business class sections of the plane. She was being a pain in the ass to the flight attendants, but it didn’t seem like anything too bad.

A little while later, one of the flight attendants got on the intercom and asked if there was a doctor on the plane, and that there was a medical emergency. I figured someone was having a heart attack or something, and as it turned out, there was indeed a doctor onboard. So, things are quiet for a bit, then suddenly a naked asian woman wanders into my section of the plane. And when I say naked, she’s completely bareassed. It was only for a few seconds before one of the flight attendants (who turned out to be one of the coolest I’ve ever met) covered her with a blanket and basically tackled her into the bathroom in front of me. Now, this is all I saw aside from when they finally got her out of the bathroom an hour later, but I talked with the flight attendant that tackled her to get the rest of the story.

The story goes like this: first, the woman was acting kind of strangely, making irrational demands, and so on. Then she started yelling and stuff, and the flight attendants were considering knocking her ass out. She told me that they keep some stuff onboard for unruly passengers, including a strong sedative, handcuffs, and restraints. I didn’t know I was on S&M airlines. Huh. The doctor was called because they thought she was on drugs and they wanted to make sure that if they sedated her, they wouldn’t kill her. But, I guess before it came to that, she passed out in her seat.

So, fast-forward about an hour. Crazy Singaporean Chick (CSC from now on) wakes up after pissing herself in a big way. She’s upset about this, so proceeds to get up and strip out of her clothes. Meanwhile, she loses her false teeth, gets super pissed, and decides to go look for them. That’s when I saw her. After the flight attendant got her into the bathroom, she proceeded to piss some more, throw up, and then asked the flight attendant (a woman in case it’s not clear) to feel her up.

It took about an hour to get her out of the bathroom and restrained in her seat, after which I guess she passed out again. Okay…crisis over, and it was better than the movie - Little Children, for you movie buffs. Incidentally, Continental doesn’t censor movies, and it seemed like the flight attendant (same one that tackled CSC for reference) would come by to check on me every time Kate Winslet was getting railed by the guy in the film. I think she was doing on purpose, cause she kept smirking at me. I know I’m a perv, go away.

Okay, so after finishing the movie, I happened to look up at the in-flight map and noticed that our destination time was in an hour, which was impossible. Then I saw that we were headed to Anchorage. Just about then the pilot came on and told us that the ‘medical emergency’ was forcing him to land in Alaska. Apparently CSC had woken up and was not happy about her situation, so they decided to boot her off the plane. Personally, I would have gone with the happy drug needle on her, but that’s me.

After landing in Anchorage, the police came onboard and dragged her off the plane. She’s going to be brought up on federal charges, so she ought to have an interesting stay in sunny Alaska. A couple of hours later and we’re off to Japan.

One of these days I’ll have a normal flight. Maybe it’s me.