Odaiba, Tokyo Dome, etc...

I haven't been doing a ton of interesting stuff recently, but I have some updates.

Last week, I went to Odaiba, which is this man-made island right off of Tokyo. It was originally used for building weapons or something, but was later converted into a very nice resort-type place. I really liked it, it was beautiful. It felt much more spacious than main Tokyo. We went to an artificial beach, and saw a smaller version of the statue of liberty. They kind of failed at the beach (there were no waves, and you couldn't go in the water really. Also, there were these people who were trying to raft or something, but they couldn't move and they just kept falling over). Then we went to the mall, where they had a lot of cool stuff. They had this European section that was built like Venice or something, and had a fake sky and everything. We went to a Toyota headquarters type place, and drove in these fake car simulators, which was fun and free. Also, we went to this bizarre theater (the kind where the chairs move and go crazy), which was simulating a race car. They played this really hilarious and epic opera music. We also went on the famous Ferris wheel, which was a lot of fun.

We also ventured to Park Hyatt in Shinjuku, which is where a lot of Lost in Translation took place. We got to go up to the bar on the top floor, but we felt weird being so under-dressed (everyone was in tuxedos, and our wardrobe included a batman shirt). But we decided that we should go back near the end and dress up nicely.



We also went to the Tokyo Dome, which is where all the major baseball games go on. But we didn't really go inside, we just walked around the area, which is also kind of like an amusement park.

Hmm...I am continuing my tutoring lessons, which is going well. I get about 25 dollars per hour, which is pretty amazing. Also, I got a haircut and didn't come out with crazy punk Japanese hair.

こんにちは、総理大臣さん

Today was really bizarre and amusing. I went to Kichijoji to enjoy the nice weather and study for my midterms (ironically, it was Japanese Government). (Oh, funny side note, I saw the “manner police” go by – apparently they just make sure everyone is displaying good manners – how creepy). While I was sippin’ on my coffee, I heard some dude screaming over a loud mic, so I went to check out who it was, turns out it was Prime Minister Aso! I didn’t really recognize him at first, because he was kind of far away, but then as I got closer I could see his face. And there were a ton of guards and reporters and everything there, so it clicked pretty quickly. I heard a bunch of schoolgirls walking by being like “OMG IT’S ASO! ASO-SAN!!!” I could tell the secret service looked kind of suspicious of me when I took a picture, like I had a gun camera or something.
As I was standing there, this Japanese lady came up next to me, and was like “That’s Aso, you know.” And we got to talking, and apparently she had lived in America for a while. She was really friendly. So she offered to treat me to a meal, but I declined. But she wanted to show me where it was anyway, so we went off to this restaurant. She called the waitress over and asked her to draw me a map of the closest one to my house. She kept saying such un-Japanese, awkward things that made me laugh. Like she kept trying to set us up. She asked the waitress if she had a boyfriend, and if she was looking. Then she was like “maybe you can start dating! Just come here next time and maybe you marry!” And then the girl, looking horribly uncomfortable, said she had a boyfriend, and the lady was like “Oh, well you just become good friends then! You live near to each other, right?” I just kind of laughed uncomfortably and finally we left. The lady was really nice though, and she gave me a free meal ticket that she had been working at for a while (you need to eat at that restaurant like 15 times, and then you get a free meal, and she gave me her completed one).
On the way back to where Aso was speaking, she started talking about her niece and was like “how you feel about older Japanese women?” When we arrived, there were interviews going on everywhere. The lady was like “maybe I get you interview with Aso, you’re a politics major.” And so she went and started heckling the Secret Service dudes, being like “This man from America, he want speak to Prime Minister Aso!” I was kind of just standing behind her being like “no, no, no, I don’t, really.” But she didn’t listen. It was so embarrassing, but hilarious. And then this celebrity politician came out (she was a famous news broadcaster apparently, and now she is a member of the House of Councilors) and basically in the middle of her interview, the lady went up to her and was like “This man from America!! Meet him!” And the lady looked pretty uncomfortable, but was nice enough to come over to me and introduce herself and give me her business card. Then the lady was like “You two take picture together!!” But I got out of that one by pretending I forgot my camera. Then the lady asked the celebrity “You just got married, yes? That is pity.” I was kind of thinking ‘oh god, oh god, don’t try to set me up with this powerful politician who could have me deported at the snap of a finger.” Of course she didn’t, but it was a fear for a few seconds there.
Then after she left, the lady went on to shout at camera men filming interviews, being like “Hey! I got American here, want to do interview!” The reporters just looked confused, and then came up to me and were like “Sorry, we don’t speak English, so we can’t interview you.” I really hope none of her comments make it onto TV. And I really hope all of those moments of me in front of the cameras never air either.
Such a bizarre day, but kind of hilarious now that I look back on it.

Taipei!

I went to Taiwan! It was probably my last trip out of Japan, so I’m very glad I went. It’s the cheapest place to get to from Japan (even cheaper than most domestic flights/trains), and I ended up spending very little money there (like under 100 dollars, including meals and transportation). I think a large part of that was because we spent like 70% of our time at night markets, which were really fascinating and awesome, so most of my full meals were around a dollar. Prices there are just amazing! Whenever I travel outside, it’s so painful coming back to Japan and the high prices. The night markets had all kinds of interesting and tasty foods (I think Taipei is known for being one of the best cities in Asia for food). I had a ton of dumplings and other popular Chinese food, but also a lot of weird stuff I’d never heard of before. Lots of strange new fish and fruits. I am really a big fan of bubble tea as well, which is basically this cold tea-like drink that has hundreds of squishy tapioca balls at the bottom, and you suck them through the big straw. Really tasty. Anyway, I’m just happy I didn’t get food poisoning or anything from the street stalls (which smelled really grotesque at times). China is kind of notorious for getting people sick, but I’m not sure about Taiwan.
Another big highlight of the trip was our hotel room, which was super swank, but cheap! It was only slightly more expensive than the hostel I stayed at in Korea (where we had to straddle the toilet while showering, and shared all the facilities with like 20 other people). We got over 100 TV channels (for all my bad Asian TV desires), and also really nice facilities. I took away the condoms they put in the drawer every night, and they were always replenished immediately (they must have thought we were having crazy threesomes or something).
I didn’t get as much interaction with Taiwanese people as I would have liked. The people weren’t as outgoing as in Korea. I did get some stares, though. When I passed this one little girl, my Taiwanese friend who I went with told me that she shouted to her mom “Look mommy, a foreigner! He’s white!” Or something to that effect. There were VERY few other foreigners there, I must have only seen a couple over the course of my trip.
The weather was really nice while we were there. Taiwan is sub-tropical, so there were palm trees and everything, as well as extremely hot weather. We didn’t get to go to any beaches, but we went to some nice places. There was this onsen place, which was very beautiful and smelled strongly like sulfur.
Another highlight was going to Taipei 101, which was the tallest building in the world until pretty recently. We got to go up all the way to the top in the fastest elevator in the world (my ears almost exploded). The view was kind of shitty though, because of all the smog.

Yesterday I went up to Yokohama to see Kyoko and Nu again, which was a lot of fun.
We went to the 150th anniversary of 開国, the opening of Japan to the rest of the world. And what better way to celebrate, than with a fucking giant robot spider? I’m sure it made sense in someone’s mind. It was pretty interesting, to say the least. People came from far and wide to see that thing move and make hissing noises. The crowds were once again ridiculous (I went to Harajuku the day before, and to get into the station took about 25 minutes, just to swipe in at the counter). There were thousands of people lined up for every event, and some of them had wait times of over an hour and a half. Oh, Japan. Because of that we didn’t get to see TOO many things. But we also saw this weird anime movie project which was interesting and pretty cool. The line was like an hour long, though, and the theater fit about 1,000 people per 20 minute viewings, so there must have been a TON of people waiting. The next day, we went to a 動物園 Zoorashia, and saw lots of cool animals. Their main attraction was this weird giraffe/horse/zebra looking hybrid thing called okapi.
Picture: Some fruit in Harajuku.

Here's a video of the spider robot.

Kagaya - Puppets!

It's been a while since I updated this. I guess I've just fallen into a daily routine that isn't terribly interesting unless you're me. I'm still having a lot of fun though, and funny/weird shit happens constantly, I wish I could document it all, but alas...

Anyway, here is something I thought was note-worthy.
I went with some friends to Shinbashi, where we had some coffee at McDonalds (for free!) and then headed to a restaurant for dinner. Getting there was a challenge in itself. I printed directions off of the website (which was basically the owner’s drawing on a white-board, and of which he took a photo of).It was the fucking weeeeeirdest place I’ve ever been. Basically, it was in this basement, and when we got there it was completely deserted except for the guy who runs it and one cook who’s right there. So it was INCREDIBLY awkward at first, because it was dead silent, so we didn’t really talk for a while, just kind of laughed awkwardly. The owner then went to his little closet, and brought out this robot animal, and put our napkins on it, and remote-controlled it to walk to us and bring us our napkins. And he was basically screaming weird shit the whole time. He proceeded to put it in my friend’s face. Then, he brought us the drink menu, which was a little play book with crayon-writing and prices next to it, and he sang the whole menu to us in English. We chose apple sake (which was delicious, but strong at the same time). Then we had to choose a “country style.” We went with America. Which basically entailed him singing the national anthem while using a puppet to carry our food to us. Our drinks were pretty hilarious, too. Karyn got a regular glass, but her refill was this statue of a little boy with a tube-dick, so whenever she pushed down on it, it shot out his dick. Then my friend Liz got this mug that burped incredibly loudly when she put it down. Mine was the best though, because whenever I picked it up, it started violently vibrating, making it VERY difficult to drink. I basically got it all over my face. That never got old.
Then the owner gave us our own little puppet show. He asked all of our names, and somehow managed to get every single one wrong (I was “Uriya,” Karyn was “Karulina,” Liz was “Bez” (I don’t know how, but I thought it was hilarious). He would often just take his puppets and be like “OHHH KARULINAAA, SEXUAL FEELINGS” and then start screaming sex noises and rubbing her with toys. He also demonstrated the doggy position for us.
At one point during his puppet show, he was behind this board and was using a frog puppet above it, so we couldn’t see him at all. As the puppet, Jack, he was like, “You want to see my brother, Dick?” We weren’t sure if we were supposed to interact or not, so we were quiet. The puppet screamed “HEY! BEZ! You want to see Dick!? Or no!?” Then she was like “Yes, I want to see dick!” And the puppet was like “Okay, one second, I’ll go get him, everyone wants to see –“ And then the owner burst out from behind the board in this ridiculous frog suit and climbed on our table. We didn’t even make noise, we were just kind of in shock. It was pretty hilarious, though. He also made me scream my main course order, and take the check with my teeth from a barbie’s boobs. SUCH A WEIRD EXPERIENCE.

Not sure what else to say here. New semester has begun, classes are going well. Not really culturally related, though, so I won't go into it...

For my next post, expect Taiwan! I'm going next week.

The photo here was taken at the restaurant, he just handed us the glasses and it made us hideous. Especially me.

Here are some videos, I don't know if just my description can do it justice.

The soul of Seoul (funny pun is funny): KOREA!

Korea was sooo much fun! I kind of love that country. I don’t know, I’m kind of thinking I should have taken it instead of Japanese. It just makes so much more sense. It’s definitely more of my style. And it’s much more laid-back and kind of dirty, but in a good way. And people are very outgoing, and love foreigners it seems. And NO KANJI. It’s just a PHONETIC ALPHABET! How amazing is that? It’s still kind of a weird system of writing, because you stack the letters on top of each other depending on their combination, but after you get that down, you’re DONE! Whereas for Kanji, the pain just keeps going and going and going…
Also, the political situation is more interesting over there (obviously, since it borders the only REALLY closed nation on the planet). And it’s also more rare a specialty. Dammit. Anyway, it was a blast.

I managed to fly without dying, so that was a plus. We noticed immediately on the plane that Koreans are much louder and seemingly happier. The guy next to us went into a weird praying mode/chanting before we took off. Seoul is really different from Tokyo. People are actually human acting there, like laughing in the streets, screaming, honking, getting wasted (we saw like 3 gallons of vomit on the floor of one train), etc. Also, the ground is really dirty. It’s kind of like New York City. The place we were staying, called the Bong House (off station 420), was really hilarious. The host guy was REALLY friendly, in kind of a crazy way. He called me his little brother, and was like “I LIKE YOU!” and “You so handsome!” And then he massaged my shoulders randomly and gave me hugs all the time. Once when I bent over, he smacked my ass. And then, I got a great photo of him trying to kiss me. He would always be like “Oh, you like it!” Sometimes he held my hand. It was a little uncomfortable, but it was funny anyway. He even jokingly hit on a bunch of the girls and would hug them as well. It’s REALLY strange, and such a contrast to people in Tokyo. I can’t count the number of times that people approached us and asked us things or just said hi. I actually noticed throughout my trip that friends hold hands all the time, even guy friends! That’s something I never saw before. After we arrived, we went to drop our stuff off, and then we went to a restaurant. The dude walked us around and showed us where to eat, and then he translated the entire menu and ordered for all of us. After I ordered, he was like “YOU ARE MY FAVORITE!” Hilarious. At one point, he was describing a dish to one of my friends, and he was like “it’s beep in stew.” In Korean, they don’t have the ‘F’ sound, so they replace it with P. I knew this, and was kind of wanting to tell my friend somehow, but she kept being like “What’s beep? Is beep tasty?” And finally he managed to get some kind of F sound out and she understood. I laughed about that a lot after he left. Also, in a later meal, our waitress came up to my friend (who is a vegetarian), and was like
“You want pork?” And my friend was like
“NO, no pork, please!”
“Then how you eat food?”
“Without pork?”
“You can’t eat this with chopsticks. I bring you pork.”
“Ohh, fork!”
Also, later that night, we spotted an old Korean lady walking through a crowd going “beep beep, beep beep, beep, beep,” and I wondered if she was pretending to be a car, or if she was just seeking out some juicy beef.
The food was SO AMAZINGLY CHEAP OMG. Like, my first huge meal was less than 2 dollars. It was about 1.50 dollars at some restaurants. In Japan, it would have been about 20 dollars, I bet. It was really spicy though, but amazingly delicious. The living situation at first was really interesting. We were in a hostel, sharing bathrooms with a bunch of people. It wasn’t too bad, but very cheap, so not high class living. Ugh, you can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet in Korea, you have to put it in the trash can. That kind of weirds me out. You could trace our journey through Seoul by looking for the clogged toilets (I’m traveling with girls). And the bathrooms in general are funky. The shower is basically on top of the toilet, so you are navigating around the toilet while showering, and the entire floor becomes a pool by the end. And the toilet gets really wet and grimy.
Also, I noticed in Korea, that there’s a large military presence. Apparently every male has to serve for at least 2 years in the military, so they are kind of everywhere. It’s all North Korea’s fault.
Anyway, after the first night, we went to the Korea War Memorial (which is ironically right across from the Ministry of Defense), and then off to an all-day market. Markets were pretty intense, you had to haggle everything and people were very rude/pushy. The shopkeepers would always try to rip us foreigners off, so that was tough to avoid. I didn’t really end up buying much, besides Kimchi chocolate (spicy) and some metal chopsticks (which is what they use there instead of wooden). There was actually more to buy for me on the street near the hostel, which was amazing. They had Red Mango, which is the parent of the American chain Pink Berry (it was originally Korean). Two of my friends were completely and utterly obsessed with it. They would sing lullabies to their bowls, and order a large bowl every time. That night, we attempted to see some Sakura trees that were supposed to be lit up, but we got lost and cold. Then the next day, we went to another smelly market, and then an intense mall. I can’t really remember much else.
One of the major highlights of the trip, was going to the DMZ. I had never really seen that kind of thing before, so I found it pretty interesting. First, we stopped at a park where families split by the North-South divide were allowed to meet every couple of years. Then we went on to see a bunch of other interesting places, like the Bridge of No Return, Freedom Bridge, Freedom Village, etc. Going to the Joint-Security Area was the best part, though. We had to have a briefing before we got there, where we signed a paper saying we accepted responsibility in the case or our deaths, and we had a military escort the entire way down to the JSA. The dress code was very strict, and we weren’t allowed to point or make any movements. On the way to the conference room, we were instructed to not stop, no matter what. So we walked out there (the urge to be like “HEY GUYS” was pretty strong, but I resisted). The military escorts were really intense, and didn’t move a muscle. They had these intense sunglasses on, and were trained to just look intimidating to the North Korean guards. Inside the conference room, we got to stand on North Korean soil (booyah, I’ve been there now). But we weren’t allowed to exit the conference room, because we’d probably get shot. Once we got far enough away, I started playing photo tag with one of the North Korean soldiers. I got some photos of him photographing us. It was pretty awesome. Apparently, it’s because they take photos of us and use them in propaganda to sell to the public to say how ugly or disgraceful we are. They are basically just waiting for us to do something stupid, so they can photograph and use it (that’s why the dress code was so severe). The building in front of us on the North Korean side was pretty imposing, but apparently it’s just for show (like, it’s just a shell, it doesn’t really have an interior). Also, they built the world’s tallest flag, in a very “mine’s bigger than yours” response to South Korea’s flag. But one of the interesting things about the tour was how apparent it was that the South wants to reunite with the North. The guide said she only felt love for them, and that both sides want to reunite again.
When we got back from the DMZ, we went to Dunkin Donuts, where I lost one of my bags. I eventually went back to get it, but found that someone had filled it with coupons. I guess that’s a good strategy? Then we moved in to our second Hostel, which was nicer, but in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The lady wouldn’t put us in our original booked room, because she said it was “for Asians” rather than us fatties. So we got split in two. We watched some ridiculous Korean TV, which was basically just extremely sexually explicit comedy.
Another day, we went to a temple, which was really awesome. Much cooler than Japanese, and much less touristy, I’d say. Then we went to Lotte world, which was kind of an incredible amusement park. We just paid 15 dollars for a whole day pass, and all the rides and events were free. It was awesome. People were so friendly there, too! When we were waiting in line for bumper cars, this Korean high school girl was like “You are so handsome!” And then when we were on the escalators, another Korean girl was like “Hi! I love you!” Oh, white guys in Asia. There were a bunch of other times that the people would say hi or pose for pictures. The rides were fantastic, too. They had a bunch of 3D simulations, and a bunch of roller coasters. After 7 hours or so there, we finally retreated. We bought a bunch of alcohol and went back and made a list comparing Korea and Tokyo. No one can ever see that list but us. Korea won, though. But in Japan’s defense, we were only in Korea for less than a week, while we were in Japan for much longer. Still, we were very sad to leave. But who knows, this trip really peaked my interest in Korea, so maybe I’ll return some day.