unexpected visitor and the porno room
sometimes things are not what they seem
I woke up early today because I arranged to meet with an old schoolmate of mine at Ueno park. for breakfast I had the usual onigiri and as always, I’m trying something new: melonpan. I have to say, this is the best sweet pastry I have had in years!
I took the metro for the first time today. I was expecting it to be full of people with no room to move, but it was surprisingly empty! still, everybody was so quiet, and nobody made eye contact. it will take me a little while to get used to this. Google Maps is indispensable but also shows a lot more than I am used to. it tells you how much the trip is going to cost, which gate you should enter, which platform to go to, which car to take to walk the least when exiting, what signs to look for, and which gate to egress.
we met up in Ueno Park with my schoolmate and walked around a bit, checking out the Shinobazu Pond and visited Benten-do where we purchased little fortunes. hers was good fortune, mine was uncertain luck which discouraged me a bit but then I remembered that it is a common custom to tie bad fortunes at the shrine, leaving the bad luck behind.
after this, I wasn’t even hungry, but I saw a street food vendor selling some pork tongues so I thought I might as well try it. she cooked it right there, it was a bit chewy and tasted alright, the flavor was interesting with some bitter spices. I will get so fat by the end of this trip but it’s totally worth it.
we walked around the park some more and were thinking if we should go to a museum or visit the zoo. neither of us are particularly into keeping wild animals in captivity but we hoped that maybe we would see something interesting and new so we went to visit the zoo. some animals were happier than others, some were depressing, but the small reptiles were pretty cool.
sorry for the wide aperture and narrow depth of field, it was dark and I miscalculated
I tried the shaved ice because I saw some YouTube videos about it, but it was quite underwhelming. it looks cool though!
instead of standing in line 20–40 minutes, we tried the パンダまん (pandaman), and we weren’t disappointed, it was actually a bao bun filled with panda meat! just kidding, it was regular pork, panda would not have tasted so good!
after the zoo we both had things to do so we started to go our separate ways but we stopped to play pachinko at a parlor.
no pictures were allowed inside.
it was quite difficult at first to figure out what’s going on, they make you sit down in front of something that is a mix between an alien mind reading device and a slot machine. after inserting cash, a bunch of metal balls come out onto a tray in front of you. with your right hand, you manipulate a wheel that controls how fast the balls are shot into the play area, the attendant was adamant about not shooting the ball too fast, because apparently that’s almost like an illegal move, and he pointed me at a place where I should hit the balls. once the balls start rolling down, they go through random pegs to make sure there is chance involved and not just skill, and the goal is to shoot the balls into a small hole in the bottom.
I think I got pretty good at it because the game that was showing underwater animals swimming around at the bottom of the sea suddenly switched to anime girls running around the beach in bikinis while all the lights were flashing. sometimes when I was doing well, the bottom small hole opened up with extra wings to make it even easier to shoot balls into it. every once in a while the machine would ask me to push a big button in front of me, which was cool, it was like playing several games at the same time. the place was super loud and a bit depressing so we decided to leave.
we were told that we should take our cards and go to the counter, where we could choose some snacks with the points we made, and then we were directed to cash out the rest at a machine. I got what I thought was a bag of pretzels, but it was mostly caramel popcorn with a small handful of pretzels, and a vitamin c drink. I wonder if the snacks are part of the scam and if we should just have gone to the machine directly, but it was fun anyway, so no regrets.
it was time to find my remote office for the day, I wanted to go to a shiba inu café but they informed me that there is no space there for a laptop, and it’s only for petting dogs. oh well, I’ll find another one, another day, I’ll quickly look for a netcafe, as I read online that those have private cabins where it’s allowed to take meetings.
as a side note, I would mention that talking on the phone on buses or trains and even cafés is considered impolite here.
I found a place called ネットルームマンボー (Netroom Mamboo) which was the closest. the atmosphere inside was a bit unusual, long corridors with door after door, not a soul in sight. lots of manga books and anime dvds on the walls, some vending machines with free drinks. while I was booking my stay the attendant asked me “black room ok?”, I was like “sure”, whatever that means. this is when things started to get funny. I got a key and I went to the room and when I entered, I realized what had happened and what kind of cabin I booked.
let me describe it to you: it is a very small room, about ~2 x 3 meters, the lights were dimmed for an extra romantic feeling, there is a tiny space in front of the door to leave your shoes, most of it is wall-to-wall faux leather cushioning (easy to clean), and there is a shelf-desk at the “far” end, with a tv screen, computer, keyboard and mouse, a small fan, and two boxes of tissues. at this point I burst out laughing, seems like I booked a porno room to take my first work meetings in Japan!
I saw a cleaning lady walk around later, she had a giant kit of cleaning products and tools with her so I don’t doubt the cleanliness of the place, it was pristine when I entered. later I found out that they have other types of rooms as well.
once I finished with work, I walked home via Akihabara in the rain, it looked cool with all the glowing advertisements reflected off the wet pavement.
I dropped by Bic Camera to buy a tripod for some long exposure photography and jetlag and all this excitement completely exhausted me at this point so I fell asleep almost instantly.
cat café and late night izikaya
my first whole day in Tokyo went great
breakfast: everybody was rushing so much that I felt like I can’t stand around and read labels, so I picked up whatever seemed familiar at first glance: a random triangle egg sandwich and a weird looking donut (imagine a snake that bites its own tail, forming a circle — but then add to it that this hypothetical snake has eaten several spheres that make it bulge at regular intervals). I ate it in front of the store on the street so I won’t have to carry the trash with me, because public trash cans are practically non-existent in this city, but convenience stores have them. the food was okay, but I need time to ease into the local selection of goods.
the weather is beautiful, it was already 20 degrees with a light breeze and perfect humidity with the sun shining at a perfect angle already at 10 am.
I am getting used to keeping left while walking, it’s hard to shake these habits.
on the way to my chosen office for the day, I realized that I’m going to need tissues so I ran into another convenience store and it took me about 3 minutes of looking (I almost gave up and bought menstrual pads) until I asked the store clerk to help me out. nothing looks like what I’m used to, everything is new! I used Google Translate to quickly figure out what word I should say, translating from Hungarian to Japanese gave me the word ハンカチ (hankachi), which was not right because I was presented with several cloth tissues, both formal and hipster. once the confusion passed we figured out what I wanted and I got a really cute packet and I was on my way.
people are flowing into the streets from every door and building that I can see, there seems to be an endless supply of hurried men and women (no kids at this hour). I knew that there would be a lot of people here but I imagined thick crowds, this is much better actually. bring it on, Tokyo!
the architecture is super interesting, everything is somehow always layered — the sidewalk, the people, a little greenery, bikes, fences, roads, cars, motorbikes, buildings, skyscrapers, the sky, and the horizon (this last one is imagined, I haven’t seen anything but city for two days now).
a car probably crossed over a yellow light turning red because as the pedestrian light turned green, we were almost mowed down by it, there is a sort of agreement that everybody obeys the rules and nobody double checked if a car was coming — but also, nobody was swearing or even looking twice at this, once the car passed, everybody continued like we didn’t almost just die.
I saw a crow devouring something on top of a building, I’ll try to keep some snacks in my bag at all times from now on, just in case I see another one. I need all the allies I can get in this city.
my remote office will be a cat café today, I’ve been wanting to do this for so long!
I heard from a friend that the cats here are drugged up so they are docile and I’m sad to report that this might be true, some of the cats were way too sleepy but some were really active so they might have been cheeking their meds.
they sell day passes here and there are little mattresses as well with blankets so guests can have a little snooze (and pretend to live like cats I guess).
I am glad that I have my headphones with me because they are looping the same corporate guitar music non-stop and it would drive me up the wall. active noise cancellation is truly a miracle.
I noticed that only westerners look me in the eye, I gotta practice not to look back because it feels weird.
I had a little Korean for lunch (food, not a person) because all the cool places closed by the time I got hungry. it was just okay once again.
after lunch I dropped by a random gallery where I could feel the heat of composting in a big pile of leaves, although they made me wear plastic gloves and use a long plastic bag on top of that to not get my hands dirty, which was a bit weird and wasteful but hey. the leaves were really warm, a sign of good composting taking place.
inside there were a few interesting things, pictures of a performance artist becoming Bread Man.
also, a huge wall of ramen packets that have been diligently massaged over the course of a day by a young woman, which she would return at the end of the day and receive a brand new packet the next morning.
I went back to the cat café to continue working and I tried all the possible beverages that the vending machine had to offer. I tried green Fanta (it tasted green), a bunch of teas, but the real exciting stuff was the corn soup, and my favorite: onion soup, which reminded me of the soup packets I used to drink quite often as a teenager, this is the birthplace of monosodium glutamate heaven and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
on the way home I had to compare the two main contenders for convenience store chicken, Famichiki from Family Mart and Nanachiki from 7-Eleven. I don’t know how they do it but I haven’t had chicken so juicy, so tender, yet so crispy at the same time, and I don’t think I will ever know or taste anything like it elsewhere. the sodium overdose was worth it, my knees got weak from the explosion of flavor, I’ll have to restrain myself from buying one of these every day!
I ran home to finish up work with two late night meetings and by the time I started looking for places to eat, all the regular restaurants were closed (I’m sensing a pattern here, jetlag + Spanish eating times combined make for tough times). I was wandering aimlessly, accompanied by my growling stomach, contemplating going home defeated when I noticed a shop that seemed to be open at one in the morning but there was something off. when I looked in from the street, what I saw was a handful of seats and at the bar, at the last stool was an old man sleeping hunched over next to an ashtray. after some consideration I went in to wake him up. he was a bit startled by me and suddenly jumped up, and I felt like he’s going to kick me out of his izakaya but when I greeted him with my basic Japanese he seemed to soften up a little. then when I told him that I would like some food and a drink, his demeanor changed and put his unlit cigarette back in the box and went behind the bar to hand me the menu.
a quick side note about me: the first time I ate fish was around the time when I was six years old and I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now. I can’t get used to the taste of the sea. this is not the most advantageous thing in Japan but what can I do?
so after writing this, you can guess what happened next when I looked at the menu: all the “master recommends” section was fish (oden actually, which is a type of fish cake which is steamed). he showed me that it’s made from seaweed and dried sardines and kept repeating “fish, all fish, fish”
I think I like to take risks and try everything at least once but at 1 am, I wanted a safe choice and I was so happy when I saw that he has pork rice, which is a classic everyday dish here.
he swiftly fired up two burners on the stove top and started frying onions in one and nine thin slices of pork on the other. you could sense the years of mastery in the kitchen in his movements, how he picked up the paper-thin slices with his metal cooking chopsticks and how he was handling those pans. within minutes he presented me with a really simple dish that was so delicious that I suddenly remembered how to say “this is delicious” in Japanese, that’s how good it was!
after eating, I translated the anecdote about me not liking fish, and also explaining that Hungary, where I am from, is landlocked and we don’t have a sea, he laughed really hard and explained that Japan is all fish, fish, fish. I think I managed to upgrade my status from tourist to visitor, and it felt great.
the walk home was uneventful, although the buildings looked even cooler at night, not sure how that’s possible.
I found out that an old classmate from my primary school is also visiting Tokyo so we set up a meeting for the next day, how unexpected?!
my first ramen
I can already tell that this is unlike any trip like I’ve taken before
after getting through passport control and got my luggage it was already dark by the time I exited the airport. I got a cab to take me directly to the hotel (I got a free airport transfer taxi because I booked so many rooms), which was fine - it was a strange feeling, having entered the city and then continuing for about an hour more without seeing any nature, I guess this is the nature of megacities. full on cyberpunk vibes.
because I am traveling alone, I feel a bit shy, gotta ease into the vibe, so the first place I dared to enter was an Irish pub, lol. the second one was a Mikkeller pub, don’t judge me.
I ended the night with a huge ramen bowl and some fried chicken at Oreyru Shio-Ramen. even though I ordered too much, I couldn’t help it and I ate it all because it was sooo delicious.
I still have trouble speaking in Spanish in Spain and Catalonia because I am afraid to make mistakes, but I quickly realized that it might be easier to try my Japanese skills (I had like a small handful of lessons before coming, lol), because nobody gives a shit, but if they understand, they respond. you really can’t tell what people think here, everything is hidden below the surface of cold politeness. I wonder if I’ll be able to get through to anybody while I am here.
there is a lot of construction in the city, but what’s new to me is that there is usually a person in hi-viz clothing and a glowing stick directing traffic so nobody accidentally wanders into the construction area, some of them seemed quite happy late at night on a weekday to see somebody passing by so they can show off their wand skills.
almost nobody looked me in the eye, I am not used to this, it feels alienating but liberating at the same time. maybe this is a night-time thing, maybe it’s a Japanese thing.
after all this it was time to go home and sleep, even though I wanted to keep exploring, it felt like maybe I could get ahead of the jetlag and not feel too messed up the next day.
the moon looks the same as it does at home but there are no stars to be seen, not even a faint image of venus, not sure if this was because of the tall buildings or the light pollution, but it’s probably both.
everything feels familiar while being different, what a very strange feeling. I am really glad that I came on this trip.
let's go
the flights weren’t as bad as I expected, 24 hours of travel went by quite quickly actually
we took a direct path from Barcelona to Shenzen, but the plane landed in one piece, so that’s pretty nice.
I got some sleep on the flights but I don’t know how this is going to work out, I feel like it’s the middle of the night, but it’s morning right now.
I got a tip from a family member to not ask an eastern chef to cook western food, so I went with the oriental vegetarian special dish option.
a huge benefit was that they would bring me the food first and even when I was asleep, they waited for me to wake up and then they brought me the plate, I felt like I got first class treatment in economy, score!
in contrast, the flavor was economy saver though, oh well.
during the flight, I finished styling and setting up this blog, so everything should be ready now, I just want to write at least one post from Japan before I start sharing the links =)
transit was alright, but there is not much to see at Shenzen airport, so I spent most of my time reading.
the second flight went by fast as well, I arrived at Narita airport at around 6 in the evening.