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'll never forget the sensation of my first melonpan, it's super soft and sweet — it's really something else

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.

this turtle looked extremely cool, I forgot to note the exact species
it may seem like this is the cricket cage but actually it was the gecko cage and the food is trying to escape, you can see a bored lizard trying to sleep in the background
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!

this is exactly what it looks like, some ice flakes topped off with green flavored syrup

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!

this looks very cute, but when you start to eat it, the first thing to do is to bite off the head! how fitting, considering the mood of casual cruelty at any zoo!

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!

it's actually quite comfortable
I like to sit on my left ankle with my right knee pointing up, this skill came handy at this setup

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.