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| Snowman at station |
One weekend I went with Paul to Shimokitazawa and met up with Harry, Harry’s friend Edward, Paul’s friend Fujiita, and Ernie. We went to a diner for lunch
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| Paul got tricked into ordering the large |
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| Fish and chips |
and then stopped in on a shisha bar. Shisha is what the frat boys call hooka: flavored tobacco smoked in a water pipe through a hose. It’s what the caterpillar in “Alice in Wonderland” smokes. I had a “tea”. It was really more of a soup than a tea, and I was heartily persuaded from trying it, but I persisted in my insistance because I am an Adventurer. The tea was very savory and had a strong ocean taste to it.
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| "tea" |
After shisha we went to a fugu restaurant. Fugu is a poisonous puffer fish that is skillfully carved and prepared in order to be edible. We had a great meal utilizing fugu meat in different types of food:
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| Shashimi |
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| fugu salad on the left, dipping sauces mid and right |
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| paper soup pot |
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| fugu kara age |
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| fugu nabe |
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| end bit of nabe mixed with egg and rice |
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| ice cream with black honey |
After the fugu we went to a sentou to relax. A sentou is a public bath. There are many pools and they are divided for the men and the women. Whilst bathing in the men’s or women’s side, one is prohibited from wearing any clothing. At this sentou there is also a co-ed part, which requires a swimsuit.
There exists some co-ed public baths which prohibit clothing but they aren’t the wild, sexy, naked parties you are all thinking they are. These are usually found in the country-side and the co-ed bath is one of three areas. The other two areas are segregated by gender. In the co-ed area, one can usually find old men, a few young men hoping for the rare naked young lady to show up, and a bunch a old women who don’t care if they are seen naked. The young men are more often than not disappointed.
We had as much fun as we could in the men’s side then donned our swimsuits and went to the co-ed pools. There was an outside co-ed pool so we ventured out to partake. It was snowing outside, which made the hot bath that much more relaxing.
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| Little house in the big city near Harry's |
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| I slept on this. I'm an ex, I guess. Or this bed used to be an airbed and it's not |
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| breakfast |
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| weird cheese puffs. The middle is moist, the outside is crisp |
On St. Valentine’s Day I received some homemade chocolate from one of the English teachers at the middle school. It was so good!
On St. Valentine’s Day, in Japan, it is tradition for the girls to give the boys gifts/flowers/chocolate. Then on March 14th they celebrate a holiday called “White Day”. On this day the boys give to the girls.
It snowed even more on St. Valentine’s Day night.
I spied this wonderful sweatshirt on one of my sixth year students at the Elementary School. Maybe I should start a shirt company which makes rude shirts written in Japanese. I could make a fortune in America!
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| "Spear the Bearded Clam You might as well go see it's worth a try. Don't give up before you've even started. Spear the Bearded Clam" |
This pitiful woman has crab hands. She sells pizza with them. As one would have imagined.
The guy who lives above me had his birthday. We went to Gasto for dinner. Their food is okay, inexpensive, and not very filling.
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| Top of the line wine |
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| mmmmm greasy dinner |
A big group of us went out to dinner in Shibuya at an izakaya. The food was really tasty!
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| giant mame |
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| huge! |
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| looks like corndogs just rice-on-a-stick |
Then we went to a night club called Xanadu. We danced all night and rode the first train home.
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| Hey, Nancie! |
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| breakfast |
On a lark, and a train, I went to Utsunomiya to meet up with Harry and Nancie. We decided last minute to visit Kayabuki Money Bar, a famous restaurant which has monkeys as waiters. The monkeys work every evening from 7-9, and seeing as how we arrived at 8:50, the monkeys were already retired for the night. It was a Wednesday night and they had no other customers, so this was understandable. The female half of the proprietorship had a one-year-old baby monkey in her arms, so we were initially entertained by it. It liked Harry, so it decided to sit in his lap and eat its sweet potato. Lord help if you tried to take its sweet potato. For dinner we had some giant cuts of maguro and some mystery meat.
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| "Look lie a monkey!" |
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| mystery meat |
After dinner, we had some trains to catch so we hollered for the owners to be forthcoming with our balance due. When they finally arrived, we were treated to our own private monkey show, for they had roused one of their beasts and dressed her in her finest Sunday garb. Oh the frivolity! She was well schooled in the hoop jumping arts as well as aerial acrobatics. This distraction served its purpose and we just about forgot the urgency with which we would to take flight. With the hired car beckoning for to deliver us to the train station, we made our final adieus and took our leave, promising to return at a date to be decided. Arriving at the station it was discovered that two thirds of our party was stuck without transport. Harry was able to make the very last Shinkansen, but Nancie and I were stranded without rail bound conveyance. Again we hired a coach to deliver us from our location, this time the destination being Nancie’s apartment, since it was of closer proximity. I slept on her coach and rose at 5 the next morning, enabling me to take the first train home, and arrive at the site of my present employ. I spent the day tired but triumphant with having patronized an establishment on the forefront of the Simian and Primate Employment Rights Movement.
One day, I found this wonderful, handwritten card on my desk, inviting me to lunch with the entire sixth grade class. It was a “Viking” lunch. I really like this translation. “Viking” is Japanese for buffet style. The connection should be obvious and, I feel, underutilized in America. What do Vikings do? They take whatever they want. What is done down at the Golden Dragon Buffet? People take whatever they want. The Vikings were known for ransacking village after village, burning everything in sight. The patrons of the Mile-Long Soup and Salad Bar down there at Claim Jumper’s give the Vikings a run for their money as to who can be the most destructive. The only thing missing from a Viking lunch is the wanton sexual abuse of women and animals, but this is a welcome deficiency.
I was invited to take part in an art class at the middle school. That day, we worked in a black ink water painting medium. I taxed my brain to conjure a suitable subject to reproduce. In the end I generated this little guy:
I am pleased.
I was also given a piece of stone with which to carve my name into. It would become my name stamp, but on this occasion it was not to be.
The next week I returned to art class, this time the medium for expression was clay. This school is without a throw, so I made due with molding the earth with my bear hands. The previous spelling is intentional; I have the hands of a bear. I created a large bowl/mug. It is with handle, thus a mug; yet its maw ostentatious, thus a bowl. Upon its face, in bits of clay, I endeavored to fashioned some kana conveying “I love ice cream”. Class ended before I could finish, so all I managed was “ice cream”. Good enough.
We have stumbled upon a most amazing discovery. If you party hard on Friday night, you effectively achieve a three day weekend, every week. Party hard Friday night, recuperate on Saturday and you have all day Sunday to still do whatever you want. I have been going out every weekend and was feeling like I was wasting my Sundays sleeping. This discovery of extra time is revolutionary!
We wanted to go to a cool little restaurant in Nakano, but they were pretty much closed when we got there, so we went right next door and found an even cooler restaurant to patronize.
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| glass floors with zen garden beneath |
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| gyoza, bacon wrapped cheese, meat-on-a-stick |
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| tuna and avocado roll |
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| chicken kara age |
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| buck up, buddy |
We had some tasty grub and then wandered to a hidden Buddhist Bar. The bar is run by a monk and the inside was all themed with Buddhist accoutrements. I had a couple of non-alcoholic mixed drinks.
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| juice! |
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| Buddha Semen |
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| Ginger beer |
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| classy |
We eventually made our way back to the train station. We arrived to find we had just missed our last train back to Shibuya (a disturbingly frequent theme) so we took a cab to the station. Arriving at Shibuya station, we walked down the street to the bus stop to catch the free bus to Ageha. Ageha is one of the biggest clubs in Japan and it has a free shuttle to and from the club and Shibuya station. The wait for the bus seemed eternal, especially with the frigid night air blowing without mercy.
We got to the club and had a blast! It was huge, the sound was giant, the atmosphere was great, the light design was exceptional, and the music was great for dancing the night away. We danced and danced from about 1:30a.m. till around 6a.m..
At 6:30 we walked to the closest train station, having missed the last bus, and rode the train back to Shibuya once again. From there we parted ways with Marvell and boarded a train bound for Hakone.
What? You thought the trip ended after the club? No way! We got on a train and rode for about 2 hours, until we got to Hakone and then boarded a bus bound for the Yunessun Hot Springs.
Yunessun is amazing! They have themed baths and the majority of the place is unisex and swimsuit required. They have a Coffee bath, Sake bath, Red Wine bath, Charcoal bath, Chocolate bath, Waterslide, Collogen bath, Doctor fish pool, some waterfall pools, and many other tubs and pools for all kinds of water enjoyment. We relaxed at the baths from 10-3. Five hours of hot springs is quite enough, especially if you haven’t eaten anything since dinner the night before. Harry and I went to the men’s naked baths while Nancie went to the women’s. After a few minutes Harry and I had had enough, so we gathered our stuff and met Nancie in the lobby. We bought some omiyage at the gift shop and made our path to the train station.
We got on a train that switches back and forth up the mountain to a station on the way to the Hakone sulfur springs. Upon reaching the station re rode the train back down, got on the next train to Shibuya and made our way back home.
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| Fall asleep and your friend takes a picture of you. Stranger takes picture of you taking picture. |
We left Harry in Shibuya, and Nancie and I hopped on the last train home. This would have worked out just perfectly, except the train stopped in the middle of its route and we sat for about 40 minutes. This made Nancie miss her last train at the next transfer so she came to my apartment to spend the night and catch the train the next day.
On Wednesday, Harry and I went to an all-you-can-eat dessert restaurant in Shibuya. He was leaving the country for good the next day, so we had a farewell dinner together. I got off work and hopped on the first train I could. This put me in Shibuya at just the right time to meet Harry. We went to the restaurant and paid the 1500yen to eat all we could for 90 minutes. They had a wide variety of cakes and pies, but they also had a chocolate fountain, a shaved ice machine, all-you-can-drink soda bar, and some savory options as well: curry and rice, spaghetti, and salad. I ate 18 different kinds of cakes and pies. Ouff!
Handy Guide!
Pink plate = Keegan
Yellow plate = Harry
After dinner we walked back to the station and I went home. I got back with no problems and fell asleep to nightmares of cakes and chocolate.
Some extra pictures:
