Satellite
  • Day 4

    Two-kyo

    May 14, 2019 in Japan ⋅ 🌧 18 °C

    We awoke to rain on Day 2. Not heavy rain. Not even medium rain really. Just a light spluttering of wetness, but it was excuse sufficient to wear one of the pairs of trousers that were bulking-up my rucksack and trial the mini-umbrella, carefully purchased to fit inside my equally-mini day-bag.

    First activity today was Sushi-making. Using our JR rail passes given to us on Day One, an Oyster-esque stored value card that can also be used in some shops, we travelled to somewhere I-don't-think-we-were-told-where where we entered a non-descript building to find a singular elevator shaft and no stairs. We took it in turns to use the lift till we all arrived in a kitchen, where we'd be learning how to make sushi.

    Before we'd come to Japan we'd been asked to declare whether or not we ate raw fish. After googling the question for guidance I'd decided I'd rather not, since many of the 'answers' were veritable horror stories of stomach-bugs, hospital-stays and one slow, agonising, diarrhoea-y death. Any such risk is of course variable dependent on the general competency of the chef, so with our lunch today to be self-prepared I was very comfortable with my decision. My declaration had been translated as being 'vegetarian', so I was given a plate of veg and something possibly-cheese to wrap into the rice/seaweed rolls we'd be making.

    The processes involved were all fairly simple, just finikity and time-consuming. When you're paying high prices for sushi it's unlikely the ingredients or even the skillset pushing up the price, it'll be the time, labour and tedium required to put the damn things together. Everybody's attempts were resoundingly successful and both the presentation and taste indistinguishable from the professionally-produced. It was genuinely fun to give it a go, but I don't see myself doing it again. Nice to know I could though.

    After consuming our creations we headed back to the train and travelled to Akihabara. This is a specialised shopping district also known as 'Electric Town', specialising in electronics and, increasingly, outlets catering to the 'otaku' culture, which covers general shut-in hobbies such as anime, manga, video-games and generally weird establishments.

    Our first stop in this district, following a quick stop-off at an anime 'conversion' photo booth that Hannah insisted we all attempt to squeeze into, was one of the famous (infamous?) maid cafés. Broadly, these are cafés where the waitresses dress-up in some measure of 'traditional' maid outfit and serve the predominantly male clientelle whilst displaying submissive mannerisms and speaking 'cute', insultingly reductive pleasantries in annoyingly squeaky voices and occasionally dancing about like loons swinging about glow-sticks to the apparent genuine delight of their regular customers. It was weird, and not in a good way. Also, they took about 40 minutes to serve us ice-cream. Wouldn't go back, but glad we went so as to learn the lesson not to go back.

    We were eventually served and so permitted to leave, opting to make the most of our freedom by returning to the Sega Centre we'd briefly popped into earlier so as to re-take the anime photograph that hadn't met Hannah's standards the first time round. I don't know if the second take was better as I'd thoroughly lost what minimal interest I'd had in the endeavour by this point, but afterward the big group split into smaller collectives for unguided exploration time. My little sub-group decided to more thoroughly explore the Sega Centre.

    Since Sega and Nintendo are bezzie-mates these days, there was ample Ninty presence in the Sega arcade. Whilst we've got Mario Kart arcade in a few places in the UK, I'd never before seen an arcade version of 'Luigi's Mansion' before, which makes sense for a kinda weird, slightly niche spin-off franchise that isn't even really that good. The play instructions were all in Japanese so I'd already lost a life before I'd figured out the pump/point/drag mechanics of the massive plastic vacuum-cleaner guns. After Ruth and I had both succumbed to the childish horrors of the haunted Mario-verse mansion, we hung up our vibrating nozzles and wandered over to take the wheel at the mushroom kingdom's more popular pastime. We'd hoped to play Mario Kart against each other, but Ruth put her 100-yen coin in the wrong slot so we ended up in separate game instances. We did, however, select the same course and began at the same moment, so my finishing-first still counts as a victory from a pan-dimensional perspective.

    Next stop was a four-storey, pink-ish building we'd spotted upon first emerging from the train station which may have had an elegant, subtle name in Japanese but had been helpfully translated on the signage to simply 'sex shop'. Unlike some of the places in Shinjuku, this was for the retail of accessories to the act not the act itself, so were comfortable having a look around. Everything BDSM/dungeon-related was on display in the subterrainean basement, which was pleasingly logical from a store merchandising perspective. The ground and first floors contained products of little surprise from a technological standpoint, albeit the size range of certain apparatus extended to far larger sizes than I'd before seen which, the relative average sizes of the Japanese people compared to the west, did surprise somewhat. The third and fourth floors were for 'men only' so Ruth had to wait outside whilst we perused. What we saw up there can obviously only be revealed in the 'mens only' version of this blog post.

    Before Yukko had left us to our 'free time' (ie. no formal itinerary activities) she had suggested to us to seek out a nearby 'hidden shrine'. She'd broadly waved her arm in the approximate direction, so we set out to explore the area. After around 20 minutes fruitless searching we gave up and used Google Maps, but the co-ordinates pointed to the middle of a block of buildings we'd encircled a few times already. I then spotted a tiny, dark alleyway down which you'd think only cats and possibly drug-dealers might venture and, lo and behold, it led to a small courtyard containing a basic shrine clearly placed in such a difficult-to-find spot so as to have any attributable merit. We took a picture as proof (Yukko had promised free beer to whoever found it) and left.

    We visited a few other otaku-geared shops, though much of the floor-space was dedicated to manga which isn't all that interesting when you're not into the medium and can't comprehend the language. There were some pop-culture and video-game items to peruse also, albeit little that wasn't available internationally so nothing pried-open my wallet hinge. I did find an awesome, old, Legend of Zelda Game & Watch device in mint condition, but it cost more than my trip's entire budget so sadly it remained in it's alarmed and guarded glass display cabinet.

    I was keen to try out a Gatcha machine ; basically the coin/twist capsule toy machines I feel we used to have more of in the UK but are huge here in Japan. There were lines of assorted Gatcha machines outside many of the shops on the main street but, again with a little help from Google Maps, Ruth and I found, or rather rediscovered, a dedicated Gatcha establishment we'd eyed-up a couple of hours earlier across the street from Creepy-Maids-R-Us. I had a go on pokemon and Star Wars branded machines. I didn't get either of the toys I really wanted, but then that's how the 'getcha'.

    We were running out of afternoon so decided to grab some quick food someplace familiar; McDonalds. I went as exotic as was possible and had the McTeriyaki burger, which was nice but a little sloppy. Though, adhering to Japanese custom, we weren't able to walk and eat simultaneously and the McDonalds wanted a cover charge to eat-in so we had to eat whilst standing in the doorway. Given we had to be back for an evening activity not everyone (Ruth) had time to finish so she had to politely carry her food without consuming it all the way back to the hostel. I'm told the re-heated, microwaved remnants were 'fine'.

    In the evening we went for a walk into the Shinjuku zone to visit the Golden Gai ; a network of six, very narrow alleyways lined with small bars, most seating around ten or less (most often less!) at a time. There was a real mixture of places; some had cover charges in addition to drink prices, others had cover-charge waiver offers for 'foreigners' and others were 'open' with closed doors, discriminately advising via curt signage that tourists were not welcome ; local bars for local people and there was nothing for us to see there.

    As a group of nearly-19 (I was noting by this point that a couple of people in the group were using the itinerary as more of a guideline than a law), it was impossible for us all to visit the same bar concurrently, so we branched off into smaller units. Will, Craig, Ruth, Hannah, one of the Victorias and myself opted for a tiny establishment dubbing itself as some form of 'tiki bar', albeit with only minimal aesthetic trim and half-hearted musical accompaniment to back the ruse up.

    Perusing the menu I spotted a whisky that Alex had suggested to me to try and, if at all possible, bring back for her. I thusly splashed my banker cash and ordered a 'Hibiki', the most expensive whisky on the menu, on the rocks and casually sipped it with class and dignity whilst the proletariats accompanying me knocked back lager or noisily sucked their cheap cocktail concoctions through straws. This is how you make friends.

    The whisky was delicious, as was the second, mildly less expensive whisky that followed called 'Nikka' and which had also been on Alex's suggested list. Two posh beverages consumed, we departed the tiki-bar to find the rest of the group, whom were converging on the only bar in the district sufficiently large to almost hold us all.

    At the most logical 'entrance' to the Golden Gai zone there's a bar both proudly proclaiming it's welcoming attitude to strangers AND boasting it's facilities that enable participation in a massively-popular Japanese pastime; karaoke. Huddled closely together in the far/near end of the bar (depends which door you went in I guess...), we gulped back very cheap, averagely-priced whiskies, beers and cocktails with a view to achieving sufficient merriment to have a go. Alas, the machine didn't have my standard 'go to' song, One Week, in it's selection so I mainly stuck to random duets where the performer's motivation had sapped somewhat between picking their song and their turn coming around. I did 'perform' Lose Yourself by Eminem solo when whomever had picked the song failed to show-up, which went about as well as you can imagine. Florian, one of the two German travellers I haven't spoken to much yet, seemed most keen and, as most who are keen are, was a good singer. But I later found out he sings/trains his voice in his own time, which is cheating really.

    I don't know how late we were out, which is generally an indicator of a great night out and a rough morning to come.
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