Konnichiwah Japan

Wow! Tokyo is overwhelming. I didn't have the video camera with me to give you the full experience and my picture camera is shitty at taking night time photos but expect a lot of Tokyo pictures when Dan and I hit up the town sunday night. I spent my short night there walking around Shinjuku where I was bombarded with people, bright flashing signs and the buzz of a Tokyo evening. The Japanese definitely have a larger taste and tolerance for outside food than the Indians did as I've already seen tons of coffee shops, several Starbucks (I'm not sure I saw any in India, Irish Pubs, Italian and French restaurants, two McDonalds and a KFC (India did have both). After walking about a half a mile away from my hotel and then turning back I finally decided on a restaurant that for whatever reason spoke to me. The restaurant specialized in Chicken Wings which were prepared in a sweet soyish/teriyakiish sauce with a black pepper spice to them. They were delicious but not a lot of meet on each wing. They also had a mascot who was plastered all over everything and essentially was a man with chicken wings and a face that looked like a Japanese Peter Lorre. Seeing as how Japan is very expensive and I already blew a ton of money on just one cab ride I'm getting as many free souvenirs as I can so I took some chop sticks with a strange little comic of the Japanese Peter Lorre Chicken on the packaging. After that I had a quiet night doing some much needed laundry at a laundromat in which the washing machine automatically added detergent (thank you to the girl who helped my confused, American ass on that one).

In the morning I got up early, checked out and headed to Shinjuku station to take a train to Matsumoto. There a nice Japanese guy in a Dodger's hat who spoke just enough English to help me did just that. He helped me get an express ticket to Matsumoto and directed me to platform 10. On the train I sat at the back of a car with my bigger bags behind my chair. About 30 minutes into the two and a half hour train ride a gaggle of older Japanese women started saying something to me and after a minute of confusion I realized they were asking for my seat. While this wasn't perhaps the most polite and proper thing to do (something I have seen my share of here) I'm not the type of guy to refuse his seat to an old lady on the train. There were some other people who had just gotten on and so I thought, that's fine, I'm young, I can be a stander for a few stops if I have to be. However the next thing I now the rest of the standers moved passed me and found seats and there were no others on my car, or at least close to my bags, which I obviously wasn't about to leave. I stood for a while, then I sat on the ground between cars for a while, then finally I moved all of my bags to a new car which I believe was like a reserved business class, but no one hassled me. I bought peanuts and read my book for the rest of the trip.

I met up with Dan at his school, Aeon, which is on the fourth floor of a small mall attached to the Matsumoto Train Station. I also met his boss, a nice woman who is the only Japanese person I've met so far to speak English very well. I guess it was just American ignorance and arrogance in me that assumed that a more modern country like Japan would know English better than the Indians, but it is completely the opposite. Granted a lot of that has to do with things like call centers and the fact that the Japanese have been able to be so modern and successful without significant American influence, but still I am shocked at how few people seem to know English. Dan tells me that many of them know more than they let on and most of them can read and write like pros but that they are very shy and self-conscious about it. I'm still enjoying my interactions and getting by as well as can be expected.

Dan took me to his place, a nice apartment with a kitchen, a bedroom (though his bed is a mattress on the floor, as is Japanese custom, so perhaps it should be called a floor mattress room), a bathroom and a balcony located about a 15-20 minute walk from the station. I got settled and he had to go off to work, leaving me with instructions to get back to the station and the main road so I could entertain myself and meet him for lunch.

Fortunately Dan is right around the corner from the Matsumoto Museum of Art, so that was my first stop. Some of the art there was pretty nice but many of them felt good for maybe a storefront art gallery but not really museum worthy (not that I'm the person to judge such things). They did however wow me in the end (something I respect unwaveringly). As I entered their permanent exhibit there was a long hallway with another unimpressive series of art, but at the end of the hall there was a door with instructions that I assumed meant to enter. I was right. The first room was a small, long, red room with mirrors on the ceiling and side walls. The pristine, red carpet crept up the wall on the sides to a sort of shelf that met the mirror. On the shelf was a garden of semi-fungal, plush red things with white spots on them. As I looked into the mirror I saw an unending series of me's in an unending garden of red with white spots on both the floor and then upside-down on the ceiling. This was very cool. After a few minutes messing around in the mirror room I walked into the next room, a white room with big, colorful polka dots all over the floor, walls and ceiling with huge, inflated, plastic balloons of the same design. This room led to a mirrored room that reminded me of the final scene from Bruce Lee's last movie except that in the middle of it was a hexagon of mirrors with a single square hole in it and changing colored lights coming out of the hole. I looked into the hole to see that it was also mirrored on all sides inside except the floor which was covered in lights that changed pattern and color causing an infinite floor of changing lights. The whole thing was very cool and very unexpected after the fairly unimpressive paintings I had seen (though some were legitimately very good and cool).

As I walked back to the station to meet Dan for lunch I noticed that about a block or two of the street leading to the station has a PA system that plays electronic, Japanese versions of American songs. The first time I passed it I heard "It's Not Unusual" by Tom Jones and the second time some Marley song was playing (I forget which).

I met Dan for lunch and he took me to a sort of Japanese fast food place. It had a menu on the wall as you walked in with two vending machines with colors and prices (and obviously Japanese words that did us little good) that we had to match to the food we wanted. It was pretty affordable, about 5 bucks for a decent sized bowl of food and miso soup, though I ordered too much. The food was good though and Dan and I exchanged stories about Japan and India respectively. Then Dan took me to a store or two and showed me some Japanese stuff explaining their drinks, their dried fishy snacks (a Dave Newberg favorite), and their strangely easy to obtain porn that is commonly read in public.

Dan returned to work and I worked my way back to his place, checking out a super market, a drug store, a sports store and a video game store on the way back. I watched some children's shows which were pretty fun with Japan-ified muppets/costumed people, a segment with a white guy named Eric who sang to children and made snow cones with them teaching them some English. They also had very cool rube goldberg machines as segues, always revealing the title of the show and singing it's jingle at the end. Then I switched to sumo wrestling (like I could resist). Overall Japanese TV seems to be mostly game shows, a few cheesy soap operas, baseball and cartoons. They only have 6 channels (not what I expected) which each repeat making it seem like there are 12 channels.

The rest of the day I read and rested and watched TV. Dan and I walked to the famous Matsumoto castle and had dinner at a place called Gusto where when we were ready to order we pushed a button and our waitress was there in seconds (something America could use for sure).

Dan is piggy-backing a weak wifi signal and I've yet to find any success in getting wifi in any cafes or anything here just yet (one had it but I needed some kind of contract, I dunno, like I said the language barrier is thick here) so if I don't get pictures up, check back for updates. Speaking of updates there is a new, can't-miss video on the goodbye goa post.