Japan pt. 2:
We wandered around Osaka castle for a bit but we didn’t have the time to go inside so we just admired the cherry blossoms and took lots of pictures and ate the Japanese version of a sno-cone. We hopped back into the van and headed closer to Kobe. We stopped at a sushi restaurant first though that had a conveyer belt that went around with all different kinds of awesome sushi. Each plate was a dollar, or 100 Japanese yen, and we each bought like 7 plates, while the girls bought like 10 or 15 each. We had inari, the sweetened gingery tofu skin with rice inside. I munched on little rolls filled with tuna and cucumber. Unagi, or grilled eel. Mystery white fish sashimi, the best tuna of my life, and lots of green tea. The girls loved that we were with them because for every plate they got they could slide the empty tray into a hole in the table that counted how many dishes we’d used all together. For every 5 dishes they got to play a game that was near the table. Eventually they both won pins.
We headed back to the ship and said our goodbyes and then I grabbed my backpack and changed and met back up with Kierstin to take the port metro to the regular kobe city subway. I rode the subway for one stop (after serious confusion. The metros in Japan are EXTREMELY comprehensive, and there are about a thousand exits for every stop. Most of the stops on each line are numbered but it’s still really confusing since each station is like a connector and there are so many entrances and exits and connections to other lines. It took me like 20 minutes to get to that Shin-Kobe station stop.) Then I took the shinkansen bullet train to Nagoya. I’m still in awe of how much money everything costs in Japan. That ticket was so expensive, but riding the bullet train was admittedly, very, very cool. I like trains in general and it goes ridiculously fast. I want to say 130 KMH, but I may have just made that up.
After an hour and a half ride and three stops later I made it to the station exit with like an hour extra time. I started walking towards the exits when I saw a sign for the Marriott Associa – so convenient. So I went to the 5th floor taxi entrance and looked around but there weren’t any chairs or reception so I figured I’d find where the check in desk and lobby was to find the smoker kids. I went to the 15th fl. Where the lobby was and saw all of them – all 6 of them passed out all over the couches/seats and arms of settees. Once there they were tired of Nagoya though so we took another hour long train to Tokyo.
Once in Tokyo we got really really lost. We took the metro to an area someone had heard had good nightlife and three or four hours later we were still wandering around with all our huge backpacks trying to find a hotel or hostel. I heard some Japanese students using English and we latched onto them like white on rice (haha.) It seemed everywhere we went was super swanky or booked. They told us they knew of an area they’d never stayed in but they knew would be cheap. Once we were there though – after one of the students whispered to me “many people are coming here for the… make love.” we realized once more we’d ended up in the red light district. For every price for the night there was also a half price for one to three hours. I swear I’ve been in the redlight district of every single country on this itinerary. Even then though we had a horrible time finding a hotel. It was 7 of us total and everywhere we went either wouldn’t give us a room big enough for all of us, was way out of our price range, or had signs up that said they wouldn’t let rooms out to people who didn’t speak Japanese.
One place was particularly obnoxious about it, the lady at the desk had a nametag that said “Bridgette” and in perfect, unaccented English told me I couldn’t stay with the hotel unless I spoke Japanese but that she was awfully sorry for the inconvenience. Most of these places even had little robotic light-up boards where you pushed the room you wanted and then just handed money to a little old lady behind a counter. Little human interaction required so as to expedient your hooker time I guess. Steph and Sarah found a banging hotel with a karaoke machine, huge flat screen and all kinds of other awesome shenanigans for $40 each for two people. Naturally we all tried to sneak up there.
Once we got to their floor though we saw cameras so we ducked behind a wall – we were found out though and thus proceeded a shitfit of epic proportions. The lady who was working went NUTS. There was like a 30 minute battle between her and Sarah, and when we tried to get more rooms she just kept telling us to leave. As Steph so wittily noted later though – it was as though they wanted us to all stay together; who does karaoke between just two people? Oh, and the reason we were so easily found out was because in Tokyo it seemed like every hotel demanded we turn our keys in after we left so that when we came back in we couldn’t just walk up to the room and wait for the person with the key to meet us up there. I feel like that would never fly in America – this trip has made me realize just how much Americans value individuality and freedom way more than any other we’ve visited.
Anyways, at this point pretty much everyone was unraveling pretty quickly. So we wandered some more and found Hotel Dan Dan down the street. For $53 each we all fit the rest of us in two rooms, and though they weren’t as nice as Steph and Sarah’s place, it was still pretty good. Nice t.v., vinyl red couch, ambient music, crazy black “wrinkle chapeau” brand condoms, and even vibrating bed. Juice and I stayed in one room together and slept pretty well – we even got a 3pm checkout time. We were still wired despite it being like 2am once we were all settled. Allie, Juice, Amy, and I went out again and searched for a cheap bar or club – we would ride the elevator to the top of some sketchy office-building looking place and just wander down the empty halls opening each individual tiny bar’s door looking for something fun. We ended up at an empty thai bar where for a $20 pitcher of shitty draught beer (Japan is crazy expensive!) we also got a bunch of karaoke songs included for free. We used the three or four Thai phrases we still remembered to charm her into helping us select such classics as “baby got back” and “ride wit me.” We crawled into bed around 4 but promised to all meet up again around 10am.
The next morning (by 10) we woke up and got McDonalds for breakfast. I don’t feel even a little bit guilty as it really was the first time I’d eaten any American food in three months and I was due for some familiarity. We wandered around looking for an internet café that might be open, and once again NO ONE spoke English. However we did accidentally walk into the arcade that “Lost in Translation” was filmed in, which was pretty cool. Those arcades could give me a seizure – they’re ridiculous loud and always busy with a billion Japanese people all playing slots or video games and all kinds of weird annoying stuff that is full of lights and is highly addictive. We got out of there though and after like an hour or two we finally found ourselves at Café B@gus, otherwise known as nerd heaven. Everything was sleek and black and comforting. For 3 dollars you got an hour of internet in leather chairs with unlimited free drinks and ice cream and other sorts of little snacks. It was heaven. Oh! And that reminds me; the vending machines in Japan are insane. You can get a hot cup of coffee, but you can also get a heated hamburger and fresh fruit and cold green tea and all kinds of crazy stuff. They must restock those things like every 5 hours.
We went back to the hotel and modeled our Dan Dan robes and the light-up whirlpool bubbly bathtub and packed our stuff to change locations. While we were at B@gus we decided we booked two rooms at a hotel in Roppangi (sp) a district famous for it’s accessibility to clubs and stuff made easy for foreigners. So we each took an exorborantly expensive taxi ride to the hotel and checked in. At first they wanted us to turn in our keys when we left but I started freaking out and saying I was worried they wouldn’t recognize Allie and I’s faces and I’d feel better if I just held on to it and they just let us go with them. We went out again to see the biggest intersection in the world in Shabuya and walked around for forever. Held puppies, wandered into a terrifying sex shop, ate Italian food, stopped in a tattoo parlor to get an estimate for Amy’s lotus and Japanese waves, and scoped out a condom emporium. We wandered for hours and then took the metro to an art exhibition opening party at a private gallery. It was called “Nude” or “naked” or something – I have to check the flyers I snagged, but they were all of blown-up giant portraits/photographs of naked women from the ‘60’s to the present, all from the same photographer. It was actually really, really, interesting. We had some deep discussions on the nature of art versus pornography and what is obscene. But then, like true college students we grabbed some liquor and headed back to the hotel to drink on our own since it was 1/100th of the price. One back at the hotel everyone snuck up there and we drank in the room until we were all ready to go out.
We dubbed that night the “tu tu night” since Stephanie and Sarah bought tu tu’s to wear out to the club; this isn’t as weird as it might sound, in Japan kids dress very bold. It was another night of weird, fun-filled antics. The first club we went to was fun but only moderately crowded – I danced with some Turkish guy who got way too drunk and creepy and tried to make out with me and when I pushed him away he wouldn’t stop. No one was noticing because everyone was dancing and I eventually had to bite his tongue to get him to go away. So awful and it nearly ruined my night. We went to a couple other clubs and were hassled by strange East African hustlers who were standing outside of each club trying to promote it. Most of them had hidden cover charges and insanely expensive drinks (in Japan it’s not unusual to spend 7-10 dollars on a beer and 10-15 on a mixed drink. Not including the $20 cover charge to get into the club.
This meant though that we ended up at so, so, many clubs and after a while it all seemed like a blur. I remember Brian was wearing a green shirt and I had that green shirt/dress from Bangkok and he kept screaming “Green machine!” I danced all night and had so much fun. Lost the room key until it was found again. Thrashed to Avril Lavigne. Tried to speak French. Eventually though Brian and I took a taxi back to the hotel and crashed – the next morning, before our 10am wake-up call, we all had breakfast and decided we were ready to stop spending money and meet up with the ship in Yokohama. Amy stayed behind since she had an appointment to get her tattoo in Shabuya so we went with her there and continued on the metro to Yokohama. It is kind of amazing to think you could go from one major city to another on a metro, but Japan is nutty like that.
We got to yokohama and dropped our stuff off at the ship and had lunch before I met up with Allie to go to the Baseball game she and I’d bought tickets for in sale 2. We all walked to the stadium and she bought a jersey and I a tee-shirt. I asked a bunch of locals who their favorite player was and everyone said to get number 25 – Murata. Funny enough, he was injured and didn’t play once the whole game we saw. Haha. Anyways, we got there early and had our hands stamped and went to the 7-11 across the park and bought sushi and chips and beer. I even had my first sips of sake sitting amongst some tulips on a children’s playground. I couldn’t stand it though – it tastes a lot like wine, which I hate. Allie said they have a lot of different sweetened and flavored ones like sugared orange, but I never tried those. We went back to the game and tried to do some of the local cheers; for every player who comes up to bat there is a very specific and corresponding cheer and clap to shout him on, none of which I really got a hang of.
It was lots of fun but we’d been there since 4 and it was 9 so a bunch of the smoker kids and I left to look around Yokohama. We eventually ran into the crew from the ship docked across from us and they told us that they were working on a ship with 12 floors and only a maximum of 800 people, both crew and passengers, which is crazy to think of since our ship is only 7 decks and has a capacity of over 1,000 people. They did say though that the passengers on their ships were all Japanese millionaires who spent 5,000 USD a day to be on there for a minimum of three months. They actually were following nearly the same itinerary as our original one but from the opposite direction to the Bahamas. They wanted to meet Allie W. and I in some park later to head to some club together, which we said okay to but weren’t all that about – we went to a jazz club and a bar on our own before finding a weird traditional looking Japanese bar where I wanted to stop by to go to the bathroom, when we found Mike and Grant – Grant, stigmata Grant, and Mike who got realllllly beat up falling over the fence in Spain. They were both trying to chat up some older Japanese women and Allie and I sat with them and filled up empty mugs under the table with beer we’d just bought at 7-11 to save money. We’re classy like that.
We wandered around Yokohama and met lots of fun people – I swear I meet a million times more people while in port than actually on the ship. We even found the crew from that other ship – or rather they found us, and they weren’t too happy we ditched them. Allie avoided this awkward moment by taking a nap in the middle of a paved pavilion while I tried to get everyone back to the ship and away from some bitter philipino men. We met up with a crew member who shall remain nameless since this blog is monitored by SAS and the last thing I want to do is get anyone in trouble, but we had a blast with him/her – sweetest person ever! However, the way back to the ship was incredibly confusing since the port was uneven and two stories of planked wood in all kinds of crazy directions and designs and they’d closed down the two entrances we’d ever used and left one 80 year old Japanese man to explain to us we had to go back to the gate entrance on the first floor and find a sneaky way in once we showed our ids. MERCI BEACOUP SAS.
The night continues from there but only with more antics not fit for the blog until I’m back home and this stops showing up on updates.
One more part to go on Japan, and we'll be in Hawaii day after tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment