That Which Does Not Kill Me Postpones the Inevitable

The hardest part isn’t finding what we need to be
It’s being content with who we are.
Stay who you are…
- Kris Roe (The Ataris)

Well, been a while since I blogged, and so much to say, and so little time to say it. If my blog runs too long and you get bored, well, that’s your own fault, cause this blog is pure awesomeness!!!

Primary Objective: Kansai Invasion of Tokyo

Mission Status: Complete!

Yep, that’s right, most of the Kansai gang, specifically myself, Keith, Tyson, Boon-Hau, and Byron, went down to Tokyo to see SUUUMOOO!!! Woohoo!!!

As you can gather, it was a good time (for the most part).

Mission Details:

On Friday night we took the night bus to Tokyo. This is not the best way to get to Tokyo. The best way to get to Tokyo is to already be there. If that fails, airplane would be a good (but expensive way to go), then Shinkansen, then maybe local trains during the day, then the second last choice would be night bus. Teleportation would be the worst way to go, since it is slightly hazardous:

"I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Maggie’s heart away
And I got Sidney’s leg."

Flying (not in an airplane) would be a good choice too, which is done by, of course, throwing yourself to the ground and missing. Of course, this takes a lot of practice, and tends to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.

Night bus is pretty brutal. It’s about a 10 hour trip, with limited leg room, squishy cramped seats, and stops every couple hours. For the first while, Keith and Boon-Hau studied kanji, Tyson read Hemingway aloud to us, ("’Good luck old man’. ‘Good luck’ said the old man"), boy that man could write nasty run on sentences and even run on paragraphs. I was reading a Ray Bradbury book, very interesting book, managed to finish it too. Which means after I finish Catcher in the Rye, I’ll have only 4 more books to read. Better save some money for a trip to the bookstore. I’ve been reading a lot more since I got here, a lot of classic books (1984), as well as some weirder books (The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul), all of them have been very interesting so far. Educational too.

Back on topic, got to Tokyo station at some super early hour in the morning, like 7:30. Went straight to the Sumo Arena to buy tickets, about 20 bucks for seats in the very back row. But better than spending a couple hundred on front row seats. Then we headed to O-Daiba, an island connected by bridge to Tokyo.

In O-Daiba we went to Sega Joypolis, which is half arcade, half ride simulations, half actual rides. Which adds up to 1.5x Fun! Well, that extra half is actually fear and creepiness… we went into the House of the Living Dolls…

Basically we walk through a completely dark hallway, and get to a room with a female mannequin at the head of the table. All five of us sit down around the table, put on the headphones, and the room goes pitch black. Then we hear (in Japanese) the story of an old woman who wants to revive her dead granddaughter by using hair, and eyes, and a heart from the Kansai crew members. With all the gory sound effects that the gouging of eyes and heart removal would create. Needless to say, when the granddaughter is revived she turns out to be evil, and goes crazy removing even more organs, and eventually a spirit tells us to pray to a doll on the table, and the demon is killed, and somehow we’re still alive, and the lights turn back on, and there’s bloody handprints all over the table. It was actually very creepy, the sound effects were done very well. I scared the pants off of Tyson by poking him in the dark haha. Sorry man.

Because the rides were not designed for too many people, and lasted a long time, lineups became excessive, 20-40 min so we decided to leave, and headed for the Toyota Showroom.

Lots of cool stuff there, some futuristic vehicles, cars that could navigate themselves along a roadway, and a robot that could play the trumpet! Stayed there for a while, taking pictures and seeing the displays, then we headed back to the Sumo Arena.

Sumo was quite interesting. Basically, before every bout there’s a long ritual, involving facing each other, stomping your legs, throwing salt, wiping yourself with the towel in the corner, repeat a few times, then try to push your opponent out of the ring. The actual fight only lasts a few seconds normally. Sometimes it takes a bit longer when the wrestlers are even matched, in which case they may try to swing or throw their opponent out of the ring.

To make things a little more interesting, we placed small bets on each of the matches, choosing a wrestler basically at random, depending on how big they were and the color of their thong. Cause it’s hard to bet on a wrestler with a pink thong. We ended up staying for about 3 hours total, got some good pictures, some of us got a little sleep, and some of us forfeiting a couple bucks due to his wrestlers constantly losing, grrr!

Not having a hotel or anything the night before, we stopped at a sento (public bath) after sumo to clean ourselves up. Not much I care to describe really, basically a standard sento. They had free toothbrushes that have toothpaste inside the bristles, which was handy. Oh yeah, there were cameras in the change rooms o.O. And probably the weirdest, there were women (employees) wandering around the all male baths, with all the guys in their birthday suits. I was prepared for this but it’s still very weird. They also allowed people to drink beer in the baths.

We met up with Clement, Neil, Leon, and Leon’s friend Mark, and went for dinner at a kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi place in Shinjuku, then got harassed by people on the way back to the station trying to get us to go to various strip clubs/hostess bars. One guy, Charles told us that he’d give us a special deal, since it was his birthday. He even had "proof" it was his birthday, he had a picture of his birthday cake on his phone! He must have been telling the truth!

Headed to Roppongi, with Gaspanic #1 being our first stop. I should probably mention to the people that don’t know, nightclubs aren’t really my thing. That’s probably because I’m not much of a drinker. Nightclubs sober are pretty brutal.

"There isn’t any night club in the world you can sit in for a long time unless you can at least buy some liquor and get drunk. Or unless you’re with some girl that really knocks you out." – Holden Caulfield

Gaspanic #1 was very crowded, and too many guys compared to girls. I got tired of it pretty quickly, and went to MacD’s for a break and to get some food, till the others called me to tell me they got bored of that club too. So I met with them and we decided to find a better club.

The first club we try, none other than Gaspanic #2! Which was much worse than the first one. We stayed maybe 15 minutes. So we continued exploring. Nearly every club has a guy outside (usually a black guy), trying to convince you to go into their club. Some will even follow you down the street. Japanese women will try to get you to go into the massage places too, and will chase you down the street. It’s a very weird place.

We tried sending in scouts to see if a particular club was good or not. This wasn’t an effective method, because the scouts wouldn’t come back out and we’d all have to go in and fetch them. The music in the clubs was mixed, one club had the Macarena playing, but mostly hip hop music. I heard only a few good songs the whole night, Santana and Fatboy Slim. One club in particular was quite creepy. We went down there because the guy outside offered us free shots, but all got creeped out one by one and snuck out before the guy could see us leave. Byron and Tyson stayed for the shots, which they thought were non-alcoholic, of course :P.

In the end (being 4am) we gave up looking for a good club, went to MacD’s for an hour till the trains started running, then us Kansai crew and Mark went to an internet café to get a few hours’ sleep.

So to recap, awake since Friday morning, 3 hours (bad) sleep on a night bus Friday night, and 4 hours (bad) sleep in an internet café on Saturday night, and a long but exciting day ahead of us… but an entertaining trip so far!

Gotta study now, part 2 in Tokyo 2: Kansai Invasion should be up soon.