That Which Does Not Kill Me Postpones the Inevitable

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."

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.

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.

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!

After the internet café and another trip to the sento, we went for lunch at Lotteria Burger. Interesting to note is that inside the restaurant was a sign saying "Please use the rest room". Also interesting to note was the lack of restroom in the restaurant.

We went to Yoyogi Park next. On Sundays, Yoyogi plays host to Japanese… er, I’d say indie but that’d be an insult to indie music… bands of all different genres. One band, LooVee, looked as if they belonged on American Bandstand back in the 50’s. Matching red costumes, lots of brass, 2 girl singers and a male lead. At one point, the lead singer removed one of the guitarist’s pants, which was very nice of him. I guess that doesn’t happen on Bandstand too often.

Another band was very punk. The guitarist was pantless to begin with, making things easier, and the lead "singer" enjoyed shouting while writhing in pain apparently on the sidewalk. There were two somewhat decent bands though, and my favorite was a single guy jammin’ on the drums alone while waitin for his band members to show up.

Me, Keith and Mark played some hacky sack in the park while listening to a band play the same 5-second beat on the African drums, over and over, for half an hour. Boon Hau, Tyson, and Byron were exploring the park, and when we met up with them, they had joined a ukulele troupe. They even tought me how to play (I sucked) and gave us drinks, it was quite fun.
Next we went to Harajuku. I won’t try to describe it, because the pics here speak for themselves.

For the last part of our trip we met up with Clem and Neil and went to a Maid Café in Akihabara. Basically at this café, the waitresses are dressed up in maid costumes. Not revealing costumes or anything, quite covered up actually. For a fee you can do stuff with the maids.

No, not that kinda stuff… For 800-en you can play a PS2 fighting game against the maid, and you get your picture with the maid "if" you win. Or you can order a song or dance (500-en) which a maid will perform on the stage.

When not playing with the maid, the screen on stage keeps repeating a minute long video of a maid making coffee, then washing the cup, then making coffee, then washing the cup…

At the center table were some hardcore otaku. I will rely on the power of the human imagination and only state a few facts:
They were dressed up as anime characters.
The anime characters were female.
They had magic wands, hand puppets, and anime porn on their cell phones.
They sang and danced (and had all routines memorized) along with the maids.
This appears to be rather common for maid cafes (at least in Akihabara).

We left after one drink (600-en), and went to get food. After a quick meal and a game of DDR and House of the Dead 4, we headed back to Tokyo Station. Tyson bought what were apparently "Fried Dolls" as omiyage… which brought back haunting images from the previous day.

The journey back on the night bus was almost as fun as the journey there, but it was nice to go home and sleep after. In all, very fun trip, the Kansai Invasion was a success, thanks to Keith for his planning work.

This weekend (Sept 22-24) I met up with Anton at Kyoto Station to retrieve my pants (I left my pants at Anton’s when he had Jen’s welcoming party… because somebody spilt alcohol all over them), and to watch a high school dance performance at the station. Rather busy, and rather impressive actually, it was cool to see. Each school had a group of performers and a different dance, maybe I’ll be able to get some pictures off of Anton later and put em up on my webalbum.

Then it was off to Wakayama, where I met up with Keith, Boon-Hau and Tongxin. We stayed up till 4:30 playing cards, slapping each other, and eating excessive amounts of junk food, then on Saturday we went skimboarding <-- Video Link! I also had a sumo fight against Boon Hau on the beach (I lost of course) and we practiced our nunchaku skills, and frisbee skills, and swimming skills (you know! Skills!). We attempted a group study session for the JLPT test, then headed home.

Ja…