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Other entries in Tokyo

Land of Gadgets and Perverts

When I arrive anywhere, I usually do one of two things: I either make a sudden random move for the nearest transport, or I loaf around looking at the maps, the shops, the people and ask questions. I spent almost three quarters of an hour doing that at first, just getting a mobile phone and asking about how to get into the city. For both, there seemed to be about 10 different options from 5 different companies, all costing various amounts, with various times, features and delivered in a confusing mixture of Japanese and English. Hurrying would only induce stress in both parties.

Seeing as I'm staying with Mike's brother Tom, I figured having a rental phone might save me a bit of hassle when trying to coordinate comings and goings in this huge city, where needless to say, there are about five different phone companies all operating different payphones with different phone cards. Your standard GSM phone doesn't work in Japan, they have far too many people together in one place. They do, however, have nifty 3G phones that do video calling, browsing the i-mode sites and the net, and stuff like that.

The bus into the city was full and I ended up making a new friend called Ayako, who lucky for me used to live in Los Angeles - so that spared me the disgrace of having to try to make a conversation out my lousy knowledge of Japanese. Such a conversation would have to revolve around food to make my vocabulary seem a bit larger than it was :o)

On the Chikatetsu (subway train) to Yoyogi, I watched as multimedia screens on the train looped Gap ads, a drunk businessman smelling of Sake sleazed onto a school girl in uniform, and finally hauled myself out to be met Tom and headed straight into the nearest bar/restaurant.

The place was dark wood, like a bavarian beer bar, and had a bunch of booths to seat four people but was obviously one of dozens of Japanese places of a similar style with sliding doors, bamboo and tacky 80's music blaring out the speakers. We yarned about his time in the countryside in Japan, the culture here, had lots of icy cold beers served in frozen-chilled glasses, and enjoyed some of the best sashimi I've ever tasted. Whenever the service got slack Tom would bark Japanese at the waiters in a gruff Samurai voice, which seemed to be the prompting they needed, and quite within local customs.

It turns out that Thursday is a national holiday, so tonight(Wednesday) will probably be a big one. This fits in well with my plans to go the Tsukeji fish markets, which are apparently best before 6am when the tuna auction starts. My best hope is probably to stay out all night and go there first thing in the morning for a bento box and a beer to cap the night off. This fits in well with my cunning strategy of staying up all night to get into London time before I arrive there.

So far, the subway system is easy to use, but in every other way, I'm reduced to being a child. I can recognise the odd word, and obviously all prices, but everything else from menus, packaging, ingredients lists, signs, shop names is all in Japanese. They have some outlanding snacks in the convenience stores that look like they might need heating or cooking, so I haven't tried them in case they do.

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