OK, so here I am in Japan writing the ol' blog to sum up mine and Ben's depressing lives. Gonna try and avoid the usual travel update crap where possible and keep it strictly regular crap, now comes the part where I try and remember the story so far....
The flight over was fairly uneventful (its a plane journey, I'm sure you can picture the scene. Although I did manage to squeeze in some great Hollywood tatbusters such as Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (henceforth POC3), what the hell happens in that film? Even Keith Ricards was bollocks and not even so bad that he was funny. Anyway back to it, gone on a bit of a tangent here...) except we did sit next to this Australian come Shoreditch uber trendy girl who's life basically revolved around raving, DJing, fashion and talking about the previous 3 to people she sits next to on planes. She very kindly gave us some tips of what to do in Tokyo which became the basis for our obsession with rationalising Toyko in London terms i.e. Tokyo's Camden, Oxford st, West Acton bus stop, etc.
After arriving and getting settled we worked out our surroundings and confirmed we were in a fairly quite part of the city (Putney), which is quite a good place to stay considering how crazy some parts of the city can be. The first day or two was basically spent staring at drinks vending machines which are literally everywhere carry a host of fantastical wonders to satisfy anyone who loves trying random novelty food substances such as a drink with bits of aloe vera in or amino acid supplements or a can of coffee endorsed by Tommy Lee Jones. The Japanese vending philosophy is essentially 'why have 1 machine when you can have 8' too true, they all have options for hot or cold drinks and right now we are working on a ranking system of our favoured drinks which we hope to have ready in early 2012.
When we finally could walk past a vending machine without stopping (about day 4) we took up our other favourite pastime of looking at food ~ most restaurants have delightful plastic replicas of their dishes outside, which instantly puts you off ordering them for fear that the food is really that shiny. Food presents more of a problem because it involves human interaction which is where our bumbling Japanese skills come into their element. Despite our best efforts we are usually reduced to pointing and vague non-sensical hand gestures. Even our efforts to impress are met with indifference, most meals we try to end with a comment such as 'that was delicious' (oyshi katta) which barely even raises a look of contempt. This could be down to our sub par pronunciation which generally sounds like us saying O Shay who is probably an Irish gigolo or something. That said most people we have met are keen to help despite our blatant culture faux pas.
Erratic sleep patterns from jet lag meant our hostel room continually had people sleeping throughout the day, which turned out to be a good thing cause our conclusion is that most people you meet in hostels are massive gits who spend their whole time talking about themselves, Thailand and trying to one up anyone/thing that anyone else has to say (which is usually met with the same treatment). So asleep was how we liked our hostel comrades most. Ben decided to fall in love with a beauty who had a face like a scrunched up bit of paper and was later renamed Paper Mario, however it would've never worked due to her 2-dimensions she would've been invisible for approx 2 days a year, which no doubt would cause tension. I think Ben's main attraction to her was that she was western as he keeps saying things like 'its good to see some western girls' even though we've been gone a week. I'm starting to think he may not be joking. Other hostel greats included an Australian man who was playing this trivia game and would only ask questions he knew the answers to such as 'which country is the biggest coal exporter?' (surprise, surprise its Australia. Damn Australians! but more on that later..) .
After alienating ourselves from the rest of the hostel community it was time to hit the town. Cool parts of Tokyo are Shibuya (Soho/Covent Garden) which is awesome for shopping if you have the dollar to spend and has loads of crazy Japanese stuff like elephant trunk boxers where your wang is the trunk and this massive manga store called Mandrake. Now, fuck knows how no one has brought this to my attention before but on top of your regular Hentai (porn comic) which are very graphic and full of all sorts, there are also peado mangas ~ NO JOKE! Comics literally about having sex with kids, even some about having sex with toddlers, all illustrated!! There's a morbid fascination with the covers but we didn't have the minerals to look inside/purchase them. I'm tempted to drop a line to the Daily mail and The Sun and see if they want to have a nonce-bashing field trip to Tokyo for their readers, god knows how this stuff is legal but there you go.
So after settling on some plain old gay porn comics we headed off. There's some good nightlife to be had in Shibuya or at least so were told by our trendy raver plane companion (who once went to this club in Berlin for 16 hours - it was amazing, etc, etc) she recommended this bar which has no name and is only a tiny doorway (classic 'ditch) but failed to mention it doesn't open before 1. After hanging around there for a bit we decided to sack it off and save clubbing in Tokyo for our next trip due to subway closing times (p.s. we have the Tokyo equivalent of an oyster ~ a pasmo, such city slickers) and other balls.
We also got told to check out Tsukiji fish market, which takes place early doors 5 (Shoreditch plane girl advocated pulling an all nighter then hitting the fish market for brekkie, the manic) and is basically where all of Tokyo's fish comes from. It's wicked there's people everywhere driving round on these tiny fishmobiles and shouting. There's also some fish there but they don't say much. After wandering around like dazed idiots we got some sashimi freshly cut, which was amazing (but did give me a dicky bum later).
The flight over was fairly uneventful (its a plane journey, I'm sure you can picture the scene. Although I did manage to squeeze in some great Hollywood tatbusters such as Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (henceforth POC3), what the hell happens in that film? Even Keith Ricards was bollocks and not even so bad that he was funny. Anyway back to it, gone on a bit of a tangent here...) except we did sit next to this Australian come Shoreditch uber trendy girl who's life basically revolved around raving, DJing, fashion and talking about the previous 3 to people she sits next to on planes. She very kindly gave us some tips of what to do in Tokyo which became the basis for our obsession with rationalising Toyko in London terms i.e. Tokyo's Camden, Oxford st, West Acton bus stop, etc.
After arriving and getting settled we worked out our surroundings and confirmed we were in a fairly quite part of the city (Putney), which is quite a good place to stay considering how crazy some parts of the city can be. The first day or two was basically spent staring at drinks vending machines which are literally everywhere carry a host of fantastical wonders to satisfy anyone who loves trying random novelty food substances such as a drink with bits of aloe vera in or amino acid supplements or a can of coffee endorsed by Tommy Lee Jones. The Japanese vending philosophy is essentially 'why have 1 machine when you can have 8' too true, they all have options for hot or cold drinks and right now we are working on a ranking system of our favoured drinks which we hope to have ready in early 2012.
When we finally could walk past a vending machine without stopping (about day 4) we took up our other favourite pastime of looking at food ~ most restaurants have delightful plastic replicas of their dishes outside, which instantly puts you off ordering them for fear that the food is really that shiny. Food presents more of a problem because it involves human interaction which is where our bumbling Japanese skills come into their element. Despite our best efforts we are usually reduced to pointing and vague non-sensical hand gestures. Even our efforts to impress are met with indifference, most meals we try to end with a comment such as 'that was delicious' (oyshi katta) which barely even raises a look of contempt. This could be down to our sub par pronunciation which generally sounds like us saying O Shay who is probably an Irish gigolo or something. That said most people we have met are keen to help despite our blatant culture faux pas.
Erratic sleep patterns from jet lag meant our hostel room continually had people sleeping throughout the day, which turned out to be a good thing cause our conclusion is that most people you meet in hostels are massive gits who spend their whole time talking about themselves, Thailand and trying to one up anyone/thing that anyone else has to say (which is usually met with the same treatment). So asleep was how we liked our hostel comrades most. Ben decided to fall in love with a beauty who had a face like a scrunched up bit of paper and was later renamed Paper Mario, however it would've never worked due to her 2-dimensions she would've been invisible for approx 2 days a year, which no doubt would cause tension. I think Ben's main attraction to her was that she was western as he keeps saying things like 'its good to see some western girls' even though we've been gone a week. I'm starting to think he may not be joking. Other hostel greats included an Australian man who was playing this trivia game and would only ask questions he knew the answers to such as 'which country is the biggest coal exporter?' (surprise, surprise its Australia. Damn Australians! but more on that later..) .
After alienating ourselves from the rest of the hostel community it was time to hit the town. Cool parts of Tokyo are Shibuya (Soho/Covent Garden) which is awesome for shopping if you have the dollar to spend and has loads of crazy Japanese stuff like elephant trunk boxers where your wang is the trunk and this massive manga store called Mandrake. Now, fuck knows how no one has brought this to my attention before but on top of your regular Hentai (porn comic) which are very graphic and full of all sorts, there are also peado mangas ~ NO JOKE! Comics literally about having sex with kids, even some about having sex with toddlers, all illustrated!! There's a morbid fascination with the covers but we didn't have the minerals to look inside/purchase them. I'm tempted to drop a line to the Daily mail and The Sun and see if they want to have a nonce-bashing field trip to Tokyo for their readers, god knows how this stuff is legal but there you go.
So after settling on some plain old gay porn comics we headed off. There's some good nightlife to be had in Shibuya or at least so were told by our trendy raver plane companion (who once went to this club in Berlin for 16 hours - it was amazing, etc, etc) she recommended this bar which has no name and is only a tiny doorway (classic 'ditch) but failed to mention it doesn't open before 1. After hanging around there for a bit we decided to sack it off and save clubbing in Tokyo for our next trip due to subway closing times (p.s. we have the Tokyo equivalent of an oyster ~ a pasmo, such city slickers) and other balls.
We also got told to check out Tsukiji fish market, which takes place early doors 5 (Shoreditch plane girl advocated pulling an all nighter then hitting the fish market for brekkie, the manic) and is basically where all of Tokyo's fish comes from. It's wicked there's people everywhere driving round on these tiny fishmobiles and shouting. There's also some fish there but they don't say much. After wandering around like dazed idiots we got some sashimi freshly cut, which was amazing (but did give me a dicky bum later).
Another highlight was Yoyogi park on Sundays, where anyone and everyone comes to partake in their favoured leisure pastimes. Depending if you're a camp break dancer/mime artist, a fat martial arts coach or a gang of 50's greasers, everyone has their place. We pottered around for a bit laughing at people but decided unanimously that the pen were you put your tiny stupid dog to play with other tiny dogs was the out and out winner. If you like seeing sausage dogs in sweatshirts and sunglasses chasing other sausage dogs in t-shirts then this is the place for you. Stayed there for a good hour or 2.
Whew! that's some serious blogging coming at ya like a sausage dog in ray-bans. Should probably go and do something now, although in this internet cafe you get a private booth (which its acceptable to sleep/wank in), free drinks, ice cream and I have a little window to wave and hold hands with Ben in the next booth.
Be sure to tune in for the next vomit inducing instalment which includes:
Electric toilets
Stereotypes vs reality - clash of the titans
Our first bath experience, with each other (not in a gay way, well as ungay as two naked men sharing a bath can be)
Photos - if I can work out how to upload them
Cockney Japanese 101
Other stuff I've forgotten about
Till next time.
Love,
Biscuit
No comments:
Post a Comment