Archive for June, 2014
June 5, 2004 – The Strip Club
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Teaching English, Team Awesome Sauce, Tokyo on June 17, 2014
I had to work today, leaving my visitors to their own devices. At work I had a one on one class with a kid known around Kawasaki NOVA as “Notorious”. I expected the worst and was pleasantly surprised.
When I returned home, I found the guys drunk and grumpy from a bad experience in Kabukicho during the day. Apparently they went out to see strippers. In the strip club they ended up having some drinks and singing karaoke with one of the dancers. When it came time to settle up the bill, there were charges for singing with the dancer on the bill. Some of the guys didn’t want to pay, as they were not told in advance that there would be any charge. To avoid an argument with the establishment, Flounder settled the bill and then tried to get the rest of the group to pay him back.
The money was the main reason why everyone was grumpy, however we were all at the point in our vacation where we had been spending entirely too much time together. Being with the same people 24 hours a day for two weeks is a whole lot of togetherness.
In the evening, Code Red and Hippie stayed at Hello House, while Flounder, Blue and I went out with Lux and some of the other Hello House residents to a nearby izakaya for beer and grilled mochi.
(2014 Update) I have heard a few different versions of what caused the money dispute at the strip club, but this version seems plausible. Since I was at work and all of the participants were drunk, it’s possible that I will never know for sure. Not surprisingly, there are no pictures from that day!
June 4, 2004 – It’s like leapfrog, but nobody’s jumping
Posted by Barniferous in Shenanigans, Team Awesome Sauce, Tokyo on June 16, 2014
Pushing people onto the Keio line at Shibuya Station
I had to work today. The guys went to a sword museum in Tokyo, and then met up with me outside Kawasaki station at the end of my shift. They all requested another night out in Shibuya. We spent our time in game centers and then went back to Don Quijote, this time sober enough to fully enjoy the experience. Green and I both bought small beer chilling machines which claim to cool a beer from room temperature to drinking temperature in 90 seconds. For the price of 2000 yen this seemed like a reasonable gamble.
We got to Shibuya station a bit early to avoid any chance of missing the last train. Our route home was the always crowded Keio line to Shimokitazawa, and then Odakyu line to Noborito. When we got to the platform we saw the second last train loading up. It was literally wall to wall people. This gave us a chance to see Japan’s famous train pushers for the first time. They are railway staff that push all of the arms and legs into a crowded train car so the doors can close. If you want a true Japan cultural experience, you have to see the train pushers in action.
We went to the front of the line and waited for the last train of the evening to arrive. We were in the last train car standing against the back wall of the car in a row. I regretted my purchase of the beer cooling cube as I had to awkwardly straddle it while the train car filled up. By the time the train was ready to leave, the train car was packed like sardines and we were pressed up against the back wall. Due to my awkward straddling position, a nearby drunk man tried to use me as a seat.
The view inside the last train out of Shibuya
As we got moving, a drunk woman crawled between Flounder’s legs and started looking like she was going to be sick. Flounder described the situation to me as “It’s like a game of leapfrog, but nobody’s jumping!”. Everyone in the area who could understand language was laughing at the situation.
When we got closer to Shimokitazawa station, I instructed the guys that we had to get off the train quickly and run to Odakyu line. I let them know that we only had a few minutes to make our connection before the Odakyu line left. I made very clear to them that if they didn’t get off the train before the doors closed, that they would have no way of getting back to Hello House.
At Shimokitazawa the doors opened and a crowd of people started flowing out of the train. Japan is a usually very polite and orderly country, except on crowded trains. When the train is crowded, anything goes. Hippie, Code Red, Green and I all forced our way off the train, but Flounder was trapped behind a man who stood directly in the doorway with his arms crossed.
Flounder yelled out “I can’t get off the train!”. I replied “you HAVE to get off the train NOW”.
Flounder, hearing the urgency in my voice, decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. He tried to go left – not enough space. He tried to go right – too crowded. He then grabbed the door blocker by his elbows, picked him up, and carried him off the train.
The door blocking man was furious at being picked up like a toy and moved out of the way. He turned around angrily and found himself staring directly into the middle of Flounder’s chest. As he slowly looked up at the giant smiling gaijin, he decided that he wasn’t all that angry anymore and quickly got on the train without a word. The nearby people on the platform thought this was hilarious. Flounder simply shrugged and told me “you said I had to get off the train now”. We all continued laughing as we ran for the Odakyu line to catch the last train back to Hello House.
Description on the beer cooling machine:
Drinking a glass of beer helps yourself release fatigue and mental stress after you come back home. Just pull down the lever and get a chilled canned beer for your relaxing time. COOLING CUBE creates a healing time and space beyond reality for you. Since 2002.
June 3, 2004 pt2 – All you can drink is not a challenge
Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Karaoke, Shenanigans, Team Awesome Sauce on June 15, 2014
The floor is lava at Big Echo karaoke
(Author’s note) My memories of the evening are a bit fuzzy, and the notes from my original blog post are vague, so I am doing my best to reconstruct the events.
After witnessing the 20 Frosty challenge in the morning, we all had a relaxing afternoon at Hello House before heading out in the evening for Thursday evening karaoke. Green was still not feeling well, so he was a lot more restrained than usual. I believe the rest of the group decided to do some pre-drinking at Hello House.
We rode Nanbu line to Kawasaki and then took Tokaido line to Yokohama in order to meet up with my usual Thursday evening karaoke group. When everyone assembled, we all walked to Big Echo. Unlike the previous week, Code Red had left his video camera back at Hello House.
We had two fun hours of karaoke, making good use of the “all you can drink” policy of our karaoke room. Green was not drinking much, so Flounder, Hippie, Code Red, and I all decided to pick up the slack.
During the evening, one of Jem’s roommates, let’s call her Rana, was flirting with Code Red hard. Code Red was wearing a t-shirt featuring Stewie from Family Guy. On the walk back to Yokohama station, Jem’s roommate told Code Red that she really liked his shirt, and wanted to trade. Code Red did not want to trade his Stewie shirt for Rana’s shirt. She kept asking, and he kept refusing.
At this point, Green, Flounder, Hippie and I decided to act like helpful gentlemen and get Rana the shirt she wanted. We grabbed Code Red and pulled off his Stewie shirt while we were walking through the shopping area of Yokohama station. We handed the shirt to Rana, and then she proceeded to remove her shirt to give to Code Red.
While Code Red was shirtless, we all started slapping his exposed back, leaving huge red hand prints. Yes, this is the kind of thing that drunk frat boys do when they like each other.
Unsurprisingly, the spectacle of a shirtless gaijin guy being attacked by his friends while a gaijin female removed her shirt in a major train station attracted some attention. We received a lot of stares and laughs from people passing by, and also got noticed by the train station security staff, who watched us carefully as we bought tickets and waited on the platform.
Although he probably could have turned the “give my shirt back” game into a night outside of Hello House, Code Red instead insisted that he get his Stewie t-shirt back before our train came. Rana reluctantly agreed and they again swapped shirts.
At some point during our excitement, we actually lost Hippie for a few minutes. I can’t exactly remember the details, but he did turn up before the train left.
Through most of our adventures so far, Green had been the drunk crazy guy. With Green taking it easy, we all stepped up our game. As it turned out, our group was better when we only had one designated drunk crazy guy rather than four.
June 3, 2004 pt1 – The 20 Frosty Challenge
Posted by Barniferous in Shenanigans, Team Awesome Sauce, Uncategorized on June 14, 2014
Hippie poses with Green during the epic 20 frosty challenge
Today was a nice, hot, sunny day. Just after noon we went to the nearby Wendy’s near Mukogaokayuen station. We all had lunch, and Green decided to get a Frosty from the 100 yen value menu. A Frosty is a thick 100 yen chocolate milkshake that comes with a spoon.
Green made a big deal about how delicious his Frosty was, and how he would enjoy eating another. Flounder asked him if he could eat two more Frosties, and Green said that he could. One of us asked if he could eat three more Frosties, which again got an affirmative response. This started a process of escalation, and after a few minutes Green had agreed to eat 20 Frosties in one hour. The rules were clarified: the 20 Frosties would consist of the one he had already eaten, plus 19 more.
Hippie, Code Red and I also wanted to have a frosty each, so I taught Green how to say “22 Frosties please” in Japanese. He walked up to the counter and said “ni-juu-ni Frosty kudasai”. The lady at the counter was naturally confused, thinking that Green actually wanted two Frosties. He tried again, and this time the lady held up two fingers to confirm. Green called me over to translate. I explained in my best Japanese that my friend really loves Frosties, and he is actually trying to order 22. She started laughing and then proceeded to start filling up 22 value size Frosties from the machine. The machine actually ran out half way through, so we were sent to the table with half of our order with the other half coming shortly.
The timer started and Green impressively started eating. He raced through Frosties two to ten in a blur of plastic spoons and ice cream. At the end of the tenth frosty he was starting to shiver, both from the large quantity of ice cream that he was eating, and also from the large air conditioning unit that we were seated under. We agreed to move the challenge outside in the sun. By the time we got outside, Green was looking a bit, well, green. I told him that I would be impressed if he could eat just two more Frosties. He picked up his spoon, and slowly, painfully forced down Frosties number 11 and 12. At this point he said he was done, and the rest of us worked on eating the remainder of the Frosty order.
After a few minutes of letting our food settle, we got up to walk back to Hello House. Green suddenly announced that he didn’t feel well and then proceeded to run behind Wendy’s to unload 12 Frosties at high speed, along with his lunch. This magical moment was captured on video camera by Code Red. Green survived the walk back to Hello House and then proceeded to sleep for about three hours.
Kids – don’t try to eat 20 Frosties in an hour. They look small, but the volume adds up quickly.
June 2, 2004 pt2 – Walking and waterfalls
Posted by Barniferous in Shenanigans, Team Awesome Sauce on June 13, 2014
Jakko Falls
After visiting some of the man made attractions in Nikko, we decided to visit some of the natural attractions. The Nikko area is famous for waterfalls. There are many famous falls in the area, but we decided on Jakko Falls because it was one of the closest to our current location. It looked pretty close in Flounder’s lonely planet guidebook, but the distance was actually 3.5km from Tosho-gu.
We started walking along the road, noticing that we were starting to walk slightly uphill. With only Lonely planet as our guide, we missed a turn and started to second guess our route. Some road signs were misleading and we ended up making a few small circles before finally finding a sign for Jakko falls showing that we still had 2km to go.
We were all tired by this point, but decided that we weren’t going to go back until we found waterfalls. We turned off the main road and started walking up a narrow road towards the falls, this time at a much steeper angle. Code Red, Hippie, Green and I were doing reasonably well with all the walking, but big Flounder was continuously falling behind. Every five minutes or so we would stop, have a nice cool drink, and wait for Flounder to catch up to us. When he caught up we would start walking again. This was great for us, but the one person who really needed to take a break was walking continuously.
Our 2km walk included a 300m vertical climb. By the time we got to the falls, we were all sweaty and tired. The falls were impressive, and we all had a nice relaxing rest near the bottom while getting splashed with cool mist. There are likely more impressive waterfalls in the world, or even in the area, but after all the walking we truly appreciated Jakko falls. We earned our view.
After a break we started our 5.2km walk back to the station, which thankfully was downhill the entire way. We walked back towards the main road in great spirits, singing Weezer songs at the top of our lungs and listening to them bounce off the nearby mountains. My apologies to the few houses in the area for our impromptu musical performance. By the time we got back to the station we had walked a total of 11.5km, not counting our walking around at Tosho-gu or our time getting lost while searching for Jakko falls. I think we all slept on the train back towards Tokyo.
Special Bonus Story: On the last leg of our trip home, Flounder started to let us know that he needed a bathroom break, and it wasn’t something that could be dealt with in a standing position. Most train stations in Japan only have the terrifying squat style toilets. I asked him to describe his level of distress on a scale of 1 to 10, and he answered 7. I tried to convince him that he could make it all the way back to Hello House.
A few minutes later the distress level had skipped 8 and was now firmly at 9. Getting back to Hello House and its safe conventional toilet was no longer an option. After getting some basic instructions on how to use the squat toilet and which train to take to Noborito, Flounder rushed off the train somewhere on the Odakyu line to find a washroom.
We got back to Hello House, both laughing at Flounder’s situation and worried that he would get lost somewhere in Tokyo never to be seen again. About 15 minutes later he showed up, smiling and relived. We all excitedly asked him about his brave experience using a squat toilet. His response: “Bullseye”.
(2014 Update 1) Always wear comfortable shoes when sightseeing in Japan. You will always end up walking more than you expected. Having a device with a GPS is also incredibly helpful.
(2014 Update 2) It took me another year before I finally had to use a squat toilet in Japan. I have already written up the post. Trust me – it’s going to be a good one.
June 2, 2004 pt1 – Nikko
Posted by Barniferous in Team Awesome Sauce on June 12, 2014
The site of today’s adventure was Nikko, a famous tourist area north of Tokyo. Nikko is most famous for being the home of Nikko Tosho-gu, a shrine dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu. It is known as one of the most impressive shrines in all of Japan.
Since our train ride was an expected three hours, we actually got an early start to our day. Our goal was to get to Kita-Senju, where we would board a limited express train with reserved seats. Unfortunately when we got to Kita-Senju, nobody could give accurate information on what to do next. I asked five different people and got five completely different answers. With minutes before the train left, a train station employee rushed us to the platform without tickets, but got us to the wrong train. We eventually gave up and took the regular express train towards Tobu Nikko station.
Going to Nikko was the first time that we actually got out of the greater Tokyo area. It was strange to finally be out of the grip of the massive city. The city itself is surrounded by mountains and trees, and was further from the ocean than I had been in my entire time in Japan. The weather was beautiful, and we happily started walking the 2.3km from the station towards Rinno-ji temple.
Rinno-ji is a complex of 15 Buddhist temples founded in year 766. Highlights include 3 large gold leaf Buddha statues and a large meditation garden. The buildings we saw were the oldest I had seen so far in Japan – nearly 500 years older than the Daibutsu in Kamakura. It really is an awesome experience being in a place that has been around for 1200 years. Canada is a fairly young country, so the “old” buildings are in the range of 300-400 years old, mere children compared to the structures in Rinno-ji.
After our time wandering around Rinno-ji, we headed towards the main attraction – Tosho-gu. We walked for another half kilometer from Rinno-ji to the main gate of Tosho-gu, the final resting place of Tokugawa Ieyasu. I was looking forward to this as Tokugawa Ieyasu was one of my favourite figures from Japanese history. He continued the work of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi in restoring a central government in Japan after over a hundred years of warring kingdoms. Tosho-gu was built in 1617 and dedicated to Ieyasu.
Unlike many plain shrines in Japan, Tosho-gu is showy and elaborate. Detailed, colourful carvings cover every wall and gate. There are beautiful statues everywhere. Tosho-gu is also home to the famous wise monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil). I could post all of our pictures and they still wouldn’t do the shrine justice. It is quite simply a must visit place in Japan.
We explored the entire shrine, and took a brief rest near the resting place of Ieyasu himself. By this time we were all getting hungry, and left the shrine in search of food. We ate delicious noodles at a small soba and udon stand outside of the shrine. Our day was fantastic already, but we weren’t done yet.
(2014 update) Rinno-ji is closed for restoration until 2020. If you are in Japan and have the time to make a day trip from the Tokyo area, go to Nikko. Seriously.
June 1, 2004 pt2 – I don’t understand medal games
Posted by Barniferous in Greater Tokyo Area, Life in Japan, Team Awesome Sauce on June 11, 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RROI52SdMIg?t=2m47s
After dinner, we all went to Kawasaki. I needed to get some shift swap paperwork signed, so I left Code Red, Hippie, Flounder and Green at a nearby game center. Since I was in casual clothes, I couldn’t go into the building to meet the other teachers, so I hung around in front of the building waiting for them to come out. Japan is a very safe country, but there are always a bunch of homeless people hanging around in the trees near the entrance to NOVA, so it’s not the most comfortable place to hang around.
Eventually the teachers came out and I got my paperwork signed. I walked to the game center to find everyone watching Flounder playing a large medal game. The game had bouncing balls, flashing lights, video screens, and a coin pusher, basically total sensory overload. Flounder was trying to manipulate the coins in order to push more tokens towards his collector. There were a number of other medal games in the area – horse racing simulators, slot machines, card battle games, and others.
Using gambling machines to win money is illegal in Japan, but you can win prizes. One popular example is pachinko, which is kind of like a high tech vertical pinball game. To play, you buy a bunch of little metal balls and feed them into the pachinko machine. Using a knob, you attempt to fire the balls through the game board into a small hole. Doing this wins you more little metal balls. When you are done playing, you can exchange any balls you have left for a prize. The loophole is that every pachinko parlour in Japan has a nearby prize exchange shop, where you can sell your prize for cash.
I was not familiar with medal games, but I assumed that they would operate on the same principle as pachinko. Flounder won a huge number of tokens playing the game. He took them to the service counter, where the tokens were counted and Flounder received a card that kept track of how many tokens he owned. The next time he returned, he could use his tokens again to play the games and attempt to win more tokens. I tried to ask the employee where the prize exchange was. The employee tried to tell me that there was no such thing for medal games. At the time I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth, or just not allowed to explain about exchanging prizes for cash. I promised Flounder that I would look into it.
Medal games can be a fun way to spend some time, but there is no way to win money. If you want to try to gamble for cash, play pachinko instead.
June 1, 2004 pt1 – Mexican pandas and fighting monkeys
Posted by Barniferous in Team Awesome Sauce, Tokyo on June 10, 2014
Code Red and I in front of a Mexican Panda
Our group slept in again, likely as a result of our previous night’s karaoke outing. When we finally got moving, we went to Ueno to check out a museum, the park, and the zoo.
Our first stop was Tokyo National Museum, which is located in Ueno Park. The museum is massive, with collections from Japan and other parts of Asia. We stayed in Honkan, the Japanese gallery. I took a Japanese history class in University, so everything in the museum was fascinating for me. I could have probably spent an entire day looking at all of the pieces from Japan’s long history and reading each and every single one of the displays. The other guys, having never taken any courses in Japanese history, were mainly interested in the swords and armor. After taking what seemed like hundreds of blurry pictures of swords and armor (due to glass cases and lighting), they dragged me out of the museum and on to our next destination.
The next stop was Ueno Zoo, also located in Ueno Park. Ueno Zoo opened in 1882, making it Japan’s oldest zoo. It currently has around 2600 animals from around the world. Since the five of us are from Canada, we were used to seeing huge zoos with massive animal habitats. The Ueno Zoo was a very nice zoo, but the animal habitats were much smaller than what we would expect to see back home.
We were pretty confused when we started seeing panda statues wearing sombreros and ponchos all over the zoo. None of us have been to China, be we know that pandas are not commonly associated with sombreros. It turns out that Ueno Zoo was borrowing Shuan Shuan the giant panda from a zoo in Mexico during the time of our visit. It’s always cool to see pandas live!
Other than the panda, the highlight was the monkey enclosure. We watched for at least 10-15 minutes while two monkeys were fighting. The fighting wasn’t life or death fighting, but more along the lines of WWE style play fighting. I would be happy to go to a zoo that just had monkeys, because they are always entertaining. The one lowlight for us was the polar bear enclosure. We saw two skinny polar bears walking around, definitely not enjoying the heat. I think we would have all liked to see an indoor, climate controlled area for the polar bears.
We stayed until the zoo closed, and then went to Roppongi Hills. The movie theater at Roppongi Hills occasionally has current Japanese movies with English subtitles. We wanted to see the new live action Cutie Honey movie, but the schedule didn’t work out in our favour. We ended the first half of our June 1 adventure at Saizeriya.
Travel tip: when you have a group of people that all like different food, find a family restaurant like Saizeriya or Gusto. The food is reasonably priced and there is something on the menu for everybody.
May 31, 2004 pt2 – Games and porn?
Posted by Barniferous in Team Awesome Sauce, Tokyo on June 9, 2014
Akihabara!
After spending a few hours in Asakusa, Team Awesome Sauce and I went to see Akihabara, the famous electronics district of Tokyo and centre of geek culture in Japan. None of us had ever been there before, but we expected to find lots of electronics stores, duty free shops, video games and anime models.
Akihabara is served by several JR lines as well as the Tokyo Metro. Since we were coming from Asakusa, we were on Tokyo metro. Subway stations in Tokyo are huge and can sprawl under several city blocks. If you don’t know which exit you need to take, you can end up a long way from your destination. That’s exactly what happened to us.
We came out of the subway in an area that didn’t have any of the brightly coloured stores that we were expecting. We wandered around for a few blocks while I took some abuse over not knowing where I was going. Eventually we found a movie and book store. Most stores in Akihabara are in tall narrow buildings, with different things on each floor. The first and second floor of the building had lots of cool looking movies. The third floor had porn. Lots of porn. The fourth floor was also entirely filled with porn, but not your typical, every day, conventional porn. There were several things that I will choose not to describe here. Let’s just say that you should love your pets, but you shouldn’t LOVE your pets. Japan has some strange obscenity laws that allows porn to contain all kinds of things that would be considered illegal in other countries, as long as the genitals are blurred out. After escaping the fourth floor we found that the fifth floor also contained porn, this time discount porn of a more conventional variety.
We left the store and eventually found that the electronics shops were conveniently located around JR Akihabara station. If we had taken JR instead of Tokyo metro we would have found them easily. I lost track of how many electronics and games stores we went into. Most of the electronics stores sold both Japanese models and export models of their goods. All of the game and toy stores had porn.
Akihabara is a really cool place to explore if you are into anime, video games, or electronics. You should never bring kids to Akihabara. Ever.
(2014 update) It’s amazing how much Akihabara has changed in the past 10 years. In 2005 the Yodobashi camera mega store opened in Akihabara, giving the other electronic chains some serious competition. In addition to game and electronics stores, the streets are now loaded with maid cafes. The area is always busy and crowded. Also, the porn is still everywhere.
So. Much. Porn.
May 31, 2004 pt1 – Banks and temples
Posted by Barniferous in Team Awesome Sauce, Tokyo on June 8, 2014
Senso-ji
The guys brought a lot of their money to Japan in Canadian traveler’s cheques. After a week of adventure, they needed to get more cash.
After breakfast we went to a nearby bank in Noborito with an English sign stating that they exchange traveler’s cheques. However, when we went into the bank, they explained that they would not accept Canadian traveler’s cheques without the original purchase agreement. They also would not exchange Canadian cash into Japanese yen. We realized that we would need to find a bigger bank, so we went to Shinjuku where we easily exchanged the money and got service in English.
Flush with cash, we headed off to Asakusa to see Senso-ji temple, the oldest and most famous Buddhist temple in Tokyo. Senso-ji was originally founded in 628 AD and has gone through many upgrades and changes over the years. During World War II it was destroyed in the American air raids. After the war the temple was rebuilt as a symbol of rebirth.
The temple is famous for its large gates and lanterns, but for me and my friends the highlight was Nakamise – the 250 meters of stores leading from the gate to the temple. Nakamise is one of the best places to shop for souvenirs. We navigated the crowds and everyone bought some proper souvenirs to take home. Code Red wanted to bring back a sword, but we weren’t sure if it would be confiscated by customs or not. After much discussion, he decided not to take the risk.
Mikuji stand at Senso-ji
At the temple, I played tour guide, repeating information that I had learned on my travels with The Penpal. I explained how to wave the incense smoke to cleanse yourself before going into the temple. I also explained omikuji – the small paper fortunes that you can buy outside most temples and shrines.
To get your fortune at Senso-ji you pay 100 yen, and then pick up and shake a large metal box filled with sticks. This makes an impressive noise. Eventually one of the sticks will pop out the hole in the top. The stick will have a number written on it – usually in kanji. You then open the drawer with the matching number and take your fortune.
The fortunes will range from excellent to terrible, giving detail on finances, romance, work, etc. If you get a good fortune you can keep it, but a bad fortune should be folded up and tied to a nearby stand. That way you can leave your bad luck behind. Green got the worst possible fortune, but instead of leaving it behind, he insisted on bringing it with him as a souvenir. For the rest of the day Flounder, Code Red, and Hippie debated whether or not they wanted to get on a flight back to Canada with Green if he kept his terrible fortune.
Senso-ji is a must visit if you are in Tokyo. Wear comfortable shoes and be prepared for crowds, and bring a camera because everything is worthy of a picture.
(2014 Update) Does anyone still use traveler’s cheques? Those things are the worst.
Drinking in Japan 
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