I've been developing an interest in photography, but I didn't quite want to dive head-first into the SLR world, being that it necessitates all manner of lens-buying and fact-knowing and number-crunching. I opted instead for a high-end prosumer model with a non-detachable lens and a tremendous ability to zoom in on things, take clear pictures, and generally be a darling to handle. The SP-550 was my girl.
After the purchase, we headed on down to that Blade Runner yakitori alley we saw a few days ago. I wanted to see the difference between the old camera and the new one.
Left is old, right is new.
We also wanted to have a taste of authentic yakitori in the most authentic place we could think to have it.
Disillusionment, as ever, is the dowry of the naive. After an admittedly lovely yakitori dinner (yakitori, to step into the translator role once again, means "Chicken-on-a-stick" or, literally, "grilled bird") in this particular hole-in-the-wall establishment along the alley (which we will from now on call Deckard Alley),
we ended up paying through the friggin' nose for the experience. 1900 yen (that's 1000 ISK) for three sticks of chicken and two sticks of vegetables. That may not strike you guys back in Iceland as much, but as food rates over here go, it's flatly ridiculous. It began to dawn on us that Deckard Alley could have been created after the fact, as it were, as an elaborate way to lure authenticity-thirsty foreigners into a monetary trap. Yay. 'Cause, like, I just wasn't cynical enough to begin with.
Wait. If that whole thing is true, it just makes everything that much more cyberpunk, in a way.
Man, I love this city.
Anyway, we cruise on home, and Wednesday is called to a close. Before that happens, though, I give my beautiful new piece of equipment a little workout.
--
Wednesday ends and Thursday begins.
Our only plan for Thursday was to go shopping in Shibuya. The area is both a great shopping district and a hip n' happenin' part of town, so we decided to devote the day to a walk through as much of Shibuya as our aching feet could possibly cover. The Hodemonster, Krust and your humble narrator thusly departed from Shinagawa-ku at about one in the afternoon, bound for Shibuya. After roughly twenty minutes of train travel, we exited the station and were greeted with, yes, The Busiest Pedestrian Crossing In The Entire World. (This may sound like I'm being all cute and sensationalistic, but no: this has been determined, through science and stuff, to be the actual busiest pedestrian crossing in the entire world.)
It's a scramble crossing, which means it lets all pedestrians cross in all directions at the same time, hence the immense flood of simultaneous multi-directionally ambulating personages. To be fair, Hodezor said that it was a really really light day, and that by normal standards this was pretty much a joke. We're going to come back at night soon, and then we'll hopefully see it live up to its title. Still, little old me felt quite a bit lost at sea in the crowd of people.
We wandered through Shibuya, bought T-shirts and shoes, and looked around. In front of 109 Tower, Tokyo's premier women's clothing plaza, a homeless man reclined in the afternoon sun.
Hodezor took us to Mandarake, Tokyo's largest Manga/anime/comic geek shop. It was fairly staggering. This was what it looked like on the outside:
After walking inside and trundling down seventy-eight million flights of steps (the place is so far underground it's practically in Iceland), we were greeted with a sight that would surely make any Manga nerd (or any comics nerd, for that matter) ink his pants:
The place was packed to the brim not just with books, but action figures, collectibles, ancient Japanese toys, popular culture statuettes (among them collector's items going for multiple hundred thousand yen), the works. There was a huge, archive-like section devoted to single-frame stills from anime films. An absolute Mecca for Manga nerds. Almost made me wish I was one.
Next, deciding on a trip down memory lane, us three aging young DJs went and checked out the small portion of Shibuya where all the record shops are. Sliding a piece of vinyl out of its sleeve, slapping it on the platter, punching start/stop, hearing the fine crackle of the very edge: ah, the small pleasures. It's been too long.
The whole neighborhood exuded the same kind of laid-back cool found in the record shops. If you've ever been in an underground record shop in your life, you know exactly the vibe I'm talking about. Funny how it wasn't significantly different from the vibe one would get from hipster record shops in Iceland, or Atlanta, or Budapest. Same mannerisms, same unspoken code of conduct, same exact atmosphere: small row of SLs, headphoned punters silently head-nodding, guy behind the counter mixing, absolutely no eye contact whatsoever.
After checking out some choice tunes, we stepped back into the sunlight and decided to make an adventure of it. The Hodemonster pointed in a direction he'd never been in before, and we made a beeline for nowhere.
Surely, you've heard innumerable stories of travelers in faraway lands making wrong turns and ending up in bad neighborhoods. Well, that's pretty much exactly what didn't happen to us. We found ourselves in a quiet little residential district, where the only noise was the occasional scooter or vespa belligerently buzzing by, sometimes giving a little meep-meep, but generally failing to intimidate.
As I ran to catch up with the guys after stopping to take a picture of a particularly interesting trash can, a tiny truck suddenly came between us. Blaring a strangely calming buddhist-like wail chant out of a loudspeaker on its roof, it carefully backed up to a corner of the sidewalk opposite a small playground, turned off its engine and just sat there, singing its mournful song.
We soon learned that the car was a grilled sweet potato stand, and that the vaguely buddhist-sounding chant emanating from its roof basically consisted of "Oimooooo, Oimooooo Oimooooooooooo." "Oimo" is Japanese for "potato."
We bought a potato from the guy, chatted with him briefly, then sat on a bench in the playground, munched our snack and enjoyed the ambience. Children played behind us, greenery was everywhere, a light breeze stirred the trees, and the potato man's strange song washed over us.
Taking another random turn into the neighborhood behind the park, we found ourselves in what has to be one of the richest districts of Tokyo, simply by virtue of the fact that there were penis and fuckballz lol.
Sorry about that. I went away from the keyboard to do the dishes after dinner, and I came back to the computer to find Messrs Hodezor III and V sitting here, po-faced, with that last part there on the monitor. I just wanted to leave that in there to give you guys an idea of what it's like to live here.
Okay, so anyway. The district must have been one of the richest in Tokyo because there were nothing but single-building homes. A detached, single-building home in Tokyo will run you a minimum of 90 million yen (50 million ISK, $74,000). That's for an 80 square meter bungalow-style house in a no-name district. A house in Shibuya-ku, one of the hottest nightclub and commercial districts in the Eastern world, will run you a minimum of 500 million yen (287 million ISK, $425,000). Here's what they looked like:
After a brisk stroll through this neighborhood, the landscape shifted to more traditional Japanese residential fare:
We emerged from this neighborhood back into what I like to call "Tokyo proper;" a wide boulevard marked by tall buildings, commercial signs and power lines, the way the vast majority of streets in Tokyo are:
We decided it was about time to head back. In the minutes prior to us entering the cab that would take us home (where we would go on a thoroughly uninteresting living-room bender, talk about MMOGs, play PSP games and World of Warcraft, watch football on television and do other things which do not really merit detailed description), I noticed a few funny buildings. I will leave you with these.
See you tomorrow.
4 comments:
With that ammount of cables hanging from house to house, did anyone ever try to walk from one end of tokyo to the other without actually touching the ground?
Some of your pictures of Tokyo look like the work of a Lego-loving giant high on PCP.
It's hard to pinpoint, but what I think I like most about your ramblings is the whole "let's-go-*THAT*-way!" attitude that surfaces every now and then.
Of course managing to come back with most of your limbs on your person will be the defining achievement of the trip :D
oh and fuckballz lol
- S
Wooooonderfuuuuul....
h&k
mm
Makes me want to go! Don't stop photographing the food.
Post a Comment