Oimo, Oimo (or: A Trip Through Shibuya)

After Wednesday's zoo journey, we headed out to Shinjuku - the cradle of electronics civilization - where I was to find my new love in life, a beautiful little piece of camera equipment called Olympus SP-550UZ.

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.

It's A Zoo Out There

Yesterday, the Hodemonster Family took Krust and I to a neighborhood called Ueno, a quaint little district containing quite a few temples, parks and other green areas, an ancient market street, and a zoo. Let's take it from the top.

After a 25-minute train ride to get there, we took a stroll down the Ameyayokocho, a bustling open-air market street that I'm told used to be a black market in the years following World War II. It had all the gritty, smoky charm you would expect from an Asian street market, until you looked at the price tags for everything and realized you were basically in a department store with a different flavor. Regardless, not a bad flavor.



Plus, bonus points to any area that has restaurants with life-like plastic recreations of their food in glass cabinets, designed to lure in customers:


We went to a tiny little traditional-style mom-and-pop restaurant and ate a tempura meal, deep-fried seafood with rice and the ubiquitous miso soup. Tempura is deep-fried in a very specific way, which results in characteristically lumpy and rather light-colored bits. It's delicious, especially with the curry salt and the tentsuyu sauce. It's also hilarious, especially when a chopstick-challenged Icelander spazzes out all over the place and drops an entire piece of squid into the saucebowl.

Or so I'm told.


After this we took a stroll down Ueno Park's lovely main garden path, where Krust and I were treated to the sight of our first ever cherry blossoms. It seems the sakura trees are blooming already in some parts of Tokyo (though not down here in Shinagawa-ku just yet). I'm told they're going to get thicker still, but here, at least, is a preliminary taste:
















Next up, we headed to the Ueno Zoo, which lies at the end of Ueno Park's main walkway. I decided right away that if I were going to take a picture of every animal in there I would run out of batteries or patience (whichever came first) very soon, so I went real easy on the camera. I did capture a few of our more remarkable animal friends, though (I'm not used to moving targets, so please forgive the blurring):



This is Ling Ling. He likes hang-gliding, knitting and judo, he's a great listener, and he has absolutely no qualms about taking a heroic dump in front of a number of camera-toting visitors. He's also dirty and scuffed, he walks with a loping gait that sort of makes you think he might have a hip condition, and seeing him there is just a tiny bit heartbreaking.


Those are the elephants. They smell bad. Really, REALLY bad. They're also either really capricious or their captivity has made them really perverted, because every once in a while one of them would stick his you-know-what up another elephant's you-know-what, then do you-know-what with it. Oh, but I've said too much already. Dear lord, how graphic.
















These three species were in the same pen together. The llamas, the tapirs and the capybaras. If that isn't a joke devised by the most fiendish surrealist in the world, then I shall consume my own posterior. We were physically unable to stop laughing. The whole thing was like a bawdy farce from a silent movie directed by a lunatic sex criminal.

All of these weird-ass animals are milling about, minding their own business. One of the bigger capybaras, who has been nonchalantly sidling up to the smallest one for the past 30 seconds or so, jumps on the latter's back and starts humping her (or him; what do I know). The small one gives a terrific squeak and bolts. The bigger one, not being so crass as to give chase, begins slowly sidling up to the small one again.

Ten seconds pass. Suddenly, for no good reason, one of the two tapirs breaks into A FEARSOME DEATH SPRINT right across the pen. If you've ever seen a tapir sprinting frenziedly, you know what I'm talking about. It looks like God had some bugs in the code and couldn't find people to fix them before the seventh day deadline.

So then the second tapir sees the first one doing the mad death sprint, and at that, it too goes into a death sprint of its own. So now there are two of nature's most baffling creations sprinting breathlessly back and forth FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY AND HONOR AND GLORY, and the capybaras are looking at them wondering what the hell's going on. The llamas, meanwhile, have this sort of airy detachment going on, like they've seen it all before and are trying to figure out a way to charge people extra for watching.

Just as the tapirs abruptly slow down and go to have a drink at the small oasis, we hear a squeak from the other end of the pen. The bigger capybara has finally sidled close enough up to the smallest one to mount her (him) again. Once more the squeak, once more the bolt. The big guy begins another slow sidle.

FIN

We also saw some polar bears.


Ferociously underwhelming. All they did, the poor things, was walk back and forth on the tiny crag of space alloted to them in their fake-ice environment, like it was their runway and they were stuck in a perpetual Groundhog Day-style fashion show.

"Maybe they're looking for their Coca-Cola," remarked Hodezor.


Japanese snow monkeys. Uhh...

We also saw some flamingoes! And penguins! Ha ha ha!
















If flamingoes weren't so hot pink, I swear, they'd be extinct from uninterestingness by now. Seriously - we stood there for fifteen minutes, and all they did was blink. At least the penguins waddled single-file back to their cave, giving us leeway to antropomorphize them in all sorts of incredibly endearing ways.

By the way, I am really glad humans don't control evolution.


Obligatory funny building shots of the day:

TAMACHI-ROPPONGI SUPER HAPPY FUN PARTY

Honestly, I have no fucking clue how I'm going to fit all of today into one blog.

Okay, here goes nothing.

I.

Okay, so Krust and I kicked the day off by going on a random romp through whichever neighborhood was the third stop left-wise on our line (we decided this through a very solemn process which involved going "second," "no, third," "no, second, bitch," "no, third," for about six minutes). It turned out to be a stop called Tamachi.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Tamachi:

"Tamachi (田町) is the informal name for the area surrounding Tamachi Station in Minato Ward, Tokyo, generally referring to the districts of Shiba, Shibaura and Mita. The name, meaning literally "field town", probably derives from the earlier presence of rice paddies."

In other words: it ain't Shinjuku, renowned for neon and debauchery. It ain't Harajuku, renowned for cosplay freaks and creative fashions. It ain't Shibuya, chic nightclub nexus of the East. What it is is a shitty-ass no-name part of town, home to office-space skyscrapers and action-figure salarymen in matching black-and-white suits.

Let's see what kind of color a couple of retard tourist Icelanders can wrest from this place, shall we?

As we came out of the station, we were faced with a bunch of really tall buildings. Since we've been here for, like, totally five days now, we're completely at ease with really tall buildings. We're not impressed with them at all. We don't feel compelled to take pictures of them at all.




































We had so much fun walking through this neigbhorhood. For one thing, there were the tall buildings, with which we were not at all impressed. For another, there was the way that, when we walked slightly out of the main concentration of skyscrapers, the neighborhood turned into this knotted lump of big and small, old and new, kind of like a miniature condensation of the very thing that makes Tokyo as a whole so fascinating. Take this, for example:


This tiny side street, just off the main thoroughfare. Laundry hanging in the windows, sliding paper doors facing the street, and (just behind us, not pictured) rows and rows of teensy-weensy cramped shops selling sushi platters and snacks and all sorts of fast food. And all of the young salarymen standing there, lined up to get their small sliver of authentic life, perhaps their only small escape from the straight-laced drudgery of their workaday lives. It was absolutely beautiful.

We trundled on down to the river, where we were treated with the sight of this guy:


The picture doesn't really show it, but that guy was going crazy. He looked like Mr. Miyagi in a business suit, and he was doing these mad Tai-chi ch'uan stretches, probably on his lunch break from work. He was going back and forth like Jane Fonda on fast forward, his black tie barely keeping up with him. We laughed so hard, we almost fell in the river.

After our marvelous little jaunt through Tamachi, we (somewhat more consciously) decided to take a stroll through the area around Tokyo Station, which is where the Imperial palace and most of the governmental buildings are located. After a quick train ride to Tokyo Station and a short walk down to where we felt the imperial gardens would be most likely to be located (we were right; we just walked in the direction where we saw the most green), we were greeted with the sight of...

A whole bunch of tourists in a group, walking towards a gate guarded by seventy million guards.

As they passed through the checkpoints, chaperoned needlessly by guards grabbing their elbows and ushering them forward in single file, Krust and I decided that we might want to save this whole thing for later, when we had someone with us who actually knew what the hell was needed to go into that place. Instead, we walked to another part of the gardens and took a gander at this fairly staggering misé-en-scene:


I have no doubt we will be going there before this trip is over, but today wasn't the day. So long for now, Mister Emperor Man. You haven't seen the last of us.

After a stroll through some adjacent areas (and a lovely meal at a veritably microscopic back-alley restaurant), and a gander at some thoroughly unimpressive skyscrapers,
















we headed back home to rendezvous with the Hodemonster and his lovely wife.

Thus began Part II of today's super happy fun party, The Roppongi Adventure.

II.

So there's this place, right. It's called Roppongi Hills, which is kind of a misnomer, right, because Hodezor and Hanako, since Krust and I arrived, had occasionally said "We should take them to Roppongi Hills and walk around," and we'd always thought, like, "Oh, okay, it's a nice wooded green area with lots of natural beauty."

Of course, we're in Tokyo. So, yeah. Roppongi Hills is a skyscraper.

I don't know what we were expecting.

So this afternoon we loaded the evil genius into his baby carriage and headed out to Roppongi Hills. We were assured that we'd see and experience lots of tremendously awesome things. "Feh," we thought. "It's a tall building. We're not impressed with those anymore."

As we walked through the suspiciously clean streets of Roppongi, we began to notice a building sticking out of the not-so-murky murk.


As we got closer, it became apparent that this was no average building. It was, in fact, an awesome ultra-mega-ROBO-BUILDING. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I'm sure your imagination can fill in the blanks. If you're having trouble, here's a visual aid.


So we go into this architectural monstrosity, and we head into a marble-festooned courtyard with a counter, and Hanako says something in Japanese to the inhumanly cheek-boned woman behind the counter, and we store our umbrellas in specially designed umbrella storage units complete with a special key for each umbrella (I am not making this up), and then we are ushered through a mysterious looking pathway where I, despite the rapid clip at which we are being ushered onwards, am able to ninja-snap an Engrish shot for your benefit:


We're taken to an elevator. An inconspicuous-looking one, if a little on the swank side. Sure. Fine. We step inside. There are four buttons. One of them says "1," the second says "2," the third says "3," and the fourth says "50." Just as the thought "I wonder if they have the same number system as us" begins to cross my mind, my stomach gets left behind me on the second floor. I watch, ears popping, as the LCD number on the floor display skyrockets upwards. 15, 29, 35, 41, 50, DING! We're on the 52nd floor.

We step out of the elevator, shell-shocked. Ahead of us, amidst the gleam of polished marble, is a gate that says "Tokyo View." Hanako ushers us forward, we enter through the gate, and there before us is Tokyo. All of it. Every single building in a 20 kilometer radius. In three-hundred-and-sixty degree panoramic view.

I tried as hard as I could to do the experience justice, but the limitations of
A) my skill as a photographer
B) the capabilities of the camera, and
C) the plate-glass windows

sort of hampered it. Regardless, here's the closest approximation I can give you.






























It was, in a word, staggering. I have never experienced anything like this in my life. I've been to the Grand Canyon. I've gaped over Jökulsárlón. I've seen Jennifer Aniston naked. Nothing -- I tell you, nothing -- has ever compared to this.

Nothing builds up an appetite like a good bout with jaw-dropping awe, so we headed on down to a lovely Indian restaurant (also in Roppongi Hills) called Diya, where we were treated to the most amazing Indian food I have ever tasted in my life. We were given a whole bunch of dishes so I won't bore you with all the pictures, but two things in particular merit a special mention:
















Of the lamb chops, Krust had this to say:

"I've often heard people use the expression 'it just melts in your mouth,' but I've never actually felt it happen before now."

That pretty much exactly describes it. Seasoned with cardamom, coriander, turmeric and god knows what unholy sell-your-soul secret ingredient, this was bar-none the most savoury meat any of us have ever had. It was so soft, you could have bitten it off the bone with your lips.

And the Nan bread... oh, dear lord. Kabuli Nan, it's called, and it contains cashew nuts and raisins. For anyone who's tasted cashew nuts, raisins and nan bread, just try to picture these three things together in one flavor-circle. Add a slight bit of salt, and then multiply the flavor by twenty. There you go. You absolutely won't believe it's possible until you try it.

This restaurant comes about as highly recommended as I could possibly recommend anything. If you're ever in Tokyo, go here. That's a fucking order. Diya Indian Restaurant, Roppongi Hills. No arguments.


After this wonderful trip, Krust, the Hodemonster and I headed out to Yoyogi to meet up with our posse for more poker, beer and Playstation soccer. As a side note: if anyone is into both PS2 and soccer, get Winning Eleven 10. I have never liked soccer in my life, and this game is actually turning me into a fan of the sport. I mean, what the fuck?

Okay, it's 3:43 in the A.M. and the wonderful nutcases who've graciously allowed me to live in their apartment are waking up in 17 minutes to watch an Arsenal game on television. I'm gonna see if I can get 10 minutes in.

Love, smoochies, the works. You know the drill.