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Loneliness
The day I went to Chinatown with Mayumi, she first took me thru a Tulip garden on the way. There are WAY too many tulips there! Rows upon rows of like-colored Tulips. Except for one. It kinda looked lonely. I met with Yuka again on Sunday- she's way too fun dernit! This time I got to feel special by finding faster directions thru the Japanese train system from her house to mine. *dance* Her original route was going to take like 1.5-2 hours, but I gave her one that was a little over an hour.. 1.5 tops. ^-^v Anyways, she came over to my place so we could watch the 2nd Death Note movie, which I still hadn't seen yet- I was waiting to watch it with her. It was pretty interesting. Unfortunately they didn't finish the storyline (it would've required another 2 movies likely..), but they way they put the ending together, somebody who hasn't read the manga/seen the anime wouldn't suspect it should've gone longer, so that's good. The point in the storyline where they ended it was where I originally thought they were going to end the anime, but as it turns out, the anime looks like it's going thru the entire storyline, which is VERY cool!
This week, as it turns out, has a whole lot of spare time for me in it, which is both good and bad, I guess. Good, because it
Weird names for stores...
While in Chinatown, I saw this store, and just couldn't resist taking the photo.. gives me a chance to make all my new CDs into MP3s for my ipod, answer emails, and write my travelblog. Bad, because I don't have anybody to meet and have fun with;; Not that I can't go out alone- I frequently do, but I need to make sure I keep up with my emails so I can have plans for the future, and I need to keep up with my travelblogs so people know I'm still alive ;p So, I found myself with a free Monday, and I used it to send out my last wave of emails to people I know in Japan, announcing that I'm here (I'd forgotten about doing this wave.. it's to the people I had talked to about a year ago, but we lost contact for whatever reason-- I didn't expect many responses) In the end, I got maybe 3 or 4 responses outta the 20-25 emails I sent. Better than I'd hoped for. 'course, about 7 or 8 of the email addresses didn't exist anymore either.
SO! Tuesday I got together with a female friend (Tomoko) whom I'd not seen before. It was either monday or tuesday when I actually first saw
Cool display
This was at the end of one of Chinatown's main streets-- the building itself, as far as I can tell, isn't a part of Chinatown, I've been told, but the display most certainly is! I think the building is actually a parking lot. a picture of her. We'd been talking on and off for a few months, but she'd never posted any pictures of herself- always favoring (as is typical of Japanese girls...) photos of minney mouse, stitch (from lilo and stitch), or whatever other "cute" characters happen to be popular that week. So she finally sent me a couple pictures, and, of course, she's always seen mine- I never make a habit of hiding my photos from anybody really. We met up at the usual place for me to meet people in Yokohama, under the giant TV screen on the side of the More's building. (More's is a very popular department store name- it always makes me think of men's business suits for some reason... *ponders*) We didn't really do anything super fancy until later. We went out to eat, walked around a lot, talking, etc.. Later on, we wanted to "go out drinking"-- I'd not yet met anybody (much less a girl!) who liked going out drinking at all, so I jumped on this opportunity. Sure, it was the middle of the week, so she couldn't stay out TOO late, but still. We weren't really near any huge drinking establishments (not
The blind are blessed in Japan
One of the first "weird" things I noticed here in Japan, is the presence of these strange yellow "lines" all over the place. Seriously. EVERY major street has these things lining both sides, as well as in train stations, the airport, and pretty much anywhere that the general public walks. As you can see, there are these weird bumps on them (that takes a bit of getting used to feeling under your feet unexpectedly...). These are for helping the blind/hard of sight to know where to walk, and where to expect a change (a turn/step/curb/etc..). Pretty neat. that they'd be busy on a tuesday night, especially with the Japanese train system screwing with everything. That's my one MAJOR gripe about here...), so we hit up this quaint little english pub near tho Yokohama station. It was pretty cool, except I've learned something about alcohol here in Japan (at least, from what I can see so far...): They DON'T know what schnapps is! ANY of them! Which means no bottlecaps! argh! I like bottlecaps;; Additionally, there's no sourpuss, which was just another kick while I was down, since it was another major ingredient to a bottlecap. APPARENTLY there -is- strongbow here in Japan somewhere, as I've seen a few ads about how it's "new" here, but I have yet to find a place that serves it. It must be -really- new or something. Still searching tho. heh. So, we hung out at that english pub for a bit, just chatting and drinking (western style!), which was a pleasant change. Japanese usually, when they "go out to drink", go out to drink/eat/talk. Like, not just snacks, I'm talking like a meal. While that's not rare in north america, typically when you "go out to drink" it's just to ...
Interesting warning...
I saw this on the side of a tunnel while Toshi was driving me around one day.. the blue lights actually move around in a circular pattern. Apparently this is a visual warning so people with high vehicles (namely trucks) will pay attention to the fact that a square block can't fit in a round hole. oddly enough, _DRINK_.
I hooked up with Mayumi again later that week, this time with the intention of going out to see Chinatown in Yokohama. (Truth me told, I'd intended to go eat there with Tomoko earlier, but at the time we'd both met, we'd both forgotten until we were already out at a restaurant) Poor Mayumi, every time we go to meet up, I'm late. I think she's special or something, because I'm not late (to speak of) with ANY of my other friends, but it seems that everytime something is going to happen to cause me to be late, it's on a day that I'm meeting her. I swear she must think I'm horrible at that punctuality thing, or something. Which is only partially true on account of my continuing inability to accurately predict travel times on the Japanese train systems. Everytime I try to predict, I'm late because of some other small thing I didn't take into consideration. Chinatown in Yokohama is HUGE! (At least, compared to Edmonton's...) It's comprised of, from what I can tell, 4 major streets in a ... well, for simplicity's sake, let's call it a square. There's tons of smaller streets
I wonder if the people who decide these things actually know the meanings...?
I've seen a couple of these trucks now, and they're pretty much just white trucks with big black lettering... Well, you can see it. Toshi and I both turned to each other at the same time and said "I wonder if they're trying to tell us something...?" haha shooting out to the sides of these 4 streets, both towards, and away from the center. You wanna buy a toy panda? This place is swimming with stores that sell them. Like, almost EVERY store has them for sale. You'd almost think there were pandas in China or something... Also while I was there, I'd come to discover another VERY disturbing fact: There is NO -ginger beef- in chinese food in Japan! That fact alone is enough reason to never go eating chinese food in Japan. We looked at virtually EVERY restaurant in chinatown, and many had this 1 dish that looks vaguely similar to ginger beef, but isn't. It's beef and green peppers, usually with some kinda ... something. bamboo shoot maybe? slices (looks almost like onions), but served in some boring (NOT GINGER!) sauce. Speaking of which, Grant will NEVER come to Japan- they don't have slurpees out here. Hell, they don't even know what a slurpee _IS_! I tried to explain it to them, and they think of snowcones><;; Other than dinner at
, all we really did for the night was walk around Chinatown, Monopoly on advertising
I walked off the train at a station one day, and came across this series of advertising banners on the ceiling. I couldn't get a shot that got all of them, so I settled for a shot that got -some- of them. In case you didn't see the first 7 or 8 banners, there's another 13 or 14 afterwards. which is really no small feat, since it's so massive.
On some random day (I likely should've written about this weeks ago, but kept forgetting) I was riding the train back from somewhere in Tokyo (since I was on the Yamanote line, the line that runs in a circle thruout Tokyo), and a shiver ran up my spine. I swear, this was like a scene outta a horror movie or something. I looked around, and I was literally the only person I could see on the train- nobody in my car, and nobody in sight in the ajoining cars. I thought not much of it, since it was after the rush of going home from work, but still before the rush of trying to get home before the last trains. But then I started looking around at the car I was in, reading ads, watching the TVs they have looping (typically...) about 12 different commercials incessantly.. I realized that this car was the -MICROSOFT- car! No word of a lie, I walked the length of the car I was in, and EVERY SINGLE AD in that car was a microsoft ad, all for the same thing (albeit different ads).. Who comes up with these names!?!
I seriously wonder if these bands would show their faces on stage if they actually understood English like a native speaker.. I don't recall the line, but they all used the same catch phrase. And I'm talking about a LOT of ads here, not just a "we so happened to randomly get all 3 ad positions in that car" kinda deal. When I first started taking notice, I was standing at the front end of the car, facing forward. From there, you can see 2 ads, one on each side of the door to the next car. Both Microsoft. On either wall there was also an ad before the sets of doors leading off the car, again, Microsoft. After the doors on either side was windows, but up ABOVE the windows was a continuous stream of probably 7 or 8 ads until the end of the windows where there was another ad before the next set of windows with ads above them. Then doors again with a single ad on the far side of the doors at the back end of the car. And again, an ad on either side of the door leading to the next car back. ALL Microsoft. If that's not creepy enough, there's also hanging ads that hang from bars (rafter-like) above your head (well, above Japanese Green Peas in Japan
Who needs Green Peace when you have Green Peas?! people's heads...><), 4 of those (or more..?) per car, all Microsoft. And on top of that, above each door is a TV playing commercials. EVERY SINGLE COMMERCIAL was a different Microsoft commercial using the same catch phrase. I think Microsoft actually owns this particular train car, and is renting it out to Japan Rail.
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