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Published: June 27th 2013
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After my harrowing landing experience, and the days of jet lag and exhaustion that followed, things became much more enjoyable. I'm enjoying living in Tokyo, and I'm essentially settled at this point. Sadly, I feel that, while my reading comprehension has substantially improved since my last visit, my speaking has languished. I'm working to rectify this, and simply living in Japan has helped quite a bit. But I am still slow whenever I want to say something that isn't simple.
Last weekend, I and another intern in the area met to visit Yokosuka. I also visited Yokosuka two years ago. When I mention this to people, the inevitable question is, "Why Yokosuka?" The answer is somewhat absurd. Imagine that one of your most inspirational, favorite movies had taken place in a town. You loved the movie so much that you would consume anything related to it. The movie may have even been your first exposure to a specific place. Replace "movie" with "videogame," and you might start to get the picture. The game to which I'm referring is Shenmue: Chapter 1: Yokosuka, which recreated substantial portions of this city in painstaking detail, including the actual weather in 1986.
In Shenmue, there is a place called Jupiter's Jackets, which actually exists in the real Yokosuka. The main character seems to be wearing one of these jackets. They're too expensive for me, but I did buy a Phoenix t-shirt from Jupiter's. Any Shenmue fan will also pick up on why this is particularly cool.
My traveling companion and I were literally just walking around aimlessly, which is actually my preferred mode of exploring Japanese towns. In this particular instance, I did indeed feel as though I was in a game. This isn't merely for the obvious reasons already mentioned.
At one point, we stumbled upon an artificial stream by the sidewalk. "Well," we decided. "Let's see where it leads." This stream was elaborate, as we soon discovered. It continued for quite some time, before leading us to a garden, and eventually leading us to an the coast. (Yokosuka is on the coast.) There, we found a very open area with ships and a statue.
"Okay," I thought. "This is cool." But it didn't stop there.
Adjacent, there was an even more open area, the likes of which I haven't seen in Japan in quite some
time. There was also a jungle gym and an artificial ship, just for decoration. And then a rather elaborate fountain. This was all punctuated by modern art. If you've ever seen one of the beautiful temples in an adventure/RPG game, you have some idea of what we saw.
We kept going. "What's this?" Some impressionistic stone art, surrounded by modern art structures, amidst some beautifully green grass, overlooking a blue sea, just as the evening sun cast an impossibly beautiful yellow hue on everything? Yes, please. I am not kidding when I say that this felt like a Japanese RPG. We approached the structure containing the art. I was distracted for a moment, and then I noticed that my friend was gone.
Well, apparently, there was a door behind the art. A hidden door.
So, I walked through, of course, only to find, yes, the largest fountain complex I had ever seen. "Really?" I quipped. I felt as though I was hitting trigger points in a game.
We walked around for a bit, before walking up the stairs and getting a full view. We noticed that the largest portion of the fountain wasn't functioning, which was
a bit of a disappointment. But wait! While we were admiring the design, the waterfall came on, just in time. I was starting to wonder whether someone was following us around and causing these things to happen, but that wouldn't account for the weather.
We walked around for a bit longer, and, just as we were leaving, we heard some music. What could it be? For the next 30 minutes, we were treated to an elaborate display of fountain art, synchronized to music.
Finally, we were on our way back. As we were returning to the center of town, we heard a trumpet on the military base, which was memorable only because of the sequence of fortuitously timed events we had experienced already. Afterwards, we wandered around for a while longer, until finally heading back.
I had a transfer point in Shibuya, where I took some rather nice photos. I'd never actually walked around Shibuya on a Saturday night, but it is indeed something to see. Finally, I went home and, exhausted, slept soundly.
A couple of days later, I caught the flu, or something similar. I seem to be almost over it.
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