Strange Things are Happening...

---

...Women stabbing men with their umbrellas...(more on this, keep reading)

The nightclub was a major success!

I emailed the DJ to enquire about tickets, whether they were sold out or where we could buy them once we reached Tokyo. And he emailed me back to tell me my name was put on his guest list for complimentary admission!! Wow. Take your favorite band/pop star/singer, now imagine they were playing a massive concert in a huge metropolitan city and you emailed them to ask about tickets. Now imagine that they emailed you back to tell you that you were on their personal guest list for complimentary admission. Yeah, WOW!

We bypassed the line and got to enter through a special entrance, received special guest passes and were ushered through the door. A quick pat down, security unfortunately told Devlin he couldn’t take his camera in so we had to check it in a locker, and we were in. The club was only a little bit hard to find. Apparently there is a free shuttle running from Shibuya, but when we got to Shibuya it was almost 11pm and trains stop running at 11:30 so we did a small search and then decided to hop back on the train to avoid getting stuck somewhere without transit.

Inside the club was MASSIVE. The outside of the building looked like Maxbell Arena!! Danny Tenaglia seemed to be warming up when we arrived at midnight, he was playing some slower deeper stuff, and the room was not very full yet. We found a nice spot on the dancefloor and started warming up ourselves. Before long, the music had gotten faster, the room was almost full and the party as in full swing. Drinks were surprisingly reasonably priced, cans of Red Bull (caffeine filled energy drinks) were $5, Heinekin from the vending machine were $5 and bottles of water were $3. And yes, this club had vending machines full of water and Heinekin. Not surprising since the official stat in Japan is approximately one machine for every 20 people. Now calculate how many people are in Japan, and that is one heck of a lot of vending machines. I don’t know about the mixed drinks from the bar, as we stuck to water and energy boosting Red Bulls.

Danny sure did put on a show. The Japanese LOVE him, and he didn’t disappoint. In total we were inside for 10 hours, from midnight until 10am. And we only sat down for a combined total of nearly one hour! The music was just too good we couldn’t stop our feet from moving our bodies!! I can honestly say I’ve never danced for such a long consecutive period in my life, that’s a new record! And just like the rest of Japan, the club was spotless. I’m not sure if the Japanese themselves are super tidy, or if the staff employed to clean up are extremely efficient, but there was not one cigg butt on the floor, not one bottle of water, or empty glass left anywhere. Even the bathrooms were clean after 10 hours of mayhem! A typical bathroom in Calgary would have lasted 2 hours before one of the toilets is clogged to the brim, an entire roll of toilet paper is streamed all over the floor and the sink areas resemble a mini lake.

There was no smoking allowed in the main room, which was a welcome relief because you didn’t have to worry about dodging careless people trying to burn holes in your clothes. Security was always quick to point out rule breakers, men with suits were carrying around ashtrays for the offenders to butt out in. It was pretty hilarious, to see an entire ashtray near overflowing with just lit cigarettes.

We stayed until the very bitter end, after the last few tracks he came on the mic and spoke to the crowd, thanked the staff, and the crowd cheered and stomped their feet for one more track…as any good superstar DJ would do, he pulled out one last bomb and let us all dance our hearts out and relish in the magic of the night. The song had a killer sample in it which went “Something strange is happening, women stabbing men with their umbrellas” and he had a couple of umbrellas and jumped down into the crowd and danced around with everyone with them. Actually, rather frequently during the night he would come down in front of the stage while a record was playing and shake hands with the crowd, pose for pictures and grin and dance around. True showmanship!

After the music had finally come to an end he sat on the edge of the stage and was autographing various things for people. Not having anything worth signing, we ran to the entrance of the club where there was a display wall of flyers of upcoming events. Thankfully there were flyers for the night and we grabbed one and ran back to the main room to request a signature. Of course he said yes, and signed my beloved flyer. I was able to thank him for putting us on the guest list and allowing us to have such a splendid evening.

We were basking in the after glow of such a musically perfect night and caught the subway back to our area and went out for lunch. After our bellies were full (we were starving!) we grabbed an ice cream snack and sat in the park near the river reminiscing about all our favorite tracks we heard.

He is playing again in Malaysia for New Years Eve and we plan to be there in Singapore at the legendary Club Zouk. Our dancing shoes are all ready and so are our legs!! We can tell that all the walking has definitely had a positive impact on our legs, after dancing for 9 hours straight our feet were mildly sore but we didn’t hurt nearly as bad as we thought we would. We’ll have to keep up some kind of exercise regime when we return, or else we’ll turn to flub again after all this daily exercising!! Tonight we even got off our subway line a stop early to save the 40 cents each on our tickets (it’s 40 cents more to go one more stop) and walked the extra bit of distance!

Tokyo is fantastic, but expensive!! It’s such a fashionable city, everywhere you look there are Japanese girls wearing the latest coolest clothing. It’s like a mix of Paris and New York. Interesting fact: Japan consumes 1/3 of all Louis Vuitton products made worldwide! And walking down the street it’s not hard to believe, as 1 out of 3 women have Louis Vuitton purses on their arms. The other 2 have various other upscale labels such as Chanel, Coach and Prada. Not being so fashionable, and somewhat of a Nintendo geek I splurged and bought a foot tall Super Mario limited edition figurine at a toy store today. It’s tres cool, and I just had to have it. It’s in a giant box so we’re not sure how we’ll mail it home yet, I suppose the parcel will be extra large this time!

Another hip popular brand is Bathing Ape. We had never heard of the brand before arriving in China, but I noticed a few people wearing these strange t-shirts with “A Bathing Ape” written on the back. Finally we read about this Japanese started brand which is rather popular with celebs and rappers. Pharrell Williams has even collaborated on a shootoff label called Billionaire Boys Club (fitting, as we all know Pharrell is in every rap video produced and probably is a member of his own billionaire boys club…) Their stores are notoriously hard to find, in order to add to their exclusivity I guess, and I can attest to that as we spent an hour wandering around the same damn area trying to find the silly place. No signs out front, the only reason we found the store was seeing a man walk up from a set of basement stairs fully decked out in Bathing Ape clothing, hat and shoes. Ready to give up, we decided to give the stairs a try, and headed on down. Sure enough we found the mystical Bathing Ape “busy workshop” store. I’m guessing that they must not receive very many customers, probably due to lack of signage, because their prices were OUT OF THIS WORLD. The clothing is your typical hip hop “I’m trying hard to look as flashy as I can in a white t-shirt, jeans that are too big, hoodie down to my knees and tacky colored sneakers” with hip hop superstar prices to boot. Their logo is a cute little monkey, and I found a beautiful hoodie which had silly monkey head print with pizzas, French fries and hot dogs around him. The items are made in very limited production so that you feel like you are getting a one of a kind piece. And at $215 for a HOODIE I would hope no one else would have the same one!! Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for our pocketbook) the size medium was too big (remember, I’m not a rapper) and bunched awkwardly in the front. Due to this limited production nonsense they were sold out of size small in all four colors (you would think for a market of tiny people they would make more size smalls, I can’t imagine they sell very many large, xl, or xxxxl). So we left empty handed, after browsing the gaudy shoes. I think their design technique for the shoes is to match the most god awful colors they can find together, such as lilac purple, orange and lime green, or brown, yellow, navy blue and red, in a fancy star with a lightening bolt pattern. Oh and don’t forget the laquer like plastic sheen they had, making them Technicolor patent leather rapper shoes. Oi. Don’t worry, stores have recently opened in New York and L.A. so expect to see this new to North America brand (they’ve been open in Japan since 1993) gracing every rapper and cool kid before long. They seem to be somewhat of a collectors item also, because in a used clothing store a half block away they had loads of “old, discontinued” Bathing Ape items, for DOUBLE the price!! The hoodies here were $400, the t-shirts $100 and the shoes $350. Yikes! Despite the used clothing signage, the clothing inside all looked BRAND spanking new, we suspect the old unsold stock from down the street ends up here, for marked up prices. So, get it while it’s hot people, or else pay double for that coveted monkey t-shirt!

We’ve also been gorging ourselves on our favorite Japanese foods, gyoza (fried Japanese dumplings with a soy-vinegar dipping sauce), ramen (ichiban but 50 times better) and steamed rice with strips of BBQ’d beef or chicken on top. Very yum!!

Tomorrow we pick up our Chinese visas from the embassy in preparation for our entrance back to China on Thursday. I’m glad we were able to come back to Tokyo, because we didn’t spend nearly enough time here the first time ‘round, and it’s a quirky funky city. We are glad to be returning back to a land where we can afford to comfortably live, instead of spending $4 each time we want to take the subway somewhere.

I hear Calgary has received it’s first snow. Sounds marvelous! The weather has definitely cooled here, but it’s still quite comfortable to walk around in a t-shirt, or at the most a light jacket after night falls.

Missing you all! Thanks for continuing to follow our journey!!

Erin and Devlin
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

---

Comments

[AKA]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDYA!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY RINSTAH!!!!! HOPE YOU HAVE AN AWESOME DAY!!!!! Perhaps we will be able to chat later...looks like you're out partyin'. Have a little fun for us too....we miss you guys! 15 minute count down for us here, but it's your day to celebrate for you already!!! WAHOO