Super Tokyo Adventure Mega Japan Fun Time

(night majestic)

My vacation in Japan was amazing. I've wanted to go there pretty much since the moment I figured out that all my favourite Nintendo games originated there. It's exactly as strange as I always imagined it, and pictures and words can only do so much to capture that. But fuck are they ever gonna try.

That banner panorama is taken from the bar at the Tokyo Park Hyatt, 42nd floor. That's the place from Lost in Translation.

The place is a real electronic dream. Or nightmare. I've described Korea and a colourblind neon insanity fest a good dozen times, but Japan puts this place to shame. I had to take care not to go all Exorcist and pull a few neck-twisting head turns looking around at all the wonderful distractions. Likewise, I had to take special care that not every picture I took was a panorama. There are video games and video screens and people and colours and lights everywhere.

In a sense, it's kind of like Korea two-point-oh. Or like Blade Runner meets Anime. Or like the 80s' version of the future, with copious quantities of pornography tossed-in for good measure.

Ah yes, the pornographic nature of Japan. Note that the pictures in my collage here were not taken in sex shops. The signs were taken from the street, and the products were all from relatively 'normal' shops. Alright, granted, one of these shops was some sort of all-purpose grocery mart that we stumbled into at 2 in the morning, but nonetheless, it was an otherwise normal store with this one section dedicated to some strange and depraved shit. Not that separate, though. I promise, the magic kits were on the same shelf as the vibrators.

Also take note that I've added some black blocks to make this collage safe for work and moms. However, if you click on the picture to see the full version, it is not safe for work whatsoever. Unless you work in a Japanese sex shop.

But speaking of toys, Japan's full of the sort that actually are safe to display proudly in public. Not that proudly displaying scads of nerdy Japanese toys will exactly win you many friends, but at least it won't alienate all but the most depraved of visitors.

Practically everything I bought fell into the 'useless kitsch' category (see the middle of the collage for some of the toys I bought). My favourite buys were my pixel kits, though, as they allow pixel-perfect recreations of all the games that came out when I was still young enough to get in trouble for saying 'fuck'.

I actually spent a lot of my Japan trip doing exactly what I would have if I'd visited there at the age of 12 or so. Toys and games and the attention-span of a gnat are all necessary parts of life in Tokyo, I think. Akihabara was easily one of my favourite parts of Tokyo. As home of all things electronic and overtly weirdly Japanese, this place represented that fucked-up bit of culture that attracted me to this place. Toys and games and grown-up toys and little things that go whizz-beep-bang-boop everywhere. I was in heaven, and after four hours was still disappointed that I had to go meet Cahill and the Cohorts at the airport. However, after a day and a half of exploring confusing Japan alone, I could use stand to see some people whom I'd met more than a day prior.

Hanging with Cahill, Eric and Roberto was cool. Numbers like that give you the safety to do funny walks down the street for no reason. They give you someone to drink with in the lobby of the capsule hotel. Or in random bars you pass. Or on the streets.

The four of us spent most our time in Shinjuku and Shibuya, two popular districts in Tokyo. Their trip was only for about two days, which is really a torturous short bit of time to spend in Tokyo. When the guys left to catch their plane on Sunday night, I decided to on and interesting place to sleep.

Well, I actually slept somewhere pretty interesting every night. My first 2 nights in Shinjuku, I slept at a capsule hotel. That's the kind of infamous place where "Japanese people sleep in drawers". It's basically a place where they have matrix-like shelves along the wall, each about the size of a comfortably-large coffin. Inside these little beige boxes, you've got a thin mattress, an alarm, and a TV about twice the size of my fist. The whole thing is surprisingly comfortable, and I think it's really an efficient use of limited space.

On my third night I booked my own room in a PC cafe and slept in the comfortable leather chair while watching streaming movies on the internet. This is actually a popular choice for sleeping arrangements. They even have special overnight pricing for just this purpose.

On the last night, I went to Asakusa and checked out a Ryokan. That's a traditional Japanese guest house - kind of like the B & B of the far east. My rest on the bamboo floor that night was easily my deepest and most comfortable of the journey. Not that a plastic coffin and a chair are really the stiffest comfort competition, but still.

I spent a day in Odaiba on Monday. After a night of sleeping in a chair, a famous spa sounded just right. The whole thing was amazingly relaxing, even if it did look like E. Honda's level from Street Fighter 2. Mid-February sitting in boiling water outdoors in a Japanese rock-built hot tub has quite a bit of world-experience appeal.

But speaking of mister Honda, fuck if the cars aren't cooler here, too. Even when they aren't cool by any stretch of the imagination, they're so ridiculous and tiny that they've got an appeal all their own. Korea actually has these crazy import laws that basically double the price of any non-Korean vehicle, so all you ever see are Hyundais, Kias, and Daewoos. The only reason these sell well outside of Korea is that they're really, really cheap. Maybe that's necessary when so many Koreans drive like their cars are either disposable or invincible.

Hell, cars in Japan are Right Hand Drive. Even if I didn't already love JDM vehicles, any country where they drive on the wrong side of the road is automatically a little cooler.

But I'm sure very few people are interested in cars and toys and games and all that shit. Admittedly, I'm sure a bunch are interested in the black-bar stuff, but that's your own fucking business. We all know why everyone really likes Japan: crazy signs and labels. So, in closing this week, here's a collection of potential head scratchers.



My comments, clockwise from the upper-right corner.

Jack Black: You love his off-the-wall comedy stylings, now try his out-of-the-bottle coffee freshness!

Yeah, 'cause I really need directions to the Giant Panda. It's not the kind of thing I'd notice on my own. (Confidentially, even with the signs, I couldn't find the fucking thing. I think there's a slight chance it might be a metaphorical Giant Panda. Like, there's a little Giant Panda in each of us us. Either that, or I'm retarded.)

Depresso coffee. Now with extra anti-caffeine! AKA booze.

Don't smoke while walking. No joke here, it's a rule in Tokyo. It's so you don't burn others with your cigarette. While you're at it, don't smoke cigarettes that are longer than your own legs.

Sunnyside Cafe. You've gotta be from Newfoundland to find this funny.

Real black music. For all of you sick of dark gray and navy blue music. Fakers!

And that's it for Tokyo. Well, just for shits and giggles, here's an obscenely wide, almost 360-degree panorama of Tokyo, as taken from the top of one of the world's largest ferris wheels in Odaiba.



Also, you can find more pictures that didn't even make the blog on my flickr album. And you can read a more cogent and chronological account of my adventures in the Trip Journal below.

Tokyo Trip Journal (Complete)

My trip to Japan was a complete success. Much like Thailand, I kept a journal in my sketchbook during the trip. Here are those journal pages, wrestled from the disproportionately tiny arms of Godzilla himself.

Balentine's Day

(holding you a while and then I'm going to Japan)

My last week before my big-but-not-so-long Lunar New Year holiday was an eventful one. Weekends and punk shows and familiar holidays celebrated in half-familiar ways and conflict against machines and bureaucracy with ultimate success marked the week of hearts and airfare.

On Saturday me, Cahill, and his various coworkers convened around Hongdae nice and early to check out a place I've been meaning to see for a while here. It's called Skunk Hell, and it's just about the centre of Punk counterculture in Korea. All of the few dozen or so people in Korea who'd call themselves part of that subculture were there, and it was a helluvan interesting show.

Of the countless (if you can't count to nine, that is) bands that performed, there was a band from Japan called The Hat Trickers. What was most interesting about them was their shtick. See, they dress like Alex and his droogies from A Clockwork Orange.

While they weren't actually the best band of the bunch, (that honour goes to the name-forgotten predecessors who played a wild cover of MC5's Kick Out the Jams) they drew most of the crowd, and thus made said crowd peak in wildness during their performance. After their set, I picked up a shirt (click for picture), which is (obviously enough) a parody of the iconic image of Alex holding aloft a blade.


The punk show was an all-ages affair (albeit one that curiously allowed copious quantities of booze to be brought-in without question) so once it ended, we headed to Brixx for some nice calm-contrast as a bunch of hookah-smoking caterpillars.

After that cool-down, Robert and Co. headed the way of all-night DeeJays and me and Cahill went the way of wandering around Hongdae. However, shortly after we left Brixx, we realized we'd lost the braceleted key to our locker full of stored goods. After searching for the key, trying to pull the locker open with drunken brute force, and stealing a knife to try and jimmy the lock, we finally got the great idea to tell the guy guarding the lockers that we lost the key. Ten minutes and ten bucks later they opened the lock.

That would have been the dumbest we felt all night, if the key hadn't fallen out of Cahill's hood several hours later (I apparently placed it there as a joke).

Luckily, the horrible humiliation of was karmatically retributed when I bested all odds to finally win at one of those crooked claw machines. Mind you, I only won an ugly lighter that ran out of fluid several moments later. Also mind you that it took about 30 tries at about five different machines, and that each failed attempt was accompanied with an ever-escalating string of obscenities. All minding aside, I did finally win something from one of them.

Speaking of impossibly intimidating odds, I visited the immigration office this week to get a replacement Alien Registration Card. Then I found out that would take a week, which means I'd get the potentially necessary-for-travel card just about a week too late. Luckily, Ben suggested that night that perhaps the sofa we 'liberated' around the same time that I lost the card might be contain a clue. Much to my relief (and Sherlockian jealousy) the card was sitting safely under my sofa. All is well and good for my Japan trip.

Of course, that reminds me that Ben is back. Mike's going to be here in a few weeks. Adrian's coming around the same time. That's a strange and pleasant little time warp in my little Korean social network. March to June will be my swan song, and it'll be interesting and will fly the fuck by.

But this is Valentine's week, so surely I've got more Korean-heart-shaped things to discuss than what foreigners are coming when, right? This place is predictably chocolaty and hearty on that chocolate heart occasion.

However, there is a twist. See, Valentine's Day in Korea is basically a day on which girls give boys chocolate and gifts and the like. Then, a month later they've got White Day. On March 14th, boys return the favour, giving sweets and whatnots to their sweethearts and whonots. Hell, I've even been told that there's a corresponding Black Day (April 14th) on which it's taboo for anyone to give chocolate as a gift.

A number of my students gave me chocolate and presents. Some of the presents, however, might have been intended for Lunar New Year (the brief holiday I'm currently enjoying). In particular (particularly nice, that is to say) I got a nice wine kit from the mother of a Kindergarten student. The school also gave us these Hickory Farms-esque box of canned meats and oils and such. For some reason, Spam is an exceeding popular - almost luxurious - gift item in Korea.

But canned meat is hardly the best part of my holiday. In less than 10 hours, I'm leaving for Japan for four days. I arrive in Tokyo alone and with no plans. I'm meeting Cahill and Co. a week later, and that's as solid as any of my intentions go. Much like my trip to Thailand, I plan to keep a sketchbook journal, to be updated while I'm on the trip. I've even bought a new sketchbook for that very purpose. So, stay tuned for updates in the next week.

In the meantime, I should probably start packing. For a closer this week, enjoy a random assortment of sight and signs from Korea.


From right to left, I start with a sign post ripe with... kitsch, if nothing else. The clearly obvious sign in that lot is for the Cafe Hyper Maniac. Me and Cahill looked for the place, and it's not there anymore. Or at least not open in the middle of the night, which really seems like a pre-requisite for all hyper maniac cafes.

Foodwise, I've got a bag of garlic baguettes. These are packaged like potato chips, in a small-serving mylar snack bag. I also hear that they're heavily sweetened; you know, like all good garlic breads. Then I've got just some sign with some curious phrasing. Granted, the English is only slightly broken, but the wording is so awkward that drunk 2:00AM me obviously found it a little funny.

Finally, there's what may be a public service announcement, and may otherwise be a fun-loving ad on how socially-acceptable it is for Korean males to get really uncontrollably fucked up on soju after work. Regardless, they're acknowledging the prevalent phenomenon, which is funny enough for me.

By the way, the Korean language has no 'V'. That's the explanation behind my relatively unclever title this week.

The Subterraneans

(had a good run anyway)

The weather's getting warmer now. First week of February and Ajosshi (Korean for 'old man') Winter is already crawling under the subway gate and sneaking out of Seoul. I've heard that the last week or so has just been unseasonably warm, and that the bitter chill of those occasional Siberian winds won't have me switching-on the air conditioner this month yet. Still, to see signs of this much warmth this early, clearly this isn't the kind of place where the season's last snowfall comes during a late-May holiday weekend.

Incidentally, though, as soon as the weather gets warm enough so that you can't see your breath, you start to see the smog again. There's something about that crisp winter air that looks and tastes so much cleaner. When I'm not used to it, it looks so much like a foggy day here. But it's not fog; it's yellower, and decidedly more urban and poisonous.

This weekend was good, albeit somewhat sedate. Pleasantly sedate, though. Friday I popped out for a coffee and some non-inebriating drinks with coteachers Bora and Sue. At the (quite nicely adorned) coffee shop in Cheolsan I noticed a number of Koreans had written their names on small white rocks surrounding an ambient light, so I figured I'd follow suit, writing my own name in Hanguel. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for petty vandalism.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but Korea loves coffee - it's everywhere here. Actually, I should say that Korea loves coppee. There's no equivalent of 'f' in the Korean alphabet, so the closest approximation is P (there's no v, f, or z either, by the way). It's quite natural once you get used to it, but it's still impossible to say that I'm leaving the classroom to 'copy' something, 'cause the kids all laugh and say "coppee jussaiyo!" (I want coffee!). I often groan sleepily and mumble "Yeah, I could use one too..."

Back to the weekend, I grabbed a bite to eat with Bora and met one of her well English-endowed friends. Kate was a nice girl who works as a designer for an art magazine in Korea. She gave Bora the world's best Andy Warhol calendar and I envied her job and she gave me travel tips for Japan and offered free admission to an art exhibit here in Korea. We had some drinks at some Elvis-statue-adorned bar in Hongdae.

Past the weekend, the week was relatively standard fare. I was approached by an awkward woman on the subway the other day. After saying 'Hello' in questionable English, she told me she had 'Good News' for me!

I briefly pondered whether she might have been the Korean Ed McMahon, and whether or not I might already be a winner. I hardly had time to remember that I hadn't subscribed to any Korean magazines to qualify for their non-existent version of the Publisher's Clearing House before she whipped out the old 'Awake' magazine. She was a Jehovah's Witness. And she could hardly pronounce "Jehovah's Witness"! (remember, no 'v' makes it Jehobah.)

The magazine wasn't even a Korean translation, it was the same publication that creepy people in suits would leave on my doorstep back in Canada when I looked out the window and refused to answer the doorbell because it was them. The girl pointed to some article about calypso music and I apologized to her that I had that get off at the next stop. That wasn't even a white lie, just a convenient truth.

I've probably driven this point home pretty completely already, but the subway is really Seoul at its Seouliest sometimes. (In fact, I've driven that point well past home, around the block a few times, then straight into the ground.) Still, though, a means of transport that will take you across a very congested city for a little over a dollar and in less time than a taxi or your own car is sure to attract all sorts.

My images here aren't anything spectacular, just generically definitive images of the subway. Identically uniformed people going to school (formative adolescent years spent wearing the same thing as everyone else - no wonder so many want to dress with conspicuously noticeable style when they mature.) Old ladies (ajummas) selling rubber gloves and ginseng and lighters and dead fish and a random assortment of virtually anything that is available for sale anywhere.

And people just standing / sitting there, waiting for their stop, as photographed through the window's reflection. I don't take many pictures inside the train, as it looks quite conspicuous, and I get enough curious looks and approaches by random strangers as it is.

Speaking of curiousness and pictures, I'm depending on my students for comic relief once again this week. First up, I've got a short assignment written on the dangers of drinking. It's reasonably well-written considering it was done by a 12-year-old. What's curious, however, is that the assignment called for him to write about his favourite pop music, or whether he likes to sing at Noraebang (Kareoke rooms, they're popular with young and old here). While I realize that singing and 'dranking' booze go hand in hand, I really don't see quite how I ended up with this. I hope it's not his idea of a subtle hint...



Oh the other side of the subtlety scale (or rather, further to the side on the completely not subtle at all scale) I've got a few pictures from my Kindergarten students. On the left, Edward drew me rocking-out (possibly smoking?) with an alien. Next to that, Thomas drew me drop-kicking a snake. Even if the 'tweens think I have a problem, at least the 5 and 6-year-olds still think I'm pretty cool.

Closer to be Far Away

(this is not how we planned it, but we got ahead of ourselves)

This week I started off with a decent night of post-work drinking with Sue and Bora. It's real curious how the only foreigner with whom I spend any amount of time these days is Cahill; someone whom I knew for years before I came here. Coming to Korea to isolate yourself with weigookin (foreigners) kind of defeats the purpose anyway, so I'm quite glad with this.

Ben and Mike are both on their way back to Korea in the coming month, though, so the former ECC Canadian Trifecta will have a reunion soon enough.

Speaking of ECC (my school) the start of another new month meant a few changes once again. I lost a couple of classes that I've been teaching since the day I got here, so I bought them all pizza, whether I liked them or not. I also lost Julia, one of the nicest co-teachers I've ever had.

I've got some cute new classes, though; one of which speaks practically no English. They're little, and a little afraid of me or any grownup, but the fact that I share their child-like mentality and sense of humour puts us on frighteningly even ground. It also gives me a chance to use the few dozen Korean words I know with people who won't question my caveman-esque lack of grammar.

But speaking of my childish sense of humour and a limited ability to use language, I really need to stop exploiting the journal of one of my nicest, most likable students like this. But not when an eleven-year-old is trying to tell me politely that it looked like shit outside.

Oh, I also have an older student who's quite impressive at drawing, and often sketches disturbing things on the back of her paper. Like homicidal tortoise-hare what-ifs. Kids are awesome.

And hell, I'm kind of on an unfair make-Korea-look insane streak here, so I collected a few signs of Korea's insanity. Or 'slightly different from what I'm used-to-ity'.

Some of these aren't even funny or insane in the strictest sense. They're all funny in the sense that they're a little incongruous. But Korea's a little incongruous anyway, so that hardly counts. I do personally love that little picture of the octopus relaxing, reclining, and wearing sunglasses, though. Not only does he not mind the fact that he'll be devoured soon, but the fucker's so relaxed he looks like he's on vacation! I only hope I look as calm moments before being served alive, my tentacles still squirming after my brain's been impaled by a chopstick. Yeah, that's a popular way to eat them here, no joke. Hell, haven't you seen Old Boy?

And now that I've mentioned vacations and tentacles, I've got to reiterate that Lunar New Year is coming this month. Not that the Year of the Golden Pig has anything to do with flailing tentacles, but Japan sure as hell does.

It's official now, I booked my tickets today - I'm Going to Japan in February. I leave the morning of the 16th and return the evening of the 20th, spending little more than a really long weekend there. But I'm going largely alone (meeting Cahill in Tokyo for a night or two), with a complete lack of plans and proper preparation, so it's sure to be a bit of an interesting few days. I'm keeping up my Thailand tradition, and keeping a sketchbook journal of my travels, to be uploaded to the blog.

But that's all weeks away, and I'm not much of a long term planner. In the meantime, I'm still in Korea. I took a few pictures this week with the theme "What's for sale in Korea?" in mind. I got a few interesting answers. An all-too-common gatcha machine (like the bubble machines that promise robot watches and give you teeny, useless slinkies for your loonie) that sells tiny replica weapons. There's also a little food cart selling blurry, poorly-photographed tentacles. Then there are the little bowls of live-but-slowly-dying parasite-sized fish that old ladies sell outside the subway.

Then there's sex. That's apparently for sale far more prevalently than I realized before. When some of us accidentally went to a Noraebah instead of a Noraebang last month, we were told that since we had girls with us, it probably wasn't the kind of place we were looking for. Apparently, Noraebahs are 'men's only' kareoke rooms where you pay a heavy premium to have scantily-clad women come to your private room to (ahem) 'hear you sing' I guess. It's good that hey warned us before that night got really expensive and really awkward.

Even though I've already rubbed it in like salt in a long-distance wound, I close this week with an image that reminds me that there are a few strange little differences between this and the frigid block of granite on which I was born.


This is a stand at the food court of my local mall. The stand itself sells grilled dried squid carcasses. For a beverage, you can get a beer there. Seven months in Korea or not, the idea of sitting in a mall food court, eating dried squid and drinking a can of beer still seems a little foreign to me.