Tokyo

I am so fucking glad I decided to stop in Tokyo. My original plan had been to fly straight though to Seoul, but after talking to a few people who had been, I decided it was worth checking out, if only for a few days. Special thanks here to Maria’s boyfriend Blair and a number of Mike’s buddies who talked me into it. I had a great time.

As soon as I got through customs at the airport it hit me that this was the first time in a while that I was in a country where I didn’t speak the language at all. A lot of Japanese people have studied English, but most are very shy about using it, and have had very little practice with native English speakers. This language barrier combined with my shoddy attempts at following the complex rules of social courtesy (I tried to memorize a list of “dos” and “don’ts” that I found online) made my interactions with everyone halting and awkward at best. Still, almost everyone I interacted with in Japan, from strangers in metro stations to hotel clerks, were very friendly and helpful despite my goony American ways.

After sleeping in at my airport hotel on Saturday, I struck out to find my couchsurfing host. Couchsurfing.com is a website that, in the words of one of Mike’s friends, “is kinda like facebook, except then you sleep over.” The idea is that millions of people all over the world open up their homes to whoever wants to come and stay for a night…for free…no strings attached. Yeah, I was a little sketched out too. However, Scott, a 25 year-old Aussie who worked at a Japanese law firm, put all my fears about couchsurfing to rest. After taking the train from Narita to Ikebukuro (the second busiest station in the Tokyo, and the world) and wandering around bewildered for a few hours, I found Scott in his quiet, residential neighborhood. He took me out drinking in a park with his friends (a mix of Japanese and Aussies) that night. It was a beautiful night, and we relaxed, talked and threw a light-up frisbee around (another reason for me to think he was a cool dude). We also went to one of those sushi restaurants where little plates of sushi come around on a conveyer belt. Good times all around.

I spent my last two nights in Tokyo at the Anne youth hostel near the Asakusa Temples. I met a number of cool people there, a disproportionate amount of who were from Norway, Finland or Sweden. I did my rounds all over the city as a tourist, and I won’t spend three pages here describing everything I saw, that’s what my photo albums are for. I’ll just focus on the coolest/most hilarious parts.

The absolute highlight of my time in Tokyo was seeing the Tsukiji Fish market. Because the Tuna auctions (the market’s main tourist attraction) are usually over before 6:30 a.m., it is wise to get to the market on the first train available. The metro in Tokyo closes at midnight and opens at 5 a.m., so I decided to just go out on Sunday night and stay up until the trains started running again. This idea was good in principle, and Matt (one of my new buddies from the hostel) got behind it as well. Before too long, we had convinced most of the guys in the hostel’s common area to come along. There were, however, a few problems. Firstly, we were drinking in the hostel until about 11:45, meaning that by the time we left, there was no time to get anywhere interesting on the metro. The second and most serious problem was that Matt decided to break out a bottle of vodka. Remember how I said there were a lot of northern Europeans there? Well, poor Matt, who was Swiss, took it upon himself to try to keep pace alongside three vodka-swilling Fins…big mistake. By the time we left the hostel, he wasn’t doing so hot. The third problem was really a direct result of the first two problems. As the seven of us left the subway after being kicked off the last train at some random station, Matt (completely incoherent by now) began to loosen his belt buckle in preparation for a healthy urination session on the public platform. Japanese people gaped in horror, and the Australian guy we were with bolted along with the three Fins. This left Matt with Gehan (a Sri-Lankan/British guy) and myself. Before Matt could let loose, I ran over and stopped him. “Man, if we were in New York City, I’d join you right now, but they’ll arrest you for that shit in Tokyo, dude.” That logic seemed to work, thank God. Since Matt had scared of the other four guys, the three of us decided to check out Shibuya, an area that apparently bustles with nightlife. Sadly, it was a Sunday night, and when our cab dropped us off at about 1 a.m., the place was deserted. Gehan and I wandered around for a bit, and managed to lose track of Matt in a record store that was inexplicably open. So what do two dudes who hardly know each other do to kill three and a half hours at 1:30 a.m. in Tokyo? Karaoke! We rented a private room, and the two of us sat on skeevy pleather couches for two and a half hours and belted out some classic tunes. The song where we really nailed it, where both of us sang our hearts out, was Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls. Pretty awesome.

As the sun began to rise, we hopped on the first available train and made our way to Tsukiji. The fish market was absolutely incredible. It essentially consists of two sections: an outer ring made up of sushi shops where tourists can sample the freshest fish available in Japan, and an inner area roughly four times the size of Boston’s Government Center that makes up the actual wholesale market itself. If it swims in the ocean, you can buy it there…lots of it. According to wikipedia, the market moves 2,000 metric tons of fish per day! The tuna auctions consist of 900 or so licensed fish vendors bidding on thousands of whole tuna, some frozen and some fresh, and whisking them away three or four at a time on two-wheeled carts. Men with enormous band saws cut up the frozen tuna on the spot, and the fresh tuna are dissected into a half dozen cuts, ranging from your basic tuna steak to o-toro, the prized fatty belly. Especially after being up all night in a deserted area of town, the place seemed insanely busy, teeming with trucks and hundreds of men driving motorized palate jacks that flew around the market and impossibly never collided. I finally got back to the hostel, feeling a little strange because it was 8 a.m. and I had more species of fish than the New England Aquarium fighting for a spot in my stomach. Yum.

I’m writing this post from Cheddar Jack Clancy’s apartment in South Korea. I got here on Tuesday, and will be here until May 10th. So far I love the food here in Suwon, but haven’t gotten around to visiting many interesting places. Still, it’s been great to relax and spend some quality time with Cheddar, who I haven’t really hung out with since 2007. Apparently we’re going to crash a Korean wedding tomorrow. I’m pretty pumped for that, although I’m not sure we’ll be able to pass for members of the family…