Day 1 - Adventures in Tokyo Land: Hanging with Ross and Lori and Friends and Japanese Sex Shops. Sunday August 8, 2010.

Jet lag would be a proper excuse for waking up at 5:00 in the morning being that it was 9 pm back in the states but that wasn't the case. After three hours of sleep, I woke up from dreams of configuring the AdHoc network so I can connect my iPad to the internet. After laying there for nearly an hour, I got up and set my mind to rest. Pretty lame excuse, but I had to get it done and feed my addiction.

Today was unlike any other day here in Japan (not like I'm use to Japan already) because it just so happens that our good friends Lori and Ross are on a 10 day tour of Japan with a group and they had their free day today. After having a slow morning and eating some curry and rice for breakfast we met up with them at a local Starbucks in Shinjuku Station. Mind you that finding the proper star bucks was quite a feat because Shinkuku Station was no typical train station. With over 8 possible exits spanning nearly a mile and 5 Starbucks establishments to choose from, it puts any Manhattan Subway system to shame.

We met up with them at noon and proceeded to give them a tour of Shunjuku. Having a whole 2 hours of experience in Shinjuku, I intelligently gave them the tour of the "seedier side" of Japan and I quickly found out that in their tour of a dozen places they haven't seen any "adult" entertainment venues on prominent display and the night life here was much more active than other places. For the next three hours we showed them all the hot spots, ate fresh Takoyaki (fried octopus balls), the confidence club (japan's gay club), and a myriad of adult shops and ramen stores.


Next we took a train to Akihabara, the electronics mecca of Tokyo. The streets there were lined with stores and Japanese hustling to various shops. Besides a multitude of electronics stores we visited Don Kyjote a Japanese versions of Walmart where they have bargain basement items on nearly 10 floors of a super tiny building. Each floor was a department and was crammed with STUFF. If you were any bit claustrophobic then this was not the place for you.

It was unfortunate that I had to find this out. Considering that we haven't eaten anything besides a bowl of curry rice for breakfast we were hard pressed to find a street vendor selling fast food. Unfortunately 90% of shops were ones where you had to sit and eat at like ramen or curry shops.

I found out that unfortunately the McDonalds cheeseburger tastes exactly the same as it does in the US but we were desperate, starving and in need of something on the go. I won't make that mistake again. Next time it's KFC o_O.

Japan: Obsessed with Anime - Last stop in Akihabara was an adult mega store (mega in their sense). Four floor of adult stuff with each floor dedicated to something. First floor was costumes and R rated items. The second floor was women goods while the third and fourth floors was for men only (no women allowed). This store was much like any adult store you'd find in the US but unlike Fascinations or Castle Boutique is how they display the items. When you walk the streets of Japan you can sense the appreciation of Anime or Japanese cartoons infused into its culture. Women dressed up in anime outfits promoting their stores (not unlike a person dressed up in a gorilla outfit waving sign for today's sale) or humongous anime or manga stores everywhere, the culture would be as some would consider obsessed with Anime as it is infused into every part of their modern culture. Anime is indeed popular in Japan but that was clearly brought to light in the adult toy store.

In american stores the shelves are adorned with products that are advertised with women of various ethnicities in various poses trying to entice you to buy their item. Ocassionally you would see a porn star endorsing a product here and there but in this store about 2/3 of the advertisements were adorned with Anime characters. This is only startling if you were to translate that to the US. Imagine if we were obsessed with our cartoons, we would see products being advertised by Mini Mouse, Daisy Duck, Smurfette, She-Ra or a myriad of female characters in our animation history. Obviously it wouldn't work because our characters aren't a pretty to look at and doesn't have any appeal after a certain age and most aren't even human but still, their cartoons.

You walk in a store and see a popular Anime Evangelion advertising their super vibrator in various lewd poses or a Hello Kitty pocket massager. The apex was seeing "Personal Girlfriends" nearly life sized torsos looking like an anime character. The Japanese do appreciate their cartoons but one can see how many growing up with such an empahsis on such a medium have become obsessed with such a thing. That ends my little commentary.


After Akuhabara we headed to Lori and Ross's hotel at Shiba and visited a huge temple. They were very close to Tokyo Tower so I got some good contrasting photos of the temple with Tokyo Tower in the background. We met up with their tour group at 7 and proceeded to a restaurant the guide knew called Waru Waru. The food was sub par but the company was fun and it was good to socialize with english speaking persons after being here in Japan for so long (insert sarcastic smirk here). I did love the fact you can order your food from a touch screen computer! 14 of us ate tapas style sampling over 2 dozen different dishes throughout the night. The plans for Karaoke were canceled because dinner took too long. We were disappointed because it would be fun to Karaoke with a group of Gaijin. We took the trains back and road our bikes back home.



My first full day in Japan was fun as we traveled around to see various places. I look forward to my second day as I bike around Shinjuku, enjoy the hot humid and rainy weather and work on some articles for KP.
Please leave a comment if you actually read this. Pics will come as soon as I get some up on a server.