July 8, 2007

• friday 7/8

  7:30am: after a slighty rushed (but free...SWEET) meal at the cafe, i make my way to the client.

  8:50am: 40 (read...FORTY) minutes later i'm at the client. can you believe?! it's basically a two block walk, and i somehow got lost enough to thread through the streets of shinjuku for nearly one hour before arriving, very embarrassed, on the 18th floor.

  12:45pm: lunch today isn't stellar, since the manager has left for shanghai...sigh. just a slightly congealed tonkatsu bento. i'm so hungry at this point i just wolf it down...but true to japanese portions, i'm really only filled up ~60%, leaving me craving something sweet from downstairs...

  2:30pm: we leave the office and right when i'm praising the miraculous traffic-free-ness of tokyo, we hit about 30 mins of standstill right on chou-dori. perfect.

  3:15pm: why do work-days seem so long sometimes? i really just feel like dicking around. today we are on the fifth floor of the ny office, which looks like some weird combination of a college library and the inside of google (will take pictures at some point), with its brightly-coloured decor and smattering of modern, slightly childish furniture that channels "we are a cool firm, not like the other firms...a cool firm!"

  8:07pm: dinner at an indonesian place nearby. is there no end of places to eat in tokyo? it's crazy! the food is good but again, i'm blown away by how little the japanese eat. each dish is maybe the size of my palm.

  9:30pm: maiko-chan!! last day in the city for her, so we're gonna maximize. i head to roppongi hills on a cab, since i'm a subway retard still. it's a whopping Y2800.

  9:45pm: true to form, as soon as i get off the taxi a drunken white banker-type comes up to me and asks in slurred english, "you wanna go in?" jabbing his thumb at some seedy bar to the left of a Zara (yaya!). gotta love roppongi hills.

  10:10pm: chill with maiko, walking up and then down a VERY cute hill that reminds me of the nicer parts of taipei. little shops line the cobblestoned streets, and cafes dot the hillside with light. it's populated just enough so it seems somewhat happenin', but at the same time retains a serenity rare to this bustling metropolis. we end up back at roppongi and chill at a cute cafe, where we try a sesame muffin with some brown powder they usually put on mochi (a true experiment!). i have a coffee with baileys (lyn, this one's for you!)

  12:05am i'm exhausted. just want to watch anime and sleep.

  2:45am: what the hell am i still doing up? sigh. anime is ridiculously addictive. decide to take a bath, but end up falling asleep in the scalding water, only waking up to find that i'm half-submerged and flailing around like some horror movie chick. i'm a freaking genius huh?

  saturday 7/9

  11:21am: turns out, the free breakfast meal tickets work at lunch too. SWEET!

  12:05pm: sure enough, the lunch today at the cafe boulogne is not japanese, nor french, but indian. kyo no su-pe-shya-ru wa...Curry Festival! it's so completely random, but that is one nuance i truly appreciate about japan. courtesy of the hyatt new delhi, the lunch menu today is four kinds of curry. very tricky though: the meal ticket is equivalent to Y2,000, so one must order carefully (haha i'm so asian...) i get the vegetable one and call it a day.

  1:00pm: i realize that i really have no idea what i'm doing - i have only a subway map and zero command of the language. if the company had given me more advance notice i could have gotten some sort of guide book, but no, that is not the way of the consultant. the conclusion is, i probably should head over to the place most friendly towards a-me-ri-ka-jin...

  1:35pm: on my way to roppongi hills then, that's the plan. passing through shinjuku station, i'm again wowed by the sheer amount of...can we say, "stuff"? that is tokyo. the little cafes and stores are countless. each one looks cute and clean. in this little part of shinjuku station alone, i daresay there are upwards of two hundred shops and cafes, maybe more. how is this possible? is there enough consumer power in the WORLD to power this?

  2:30pm: roppongi hills in the daytime looks less shady to me. it's still populated by the usual gaijin, and it's a struggle not to pass judgement on their crazily tasteless outfits (what the heck is wrong with these people?) no joke, i saw some blond guy wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves cut out, so open that i could see his left nipple jutting out of the arm-hole amidst a forest of armpit hair. on top of that he's wearing shorts, showing off wonderfully hairy legs. DISGUSTING. can we please cover that sh_t up?

  3:35pm: culture shock time...in the fitting room, the woman gives me this funny little tissue-thing. what is this? something to wipe my sweat off? anyway, i just toss it (the shirt is overpriced anyway, everything here is Y9000+ which is ridiculous). the mystery remains unsolved..

  4:30pm: next to roppongi is tokyo's new "it" thing, tokyo midtown. it's basically just a glitzier version of your typical asian mall. again, things are massively overpriced here...a cute skirt i found was a mere Y43,300. pennies, you say, pennies. there was also a chloe that i went to just out of curiosity - even found nice black cropped coat that would potentially look good, only to find it was Y233,000...great!!

  6:15pm: observe a uniquely japanese phenomenon, people lined up to watch the rolls-royces pull out of the riz carlton tokyo, the new "it" hotel. there is a new "it" everything, it seems.

  9:30pm: dinner with tom and his wife, at an ex-pat recluse in the midst of shibuya called Sonoma. how ironic, a restaurant boasting cuisine from northern california. the highlight of the restaurant? egg-shell lights. made out of real eggshells!

  

  11:45pm: wandering around shibuya after seeing them off. when i had gotten out of the train station it was simply a bustling beehive of neon-lighted katakana and funky-looking teenagers, but a sheer coating of drunkenness has settled over the milling crowd; there is a bit more sway in the haltering gaits, a bit looser laughter, and the noise is just a decibel

  12:45pm: shockingly, i'm hit on by a japanese businessman. this is an impossible phenomenon, since standing next to him i'm maybe half a head taller and probably weigh 20 lbs more. how can he not look at me and think "cow"? he tries to ask me for a drink in japanese, but i just give him bewildered head-shaking until he then, the second shock - asks me if i'm half caucasian! this is where there is some fun to be had. since i'm not quite retarded enough to tell him i'm living alone in the century hyatt i instead tell him i'm going home to my family in...yes...roppongi hills! "ah...rich father" he says under his breath and then bows at me sadly and goes away.

  1:30am: oh how sad...i should maybe take the taxi but decide to be cheap about it and take the train.

  ~*~*~

  random observations to date...

  1. we a-me-ri-ka-jin are beasts. truly beasts. i thought it was a stereotype but no...in comparison to the locals, not only do we have pretty much zero in terms of manners, we seem to think that the world owes us a cookie. on my way downstairs in the morning i spotted a nasty-looking new england woman with curly red hair just about screaming at the concierge, "i need to ask a question. do you understand me? I'M SPEAKING ENGLISH. do you understand? i need a wake up call at 6 because my FLIGHT LEAVES AT 8. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

  honey, you're in japan. the national language here is japanese, in case you missed the memo. that brings me to...

  2. who the heck are the rude americans who visit japan? they are definitely not from (chill, friendly) california or (slightly uppity but rigidly mannered) new york. it seems that we are represented here by three types:" the banker types who haunt the ex-pat pockets throughout tokyo, the seedy otaku-types who never wash their hair, and the third...very curious...poorly dressed and extremely rude americans that i have yet to see in america.

  3. we a-me-ri-ka-jin eat a lot. i'm talking a full 3-4x what the japanese are used to eating. take me, for example - i can finish about 3/4 of a normal america-sized portion (or the whole thing and feel completely stuffed). here i'm usually the first to scarf down the food and then feel only about 60% full. though, that being said..

  4. not everyone here is skinny anymore! well, the guys are still skinny, but i guess that can't be helped. the girls, if i remember right, were collectively anorexic 5-6 years ago, but walking even around shibuya, i'm actually pretty average-sized (and recently, bought a suit and was a size M, not XXL!)

  • 5:16 am
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