Japan - Day 2 - Tsukiji Fish Market

After going to bed at around 1am, we wake up about 3 hours later and get ready to head to the Tsukiji Fish Market to watch millions of dollars worth of fish being auctioned off. We were informed that the market opened at 5am and the auction went until shortly after 6am, hence we had to be there early.

We arrive at the Tsukiji train station at about 5:30am along with a train full of other tourists who were presumably headed to the same destination. The moment we stepped off the train and into the open air, we caught a huge whiff of fish smell, however interestingly enough, after that huge whiff we didn't really smell it again.

None of the gaijins on the train really knew which direction to head, so we all just ended up following each other, I think we were secretly hoping that within one of those groups someone had a local who was showing them the way.

Surprisingly enough we all managed to find our way there, from there the huge group was filtered through the many isles of fish vendors selling fresh seafood. (Picture a flea market) There would be stall after stall with tub after tub of delectable seafood available for sale. If I had a microwave in my room, I would have probably bought some.

After navigating our way through what seemed to be an infinite number of stalls and isles we finally make it to the auction floor. From there we quietly admire what appears to be a watertight system that they have in place. I took the liberty of filming an auction that took place, if anybody understand how their system works, please let me know.

Flash photography is not allowed while the auction is taking place, since the flash might distract the auctioneer and miss a valuable bid, but of course there are always those within a group that think they are the exception and do not follow the rule.

*Rumour has it that a few months ago, the fish market was closed off to tourists, due to an overwhelming amount of them not following the rules and causing too many distractions to the workers there.

After we left the fish market, we wandered around it's neighbouring streets until we came upon a buzz, a commotion of people were gathered outside a small shop, naturally we stopped by, poked our noses in to see what was going on. Turns out that there was a line up to enter a shop that seats about 6 people at a time to eat some fresh sushi. So we joined the queue of people and waited for our turn to enter the shop to enjoy some delectable fresh sushi.
Once we filled our bellies we continued to wander around the streets and city aimlessly until we found a small stall that sold souvenir T-Shirts.

While we were on the subway looking for our way to Akiharbara, we bumped into a Caucasian male who informed us that he had been living and working in Japan for the past 10 years. He informed us that the place we were looking for wouldn't be open till later on, it's only about 8AM at this point. He informs us that the Tokyo International Forum should be open right about now, and that we could travel to the very top floor for a unique view of the city. So we all pounce on the opportunity for unique photo ops.









But before we make our trek all the way to the top we first had to re-energize our bodies by purchasing various flavoured coffee from a nearby vending machine. Unfortunately, all three cans tasted the exact same, they tasted just like black coffee.

There's not much to do afterwards, so we make our way back to our hotel, on our way back, we come across a 9 story department store called Bic Camera, and each floor has it's own theme, i.e one floor for computers, one floor for household electronics, one for apparel, etc.









By now it's lunch time. What's on the menu today? Curry from a vending machine. Insert money, push button, obtain....ticket, exchange ticket for a plate of curry. Delish!









What's after lunch? Back to what Dora does best, explore! We're suppose to meet up with one of our other contacts in Japan today, Irene, but she had some personal things to take care of first before meeting up with us, so we proceeded to head on over to Sunshine City ourselves.

We find ourselves in some sort of entertainment center where they have plenty of vending machine games and inside hold prizes that we are not likely to see as prizes in vending machine games over here. Savy?









Hey look. It's the Sunshine King of Sunshine City.
So after all that excitement, we continue prowling the streets. Here we learn a new game, Rock Paper Scissors. Over here in Canada when we play this game, we usually just laugh and point at the loser, but over there in Japan, they take it to a whole other level. Get this. The loser has to go and hit on a girl. We stood there and watched them play for a few rounds and they were all unsuccessful with their approaches. So I decided to try a new approach and one of my own.

I walked across the street, found a couple of school girls, said excuse me, asked them to take a photo of me standing in front of a building, after they took the photo and handed the camera back to me, I then tried to hand the camera back to one of the school girls and asked one of them to take a picture with me and their friend, sadly this approach failed.

After this horrid failed experience, I had to do something to get back on my feet. So, what do I do? I eye-fuck the shit out of the next decent girl that I see walking by: So i'm crossing the street and make eye contact with a girl, she responds, this is a crosswalk, so she's walking towards me and i'm walking towards her, we stare at each other for a few seconds, she breaks, then I break, then just as I pass her, I turn my head over my shoulder for another glance and notice that she does the same thing, we manage to maintain eye contact for a few seconds until she bumps into someone, at that point we share another moment and we both laugh. We both stop dead in our tracks and that's when I whip it out. I'm talking about my camera you sicko's. That must have scared her off, 'cause she just laugh and ran off with her friends. So much for that.

After that unprotected incident we went back to Ikebukuro Train Station to meet up with our friend Irene, who had brought along her friend Will.I.Am.

From there, we let them take the reins and show us around their crib. They took us to the Harrajuko area and to Omotesando Hills, a mall made just for Yakuza wives. Why do I say that? Because the stuff inside that place are so expensive that nobody with an honest paying job would be able to afford it.

From there, they took us to the Meiji Shrine, where they gave a brief history lesson on the shrine and mentioned some of the rituals/practices when in a shrine.

For example, when entering a shrine or temple, you should walk directly under the arch, this is for good luck. Sunshine over there wasn't aware of this, so he entered the shrine by walking along the outside of one of the pillars. Fail #1. When he found out that he did it wrong, he tried to exit, by walking back out and tried to go under it again, correctly this time, but I don't think that's how it works. Fail #2?

When you're about to enter the actual sacred grounds, they usually have a 'cleansing' station, where you fill the ladle with water, pour a bit of it into your left hand, transfer the ladle over to the left hand, pour a bit of the water into the right hand, then transfer it back to the right hand, form a cup with your left hand, pour some water on it, rinse your mouth with it and spit it back out, all with just one scoop of water. I don't know what Sunshine was doing at the time the instructions were given, but he messed that up as well. Fail #2.

As you enter the shrine there is usually an elevated step, of which you're suppose to walk over. Can you take a guess on who messed that up and stepped on the step? That's right! Sunshine King! Fail #3.

Before you pray it is customary to make a small donation, by tossing a coin into the box. After you toss the coin into the box, you bow twice, clap twice, and then bow again. (The procedure of this is up for debate as we never figured out how to actually do it before the end of our trip). Needless to say, Fail #4 for you know who. (It's considered as a fail since we were taught one method of doing it at that time, but he still messed it up).

Okay, enough of the temple, let's go some where with a little more leg traffic. And when I say leg traffic I do mean LEGS! And where are we going to find that? Where else than the Head Quarters of the Fashion Capital of the World, Shibuya!

It is here that you will find the world busiest intersection, along with a 9 story building filled with shops only for girls! and across the street from that you'll find a 9 story building filled with shops only for guys! Don't get me wrong, girls in short skirts and high heels can be found all over Tokyo, but here is where you will find the better talent.

So what better way to try and fit into a foreign city than do what the locals do, shop at one of the department stores. Naturally since the majority of us were guys, we wanted to go to the store only for guys, however, Irene wanted to go to the one for girls, but didn't want to go alone, so we all just quietly complied and tagged along. Oh wells.

Okay, enough "sight-seeing" I'm getting hungry. You know what I haven't tried yet, since I arrived in Japan? That's right sushi! What better way to have sushi than, on a girl, but since Irene was uncomfortable with the idea, we opted for another idea, conveyor belt sushi.









After all that soy-sauce and walking, we needed liquids! So, Will.I.Am showed us the way to one of his many favourite local watering holes, or as us Canadians call it, bars. Here we ordered a couple more dishes, a few pints of beer and 1 desert. Yes, 1 desert for five people.












After that, our tour guides had to leave since they had work the next day and they needed to catch the train. But for us tourists, the night was still young. Loaded with liquid courage, pockets lined full of cash and plenty of time to spare, where do we find ourselves? That's right, Kabukicho, the Red Light District!

So when we get there, we must have either stuck out like a sore thumb or someone must have tipped them off that three guys armed with point and shoot cameras who look like us but could potentially be tourists are headed their way. 'cause when we got there, we were approached and approached, not by girls though, but by guys, not by Japanese guys either, but by black guys! Yes folks, you read correctly, there are black people in Japan, and no, we did not find them @ KFC.

We couldn't even walk 10 feet without someone yelling at us and asking us if we wanted to have a good time. I don't know what they do in Japan as a pass time, but i'm not interested in guys. So we quickly make our way through the streets, avoiding as much eye contact as possible and got the hell out of there!

Japan - Day 1 - Part II

The N700 finally arrives, we all board the train excitedly, nothing eventful that I can recall takes place during our 54 minute train ride, we each snap a few photos to commerate the memory of our first train ride in Japan.









Mind you, it's about 7PM in Japan right now and we've all been up and travelling for about 24 hours by now.

We somehow manage to find our way out of the subway sytem and use a map to locate our hotel, the hotel was surprisingly enough easy to find and relatively close to the station.

Steve makes his way up to the check in counter, winks at the male recptionist and proceeds to check us in. They have us each fill in information cards and inform us that if any of us are feeling slightly under the weather that we need to inform them of it.

After we get our room key, we hang around the hotel lobby for a bit and wait while Steve left to bring his friend, who is currently living in Japan to the hotel. A little while longer we head our way up to the third floor, drop our bags off and quickly run to the airplane sized washroom to take pictures of the toilet. After that we finally make use of the facilities to freshen ourselves up.












We proceed to head out to begin our first of many nightly adventures, Steve's friend, MangaMan, proceeds to show us around our neighbourhood, pointing out to us, what is what, what is a good place to eat etc.












We walk around a bit and finally settle down at a local bar for some drinks and bar food. None of us are fluent in Japanese, so we rely on the simple ordering method of pointing to pictures of the dishes that they have available. Sadly enough the size depicted in the pictures were really deceiving. Needless to say, since we were expecting somewhat of a real meal after 27 hours of travel time, we didn't stay long at that venue.
We wander down a couple of streets and decide to eat at a restuarant that appears to be pretty popular with the locals. We each order a tonne of food, which included a bowl of noodles, bowl cupped yet in a plate of fried rice and some dumplings to go with it. Since I was in Japan, I had to try the Sake, the Sake I ordered was suppose to be cold and it tasted just like Vodka, needless to say, I did not try it again in Japan.
MangaMan informed us that in Japan, they usually take a mixture of three sauces and mix it together to dip their dumplings in, however when he informed us of this, Steve had already consumed half of his dumplings. I think this was Steve's first of many fails.

After dinner, we continued to wander around the streets for a bit, just relaxing and gathering in the nightlife, soon after we departed with MangaMan since he had to work a 10hour shift the next day. Before he departed, we drilled him for information on the red light district, Kabukicho, and he parted us with great advice, use protection.

After we left we decided to head back to the hotel to get some rest for our official full day as a tourist in Japan, since it would be an early one.

Japan - Day 1

After a 9.5 hour flight from YVR, 2 meals of airplane food and 1 movie, we finally arrive @ the Narita Airport.

We begin to gather our belongings to deboard, but before we can do so, the flight attendants inform us that we have to pass a health check, and ask us to remain in our seats. I was expecting people in hazmat suits with thermal heat sensors in their hands inspecting each individual, however that was not the case, they just sent in a few people with SARS masks on, armed with a pen and check board, they basically just walked up and down the aisle looking at everyone and declared that everyone had a clean bill of health. I guess they really are THAT technologically advanced over there.

We collect our bags from the baggage claim without any hassle and make our way out of the airport and onto our first Road Block, figuring out how to get from the airport to our hotel. I make my first approach on a Japanese woman behind the ticket counter, I ask if she speaks English, she uses sign language to communicate to me that she speaks very little English. I show her the address to our hotel and she informs me that I need to purchase the tickets downstairs and that the next train is in 15 minutes.

Before we can embark on our journey downstairs we need to first rent a cell phone, so that we may contact the folks back home and various contacts here in Japan. I delegate the task to Ly, since he is the 'gadget man' and surprisingly, he complies! After what seems like to be a decade, we finally get our blue flip phone. (Anybody have a picture of it?)

I inform the guys that we have about 5 minutes to navigate our way downstairs, find the ticket office, purchase the tickets and exchange our Japan Rail pass vouchers and catch a high speed bullet train that is almost never late. We all knew very well that we were going to fail at this task; however that did not stop us from being persistent.

We make our way downstairs and easily locate the ticket office, from there, we communicate that we would like to purchase 3 of the Suica packages. The Suica Package is a package (duh!) that is available only to tourists, it basically includes a one-way ticket on the Narita Express Train along with an electronic Subway Pass that is preloaded with 2,000Yen, all for pretty much a couple hundred more Yen than just a stand alone Narita Express ticket.

After that, we head on over next door to exchange our JR Vouchers for some JR Passes. The JR pass allows us to ride their high speed bullet trains, Shinsaken, an unlimited number of times for a 7 day continuous period.

Naturally, we missed our 5 minute window and the next train was a little over an hour wait. So we find a spot to park our bags and Ly volunteered to guard them. While Ly guarded them, Steve went on a mission to find internet access, since he was missing a digit to his contacts number in Japan, while that was going on, I began my exploration of the lower level of the Narita airport. This is where my vending machine photo album began. I stumbled upon a vending machine that carried a Kit Kat drink, naturally, I snapped a quick picture of it to show the folks back home, however, I did not purchase it since I did not have any change on my at the time, and figured that I would have an entire week to try it.

As I was returning to the location where Ly was stationed, I came across a Starbucks, yes, they have a Starbucks in Japan. Embarrassingly enough, I jumped up and down like a silly anime character, when I witnessed it.

During my exploration of the airport, I came across a currency exchange place and noted that a $100 USD would buy me 9,300Yen. I informed Ly of my findings and this is when he discovered his FML in Japan. Before arriving in Japan, he exchanged $1,000 US and $45 CDN in order to purchase 90,000 Yen. However if he had done it here, he would have had a better deal.

After that, we just sat around and waited for the train to arrive, when the time finally arrived, we gathered our belongings and headed for the next part of our journey.

The Vancouver Leg

Woke up @ 4:30AM on Saturday morning, got dressed and threw my bags into the truck and headed off to the airport via Ly's Dad.

Met up with Steve, used the self check in, did the usual competition of weighing in the bags, to see whose weighed the most (heaviest packer was the loser) as usual, Ly lost this competition.

Surprisingly enough, we all got through the security checkpoint without any beeps or hassles.

Not much excitement here, we board the leg, find our seats, get comfortable for take off, and yippie, plane doesn't explode during take off.

Ly and Steve are seated next to each other in the middle aisle (I arranged for it this way, in case Ly needed to hold Steve's hand, since this was his first time flying), while I'm seated to the right of them with an aisle seat. A little while after take off, we get to choose our own movies on our own personal TV's. And here comes the gayest moment of the trip, we all chose the EXACT same movie. But wait it gets even gayer, it was a chick flick that we all decided to choose on our own: He's Just Not That Into You.

I heard them laughing along with the movie, but I had no idea that they were watching the same thing I was, until I looked over and noticed the similar screen shots, while my system was being restarted because I lost the functionality of my TV.

Shortly after the movie we landed in Vancouver, here our stopover was about 3 hours. Steve was nice enough to arrange for some of his friends to come pick us up, show us around the city and grab lunch.
They showed us a couple of the main tourist attraction hot spots, one of them being a building with a mutha-f-ing tree planted right on the top of it.

We ended up grabbing lunch at Milestones and for some odd reason we all opted to have almost the exact same thing, eggs.

I would have been more interactive and asked them more potentially annoying questions regarding their city but I had a major splitting headache at that time (for some reason, I always get headaches when I fly, must be the change in cabin pressures). I only managed to get one fact out of them while I was there, that is, there are practically no black people in Vancouver.

We didn't see ONE for the whole 3 hours while we were there, therefore there are none in Vancouver period

They dropped us back off @ the airport and told us to give them a call if we got stranded here for whatever the reason.

As we were walking to our gate, Ly kinda branched off into the direction of the seating area, while Steve and I kept walking, I was looking for a washroom and I guess he was just exploring. This "suspicious" activity caught the attention of a couple of wandering customs officers, who pulled us aside and questioned us, individually. He asked me questions such as where are you going, why am I going there, where will I be staying, how much money do I have on me, where do I do (I hate that question), etc. It seemed like this was going to go on forever!

After the game of 20 questions, I went to the washroom and secretly popped a few pills, found a comfy seat and passed out while watching the TFC game.

Woke up, boarded the plane, discovered that our seats were situated around the mid section of the plane where the emergency exits were. Pros: more leg room. Cons: Center mounted TV's had a glare on it, so therefore you couldn't watch much. If the plane snapped in mid air, we'd probably be the first to go.

Japan - How It All Began

Friend: Hey buddy. What's up?
Johnson: Hey. Not much. You?
Friend: Check this out, I just got this email from my friend, he just booked a round trip to Japan for $555 tax included! And for flying with a stop over in Vancouver, you'll get about 13,000 Aeroplan points.
Johnson: Did someone say Aeroplan points? Where do I sign up?

So I naturally spread the word, first person I tell about the deal is Le Yen. Since she is usually around to answer my emails (see, replying quickly has it's benefits). She ponders a bit on the idea of leaving the Americanized continent and traveling to the far east to learn the secret meaning of life. Sadly she had to pass on this opportunity.

During my almost daily workout with Ly, I inform him of the deal, he also ponders it for a bit (he probably wants to become the next Drift King of Japan) but alas he agrees to go. I can tell from his anime lit eyes that he is very excited to go.

Ly informs his younger cousin Steve that he is going to Japan, and Steve is filled with envy, so much in fact that he decides to join him on the trip.

So I quickly book our flight tickets, and with a little over 2 weeks to go before the impromptu trip, there is lots to plan.

I spent countless hours researching what little information I knew about Japan on the internet. I wikied the country's history and the operation of Love Hotels in Japan. I read pages of information on their language, trying to understand and speak it. I googled their cultural aspects - way of life, bowing and peeing. I tried to gain an understanding of their noodle subway system, and last but not least, I bought Tourist related books on Japan.

Our flights were confirmed, our hotels were booked and our gaijin clothes were packed. After what seemed like an eternity of planning, it seemed like we were all set, all except for the fact that we didn't know what we were going to do once we got there.