Jun 11: You spend all yo' tiiime! (in the 'fukuro)
Last night I did end up going to Yokosuka-Chuuou (or Yokochuu as Jiuna has dubbed it) for dinner, but first I checked out a cake/cafe place nearby that looked kind of cute and had menus and stuff. The real reason I went in though, was because they had a huge sign with their name on it, which happens to be ROSEN BACFER. Too awesome. ROSEN BACFER's menu was more lunch oriented, as it had a bunch of sandwiches and coffees, and I suspect they would have been surprised had I asked to eat dinner there. Instead I looked at their cakes, and asked about one tart/cupcake thing that appeared to have buckwheat noodles on top (partially glazed, no less!). It turns out that it's actually chestnut paste, but my mistake was good for a chuckle from both me and the counter lady. I bought some bread, because they (gasp!!) had non-square, non-white bread available for purchase! It advertised having fruits in it, which is always a good sign, and it looked pretty good so I decided to try it out. I also asked the lady behind the counter when the last returning bus from Yokochuu left, so as to not strand myself over there after dinner. Unfortunately the bread was a bit of a bust, as the fruits advertised appear to be rather tart, gooey red things, as one might find in a fruitcake or something else I tend not to eat. QQ I hope the bread enjoys a happy life in my cupboard before being tried once more for good measure and then thrown away...
At Yokochuu, I saw Tenya, but I decided against it due to possible greasiness complaints from an empty stomach[t]. I walked around a bunch in search of Pepper Lunch, which involved going past a CURRY RESTAURANT unmolested! You heard it here first, folks: RJ eschewed curry in favour of pursuing a higher goal. Anyways, after some searching I found the Pepper Lunch, and had absolutely no idea how I had gotten there. I at least I knew from my path generating algorithm that I wasn't far from the station (I walked in loops), so I wasn't lost per se, but I couldn't find the damn thing again when I checked to see if I could today. Anyways, I went in to Pepper Lunch (for dinner), bought my ticket for Pepper Rice at the vending machine, sat down, and was surprised to find myself in a restaurant almost entirely populated with black people. The people working at the restaurant were Japanese, as were the two people sitting to my left, but other than the white guy and the Hispanic guy to my right and myself, everyone in the place was black, and this remained true even after a decent number of comings and goings! I guess I'm not surprised that the many foreigners I've seen in Yokosuka are partial to Pepper lunch, as it's got a fair bit of beef in it, as well as zero requirement to interact with anyone in Japanese, and it's cheap and generously sized (if you get the large ones), but I would have expected an even blend of ethnicities, and this was definitely not that.
Anyways, I ate my Pepper Rice and went home. Oddly, the bus trip does not seem to take that much less time when there aren't huge slowdowns on the road to Ikkidzuka. I'm not quite sure how that's supposed to work... I'm also having a hard time remembering the order of the stops between my stop and Yokochuu. This may have to do with the fact that I can't really tell what the canned announcer lady is saying (I'm pretty sure no-one would name a stop kusogasa kooen), or it may have to do with the fact that there are 6 buses that run the route I want, and I don't pay much attention to which one I'm getting on. Every bus I've ridden appears to take about half an hour, and appears to cost about 350円. After getting home I bought a bag of cucumbers from the Yokosan so I don't die of a lack for green veggies. It feels a bit wierd to be buying perishable groceries with no fridge, but the cukes seem happy sitting in my cupboard so far. If I don't wake up ever again you'll all know why~! <3
In the morning I woke up early to some rather wild weather. I had to close my window due to wind-driven rain coming inside. I went back to sleep on and off for a while before I finally got up. As of the time of this writing, some of the water that fell on a plastic bag in the morning is still there 17 hours later; humidity is certainly higher here than in Canada, or at least that's what I'm attributing this non-drying behaviour to.
I went out and got some breakfast at Pain de Mie Bread Kitchen, which involved some seriously galapagos fare. I had something that appeared to say "beef meat" in kanji, but was really a (possibly beef) korokke split in two and sat on a bun with some mayo(?) in the middle. I also had a melon-pan and a "kare-pan", which was shaped like a lemon and breaded on the outside, and relatively flexible. It did indeed have curry inside though. The Bread Kitchen very conveniently sells milk in little cartons, a beverage not commonly found in vending machines (although I could get it at a konbi if i really wanted). I waited at the bus stop, which was surprisingly entertaining, as I tried to subtly move around to avoid as much rain as possible in the rain-shadow of the bus shelter, which was constantly on the move due to the gusting winds. As my luck would have it, the one time I'm waiting in the rain is the longest wait I have yet experienced for any transit yet in Japan, but I had my rain jacket and Roots hat on, so only the hat and one side of my jeans got very wet, which I can certainly deal with.
The ride to Yokochuu was uneventful, although I did enjoy watching the patterns of the sheets of rain swirling around in empty parking lots. At Yokochuu I for some reason felt the need to put more money on my Pasmo, so I walked through the gate with a whopping ~17200円 ready for use. I'm happy to say it does not cost quite that much to go to Tokyo and back. = ) The first train that came bound for Tokyo was marked with a viking ship (limited express), but I had checked the map, and viking ships were exactly what I wanted. The green limited express from Yokochuu only stops 6 times until Shinagawa, which is totally awesome, as it means the whole trip takes like 40 minutes, barely more than it takes to get from my dorm to Yokochuu! From the train I saw a rather upsetting older, frazzled looking man in a girls' school uniform on the platform at some station or other, complete with pigtails. In his beard. D: I didn't take a picture because my camera wasn't out and I'd really rather forget, actually.
I switched to the Yamanote line at Shinagawa (noting that it had stopped raining altogether, something that would hold for the rest of the day), and rode to Ikebukuro (hence the title of this post, "the Fukuro" apparently being a nickname for Ikebukuro). That was uneventful as well, and I was pleased to see that, stepping off the train into Ikebukuro station, it had taken only 2 hours from the moment I stepped on the bus at Ikkidzuka. Anyways, my good travel time was offset by the fact that I'm an idiot and forgot that Tokyo has stations with meaningful multiple exits, unlike our skytrains, and had forgotten to take note of what exit to take out of Ikebukuro station to get to Maguro Ichiba (one of Jiuna's many suggestions for things to do in Tokyo). I had taken forever to get out of the dorm, so it was about 1 o'clock by this point, and I was getting hungry, and successfully managed to pick an exit that spat me in exactly the opposite direction of my goal.
I wandered around for a while thinking Ikebukuro was like, ohmygawd like super boring, before consulting a map and realizing that the street formation I recalled from Jiuna's map was on the opposite side of the station. I went back underground and came up on the right side in search of Sunshine 60 Street/Boulevard/Promenade/Lemonade/whatever. A street with a gate depicting a sunburst over it means that street is probably Sunshine street, right?
Wrong.
It took me a little bit of walking, thinking again that perhaps Ikebukuro is not the most interesting of places next to Akiba or Shibuya or Harajuku, until I came upon a map and realized that I was again in the wrong place. I then backtracked to the station and headed in the right direction (FINALLY) and was greeted by the wondrously populous Sunshine 60 Street.
I spend a while looking for Maguro Ichiba, as the map neglected to depict how many roads I had to skip before going down the side road it was located on, but I did eventually find it, and took note of a lovely landmark to help me find it in the future (unfortunately it's a temporary one) that I will post a picture of maybe tomorrow.
I ate some lunch at Maguro Ichiba, choosing the Bakudan-don over the Kaisen-chirashi-don for Jiuna's sake. It was delightfully slimy. I suppose that's what you get when you combine OKRA and NATTO. I tried the natto on its own first to make sure I still didn't like it, and while I didn't find it repulsive (I still think it smells a little jankey), I still wouldn't go out of my way to eat it. It mixed in well and added to the overall slipperiness of my bakudan-don, though I was quite worried about natto filaments ending up in my beard, and making it reek like cheesy feet for the rest of the day.
I finished my bakudan-don and wandered around Ikebukuro for a bit (I think I found a Tora no Ana? Didn't have the courage to investigate further) and contemplated seeing ザ ブラック スアン, but I didn't feel like going and holding up the line asking about whether it was subbed or dubbed in my highly limited Japanese. I settled for wandering around looking at the various establishments titled "GAME" in search of one that offered something I actually wanted to play (no I don't care that you've got darts and pachinko and a hundred thousand UFO catchers with Minnie and Mickey Mouse in them, I want some goddamn vidjagames!!!).
I succeeded in finding a GAME establishment that advertised ARCADE as well as UFO catchers and purikura (stickypics) and stuff. I went up to the third floor, which had a mens washroom which was disturbingly clean, and smokeless air, which was disturbingly fresh. Also disturbingly, on this third floor devoted to ARCADE, there were Gundam games. And Gundam games. And some Gundam games too. Oh, and a Dragon Ball game that was totally a ripoff of those Gundam-style games, you know the ones... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.
I looked around some more and found some RTS-card game hybrid thing going on, which looked kinda neat, but I didn't have cards or any knowledge of the rules (or any real desire to play, for that matter). I went back down to the first floor with the aim of finding a different GAME with ARCADE that hopefully contained something not related to uncomfortably Freudian beatdowns, but I gave this GAME establishment one last chance and, lo and behold, hidden among a forest of purikura booths was a cache of rhythm games! I knew it wasn't the purikura playing J-rock!
Anyways, they had some really swanky BeatMania/DrumMania/GuitarFreaks setup with intimidating speakers that probably did some permanent damage over the duration of my stay at the arcade, as well as a couple of Jubeats machines and Pop'n'Music, and some now thing called "Reflec Beat" that's got a touch screen and it has these orbs flying around the screen, and you touch them when they hit a line on your side of the screen and that bounces them back to the other side of the screen. I played none of these games, however, as I had my eye on something else.
PROJECT DIVA!!!!!!!!
Yessss!!! They had the arcade version of Project Diva! It was 100円 for two songs, which is pretty fair considering they're like 3x as long as DDR songs, but the lineup was pretty brutal. There were like 4 people in the lineup at all times, which translates to waiting like half an hour to play. They had a big screen set up which I really should have taken a picture of, but I was too busy being in line and trying to get used to the button scheme on the downtime to remember to do so. I bailed pretty hard overall hahaha. I failed World is Mine on Hard on my first try and had to walk the walk of shame back to the end of the line while the the goth loli who was behind me cracked her knuckles and proceeded to take me to school (OK, she didn't really crack her knuckles, but she did have a really floofy skirt that was all black and lacey, and she was pulling like 102.7% on some songs on Hard. Thank you Japan for never making 100% good enough). I fared better on my second try, passing World is Mine and failing Po Pi Po, both on Hard. I basically blew the afternoon there and stayed until about 4:30 before I left. The button scheme is so frustrating! I've full-comboed Po Pi Po on extreme before on the PSP, but in the arcade I couldn't even clear it on Hard! I ended up asking some people near me in line who were worse than me (so I didn't have to suffer the scorn haha) where to buy the card, so I am now the proud owner of a Level 2 vocaloid named QUEENT (duh), as the card was available around the corner for 300円, and I for some reason missed seeing Miracle Paint when looking for it and therefore thought it had to be unlocked. It's sitting in my wallet next to my bling-worthy Pasmo, which I really should get some rhinestones or something for. D:
I left the arcade and went back to Maguro Ichiba, as I wanted to try the Kaisen-chirashi-don. It was pretty good, but oddly I think I may like the Bakudan-don better, despite not really liking natto, and despite the chirashi-don having many lovely things like negitoro in it. I went to Ikebukuro station next, with the plan of checking out a drugstore inside, as I had been suffering from a headache and an acid stomach all day, which had started to get pretty bad. I decided to try to get some TUMS like thing, armed with the knowledge (or at least the erroneous belief, I haven't fact-checked myself yet) that the active ingredient is calcium carbonate.
In the store, there were people behind the counter at the pharmacy section (yes, a drugstore needs a pharmacy section, because the rest of the store is busy selling dried fruit and milk tea), who eventually after watching me turn over a package in my hands about 8 times volunteered that it was for diarrhea (at least I think that's what they were suggesting). I suppose it's pretty clear that I didn't want diarrhea medication, as someone who wants diarrhea medication does not stand about attempting to read the package 8 times. I asked the clerk which one has calcium carbonate in it, and he got the calcium part and said stomach, so I think I got my point across. He then proceeded to show me a medicine that he said had calcium in it, but he didn't hand it to me, and then kinda went "hmmm" and started looking at the other medicines. When he started playing with the band-aids, I took that as my cue to leave, because even I know that in Japanese, band-aids are not used to cure acid stomach. I suppose I could have tried the supposed calcium tablet out, but I wasn't partial to the idea of taking a medicine that appeared to have four phases, only one of which was calcium, and none of which I could actually read the description for.
As a result, I decided that my second planned destination for the day, Akihabara, would have to wait. Since I had blown all that time on bailing at Project Diva, I figured I should devote a separate day to Akiba anyways, to do it justice. I drank some milk to try to calm my stomach, and got on the Yamanote to Shinagawa. I felt pretty gross on the Yamanote, but I felt better once I got off and switched to the limited viking ship to Yokochuu.
I got off at Yokochuu and felt well enough to do some shopping at the Seiya department store. I bought some hangers, some handkerchiefs, some towels, and took a second run at buying a bed cover. I also got a miniature laundry hamper and a sheaf of looseleaf paper. Pro-tip: Do not use the Yokochuu Seiya washrooms; they are gross. They are actually the first gross washrooms I have encountered thus far.
I finished my shopping and went to the curry place I had passed yesterday for dinner. It advertised itself as being "since 1971", so I figured its longevity was a vote of confidence. I had some beef and eggplant curry, which tasted pretty good, and I am inclined to believe the part of the menu claiming it was home-made. It didn't have quite the same taste as any other curry I've had, but it was pretty good. It was also extremely fast, because the way they make it appears to be that they have various pots full of different kinds of roux, and then they cook the eggplant seperately and store it in a fridge and add it when you order it. It's not the most romantic way of doing things, but it's quite efficient, and I didn't think the taste really suffered much for it.
I came home and started writing after unpacking, reorganizing a little, and making sure Nat's headset works. As it turns out I appear to have a mic on my computer which seems to be picking up more audio (no good tests were done though), so it may prove unnecessary. I also cannot find my belts (other than my dress belt, which I wore). I will try a little harder to find them before rushing out to Seiya to purchase some more, as I do not want to have 4 extra belts sitting around, and the belts I saw at Seiya just in passing were a chimaeric combination of the "glam-rock" and "cowboy" basis vectors. No thank you.
Anyways, I'm off to bed. Tomorrow is going to be for researching detergent terminology, buying detergent, doing washing, and taking some pictures of Ikkidzuka to share with you guys if weather permits. Otherwise I'll just take a shot at posting the minimal ones I have taken already.
GLHF in Canada.
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