Tokyo
Sometimes while I’m traveling I can sort of forget I’m traveling. While I know that I’m not at home I’ll be in a place that has a lot of similarities to Australia. Places like America and England have a lot of similar things and it sort of gives you that feeling of home away from home. That doesn’t happen in Japan. I think it’s because I can’t read a ****ing thing here. It’s pretty awesome. Walking down the street and seeing Japanese writing everywhere makes me smile. You know you are out of your comfort zone. Going to a restaurant and pointing at something on a menu because the tiny picture looks ok is pretty fun. Finding out it’s something you never would have eaten otherwise and liking it is even better.
Yes, Tokyo has been fun. Having come from Hawaii I was happy to find a few less Japanese people here (if you been to Honolulu you will get that joke!) and have had a great time. The city is huge. 36 million people alone in Tokyo and a billion people in in all of Japan. To put that in perspective Japan has the land area of a little over a half the size of Texas. That’s a lot of people in a small area. But they make it work.
Firstly, and very importantly, the toilets here are awesome (picture below). You can do anything to your ass while sitting down. There’s a button for everything. They are all in Japanese, so I’m not sure what each one does, but that’s just details. There’s probably one for the ladies to get them pregnant. Would explain why there are a billion of them. Every toilet in Japan is like this, even the ones in Maccas (before you start with the “Why go all the way to Japan to only eat McDonalds” bull****, yes I had McDonalds – At 3am my stomach had disagreed with some Japanese food I had eaten the day before – big time – and it insisted I eat something that was familiar for lunch before it completely gave up).
Maybe I’m late to the party but they have the coolest slot game ever here. Vegas (and the rest of the world) have the spinning wheel, get 3 in a row, win 5 credits thing. Pretty boring. Japan doesn’t do boring. I walked into one of these slot machine casino places and I had no idea what was going on. Basically it’s a game where a heap of ball bearings dropping from the top, bouncing around on a bunch of pins until they reached the bottom. The guy using the machine was either doing exactly nothing, or was smashing several buttons at the same time. In the middle was a TV screen where a cartoon girl was screaming / cars were racing / lights were flashing etc.
Yes, it really was quite confusing. I had absolutely no idea if the person was winning or losing. Of course I wanted to put money in and give it a go! So I put 1000 yen in and played. Well I think I did, all the instructions where in Japanese, so who knows. I pressed a bunch of buttons, it did something, ball bearings dropped, the screen flashed and I think I lost that money. Maybe the guy that used the machine after me found it had 990 yen credit for all I know. Here’s some pictures.
While here I experienced a Japanese tea. The tea tasted horrible and kneeling made me feel like I was 100 years old as I couldn’t walk afterwards. Pretty cool experience though.
Ok, because I’ve been here for several days I will confirm and deny all those stereotypes for you (I have kept it really tame, but if a mod finds anything wrong with what I write, please delete it)…
They are polite
They like their comics/manga
Japanese girls have a thing for Westerners
Temples are everywhere
Ninjas are everywhere
Samurais are everywhere
Hello Kitty is everywhere
And just for fun, here’s a picture of a giant sperm I found. In before someone who knows far more about Japan than me tells me how wrong I am.
Last edited by fidstar-poker; 03-18-2014 at 10:47 AM.