calvin aka p.phresh

Just some odds and ends i wanted to blog about from Japan but didn’t get time to do it.  So here they are all in one entry, check it out!

MacDonald’s breakfast sandwich…. double sausage and egg with bacon and cheese… omg, yes it tastes as good as it sounds… like sex in an english muffin!

Raw horse meat….. yes, HORSE meat… not just good for glue anymore.  I tried it and it tasted just like meat… no different than having a slice of lean steak.

Spaghetti with chicken and some sort of light oil sauce…. very good.  I went all the way to Japan and had Italian food… lol.  But honestly the Japanese make a mean plate of spaghetti, there were so many different flavours!  This was really good though!

Street Fighter IV arcades!!  Sweeet… we haven’t even seen this game yet, it’s supposed to release for the consoles, but they’ve got this goin on in ALL the arcades.  One arcade I visisted, Club Sega in Akihabara had a floor dedicated to this game only.  The players can get their own card and take it with them and insert it into any arcade machine to keep track of their stats.  And when you play versus with someone, it’s not on the same cabinet.  Each machine/cabinet is double sided and when a player wants to join in they’ll go to the other side and play opposite you.  The way the machines are arranged doesn’t really allow for you to see your opponent.  There’s no more cramming into one cabinet to play versus, you sit down (yah sit down, all the machines are designed to be played while sitting in a chair), and you get your own set of controls, your own screen and your own elbow room!

Bathing Ape in Harajuku!  OMG i finally found the BAPE store in Japan!  Actually they have many of these stores all over Tokyo!  It’s a multi level store, on the lower level, seen on the picture below, is the women’s clothing.  And then you walk outside, around the corner and you enter the middle level to reach the Men’s section.  From the Men’s section you enter that area where the stairs are, there’s a little listening booth for “BAPE sounds” (didn’t take a listen, i’d assume it was the latest hip hop tracks from artist that endorse BAPE, Teriyaki Boys, Kanye, Pharrell), take the set of stairs up to another section containing shoes and more graphic-tees.

Once you get into the retail sections you notice everything is well spaced out and laid out very nicely, the counters are glass showcases with smaller accessory items, like keychains, toques, sunglasses, jewellery etc.  Then when you go to look at the clothing, there is only one of each on the rack or shelf.  They only have one item out and if you want to see it in your size, you ask the staff and they run to the back and grab you your size.

This clothing is for ballers, and sorry, i’m just not baller enough to wear this stuff.  It was upwards of $250 for a hoodie, and $60 for graphic-tees.  Even toques were $70.  A lot of money…. too much for me :(  I’m surprised they didn’t charge admission into the store LOL!

So in the past two weeks i was out there i managed to control myself and only bought 4 pairs of shoes.  And not surprisingly, they’re all Adidas.  Some people are Dunks and AF1 fans, but i am a connoisseur of shelltoes.  I dunno what it is, but i’ve been wearing shelltoes for over 10 years, and have loved all of them.  And through my love for shelltoes, i’ve become a huge fan of Adidas.  80% of the shoes i own are Adidas shoes.

Anyways, enough about my shoe addiction, here’s what i picked up overseas.  And for the record, i am positive, anywhere but here has much better shoe selection than we do.

Adidas Sunny Hi-Tops:

Adidas Superstar ABC Mart Exclusive:

Adidas Superstar Clear Purple:

Adidas Superstar Bling:

One early morning as Carrie and I were waiting for the subway to go to Tsukiji, we ate some buns we purchased the night before, as we were eating people would stare at us.  I didn’t know why at the time so i just kept eating away, and they kept staring… i was wondering why they were looking.  Now i know the answer.

I recently found out, actually right before i read this comment, that eating in public was pretty abnormal.  It’s downright frowned upon.

When foreigners are doing it they are somewhat excused, because they don’t look Japanese.  But when Carrie and I are eating, they don’t know we’re Chinese, we’re Japanese to them!  We only found this out near the end of our trip, and the entire time we were eating our breakfast on the go when we were rushed or having snacks while walking about!

Even when we met up with Carrie’s friends, one whom is born and raised in Japan, we still ate in public… the four of us were eating Mochi, while walking through the subway station.  I dunno when and where it all began, all i know is it’s bad manners.

edit: as pointed out by my esteemed sister, it was not Shinjuku, it was actually the Ginza district.

I forgot to mention that I also visited the area called Shinjuku Ginza and revisited Akihabara on saturday.  That would’ve placed it after the Tsukiji Fish Market, and before the night of clubbing.

Shinjuku Ginza is one of the more “classy” parts of town.  Go here to find the large and expensive department stores.  One of the major streets in Shinjuku Ginza was closed off and didn’t allow any motor traffic through it at all and this was a very large street, about 5 lanes accross.  This street can be considered the Rodeo drive of Tokyo.  Here you will find a Chanel store right next to the Cartier building and also within short vacinity of the Coach, LV and Gucci stores.  You can also find Tokyo’s Apple store here.  It may not be high priced like the rest of the stores, but i’m glad to see it in the district.

We didn’t spend a whole lot of time here, since everything here was well overpriced.  I looked at some Burberry golf shirts and Polo shirts priced at $250 and $200, and immediately backed away.

Shinjuku Ginza was also the place where i saw my second skyline of the trip, but Shinjuku Ginza was not the place for me.

After leaving Shinjuku Ginza, we went to Shibuya, and then went to revisit Akihabara.  I say revisit, because Carrie and I tried to see Akihabara on Thursday, the day we went to Tokyo Tower, but we got there too late, about 10:00 and everything was beginning to close, and that was the night my foot began hurting.

So we went back to see what all the fuss was about.  And there was a lot to see.  I don’t think i got to see everything i wanted to see.  I saw the electronics stores, but all the electronics were expensive.  I think Japan’s got the latest and greatest electronics, but Hong Kong’s got the best prices.

We stopped inside Club Sega, a multi-level arcade, with one floor completely dedicated to those claw machines, and another floor dedicated to a Gundam video game, and a floor all for Street Fighter 4!  Amazing!

We left Electric Town and headed back towards the hostel for dinner.  We were all starving by that time.

After spending a few hours at Ghibli Museum, we headed off to Harajuku.

Carrie and I both heard that Harajuku was the most colorful on sundays, with many people dressed up in their costumes.  And there were some, but i don’t think i was in the right place, cause i didn’t see a whole lot, but i did see a bunch of people with quite edgy and eccentric fashion styles.

We walked down one street that was apparently quite famous and popular in Harajuku.  And it surely was.  The street was packed with locals and tourists.  The street has many clothing stores, many dedicated to the “off-colored” fashion you’d see people wearing walking down the same streets.  There were also a lot of hip-hop styled clothing stores, selling a lot of clothing that you’d see in mainstream rap videos. lol

And for some reason there were a lot of little food stores that were selling crepes!  This was the first and last time i saw little food stands/shops selling crepes, and there were a few of these shops on one block.

Harajuku was probably one of my favourites.  There was so much people and the people watching was great, you’d see the oddest things, this is where you will see those “gothic lolitas” that seem to always appear when you talk about japanese pop culture.  And this was also the place where i saw the more “tourists” or “foreigners”.

We walked for a little while checking out many little shops, we even managed to find the BAPE store that was located in the streets of Harajuku.  Unfortunately Harajuku was to be our last stop in our trip to Tokyo.  The next day Carrie and I would fly back to Winnipeg.

Check the gallery for more/better photos of the streets of Harajuku.

Ghibli is the production company that makes all the Japanese animated movies. They are like the Disney of Japan. They’ve got a little museum exhibiting the movies they’ve done. They’re quite well known for Laputa and Totoro.

They have a little museum just outside of Tokyo in Mitaka. It took us about an hour and a half by subway and bus to reach the park where the museum resided.

Within the museum there are dome displays on how animation works. They have this neat little display that has a series of figurines set up on a turn table. When activated the turn table begins to turn at high speed and the display lights turn into stroboscopic light an turn the series of figurines into an animated display. Each set of figures act as a frame in the animation. It was do cool to see. They had the little girls from totoro playing skip rope and the cat bus running. Along with totoro jumping up in the air. With some other small things. Definately one of the nearer things I’ve seen.

They didn’t allow any photography inside the museum so I didn’t get much photos of the exhibits.

On the roof top garden they had a statue if the robot from Laputa. A full size statue. It was huge. Like it was straight outta the movie. Like a childhood dream!

There was so much attention to detail in this place. The décor seemed
So steampunk. The feeling that the place conveyed was serene and you felt happy walking through it all. I really enjoyed hamgin out there. We spent about 3 hours there and were off to Harajuku next.

So last night I had to go out and see what the club scene was like.

We got instructions from an avid clubber that worked at the hostel. That took us to a place called “WOMB”.

Getting to the club we had to wind through streets that took us down into a very small street. The streets in the area that lead up to the club were just littered with “love hotels” where you could rent a room for a “stay” or for a “rest”.

When we finally arrived to the door there was no signage. Just a man at the door wearing coveralls and an earpiece in his ear.

We were instructed by the man at the door that the main floor was closed and that only the lounge would be open. We came all the way so we decided that we’d go in anyways.

He let us into a door which looked like a back door to a building. Just a large steel door. When we got inside there was another man waiting inside there, wearing similar coveralls and another large steel door. We were instructed to just wait for a second.

Then he opened the door. And we could hear a faint thumping of the bass. Getting through that door lead us to a girl who checked our ID. I handed her my Manitoba driver’s license. The line kept moving forward where the next girl took my money, ¥2,000 cover charge. Once we paid we walked over to another steel door where another person was waiting to open it for us.

He opened the door and the faint thumping of the bass turned into a heavy bass undertone and full out music could be heard. We finally arrived at the “lounge”.

The “lounge” was pretty tiny. It was smaller than Hi-Fi, a local Winnipeg club. It would’ve been about the size of just the upper part of Hi-Fi with the bar taking up an eighth of the space and a designed corner for the DJ marked off with temporary steel railings.

There was about three couches for seating room which were ropes off. I guess for VIPs.

The music being played was house/trance. We went to the bar to buy a couple drinks. There was a small menu of about 80 drink listed. Seperated by vodka based, gin based, rum based, liquers, beers, wines and miscellaneous.

They didn’t have any whiskey and I didn’t see vodka and 7up on the menu so I ordered a screwdriver. That was about 500¥. I had a couple redbull vodkas after which were 1000¥.

As the lounge started filling up with people a few people were kind of dancing.

We decided to leave at about 1am since the music was not the preferred choice.

After leaving WOMB we came across another club. Vuenos. We asked what kind of music was being played, they told us hip hop. So we decided to head in. After a quick pat down and a cover charge of 3000¥ which included a free drink we entered into a smoke filled room. About the size of TYC’s dancefloor. There were about 20-30 people standing around. And then the music changed and kanye’s good life came on. You could hear an uproar of people. I walked towards the center of the room and over a ledge and looked down. The lower leve was packed shoulder to shoulder. Hordes of people were cheering!

We went down to the lower level and saw a stage where the DJ and a couple of dancers were on stage. We got our free drinks and walked into the large crowd. Everyone was dancing But then I noticed everyone was facing the same direction. They were all facing towards the stage. Groups of friends were standing next to each other, not facing each other dancing in a circle like we do at home. But all watching the state. Even when the girls stopped dancing and there wasn’t anything happening on stage they all faced the stage still. It was the weirdest thing. People would cut through the crowd and them stop right in front of you and start dancing. If it was a girl you be facing her back.

And for being such a packed crowd the people going through the crowd were still courteous to put their hand out so you knew they were coming and didn’t move till you stepped away.

The music was slightly behind by 6 months. And when the DJ played Kanye, Wu-Tang of any really mainstream music the crowd would go wild. I did hear some music I’d never heard before and prolly wouldn’t hear anywhere outside Japan either.

We ended up taking a cab home at 2 from Shibuya which eneded up costing the four of us 6,000¥. The subway stops running at midnight and doesn’t start back up till 5am. Often when people are out clubbing they’ll be out till 5 am since it costs so much to take a cab home. But we left early cause we had to be up and out the next morning.

After getting back to the hostel and crashing Carrie’s friends arrived into town to hang out for a couple days.

We eventually made out way to Shibiya.

Shibuya was incredibly packed. The streets are just shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalks. This is where those giant crosswalks are when all the traffic stops and it’s just completely pedestrians. It was amazing. There were so many people crossing at once!

We went into the store “109″. This store is targeted for girls age 18-30. It has the latest and greatest trends currently happening in Tokyo!

Every little section in this department store had it’s own hip hop/pop/whatever music playing that represented its target market. It’s a very loud and colorful place.

This is also the place where all the girls in Tokyo reside. LOL

Shibuya’s streets are lined with trendy clothing and shoe stores. All things related to youth’s current fashions can be found here.

Check the gallery for a lot more photos.

After sleeping 4 hours last night we woke up to go to the tsukiji fish market.

My ankle was still sore so I put on my ankle brace and put another tensor wrap around it and took some ibuprofen and headed out for the subway station and made our way to the fish market.

We weren’t quite sure where to go exactly so we thought we’d go ahead and wing it.

We arrived at the station and decided we’d ask someone for help.

We stopped this group of 4 in the station, “do you speak English?”

Then one replied, “we are from Hong Kong.” in Chinese! So we asked them in Chinese where the fish market was and they said they were going to it too so we just followed behind them.

They stopped to look at something and we continued on. Not quite sure where to go. Eventually we arrived at this busy market where everything was laid about for display. It was all fish and seafood!

The little trucks were motoring around everywhere and if you didn’t pay attention you could probably get run over.

There were huge tunas being sliced up into smaller pieces. The tubas mustve weighed near 80lbs. They were the size of a small child!

Carrie and I watched as a team sliced through a large piece of tuna. They cut it into 4 large pieces lengthways.

Sorry these photos are not that good representation of the market. Check out the gallery for better photos.

today i spent the whole day in the hostel.

I am wearing two ankle supports and i hope that i am more comfortable to be walking tomorrow.  Didn’t do much today either.  Did some laundry and caught up on the emails.  I’ve just been talking with some other guests staying at the hostel.  And amazing as it seems, i ran into another person from Canada, but that’s not the most amazing part.  The amazing part is he was also from Winnipeg!

There are a lot of people here from canada and all over europe.  I also spent some time talking with the girl at the front desk and learned some things about Japan.  I learned that Japan is not a very social place.  Working long hours.  But the place is very orderly.  As opposed to Hong Kong, where everyone pushes and shoves to get on and off the subway, in Tokyo they all wait their turns.  They line up to the side of the doors until all the people have come off the train and then they proceed onto the train.  It’s all quite amazing that there are so many people but wtill so much order and unspoken rules everyone follows.

Japan also has a high suicide rate.  So many people only know their life as work.  They get up and go to work for 12 hours and then go home to start it all over.  Many people will go out drinking in the evening to release the day’s stress.  While walking around in the Shiodome area, where there are plenty of up-beat restaurants and lounges, i noticed many business men, dressed in shirts, ties and slacks, all stumbling around reaking of alcohol.  It was quite an odd sight to see.