| June 6, 2001
Wednesday (rainy, drizzling)
Woke up pretty early (cuz of
the time difference) to take a shower. Everything in Japan seems to
be reversed. Bathroom doors open outwards instead of inwards.
You flush the toilets by raising the handle instead of pushing; You
turn on the water for the sink by pushing the handle instead of raising
it. The shower system took a while to understand. There's two
handles on each side for hot and cold water. Then you have to turn
the middle knob to adjust the water volume for either the tub or
shower. failing to understand at first, I turned the knob the wrong
way and sprayed all my clothes wet. Hmmm,
I don't know why it seemed so complicated at the time, it's the same kind
of system I have now at Berkeley.....
In the morning, we went
to Shibuya. We again went on to find a restaurant. Japan is
not all that different from Taiwan, streets look really similar. We
got lost after a while (too used to checkerboard architecture) But
as we were finding our way back, we accidentally found the restaurant we
were looking for =) It was raining the whole day. (We bought
two umbrellas as we came out of the subway) Ordering for food was
interesting cuz we didn't really know how to read the menu very well and
they didn't have pictures =[ So we pretty much ended up ordering
whatever the waitress chose to explain to us. I had $10 sashimi, it
was really good.
Afterwards, we went to
good old Starbucks for Andy's coffee. Starbucks
is everywhere!!! We then set out to
find an internet cafe buy a phone card. Asking for direction became
tricky. Even though I thought I understood what they were saying, we
just couldn't find the places. Oh, on the way, Andy bought some hair
straightening products. Trying to communicate is really quite
amusing. Most Japanese have really poor English and I would always
just say "nihongo demo ii desu" (It's fine if you use
Japanese) cuz I think my Japanese is better than their English.
there were few exceptions though.
In
any case, we finally found this huge pachinko tower which had an internet
cafe. It's actually pretty cheap (about 450 yen, or $4 for an
hour) We went to look around the arcade games. I really don't
see why so many ppl play pachinko. You just sit there and watch the
little metal balls fall. It doesn't see like they are doing anything
at all! But then agn, slots machine
are like that too. We also found
this fish simulation "game" I don't see why that's fun
either. You can touch the fish and they would change color or size,
or you could put food, but it didn't really seem that exciting. Then
agn, ppl are crazy about tomogachi and such, designed for ppl who can't
raise real pets, in this case, can't even keep alive some real fish, lol
Some ppl seem to be really absorbed into it though, one guy seemed like he
has been there for a long time that he's actually taking a nap. We
also saw some sniping games, skateboarding game which I think are pretty
unique (games are kinda pricy though, 200 yen is standard) Well,
these games are actually pretty standard in US too, I just haven't been to
arcades for a long time.
We
then went to find phone cards, cept later when we used it, it didn't even
connect but all the money were used up =( so we lost like 1000
yen.
We found this gaming
center and we spent quite a while in it. They have some quite unique
games. I tried the sniping game, and it's really cool ( I love
headshots) I also tried the taiko (Japanese drums) game, much
simpler than DDR since you only have to look for one thing. There
were also many games like DDR, one is with 5 drums and a pedal, one's with
a guitar, one is with four movement sensors in which you move your hands
across the 4 sensors according to the beat. there's also a typing
game. It's the typing of the dead,
which my roommate Alan was a tester for. Can't believe I paid money
to play a typing game!!! And
there's one in which you use a camera to take pictures. (good
practice for photography, I supz)
We then went back to
hachiko (the faithful dog statue) to take a picture. This girl took
a pic for us, and then asked us if she can use her camera to take a pic of
us too (Haha, we are too irresistible, j/k) Gosh, I'm
shameless. She's in some photography class. Andy was making
small talk and all, but I wasn't really good at translating or good at
talking to a girl. <sigh>
Then we left for ginza.
After a while, all the plcaes look pretty much the same. We had some
drinks at a cafe and then decided to go watch kabuki (we later realized there's
a kabuki theatre right next to our hotel ...) We only saw one scene,
and it was only 400 yen w/ my Cal ID. =) (it's normally 500 yen) I
can't believe they accepted our Cal ID, I think Andy gave them a Tang
center card too.... I didn't really
understand the performance at all. There were pamphlets explaining
the story, but I didn't really get anything except the releasing of the
sparrows. (good thing we only watched one scene, hehe)
 |
The brochure for kabuki |
After that, we set out
for a restaurant again. Man, all we
do is eat =P We asked this woman
for direction, but she didn't really know, so she called the place w/ her
cell phone. I'm not sure if it was on her way or what (ok, ok, so my
Japanese is not that great) but she walked with us all the way to the restaurant.
We walked in, but soon realized that it was Youshoku (western food), so we
quickly stepped out (which turned out to be a lucky decision) We
looked around some department stores throughout the day (you gain a true
understanding of how much more shopping girls do cuz there's like 7 floors
for girl's stuff and half a floor for guy's stuff) What
about food, where's the food, why aren't we talking about food anymore, me
hungee =( Things are pretty darn
expensive and you can buy the same things in US or HK newayz. We
also went to try some food samples on the basement level. Oh, btw,
we saw a lot of students, girls with really short skirts (I'm not exactly
complaining ....) Shaddup, David,
just shaddup! They wear the long
socks and then crumbling them all together; They wear the short
socks and then pulling them really high. Darn it, just buy the kind
of socks you want!!!! Japanese people all dress very formally.
On the subway, all guys wear suits and ties, women wear dresses, and
students wear uniforms. Ok, back on track, so we went to this
traditional Japanese restaurant for dinner. Ooh,
that's what I'm talking about, yummy =]
We were quite lucky to meet this waitress who came from Taiwan. She
helped us order even though she was a lil pushy at times. But we had
a really good meal (Oden was good) We also had roasted beef tongue
(looks like regular beef) on a lil fire pot. And we had tempura,
pork chop and soba. I'm so hungry
now.... The waitress even helped us
with some sight seeing advices. She also told us how to eat the
various dishes. Funny thing was there were 2 other Japanese waitress
(one of them is actually the owner) that were really helpful to us too (we
took a pic w/ them at the end) Apparently we were quite lucky cuz
the owner was said to be pretty strict to other customers. They were
really nice and helpful, even going around to help us find
information. The restaurant is said to be famous too; It's
been on TV often. During winter time, you probably have to wait for
2 hrs before you can get a table.
We then wondered the
streets, finally bought usable phone cards. They had a lot of
"interesting" ads in the phone booth (like the 1900 numbers in
US) We found the Sony building but it was closed already. We
eventually went back to the hotel. We got lost again cuz the subway
entrance we came in from was closed. (Dohh) I
don't think there's one day which we weren't lost
Oh, in Shibuya, we went to condomania, Andy bought a nut and a condom
which is wrapped like a gold coin chocolate. Hmmm,
quite random comment. That pretty
much ended our day. Rob came over to our room for a while. He
had to work till 11 pm or so, (Japanese ppl are real workaholics) and he
can't leave early even if he finished his work cuz his mangers haven't
left.
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