Oh-oh-Odaiba

Well, thankfully there are no more exciting weird food experiences to share that have occurred in the past few days.

Friday night I went with a friend to nearby Kamata to grab dinner at this great place that serves ramen for 390 Yen ($3.00). Who says you can’t get a cheap meal in Japan! In fact, I really think you can find a cheap meal mush easier here than in New York. So after dinner, a bunch of us just went to our favorite local bar and hung out and played darts. I met my Japanese friend Kasuke there and we were TRYING to talk about politics, but something must have gotten lost in translation somewhere because by the end I thought we were talking about politics whereas I thought I heard him ask me who was going to win the World Series this year. Oh well.

Yesterday I went back to Ueno Park to the Western Art museum that I tried to go to last month, but was closed. Well luckily it was open this time and even better, because it was the fourth Saturday of the month, it was free. It was a really nice museum and had a bunch of great work from Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, etc. It also has one of the largest collections of Rodin sculptures in the world, which was neat to see. After the museum, I wandered around the area and came upon this fantastic guitar player (ironically, named Daniel) who was playing for a large crowd. Considering he both had the best name ever and was an amazing acoustic player, I bought his DVD, though I didn’t know Japanese parents named their kids Daniel, though I suppose he could have been searching for an amazing name to use on stage and decided on Daniel for OBVIOUS reasons. After that I went over to this really cool temple nearby where the plum blossoms were just beginning to bloom. The plum blossoms precede the cherry blossoms in Japan, but are just as pretty.

I left the temple and couldn’t help but notice this amazing smell in the air. Finally, after searching for literally 10 minutes, I found its source – sweet potatoes. It’s this great delicacy in Japan and they sell them right on the street out of these large carts. Of course, I had to have one. The guy basically cut a huge potato in half, wrapped it in paper, and gave it to me to eat. Sometimes you can get whipped cream on it, but I just had it plain this time. It was great. Perhaps I can bring that idea to New York City and sell them next to those great smelling peanut stands. I wonder if it would catch on.

On the way back, I stopped to watch another street performer, this nutcase name Hiryu, who was part magician, part acrobat, part juggler, part madman. He did a bunch of cool stunts and juggled and etc. and made tons of funny jokes in Japanese that I just laughed at to look cool. Then he balanced on top of a bunch of chairs (see picture). Yeah, I can do that.

Today Emily, Ashley, and I went to Odaiba, this man-made island in the northern part of Tokyo. It was total sensory overload. First, there are like 10 malls filled with every type of shop imaginable, including this huge theme park with like 50 rides, all indoors. We first went to the Fuji Television building, where they film a lot of the popular shows in Japan. The building is super cool and is built with a bunch of cool passageways and this enormous orb-shaped observatory on the 27^th floor. Touring the studios reaffirmed that Japanese TV is so incredibly out there, its unreal.

After that, we went back to the mall and happened upon this crazy store that, get this, allows you to pay 800 Yen (about $6.50) to sit in a room for as long as you want and play with forty or so cats. Emily decided to go ahead and do it and said that most of the cats were just incredibly lazy, though she did say one cat bit this little boy. Great business plan guys. Along the same theme, we also saw this shop in another mall that, yes, rented dogs out to walk for 1000 Yen an hour – and there were tons of people doing it. Oh Japan.

We also went to a place called Palette Town (seriously, don’t even try to figure out what the names of these places mean, I have no idea – the first mall we went to was called the “Island Mall” connected to the “Seaside Mall” which was right next to the “Venus Fort”). There was this huge impromptu rock show going on with literally hundreds of Japanese girls all screaming for this pop star named Kato something. So of course, I joined the girls in screaming for this guy, much to the amusement of everyone around me, including this policemen who, for some reason, tapped me on the shoulder and made an “X” with his arms. No idea what that meant, though I’m assuming it meant “Stop doing something” or maybe we playing some sort of weird game of Tic-Tac-Toe.

To finish off the day, we rode the giant Ferris wheel nearby (my second in less than a month, yay! Before that it had been literally three or four years since I had last ridden on one) and then headed home.

The four-day weekend continues tomorrow and Tuesday, though I suppose I’ll spend a portion of tomorrow doing some work and stuff for midterms coming up, though I doubt it’ll take me the whole day. Tuesday I am heading up to Nikko (about 2 hours away) for a day trip. I’ve heard great things, so I’m excited about that.

Keep in touch, ya’ll!

Jaa mata ne!