The Tokyo

This weekend was every bit as insane as I expected it would be. Its been said that Tokyo and the rest of Japan are like 2 different countries and I would definitely agree with that. Tokyo is so mental and so much more … everything than anywhere else in the world. Put simply, it’s a city that you have to see.

I got to Tokyo at 7am on Friday having taken the night bus, as the train is so unbelievably expensive that its not even worth considering. The night bus basically goes from Nagoya to Tokyo via a few other cities. It leaves at around 11pm and arrives early the next day. The idea is that you sleep on the way and therefore don’t lose any time. Unfortunately for me, Im particularly adverse to sleeping sitting down (especially when the bus is ludicrously bumpy) and so only got a couple hours sleep.

I got off the bus in Shinjuku and decided to look around since I had a few hours to kill before I was allowed to check into the hostel. Shinjuku is a pretty incredible place, filled with massive skyscrapers and a ludicrous amount of neon. Still, at 7 in the morning theres not really a whole lot going on except A LOT of men in suits rushing to work.

It was still pretty interesting looking round, altho I ended up well lost. At one point I stumbled across `Kabuki-cho`, or the red light district. One minute I was walking along minding my own business, the next Im being approached by pimps trying to drag me into brothels! Normally I quite like seeing the seedy underbelly of cities, but having had 2 hours sleep was not the best preparation, and I got totally freaked out! Somehow I got out of there, and decided to head to Akihabara (the electric city).

Akihabara is one of my favorite places in Tokyo just because its such a haven for geeks. I don’t think theres another place in the world with more video game shops or crazy model shops. Whilst not buying anything, I did manage to play some weird new Japanese games, and see plenty of cool stuff. I also got to fulfill a recent ambition and try the `Rice Burger`. Theres a fast food chain here called Mos Burger, and they sell this. Its basically the same concept of the burger but instead of a bun, 2 kind of fried lumps of rice, and instead of a burger, some stir fried vegetable stuff. I have to say this was an awesome mix, and no doubt healthier than the average `burger`.

After Akihabara I headed to my hostel in Asakusa. I had booked this at the last minute (literally, I got confirmation 30 minutes before I left the house), due to some terrible planning. However it was a very decent hostel and had a very reasonable price. My friend Sam was going to meet me there in a few hours so I decided to catch up on some sleep.

Once I woke, I met up with Sam, got fed, showered and dressed, and we decided to head out. Since we had both been sightseeing in Tokyo before, the main motivation of this whole trip was for clubbing. I don’t have many friends in Nagoya, and there aren`t any clubs in Kofu (where Sam is from), so we both had a lot of pent up energy to abuse Tokyo with.

Whilst the hostel arrangements had been slapdash and last minute, the clubbing aspect was something I had put a lot of man hours into planning. Friday would be spent at Womb, where Shinichi Osawa, a famous Japanese house/J-Pop producer (kind of like the Japanese equivalent to William Orbit) was playing, whilst Saturday would be spent at Unit where there was a drum n bass event on.

After a couple of drinks in the hostel lounge, we headed out to Shibuya. We searched far and wide for a decent and relatively cheap bar, and eventually we came across one. As we sat down and began the drinking process, I noticed something strange happening directly in front of where we were sitting. On closer inspection I realised there was a man cutting thin slices of pork from a huge pigs leg placed directly on the bar. Nice.

After a few more drinks we decided to be a bit more adventurous, and bought a special hot plum liqueur complete with a whole plum inside. Not being a big plum man, I was suitably apprehensive. Surprisingly it was actually really rather tasty, altho I don’t recommend trying to eat the plum afterwards!

This bar was also a good chance to practice my Japanese. Sam is studying Japanese at uni, so his level is really rather good. Mine however needs a lot of work, so I took this opportunity to inflict some of my `skills` on the barstaff. Whilst I wasn’t exactly waxing fluent, I was satisfied with some of the exchanges, and considered it a decent achievement for my language skills.

After leaving the bar we headed to Womb. A number of readers will have been there (they told me about it!) but for those that don’t know, Womb is kind of the Japanese equivalent to Fabric; a chilled out atmosphere, with safe people and top name DJs playing regularly. Its not that big, but the main dancefloor is big enough to produce a suitably `epic night out atmosphere`.

Ive said it before, and Ill say it again, clubbing in Japan is an awesome experience. The friendliness of the people is above and beyond any `pills-free` place I have ever been to. Its one of the main factors that got me here, and this night more than lived up to expectation.

After getting suitably hammered my Japanese was getting better and better (this is a phenomenon which is apparently very common) and so we ended up chatting with loads of random people. Having said this, most of my conversations consisted of me saying `Subarashii, ne!!!` and getting the response of a hug.

The music in Womb on this night was house and techno, with a few random selections (at one point impromptly breaking into `Hit That` by The Offspring!), and was for the most part really really awesome. Im not a big fan of house music generally, but when its done right its really cool, and this was one of those times.

I also have to say something about the quality of the laser lights show and VJs in womb, as they put on an awesome show. The pictures here wont do it justice, but they were really cool all the way through, trust me!

After hours of dancing, drinking and chatting we left the club around 5. On the way out we were given a whole bunch of leaflets although I have to say my favorite one was for a drum n bass tour of Japan sponsored by Nike. The leaflet was obviously coproduced by Nike, as it had some pictures of various Nike trainers `ideal` for drum n bass. The idea of having a pair of `Drum n bass trainers` is awesome to me, and I definitely now want a pair!

Before we left the hostel this night I had mentioned to Sam that we should at some point see the Tsukiji fish market since neither of us had seen it, and it is meant to be something that you should definitely see. Since our timetable consisted of clubbing all night and sleeping all day this was almost certainly going to be out of the question (especially since you are meant to go there around 7am). Sam however came up with the ingenious idea of going to the Fish market on the way back from clubbing.

The fish market was as expected a market with lots of fish, and we got to see plenty of interesting species, although our enthusiasm was dampened slightly by the intense tiredness which had yet to, but which was surely about to hit us.

Highlights of the fish market included seeing some really big fish, and the crazy buggie guys (they drive dead fish around to different parts of the market) who nearly run you over at every available opportunity due to the incredibly narrow streets, and the large volume of people.

After realising we had seen enough we headed back to our hostel to catch up on some much needed sleep.

The next day we woke up around 3, headed out for some food, then went back to bed to rest up for the intense Saturday night we had ahead of us. Saturday was the night we were both really looking forward to as it was a drum n bass night headlined by DJ Zinc and Dynamite MC. Since getting to Japan I have been searching far and wide for some DnB in Nagoya, but it seems I overestimated how popular the scene is here. I have recently found out about one night on the second Saturday of each month but it seems that it is not as widespread as I initially thought. Because of this I was very excited to find this night featuring Zinc and Dynamite, as well as the extra draw of Makoto (a Japanese DnB artist with releases on Hospital records) who I had been wanting to check out live for some time.

Once again we decided to drink in the lounge of the hostel, and ended up talking to this American bloke named Dave. He had just got off the plane, and had not had any sleep but decided it was best to stay up all night, and agreed to come along with us. Dave was in Japan to study Aikido (a Japanese martial art) under a teacher who is the only person in the world who can teach it apparently.

After a large amount of drinking (Dave drunk an entire litre of Sake on his own!), we decided to leave having first also dragged along an Australian bloke named Warren with us. On the way, Daves jetlag sunk in and he passed out on the subway, veering dangerously close to falling asleep on some poor womans shoulder.

We ended up once again in Shibuya, and headed to a bar to meet one of Warrens friends. After about an hour of looking we eventually located it, and then promptly decided to leave to avoid having to queue to get into the club. Warren however decided to go with his friends to a different club, so we left them. After a lengthy wait for a train and a very long search for the club we eventually finally found it.

Unit is slightly more upmarket than Womb, altho still has a very casual dress code and a chilled out atmosphere. There were 2 rooms, one was 2 floors below the ground, and the other, 3 floors below the ground. We headed to the lower floor to get some much needed alcohol for me and Sam (Daves Sake antics had him totally wasted).

On the wall of this room there was a giant video screen playing Disneys Fantasia which went strangely well with the intensely loud jungle music. After a few drinks, I headed upstairs to check out the main room. This room was awesome! The first thing that hit me was how good the sound system was. Im not much of a nerd when it comes to stuff like that, but obviously the Japanese attention to detail and being at the forefront of technology applies to clubbing as well.

The room had started to really fill up, and there was a group on stage called Rub-a-dub-Market who were some Japanese electro-reggae MCs, and who were really quite good. After a few minutes Zinc and Dynamite hit the stage and totally smashed it. Zinc is a DJ Im a big fan of, but I have to say this performance blew away all expectations and was one of the best Drum n Bass experiences Ive had in a long time.

As per last night, I met lots of really cool Japanese drum n bass fans, including one guy who had been to Fabric. Having said that there were also loads of gaijin once again, altho they were all really safe too.

After Zinc finished his 2 hour set, Makoto took to the stage with a Japanese MC, and again was totally awesome. I danced solidly for a ridiculous amount of time, and we got out the club around 530. The subway started again at 5 but the music was actually so good I sacrificed a vital half hour of sleep ( we would have to be out of our hostel by 11).

At a certain point in the night me and Sam realised we hadn’t seen Dave in a while. He had left his hoody in our locker so we assumed we would see him again. However we didn’t and we still don’t know what happened to him. He didn’t really know where he was or how to get back so Im a little worried about him, especially since he didn’t speak any Japanese, and it was freezing cold outside. O well.

Once we got back to the hostel it was about 730, which allowed us a 3 and a half hour sleep, before we had to check out. Since my bus wasn’t leaving Tokyo til 11 at night, we decided to do a bit more sightseeing when we woke up. I had been told by some of my students that the Meiji Jingu shrine was worth seeing, so we headed there. The shrine was in Harajuku which is famous for the kids that embark in CosPlay (which is where they dress up as their favourite characters from Manga comics or just really, really weird).

The shrine was quite nice, and afterwards we headed to Jingubashi which is meant to be CosPlay central, especialy on Sunday. According to my lonely planet book, these guys love having pictures taken of them so I was a little miffed to have my request rejected by the ones that I asked. However, there was a lot of love shown by the `Free Hugs` guys. These guys are all over Japan. As far as I can tell, they just love hugging people, so they stand around with signs saying `FREE HUGS`. You hug them and then that’s it. There is a few in Nagoya here and there but I was pleased to find a bloke dressed in a pink bunny suit offering them as that was a little bit special.

After my hug, we headed deeper into Harajuku to look around. We were both feeling well rough so didn’t probably take it in as much as we should have, but it was interesting nonetheless. As we kept walking, we ended up in Omote-Sando. This is a really high class shopping area, and everyone seemed to be proper loaded. I always say, in Japan you can tell how rich an area is by how many `little` dogs (i.e chiuaua`s and poodles) there are, and Omote Sando is full of rich girls with some sort of tiny mut.

A plus side of this areas economic luxury is the awesome architecture that adorns every building. Time after time we saw really cool, weird buildings, and this was reason enough to explore the place.

One of the highlights was Omotesando Hills, which is a high class shopping Mall. Instead of just having stairs and escalators between floors, they are all connected via sloping ramps that circle the outside of the mall. The center is also filled with these huge diamond like structures which make it look like Supermans ice palace.

Also in the middle on this occasion was some Japanese male vocalist singing. He started with singing an acapella of `White Christmas`, and then went on to sing some really bad songs.

After this we headed back to the station to get back to Shinjuku. On the way I saw some more CosPlay guys and decided to give them one last shot. I asked for a photo, and these guys were awesome. They got all the nearby CosPlay people together just so that I could get a picture with them. In my mind, they had redeemed their culture.

Also on the way, we passed Harajuku park. We could hear lots of loud music coming from within so we decided to check it out. When we got there, we saw what can only be described as a huge circle of Japanese men, dressed in an American 1950s style complete with motorbikes, INSANE slicked back hair and quiffs, dancing to 50s rock n roll coming from a huge speaker next to them. It was like we had stumbled upon rehearsals for Grease. Some were going completely mental, twisting like there was no tommorrow, others just kind of bobbed along. Sam turned to me and said `Only in Japan…`

We also saw a band playing in a hole in a hedge. Literally, there was a gap in a hedge, and there was a J-Rock band playing a set there. They were actually really quite good, well they deserved to be playing somewhere other than a hedge anyway, and we joined the small group of people that had gathered to watch them.

After this we headed to Shinjuku to get some food and our respective buses home. Sam left at around 830 but I had to wait another 2 and a half hours, and whilst there is a lot of things to do in Shinjuku, when you’ve had little or no sleep, there is not as much motivation. I managed to find a few video game arcades to waste some money, but aside from that just wanted to get home.

Luckily at this point I remembered that I wanted to buy some stuff for my students so went on a quick mission to find some sort of Tokyo speciality. I happened upon a rice cracker store and bought a box, which according to the salesman was a Tokyo flavor altho they may have just been trying to get money out of me.

The bus was 30 minutes late so I was standing around in the cold for ages which sucked! Eventually I got on it, got to sleep and got home without incident.

When I got in the door, I slept for 3 hours and then went into work to do a 5 hour shift. Im not sure if it was the copious amount of alcohol, or the standing in the cold, but Ive since developed a distinctly horrible cold. Luckily I`ve had the day off today so Ive been able to try to get over it before I have work tomoro. Urgh, what a chore! Tokyo was awesome but Im paying for it in spades now.

However it was still blatantly worth it! Cramming 2 months of clubbing into 2 nights was definitely needed, and I cant wait for my next Tokyo adventure. Accomodation permitting, I should be going there for New Years Eve to meet up with some friends, so I really hope I can pull that off as Im thinking that will be immense.

Anyway this has taken me ALL day so Im gonna go now. Not sure what Im doing next week so expect some more random thoughts etc. Thank you all very much for reading all of this, and hopefully I`ll see you (or have you read my words!) next week.

Much love

Jack

P.S Heres a couple of movies to go with the trip. One is of Unit, with Dynamite and Zinc on stage, and the other is of the rock n roll guys dancing. Enjoy!