The Tokyo

Across the street from me, there is a lady who is cleaning her window. The window is located eight floors above what mere mortals refer to as "ground", where there is an AU-shop. This shop sells mobile phones. I should know, I've bought mine there. But that is still not the point. The shop, aside from being located eight floors below the lady cleaning the window with a fervor that would indicate she's having inlaws over for dinner, is also located on Shinjuku-doori. If that lady were to stop cleaning for a moment, get out of her apartment, turn right, and walk 10-15 minutes through the rain currently streaming down, she would find herself in Shinjuku. The place to be, as it were.

I have never lived this near the center of, well, anything, really. Cities with twice the population of my home country even less.

I arrived last week, after a flight which left me feeling pretty good, having slept all of 25 minutes. Then I was led into the "special immigration office", feeling way too special, with the ominous phrase "there's no problem, but...". That's not what you wanna hear at 09:27 a.m. in Narita International Airport. No, you want to hear "Yes sir, all your luggage has already been sent to your specified address", or possibly "I'm sorry, only the white helicopter was available to take you into Tokyo today". But it turns out that there actually was no problem, praise the somebody! Sadly, there was no helicopter either, but I'm willing to let them go on that one.

So, six days in the capital of my own personal little world, and what have I accomplished? I've:
1) ...been to baseball twice. Once to see my dear Chunichi Dragons own the Yakult Swallows, and once to experience what may objectively be the best supporters in the sport at the Hanshin Tigers' game against the Yomiuri Giants.
2) ...had 22 pieces of sushi in one sitting. At the Kappa sushi in Harajuku, hidden though it may have been. Thanks to the magic of mobile-phone-GPS and lots and lots of love for the raw fish thing, we still managed to find it. Ha-HA!

It was not at this place, the name of which translates into "Surprise sushi". Isn't that taking the whole concept just one step too far?
2b) ...had one order of "Fresh slices of horse". Seriously.


3) ...been to Ebisu to see England have their b-hinds handed to them on penalties in the quarter final of the World Cup. I also had dinner there with some ten or so other people, less than half of which I knew beforehand.
4) ...been to Omiya, up in Saitama, not too far from where I and Tomo used to study. "Study" being our word for "heading downtown to do random shopping and have fun looking at Japanese people doing Japanese things".
5) ...bought a phone. On which you can play an arcade-perfect conversion of Ridge Racer. Oh, and use it as payment for the subway. The last time I was here, I had to have a card in my wallet and hold up the wallet to a sensor, this time I can do it with the phone instead. And I can buy stuff from convenience stores too. What will they think of next? Anyway, if you're reading this, chances are you already know the number/email address. If not, email my regular one and I'll set up up double-quick-time.
6) ...bought a lot of other stuff too. It's amazing what you can accomplish in less than a week if you put your mind to it.
7) ...started my training at Tetra Pak Japan, which is supposed to end up being magically transformed into some sort of Master's thesis. "Magically" being the key word.
8) ...gotten a fine massage from my hairdresser. This is apparently the way they do things here. It was a good one too. The conversation was almost even better, about this new Cup Noodle (r) timer. You put your cup (preferably with noodles and water in it) on there and that little sucker will tell you when they're done. See #5 about what they will think of next.
9) ...seen Jack Bauer (yes, that's his real name!) do an ad for "Calorie Mate", which is basically just space-food. A brick you eat so you don't need to eat anything else, essentially. And Tommy Lee Jones did some ad for... diapers? Something in a supermarket, can't remember what. Never mind.
10) ...not been late for work once. Thankfully, the soccer was on Saturday night, otherwise the 12:30 p.m.-wake-up the next day might have had dire consequences.

The lady across the street has now finished cleaning her window. Maybe she took my advice and headed off to Shinjuku.

In closing, I offer this picture of Tomo pretty much punching the crap out of Omiya's resident mascot squirrel. At least it looks like it, and pictures surely don't lie, much like this dear InterTron of ours.

Kumadude out.