Pullquote: Suits

Kazue, Steve (Millo's friend from France), Ken, me, Millo

We had a Monopoly night where everyone was required to wear a suit to play. Our definition of suit was pretty loose, however. It was a fun night.

"I like wearing suits," I said to Ken. "If only to do things people wouldn't expect from a guy wearing a suit."
"That's not possible in Tokyo," he replied. "People here have seen guys in suits do everything imaginable."

You Would Die to Eat This Melon

Let me share to you my frustration about fruit in Japan.
Fruit in Japan is kind of backwards from the way I've known it to be all my life, growing up in North America. How much would you pay for 12 exceptional strawberries?
What about 105$?
OH NO! Because that's what it is for 12 "excellent quality" strawberries. They're pink!
 Don't worry. You can still eat great strawberries without shelling such a fortune. But they're still expensive.

You see, here, fruit, is grown with one thing in mind - quality. As a matter of fact, every single one you eat here will be bigger, fresher, tastier, juicier than what you find most other countries (bananas are the exception!) Only a small amount of the fruit makes it to the market here. The rest, what a foreigner like me would consider to be regular quality fruit -

GOES TO HELL!

It literally gets thrown out or feeds livestock! Like pigs! Your American fruit is worthy of pigs, it seems to tell me.
Consequentially, I don't eat much fruit. It's tempting sometimes, but I have a guilty conscience buying something fractionally cheaper in Canada. Here, a nice apple the size of two fists is 2$. A large peach is 4$. Those are touchable. Sakuranbo cherries not so much.

This takes the cake.

Maybe I'll just never get it, but here's another fun fact. Exorbitantly expensive fruit is considered a great gift and in very good taste. Basically that high class stuff.
If you buy some in specialized shops (since they don't sell them just anywhere) they'll actually gift wrap them for you and give them to you in this fancy box.
 Truth be told, I don't know if I could eat something worth 130$. Could I sell it?

Not the McDonald's You Grew Up With

Actually, I get asked this a lot. "Is McDonald's different in Japan?" Why yeah, it kind of is. Fun fact! Japan has 6 times less McDonald's than the USA but is 23 times smaller. Which means there's 4 times more McDonald's per every square kilometer. Scary! And yet a thousand less fatties per square kilometer! I'm calling shenanigans.
 But here's the main difference you'll notice. Check out the menu!

* These items are seasonal!
 McDonald's Japan has tonnes of seasonal items that change every so often and, in my experience, disappear after that without ever being heard of again. The season items currently available are the Quarter Pounder BLT, the Quarter Pounder Habanero Tomato, and the Teriyaki Chicken Fillet.

 And then you've got the regular items.

1: Big Mac
2:  McDouble
3: Quarter Pounder with Cheese
4: Juicy Chicken Fillet
5: Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese
6: Double Cheese Burger
7:  Teriyaki McBurger  (I'm not even kidding.)
8: Shrimp Fillet
9: Fish Fillet
10: Bacon Lettuce Burger
11: Chicken Crisp
12: Cheese Burger
13: Hamburger 

The Wonderful World of Gashapon

You won't believe what people hang from their phones. Upon my last visit to Montreal I brought most of my friends the phone accessories pictured on the left. They're bizarre, noticeable, and some of them borderline wrong, and a good example of things commonly disregarded as run-of-the-mill only in Japan. I wonder how many of my friends hang theirs from their phone.
 Vending machine toys like these are kind of gratuitous bait for people with collection fetishes. Want to see what other varieties exist?

Well that's too bad, because I can't fucking show them all to you.
 Welcome to the world of gashapon. Whereas in America vending machine toys are real pieces of crap, in Japan they're quite a bit more charming, and higher in quality.

Really? Mushrooms?

That doesn't make them any less bizarre, but I guess that also adds to their charm. On top of the one's not pictured here, there are also different varieties such as a sea slugs collection, an embarrassed salary-man collection, as well as most popular anime characters.
 They're a bit of a trend here, as most of them, like the ones I brought home, can be attached to phones, making for a cheap accessory (gashapon toys price anywhere between 100¥ to 600¥.) For instance, Ken has a frog one, and Kazue has a plush triceratops. I had an astronaut at one point in time.
  Oh hey, if you're one of my Canadian readers, why don't you leave a comment saying which you like, and I might get you it.

Interesting Tidbits: It's Typhoon Season

Courtesy of sciencecodex.com

Oh hey guys! What have you got to look forward to tomorrow?
 Well I've got this charming fellow to the left. That's Tropical Storm Yagi cruising around the shores. Yagi's actually not so terrible for one of his kind. I guess if you look at him on a picture like that he looks worst than he is. He won't kill anyone or destroy any houses or flip any cars, but he may stop a few trains from running and make a few salarymen curse. Is it a big deal? No.
 It's typhoon season, folks. Everyone's expecting it to rain for every damn day in June, and that's the way it is every month of June. June is rainy, end of that. We'll be seeing tropical storms flying north and south and every which way, making it quite hard indeed to plan much for the coming few weeks (not that I don't have any plans. I have a few exciting ones.)

Me, wet and miserable last year's season.

So how does the rainy season affect our daily lives? Well, attendance at the gym sure as hell drops. I often get sent home early so that I can catch the trains before they jam when the storms get really bad. The streets become a graveyard of flipped umbrellas. Also, I get wet.
 But as it is, Japan's just prone to hurricanes and typhoons and all matter of storms throughout the year, not just in June (although that's when we come to expect the mother-lode to hit.) In fact, hurricane Jelawat, the terrible one that flipped cars during its wake, hit on September last year. I was outside that day.
 We'll see though. So far the weather hasn't been bad at all. But the rain outside will only worsen as Yagi comes around, and every person in Tokyo can do nothing but bend over the table for a whole month.

Geekier Than Akihabara

Akihabara is widely known as Tokyo's geek central - or otaku as geeks are known here. But that doesn't mean there's no other places for such special interests. Growing like a weevil on the other side of Tokyo, a competitor has arisen - with many an otaku calling it superior to Akihabara - and the challenger's name is Nakano Broadway. As opposed to Akiba, which lines special interest stores along the side of one main street, Nakano Broadway is a single indoor complex - 4 floors' worth of geekdom. Aala and I delve in.

Would you buy anything like this?

Holy shitting dicks on a stick. The question of the day is how much money are people willing to spend to satisfy their interest. The answer? All their money.

Nakano Broadway is increasing in popularity, and it isn't because things are value-priced. I tend to think they are in Akihabara. But they key to Nakano Broadway's success was in catering to very specific interests and owning a large part of the market when it came to certain target audiences. For example, you'd be hard pressed to find another shop that sells special limited edition train-commuter cards. Or toys of robots dating from the 60's. And yet Nakano Broadway has shops specializing in those.
 But you know, I actually kind of like the place.
 I prefer Akihabara, myself - it's a lot livelier. But the Broadway is quiet and interesting if only to look around in, and has some kick ass deco. Granted, some of the halls are still empty and shop-less, but the place is still young, and I doubt some of the stuff you find here can be found anywhere else in Tokyo.

Hakone's Open Air Museum

I've decided that this facial expression will replace smiling. Better get used to it, folks.

I found myself returning to Hakone last weekend, for a much shorter trip than last year's. And although I do consider last year's trip to have been complete (you can read about it here and here,) there were a couple of things that managed to seep through the cracks.
 One of the reasons Hakone is so alluring is its genuine family friendliness, and the Open Air Museum featured in pretty much every touristic leaflet about Hakone is a major contributor. There's a little something here for everyone, be it for art lovers, energetic children or the senile old man next door, and I was glad to be able to take a peek at it this time around.

What the Open Air Museum is is essentially a giant mash-up collection of unusual pieces of art and other interesting stuff.
Many of the items on site provide some level of interactivity, with a few allowing children to even climb in and jump around on. As tempting as it was to straight up do exactly that as well (and believe me, it was tempting) there were clear signs saying that anyone above grade-school age could not enter, written in legible English as well.
 So I had to settle for watching the children play with glossy eyes full of want. It took a few minutes to realize that I looked like a debonaire child predator, minus the mustache, so I had to back away slowly and avoid eye contact with parents.
 But hey, that aside, some pieces actually do allow for adults to interact with them too!


The museum grounds are filled with narrow underground tunnels that exist for the mere sake of being interesting as opposed to being useful, and that's fun. There was even a maze that I took pleasure in getting lost in, and that was cool too.
What took the cake for me though was the stained-glass tower, its entirety made of colorful stained-glass that can be admired all the way to the top thanks to the narrow spiraling staircase leading to its roof. And once there, from the top of the tower, one can take a good look at the (pretty wide) museum grounds and the mountains that surround and make up Hakone. And that's nice.
 One can enter the Open Air Museum for 1600¥, which isn't exactly cheap, but not quite expensive either. A lot of discounts are readily available for those who look.