The Design Festa Gallery

Yesterday I took a stroll around downtown with Clement, who showed me an art gallery exposing the work of the young amateur artists who regularly attend the Design Festa convention.
 Design Festa is the largest event of its kind in the world. It occurs twice a year in Tokyo. I passed on the chance of attending in November, but just visiting the gallery itself was quite nice. Each artist has his or her own artistic identity permeating from their own work, which is pretty great. The exhibition changes almost every week, and it's also quite cheap to put up one's own artwork in the gallery. I might consider it once some money starts coming in.

A quaint little piece. The photo doesn't do it much justice, I'm afraid.

A (Short) Roadtrip!

Clement is way too primed for 6 in the morning.

An alarm rings at 4 in the morning. I bury my head in pillows. Julian asks me if I'm ready to go. I sit up and feel my brain rattling inside my head.
 Today Julian and I met Clement and Takashi in front of the New Koyo's at 4:30 AM. We stuffed our backpacks into Takashi's car and headed out towards the countryside, our destination being a bathhouse near the mountain range.

 Approximately two hours west of Tokyo is a town in the area named Kofu, near the foot of the Minami Alps. Here, we went into a bathhouse at 6:30 in the morning, hoping to catch the sunrise as we relaxed in an outdoor bath. Onsen, as they're called here, are somewhat popular outside of the cities, and many of them offer panoramic views. Though the water may seem scalding hot at first, once you sit down and relax you can feel every muscle in your body easing up. Also, there weren't any old people, so I was spared the horror of turning into stone at the sight of an old guy's junk. I didn't take any pictures while sitting in the bath, because everyone's ass naked.
Not that you can see anyone's dongs when they're sitting in the water and with all the steam everywhere, but I thought I'd spare them the awkwardness. At any rate, we didn't see the sunset from behind the mountains and with all the clouds and stuff. Sometimes you can actually see Mt Fuji, the towering volcano, from here, but we had no such luck. Regardless, the bath felt amazing.

If this picture were anymore overexposed,
I'd be seizing.

The onsen was only a short drive away from one of the mountain paths, so we also decided on a small hike along one of the trails. This spot was a popular one because it was the site of a Buddhist Monk's pilgrimage some few centuries back. Though we didn't climb the whole trail, what little we did see was quite nice.
 A few stores were also open along the road, selling semi-precious gems and stone carvings of Buddhist symbols. Also, ice cream. We stopped for ice cream.
 After a little bit of sight-seeing, stopping at one of the temples and the site of a feudal era castle (where nothing but a wall still stood) we decided to call it a day and headed back to Tokyo.

Homoyaro!

Though I've been acquainted with Takashi for a while now, I've only lately begun hanging out with him, so here I may as well introduce you to him.
 Takashi (whom we also refer to as Homoyaro [yaro = bastard], Pédéyaro, Schwulyaro, Faggotyaro, Fiffeyaro and Tapetteyaro) is one of the three receptionists and staff members of our former hotel, New Koyo. He's straight, despite all the nicknames.

Milestone: Month 1

And so it's been a little more than one month since I've been in Tokyo (five weeks, to be precise.) For the sake of the people who want to join into the reading of what I've been up to here in Japan (like, the two of you), here's a summary. I'll be posting one of these every once in a while. Also, for your entertainment, it's all in synopsis form. Like you're reading a novel or something.

Month 1: Summary


Status:


Job: Unemployed and looking
Salary: Jack shit
Financial status: O.K.


Location:

City: Tokyo
Ward: Taito-ku
Train station: Minami-senju
Residing in: Aizuya Inn


Cast of Characters:


Major Characters:
Jon of Latvia
Julian "Shank" Einschenk of Germany
Clement Sanchez of France

Minor Characters:
Fumi, the ex-hostess
Miyamoto "Onii-san"

Retired Characters:
Anton "Foxboy" Jermaine of England
Rodrigue Zapha of France


Top Five Highlights:
In no particular order:

Asakusa
Edo-Tokyo Museum
Rikugien Garden
Being on Television
Touring a Sex Shop


Still to Come:

- A list of Gaijin Privileges
- The Market of Thieves
- Traditional Japanese Bathhouse
- The City from Above
- Tsukiji Fish Auctions

Into the Womb

I obviously didn't take this picture.

Last night took me to Shibuya, one of the nightlife hotspots in Tokyo. Having been invited to a drum & bass show by Clement, I decided to partake in a night of dance and music. And so we ventured into Womb, a nightclub that has recently been voted one of the best in the world.
 The music was amazing; it should come as no surprise that Womb is equipped awesomely. So, too, did the DJ lineup keep things moving well throughout the night. We walked in at midnight and out at 5:30 in the morning, dancing non-stop in-between.

In other news, I have moved into Aizuya Inn guesthouse with Julian as my roommate. Our new room is four times the size of my old one, and is furnished with television and wifi, just like the old one in New Koyo. With this, my living expenses are down 20% for as long as I'm here - so we win both ways! It is still located in the same area, a short three minutes walk away from New Koyo.
 To the right is a picture of our room. It ain't much to look at, but if I had tried to take a similar pic in the old room, you'd have likely seen nothing but a wall.

We're dorks (together)

Today, Julian, Devin, Clement and I decided to go walk around in Shinjuku and go wherever the wind would take us. Thus, we strolled into Shinjuku-goen park. Though the wind is getting chillier with every passing week, Tokyo's parks are particularly nice at this time of the year, since the leaves have mostly turned but have not yet fallen. The great variety of trees in this area make it so that the colors are quite diverse. With so much city around us, it's kinda easy to forget that Japan is kind of a tropical island, and houses an expansive flora.


Having visited the park, we then ventured downtown to purchase prepaid cellphones. I have to give credit to Clement where it's due, since we wouldn't have been able to figure it all out without his knowledge of the language. Unfortunately, it took shamefully long for them to prepare the phone for us (Julian bought one too), so we decided to kill some time at an arcade.

I told him to pose like this.

 Now, arcades in Tokyo aren't like the measly ones back home. Here, they're megalithic spires with up to five floors, packed with a decent amount of people at any time of the day. We walked around the floors with all the cool games and shit, and were quite frankly intimidated. I was watching a girl play, and decided to opt out of playing with her because she would kick my ass and wipe the floor with me. Then I watched a child play, and decided the same thing. I'm pretty sure if there was a dog in there it'd have also kicked my ass. So instead we went back to the first floor and played the UFO catcher games. I spent 200Y (3$) before quitting. Julian spent 8$. Devin spent 28$.
Julian won this weird fucking thing. It's an action-figure doll with airplane propellers for legs. I won't even comment on that, but I will say it's pretty Japanese, alright.




So after one hour, we headed back to the cellphone place to see if our orders were ready. They weren't. So we waited another 20 minutes so that the crab-people could finish and give us our purchase, by the end of which they did. It turns out what took so long was charging the phone. Why this was so important, I don't know. My phone comes with useless features such as a daily fortune and, if I understood corectly, an earthquake-warning app, which is kind of weird, seeing as I'm pretty sure I'd feel it if there was an earthquake that posed any danger to me. Of course, I didn't pay anything extra for any of that shit.

 All in all, my phone cost me 30$, plus 30$ for two months of unlimited received calls and text messaging. It's a good deal, I think, and one that's been recommended to me many times.

I'm seeing a trend

Today I was introduced by Julian to Clement, a frenchman who's been in Japan for a full year! His Japanese is near-flawless and he's been able to share a few tips with me.

So has anyone else noticed that most of my foreigner friends are dudes with short hair, beards, and glasses? Sheesh, and some people say the asians are the ones who look alike. I'm afraid people will get confused who's who if I don't state who they are near the pictures. You can compare people's faces here.