County Warm of Conceptions: Japan - Tokyo, Yokohama

4.09.09

TOKYO!

After another excellent night of sleep, we woke up and decided to have a Western breakfast. So we went to a Denny's just down the street. What a meal. Had amazing sunny side up eggs, bacon, and french toast for the first time in a long time. It was refreshing. And once we had finished eating we had a fun time figuring out the bill, which was entirely in Japanese. To add to it, three people on the bill had left early and already paid part of theirs, which still seemed to be on our bill. So, we looked over all the prices attempting to figure out which were our and which were not. Then Disha, being the one who knows some Japanese, turns to our waitress and says, "To-tal?", doing her best to speak slowly and wave her hands. It was embarrassingly funny.

Following our teasing of Disha, we all walked to the Shinjuku Station, jumped onto the Yamanote Line, and hopped off at Harajuku, the huge fashion area of Tokyo. Walking from the station we found ourselves right in front of Takeshita street, the street incredibly crowded by shops and people. Once we prepared ourselves, we braved the massive amount of people in order to spy possible points of consumerism while trying to find somewhere to eat. We found a food court, got our grub on, and enjoyed some bubble tea (mine without those disgusting tapioca pearls... YUCK!).

With our bellies full, we returned to Takeshita and made our way from shop to shop. I found myself some awesome goggles. When my hair is longer and I can spike it, I will wear my goggles and look like an Anime character.

While shopping, I watched the people flocking up and down the street. I saw tourists and numerous Japanese adolescents and young adults. Several of them were decked out in what would be considered ridiculous clothing in the US. Huge platform shoes, obnoxiously neon socks, jackets with billions of zippers, frilly dresses, blacks, reds, bright pinks, everywhere. One guy had a long, black leather trench coat, covered in zippers, shin-high platform shoes with buckles and zippers everywhere, and thick chain necklaces, plus his hair was spiked to high heaven, and he wore red contact lenses. He was absolutely intimidating looking.

Our wallets nearly empty and our hands full, we decided to leave. Devin, Disha, Lia, Keith, Alex, Hussain, and I all went off to the tattoo studio where Devin and Disha has made an appointment for consultations. We returned to the deliciously named Takadanobaba Station and made our way to the studio. There the tattoo artist kicked out all but Disha, Lia, Devin, and I, Devin and Disha the customers, Lia and I the only support allowed. He didn't want his studio clustered with four germ-infested loiterers. So they left and we stayed. He talked with Devin and Disha about their designs (which I drew out, actually), where they wanted them, how big, and thoughts on color. Devin confirmed her "Walking on a Dream" tattoo for her foot, along her arch, and Disha confirmed her "Ubuntu" tattoo on the back of her neck. They made appointments for the actual procedure, and since his entire day was free, Devin decided to stay and get it done right away, while Disha made hers for after Devin's. I chose to stay with Devin while she got hers done, so Disha and Lia ran off to do some more shopping before Disha's appointment. And so it began.

So the next two hours of my life were quite exciting. I had never seen someone get a tattoo before and I was intrigued to see how it really worked. I assumed that since Devin already had two other tattoos this wouldn't be a big deal and she would be able to handle the pain. Yeah, no. So let's lay out the timeline to this first:
- 0 to 20 Minutes: The artist cleaned her foot, confirmed the position of the tattoo and put a temporary tattoo on
-20 to 50 minutes: He outlined the words
-50 to 105 minutes: He filled in the words
-105 to 115 minutes: He did some finishing touches, cleaned it up, and bandaged it.
Now let's add in some of Devin's reactions:
-Squeezed my hands
-Swore
-Ate many suckers
-Kept scolding herself for doing this
-Hit and slapped me
-Swore at me
-Attempted to tell me stories
-Pleaded with the artist to stop
-Made me squeeze her arms
These reactions all happened between the minutes of 20 and 105. It was quite fun.
Once she was done, she felt better and didn't regret getting it done. And she thanked God that Disha hadn't been there to see her. It was going to be her first tattoo and we assumed she would've chickened out.

Then we waited at the studio for Disha to show up, waiting fifteen minutes past her scheduled appointment before assuming she had chickened out. We apologized profusely to the artist, thanked him, and left hoping to run into Disha. Not seeing her, we took the train back to the hostel and looked for her there. She was not there. So we assumed she had probably just run into some trouble getting back to the place, but still partially convinced she had chickened out.

Finally Disha showed up with her new tattoo and a crazy story. Apparently they are not good at using the easiest transportation system on the planet. The two trains to the tattoo place seemed to be too difficult for them to handle. They went the wrong way on the first train, had to double back, and then took the second train the wrong way, too. Not very smart. But they made it to the studio just in time.

So after everyone looked at the new tattoos, we walked to the central area of Tokyo, right near Tokyo Station. Some people went off to Karaoke, others (including myself) instead decided to explore the area. So we walked around, took in the sights, and eventually made it to a book store named "Book". There we had an interesting conversation with the owner about where we were from, how his daughter got married and moved to Kentucky, how it takes around 12 hours to drive to Kentucky from Chicago, and how we have specific book store that sell hentai and how it isn't in every single store. He was surprised and we were surprised. Anyways, he was very kind and he called me a nice man when I gave Disha more money to pay for her purchases.

And the day ended after this when we returned to the hostel, ready to wake up early the next day.

4.10.06

Woke up from another amazing night in my cozy capsule, and I was saddened to think I would not be sleeping there again. Waking up Disha, Alex, and Hussain, we prepared the next leg of our journey.

As soon as we packed up and checked out, we went to the cafe from the third day again for a quick breakfast before taking the Shinjuku Line to the Tokyo Train station and then taking a train to...

YOKOHAMA!

Departing from the train station, I was greeted by my fourth Japanese city. Right away it seemed bigger and more developed than Kobe. Probably since it's basically a suburb of Tokyo. From the station we quickly returned to the ship to drop off all of our gear and freshen up before tackling this new city. We then returned to the city and began our exploration.

We walked around a bunch, found a market/mall of sorts, found an actual mall, more cherry blossoms, and an amusement park. At the park, Alex and Hussain split to take on the coasters, while Disha and I went to find a post office.

Along the way, we met some friends, other SASers, and they told us about Chinatown. So we went. We looked around, got bubble tea, and pork in dough-balls, and then made our way to the post office to exchange the tens of thousands of yen in our possession. Walking away with hundreds of dollars, we returned to the ship, depressed that we were leaving Japan.

But it's okay, because...
IT'S TIME FOR PICTURES!