What Earthquake?
After spending the night sleeping in my chair I came to a little sore and still quite tired the following morning to the talk of the earthquake I missed. Apparently at around 7AM both Ryan and Alanna explained there was a rather strong earthquake that rumbled the Internet café where we were sleeping. I would love to tell you more but I slept through it. Being a sound sleeper people have always joked, “you could sleep through an earthquake”, I never knew how prophetic those comments would be. They both said it was quite strong and this was confirmed by some other friends in the Tokyo area who also felt it in other parts of Japan. One member of my training group closer to the epicenter near Narita Airport actually said it knocked things off of shelves etc., but alas maybe its better I slept thru it after all. After quickly packing up our stuff we headed out into the cold Sunday Akihabra morning, as we were off to meet up with one of Ryan’s high school friends, Gene who lives in Tokyo. Even more exciting Gene who is a West Point graduate and is now stationed as an officer here in Japan was going to take us to a US military run hotel and conference center for a real American brunch. After about 45 minutes of navigating the maze of the Tokyo subway system we arrived near the hotel and met with Gene and about 7 of his friends and began the walk to the hotel, which was about 5 blocks away. Once reaching the New Sanno Hotel we had to be checked in by guys with automatic weapons (the New Sanno seemed similar to a foreign embassy) before entering the posh hotel portion. From there all of us got seated and then proceeded to spend the next 3 hours eating, drinking and catching up on the previous nights festivities. The food was great and not only that I have to say it was nice being in a large ballroom with many American faces and accents. The New Sanno attracts mainly Americans and seems to be magnet for the American ex pat military community in Tokyo. Unfortunately only active military and their families are allowed entry so sadly this will likely be my only trip. After feasting on some good American brunch food like Eggs Benedict, waffles, sausage, bacon and the like we set off for Harajuku and Yoyogi Park. We arrived at the Harajuku section of Tokyo and spent some time walking around checking out the area as well as the famous “Harajuku Girls” who station themselves near the JR station. The girls who wear crazy clothes with goth hair and makeup attract quite the crowd of mostly foreign tourists snapping their photos. From there we headed into Yoyogi Park nearby where we saw another interesting “only in Japan” site, namely a large group of Japanese “greasers”. These guys clad in blue jeans and leather jacket sport pompadours and do highly choreographed dance moves to rockabilly music. What I find so interesting about Japan is that in a country where “sameness” is such a valued commodity there are pockets of people in the country who work so hard to be different and separate themselves from the group. I wonder if individuality is something some people really crave even in a country where being like everyone else is a source of national pride. After exiting the park we began the long journey back to Gene’s apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo. After nearly 2 hours of trains and subway we arrived at Gene’s large rented house and then headed out with he and his girlfriend for dinner at a local Indian restaurant. Two couples and me often makes for a bad dinner date for the two couples but we all had a good time and still being quite tired was happy when everyone wanted to call it an early night. From there we walked the few blocks back to Gene’s said goodnight to the girls and Ryan and I were very excited to watch some Super Bowl pre game reports on ESPN. All members of the military have access to the Armed Services Cable System, which sends American programming all over the world. I have not missed TV all that much here in Japan but I have to say watching ESPN on a huge plasma TV was a nice treat. Even better the three of us agreed to wake early and watch the Super bowl live on TV which was starting at about 8:30AM our time which we did. The only miscue was Gene kindly agreeing to take Ryan and I on base during half time to pick up some take out Burger King (a rarity in Japan) only to forget his ID making it impossible for us to get access to the base. Ryan looked as if he might lose it as he spent the 10 minutes en route to the base in Gene’s car providing the laundry list of items he was going to purchase once we arrived at Burger King. Unfortunately we had to settle for convenience store food instead which we unhappily ate thinking how good Burger King would have been. After eating we packed up and quickly hustled out at the end of the third quarter since we had to meet the rest of the group at Tokyo Station for our 5-hour bus ride back to Nagoya. Once meeting up we all slept most of the ride before pulling back into town around 6PM. All in all the bus was pretty comfortable and we even hit two rest stops along the way. As with the rest of Japan rest stops here are quite interesting to say the least. I have never seen so many different things for sale or services provided that I cannot imagine you suddenly deciding you needed to get at a rest stop. I have never driven down to Sea Isle and decided that I wanted to have my shoes cobbled and by a new toaster oven at the rest stop in Jersey but here all things are possible. Also were American rest stops are owned by large food chains most of the food was from local vendors at the places we stopped. Someone spotted a sign marked pizza and when we headed over it turned out the place was called “Pizza Face” or something like that and we quickly decided any kind of pizza from such a place did not sound really appetizing. Once arriving back in town I headed home and closed out the week by attending Ryan’s first gig at Backbeat. As he was telling Kazuhiko and Mikka about his DJ’ng career they decided to have him play on Friday. What was comical was that mostly no one but our regular group was there but watching Kazuhiko a loyal Beatles and classic rock aficionado listening to a searing remix of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Faster, Stronger” was worth the visit. Also since the crowd was sparse Ryan was kind enough to give all of us our own time on the wheels which I was happy to take him up on. Even better Mikka took to the equipment and seemed excited to try her hand, when I asked Kazuhiko what he thought of DJ Mikka he smiled over the rim of his beer and gave the thumbs down saying “I don’t like”. After leaving my Japanese friend Hiro, Ryan and I headed over to Osho the 24 hour Chinese restaurant in town for a post show meal.
Not Exactly What I Had in Mind While working with my 18 year old student on a lesson about types of jobs one exercise had her having to write down her 2 most exciting dream jobs. After two minutes of her quietly thinking I asked what she had. She first said “chef”, knowing she enjoys cooking I slowly nodded and added that perhaps if you were the new chef at a tony and hip Tokyo restaurant that perhaps that could be considered exciting. When I asked for her second job she paused and then replied, “librarian”. After laughing unprofessionally for a few seconds at the answer even my student cracked a smile as I explained that it was the first time anyone had listed librarian as most exciting job and that I was more looking for like being the 6th member of the Pussycat Dolls or the Dragons new third baseman.
