Sunday, January 08, 2006

happy new year!!
sooo...tokyo was fun! i saw the emperor, (the nice gentleman waving) saying hi to the plebs, who was dutifully waving the flags it got at the entrance. my first emperor!! some guy next to me wearing a towel all twisted up and around his shaved head (first time for me to see j-ultra-nationalists) was shouting 'banzai!' about 27 times till the emperor and his whole family vanished behind the ricepaperwall again. all very exciting. i wish i could host the short videoclip somewhere i took standing admidst a sea of red suns on white, waving, doing a 360 while being very tall. if you saw it you'd know what i mean. then, onwards to ginza, which is as expensive as everyone tried to tell me (cafe au lait= 840yen=A$11=11SFr.) whoa! so no coffee in ginza then, fine! and just up and down in a few equally expensive department stores for wihch ginza is famous. marvel at how much people are willing to pay for a purse with an embroidered name on it, check out the lacquerware, which really is amazing, love that stuff, the ceramics section is always worth a look but we couldn't find the groceries section, bummer. i wanted to see $20 chocolate with my own eyes. oh well, next time.
at night we hit roppongi, supposedly the nightlife section of tokyo, which was absolutely deserted, as everybody had left the city to visit their folks in the country as it is the custom in this funny country. so we just trotted through the empty streets amazed till we found a restaurant that wouldn't have looked out of place in 'crouching tiger, hidden dragon' and had some tasty food (slowly cooked pork belly in a sweet-salty sause that wasn't teriyaki, covered in the very snotty mountain yam and an innocent looking blob of wasabi, mmmmmmmm...plus some of the usual yakitori). fun.
the next day it was asakusa, which is a huge shrine complex filled with stalls and and new year's: people. if we missed the peops the previous night, that's where they all were hiding. so we queued up to get our fortunes for the new year..willierose got the daikichi or 'best fortune', while poor me got the bad fortune. i have lost faith in the gods and should change my ways. true true, so after tying the messenger to a tree branch rather than shooting it in order to get rid of the bad luck that all of a sudden made its ugly way into my life, i quit smoking in hope of appeasing the angry gods (no more smoke offerings for you guys!). still going strong, and my faith was tested in yesterday's allnighter, as i was as always surrounded with fagfiends and constantly fuelled with booze, which doesn't quite bring the happiness without the nicotine. i hardwired the 2 together at the age of 16 so one feels bland and boring without the other. this might have to mean i'll have to quit the whole drinking thing as well. my liver probably would leap up in joy if it could..well...but how booooring!!!! still in my 20s after all, at least for a few more yearies!
anyway , tokyo, where was i? ah right, so after asakusa and quitting smoking at the as odd as it is famous ueno park. it has the biggest lotos pond i've ever seen, which would look absolutely fantafuckingfabulous in bloom, but is really quite fugly in winter with just a duckshit pond filled with brown limp stalks. hmmm. the main street inside the park is lined with huge old cherry trees, which, in spring, woud look absolutely amazing but again simply present a slightly naked and uninteresting view during the cold season. god bless the powers of imagination!
after that it was off to the infamous shibuya (we really did the tourist thing didn't we?), which was packed with the funniest dressers on the planet, a sight to behold. although i didn't ee any of the 17th century dolls in powdered wigs and 2 hours worth of make up on, i did see some pretty spectacular fashion. the conservative and very broke/stingy me (i came to tokyo with 5 bucks, naturally assuming i could just get money out in tokyo. nope. can't. sorry. anywhere. for 4 days!!) bought 3 pairs of the funkiest jeans i've ever seen, one of which i'm wearing right now! as it is the custom here, everyone under 20 gets an envelope with money, the older the brat the more they get. now, bout 150'000 were busy spending most of that cash right around us.
have i mentioned the fashion peculiarities of the young japanese male here yet? it is commonly said that these guys spend more money on their hair and skin, take longer in front of their mirror and are generally prettier! they have absolutely no qualms whatsover walking around with louis vuitton purses or handbags, having hair that's so long and spiky it could hurt if you walked past them a bit too closely. the eyebrows are plucked to perfection, the teint is a perfect smooth glow like out of a fashion magazine; they wear their gucci sunnies at night, in the subway, or where EVER else it might look cool. the actual purpose of sunglasses is still unknown to the majority of fashionistas here i think. they're just accessories, like the louis vuitton bags. oh, and of those you see about 9-15 per subway carriage. they're about 800 bucks each. anyway, tokyo! so yeah, the boys are pretty here. makes even guys like me feel masculine here, great!! so after shibuya we give roppongi another chance, which we shouldn't have and then back with a bottle of bailey's to the very luxurious daiichi ryogoku hotel, **** and with a view and one of those fancy toilets with heated seats and bidets and bum-showers. i was brave enough to try one of those his time and it is quite weird. how these things always find the brow eye will probably remain an enigma to me forever but hey...it's weird at first but actually not all that bad! try it one day.
on the last day i was the electric wonderworld of akihabara, where willierose but the cutest digicam around and had some great cheap counterlunch, the most tender beef i've ever had. yum! then we tried to find the meiji shrine but only managed to find the meiji memorial museum. at this point i had to ask my fellow travellerette if it was ok if i got a coffee at the vending machine, cos she only brought about 250 bucks herself, which had to be split between us to last the full time. so the 8 bucks admittance fee was already too much too ask, we had 30 bucks left for the trip. so we just wandered around even more aimlessly than before, trying to find nijubashi, the famous bridge in the emperor's palace grounds. that was a silly idea so eventually we gave up and headed for tokyo tower to take some pretty night-time tokyo pictures from above.yay! then back to the hotel, a lovely dinner in a cute little italian restaurant (thanks, mastercard) and get stuff and go! i highly recommend this crazy city and wish i'd had more time and money.

gg; 1:32 pm