The Tokyo Trilogy - The Ethanol Strikes Back

This, the second part of my famous Tokyo Trilogy will be written over time, as I have no long periods of free time to work on it. Thus the flow of ideas is slightly erratic, but don't worry about it, the story's not that good anyway.

Burger Panic, or "What's wrong with this picture?"


With so many good eats, why eat a burger in Japan? I sure as hell wasn't going to. I spent my first trip trying to avoid the mere sight of the golden arches. But there's no denying the midnight munchies when vacating a bar, and during my later ventures to Japan I did occasionally slip in my choice of diet.

What I found out was surprising. Japan is the only country where there's nothing wrong with the picture. It's the only country where Michael Douglas would've left the fast-food restaurant without going postal.Why? It's because when the burger is plopped in front of me it looks every bit as juicy, fluffy and tall as the advert. This is no burger turned flapjack. And once I hang my fang onto it, it tastes, for lack of a better word, perfect.

 

The terrific Teriyaki burger @ Mos Burger.

It's not an isolated incident either.. encouraged by my findings at the arches, I take on Burger King, Japan's own Mosburger (yeah, name's not as appetizing as the burgers) and the aptly named Freshness Burger. In all cases I find that the Japanese strive for perfection reaches even the kitchens of hamburger joints. I wager that if I were to go to the register with a "faulty" burger to lodge a complaint I would not only receive the humblest apologies of the entire staff, I would also be invited to witness the ritual suicide of the person responsible for my burger.

It's good to be the King

And in Japan, every customer is King. They even have a saying to that effect, look it up! Actually it's "Customer is God", but I'm trying to be modest. Besides, an exact translation would've ruined the headline for this section, as Mel Brooks distinctly said "It's good to be the King"and who wouldn't want to quote him. In fact, he's probably the only old, fat, balding jewish guy I'd like to quote, unless Kevin Smith converts, in which case it's a whole new ballgame.

It may be just my own observation, but I believe the Japanese have realized that even if they're just drawing a salary and do not receive tips, it's the customer's satisfaction and possible repeat business that pays and keeps paying their salary. Anyway, when you combine the Japanese service attitude with their attention to detail and never-ending strife for perfection, you end up with...well, feeling like a retard. Why? Let me present an example from personal experience: When going to the store back home, I usually just casually throw cash on the table, or hand it to the sales clerk directly, no big deal. But I felt like a retard doing it in Japanese department store (Isetan, if memory serves), where there's usually a person whose job it is to greet you at the register and package your goods in a detailed manner, and another whose job it is to ritually accept your offering of cash or credit on a nice platter that's there for this exact purpose. Nevermind the return of change and the "thank-you-come-again" that feels a million years more real then the plastic "Hello, how are you today?" or American sales clerks or the "How dare you disturb my nosepicking" stare of a Finnish customer service professional.

Despite occasionally feeling like a Mongoloid, it's good to be treated like a King. Most Japanese probably take this for granted, so they think nothing of it. But you can choose to ignore the fact that it's just customary and think of yourself as visiting royalty. It's a win-win scenario, you get the royal treatment without having to go through centuries of inbreeding. Gotta love Japan!

Day of the Tentacle Porn

Everybody talks about Tokyo having vending machines full of ladies underwear and other deviant sexual stuff. This filth is supposedly everywhere and available 24/7 for the amusement of local businessmen. There's literally countless newspaper articles and TV news stories in the west about this phenomenon, with tones ranging from slight puzzlement to moral outrage.

So imagine my disappointment when I was unable to find so much as a used tampon in the vending machines. I was so pissed off I walked around until I found one that served beer. That calmed me down. In fact, I think vending machines with beer are so awesome I even attached a picture so you can feel envious.

Once I get over the underwear debacle, I make a fantastic new discovery: Cartoon porn, or Hentai. I walk into any convenience store and there it is, page after page of innocent looking babes being the willing and unwilling repicients of major piston action. There's so much drilling in one magazine it makes oil companies look like pussies. With this discovery I've solved two problems: What to read on the porcelain throne and
what to take back to my Hentai addicted friend on this trip. I feel he didn't see the humor in the roll of Pokemon toilet paper I got him on my previous trip.

However, Hentai doesn't just come with your garden variety hydraulics, there's several sub-genres. Of these the all-time greatest heavyweight champion of the world is tentacle hentai. Since this is a politically correct internet, I won't tell you that it involves demons, aliens and other forms of tentacled, horned and slimy beings using their talents to destroy the virginity of innocent little girls. Awesome!!! What's even more awesome is seeing regular looking businessmen crack open comics like this in the metro and read 'em like nothing's nothing. I could imagine the disapproving stares if I did the same thing at Chuck-E-Cheese or the looks of joy at the local catholic church.

 

Speaking of porn, they even have it on the streets. Look at the tailpipes on her!

Despite being able to spot the occasional bit of motor pornography in Aoyama, the best place to find anything Hentai related in Tokyo is ofcourse Akihabara, the world renowned nerd nirvana.

Akihabara - When you have absolutely no life

Akihabara, or Akiba is a place that must be mentioned from my travels, even at the risk of sounding like a tourist guide (with tentacle porn).

Akiba excites geeks more than high explosives and bulky women in burkhas excite muslims. And with good reason; there's electronics and computer stores everywhere, there's arcades, there's even stores dedicated to retro gaming, and by retro I don't mean Nintendo Gamecube. I'm talking collections so old and deep that Jacques Cousteau would sell his left testicle to film them. There's one that spans several floors, with a retro arcade in the top floor. While I was drooling all over the counter sporting the original version of Donkey Kong handheld game (among others), I had a feeling I had hit a new low of pathetic, but I didn't care.. I was like an old alkie who's too far gone to care that he's lying in a ditch as long as he can get his drink on. I threw away the last remnants of my self-respect and fed some coinage into the retro-arcade machines.

As I stumble out later, I try to spot the name of the place for future reference, but it's in Kanji and I can't even read "beer" in Kanji, which is really pathetic. But I bet the translated name is something like "I can't believe they have this!" or "The most awesome store in Akiba! really! ask anyone!". I was inclined towards the latter until I visited the 7-floored store nearby.. they stocked models. No, not the "Oh yeah, I'm like totally for saving the Brazilian polar bears!" models.. I mean the "Put together a painstaking puzzle while high on the glue fumes" models. The stores I've seen in other parts of the world have nowhere near the collection this place sports. For example: Not only do they have all the things from the Star Wars films, they have them in Build-it-in-an-hour and in Lose-your-job-wife-and-house as well as everything in between.

1st Annual Signs & Slogans World Cup

After receiving my Ph.D in Signology I was elected to judge the first Signs & Slogans World Cup. The entries consist of the finest signs and slogans I have managed to snap a photo of on my journeys in Japan. The preliminary rounds weeded out the weaklings and only the Élite few remained for the finals. Here are the results of the finals in ascending order:

10th place - Doubleprice barbers in Aoyama

With the recession going on, I don't think this business plan is all that well thought out. Still, it's enough to land the sign into the respectable 10th spot on our countdown.

9th place - The Cock

 

Maybe it's my Freudian subconscious, but I find this sign strangely appealing.. not many times can you just walk down a random street and run into The Cock.

8th place - Gaming hall in Shinjuku

If you can make some sense of the slogan over here, then mister you're a better man than I.

7th Place - Wait here

 

Wonder what would be the penalty for stepping out of bounds while the light was still red. It's all well and good for the Japanese, but my feet slip into oceangoing catamarans.. 

6th Place - WTF?

Hey, your guess is as good as mine..

5th Place - No drowning

 

If you're puny enough to drown in a shallow pond with a few weeds growing in it, don't do it here! After this sign was installed, incidents of drowning still stayed at 0. 

4th Place - Finlando Sauna

The sign for the legendary Finlando Sauna, from which this puny blog draws it's name. A perfect rendering of a Finnish man sitting in a sauna (which is always filled with water up to waist height), down to the birch branches we use for self-flagellation.Though it doesn't quite make the Top 3, it deserves an honorable mention out of the sheer amazingnesity of it.

3rd Place - Mind your manners

 

This helpful illustration of the correct technique to dispose of a snotrag in a crowded train deserved more, but had to settle for 3rd place due to heavy competition. Nevertheless, it scored a new World Record of 9.2/10 in the Public Awareness category.

2nd Place - Beware of wet mops

 

Before the installation of this sign, the number of people getting swiped in the face with greasy mops when coming around the corners was reaching epidemic levels. Since, the wet mop fatalities have dropped by 87% and serious injuries by over 70%. Scoring an Impressive 9.3/10 in Health & Safety rockets this bad boy into second place.

And the winner is... 

Where to start? This sign has it all. It has the delicious looking pictures of dog vomit, deep fried turds and gums with teeth attached served in a tangy sauce of pus with a side of nuclear accident egg. There's even an explanation why the food still tastes as bad as the day it was first cooked. And ofcourse the sign tops it all off with the ancient Nigerian greeting: "Please Trust Us!!". In here the cookies probably have cool fortunes like "Hello, my name is Elaine Mkwoko and my husband left me $15 Million USD dollars..."



Coming later.. Part III of the world famous Tokyo Trilogy

With readers from Austin to Oslo and Sydney to Helsinki and anywhere in between, the demand for new this Part II was huge (0 request so far).. I expect the same strong pace to continue in anticipation of Part III, coming perhaps in Q2/2010.

This ultimate badboy of a finale may contain glimpses of Hakone, coupled with ways to pick up hot chicks using a shitty car. It may also contain the long-awaited, and equally long delayed grudgematch between Sushi and Sashimi. Stay tuned...

The Tokyo Trilogy - Return of the Finn

In a land far, far away..

After my first trip to Japan I wanted to write a blog about the sheer awesomeness of it, but I'm too lazy. Instead I put my excess energy into something more creative, like nagging my wife into giving me my travel pass and planning my next trip to Japan. I'll do the blog after the second trip.. promise.

But after returning from my second trip I fell into a familiar pattern of begging the powers that be and looking for cheap tickets.

Having exhausted my vacation days and my wife's patience, it's now time to take a little break in planning my next wasabi vacation and write something about the ones gone by. Being me, I can't be bothered to write three blogs or to stick to any timeline (it's all relative anyway), so i'll just write about events as they pop up in my head...

That said, let's start in the beginning:

Land of Rising CC Lemon

First thing I notice when getting off the plane is that everyone's bowing. The airplane crew is bowing, the airport crew is bowing. At the airport end of the jetway, there's a person whose job seems to consist of bowing and greeting people. Naturally the train terminal seems to have it's own greeter as well.

One of the first expected things I notice are the ubiquitous vending machines, which seem to be everywhere, even on the express Skyliner train (you can score a cheaper local express which is 10-20 minutes slower, I was in a hurry though).

I grab a quick can of CC lemon and even manage to hassle some locals to taking a very touristy picture of me digging into it, but I made an executive decision and decided people would probably rather see a picture of a vending machine on a train than my ugly face.

Meeting drinks and people

During Episode VI (yes, i'm using Star Wars numbering and i'm not counting the Sithy I-III, deal with it) my German-American travelling companion and myself were making a down payment on the next day's hangover in one skyscraper or another and we ran slapbang into a Tamago (her real name is Tamaki, but it has been changed to protect her innocence), who spoke reasonable english and joined us in our Quest for the Holy Hangover. She turned out to be a real hoot as she couldn't understand our jokes, and therefore could not be offended by them. Love ya toots!

Now, it must be said that having a local show you around Tokyo is much more informative than bumbling around on your own.. however, when you go to Omoide Yokocho for Yakitori,.. well, maybe it's better if you don't necessarily know what exactly it is you're eating. Just stuff your face and wash it down with beer & sake.

That reminds me:

Beer and Sake

Everyone says you have to drink some Sake in Japan.. sure, it's like having to visit the colosseum when in Rome. But once you get there it's just some old moldy ruins that the italos flog to the tourists as the biggest thing since sliced bread.

Same with Sake (except for the moldy part), the name covers everything from braindeath inducing moonshine to the divine nectar that makes your tastebuds bubble and all food taste great. This doesn't mean we went for the most expensive Sake's around.. loads of times we just drank mid-end with the food, but not before we'd already had a few rounds of beer.

Speaking of beer, the best place in Tokyo to have beer is everywhere.. but you can totally splurge yourself on decent specials at the Beer Museum Ebisu. I've been there a few times and the destruction wrought on my braincells was magnificent, especially considering the otherwise civilized decorum. Especially on the day I was drinking off my hangover from the Hanoi Rocks farewell gig...

Scotch on the Hanoi Rocks

My friend and me are rushing back from the scalding pools of Hakone back to Tokyo at Amazing Race speeds, we have 45 seconds to make the train and the f***ing turnstile is not accepting my ticket.. M*THERF*CKER!! It all comes down to entering the ticket in the right way and then running down the escalator at breakneck speed to just make it, Japanese trains don't wait for slowtards.

We have a reason to end our tranquil stay in Hakone with undue haste as we're meeting our friends in a few hours and the meeting is in Ginza. And from there we have to hustle to Akasaka, where the "famous" Blitz club is hosting Hanoi Rocks on their very last concert in Japan.

We make the train, dump our stuff at our new "hotel" and rush to Ginza, where we find our two friends already deep into their beers, we have catching up to do, but not before we relocate to Akasaka, so we can see if anyone showed up for the concert.. who knows a Finnish 80's glamrock band in Japan anyway?

We arrive at the concert and I see so many Andy McCoy's that I think I'm riding a tram in Helsinki.. but wait, they're all walking and standing up straight! They're not the real McCoy! They're sober!

<-- Our friends have backstage passes, the bastards!

While Japanese fans are dedicated enough to wear their idols clothing and learn all the right dance moves for each song, they're not hardcore enough to do booze and hard drugs for 30 years to reach that final level of true fandom. Still, I feel like I should've brought my pirate outfit.

After the concert we head for the afterparty. Our friends know people in the crew so they get a ride, my friend and I have to haul ass on the metro, destination: Rock Inn Current in Shinjuku.

This place turns out to be one of those oh-so-japanese places that's totally impossible to find, so once we arrive we're ready to drink the house dry. Luckily tonight is a very Finn friendly night, so all the drinks are doubles to start, quadruples or more later in the evening. It must've been one helluva party!

My feet are killing me!

When you weight over 125 kilos and walk 15-20 kilometers per day in Tokyo your feet will eventually start complaining. If that happens, there's only one thing to do: take a bath.. there's plenty of good bathhouses around. My favourite one is east of Ueno station.. I can't say more of the location as some of the people I met there state their main fear as "..this place ending up in a tourist guide". Can't blame 'em either, after some recent renovations the place is an oasis of rest that soaks up the wear & tear of the day's walk, giving you a good platform to kick off even the roughest of evenings.

The etiquette for these places is ages old and thrown around in all the tourist guides, but you still find people who manage to flaunt it. Like these two ozzie douchbags who enter the place while my friend and me are soaking up some heat in one of the jetstream pools. From seeing them enter the shower room to having them stepping into the same pools not 2 minutes goes by. A subtle hint to wash properly works real well: they go "we've washed" and dunk in. Locals disappear faster than booze at a finnish wedding.

RANT: If you can't be bothered to wash properly, use the shower in your hotel! Don't bring your funk into the common pool.

Asking for directions

In short: Don't!

I was walking around this neighbourhood during Episode IV, trying to find this very elusive spa. I finally acknowledge I'm a wuss and ask for directions, which is my second mistake (the first being trying to find a spa that's no longer there). Now don't get me wrong, Japanese are some of the most friendly people you'll ever meet. But sometimes they can be.. misguided in their efforts to help you, as I was. Misguided, that is. I was standing in front of the boarded up entrance to the spa, trying to hard to understand did my local helper mean "go 4 blocks straight, 1 left, then 2 blocks straight and you'll find the spa" or "go 4 blocks straight, take 2 flying f*cks, and I'll never see you again".

I suppose it's my fault for asking, doubly so for asking when I knew I probably wouldn't understand the answer. Then again, had I not kept asking I never would've found out the spa is closed. Later I ran into one of my earlier helpers who spoke some english and he asked me if I found the spa. I said "Yes, but it's closed", he replied "yes, it is", clearly wondering what that had to do with anything.

Izakaya - The Way of the Exploding Gut

Japan is the land of cheap and delicious eats, noodles in oodles and beefbowls bursting with calories are available for less than half the price of your average pint, but in no place does good times meet good eats like in the Japanese Pub: Izakaya.

My friend Yuhji took me to my first Izakaya somewhere in the business district of Tokyo and I was blown away. You just keep ordering stuff, more and more of it, in small dishes and keep washing it all down with beer or later with Sake. They make fishes in so many different delicious ways that you start seeing the wisdom in Gollum's choice of diet. But that's just scratching the surface: there's so many dishes on offer that this is the one place where you'd need to have a native speaker at hand, just so you don't have to try to work your way through all the dishes to find your favs.


A yakitori starter, are you salivating yet?

Once you've eaten all you can, order some more Sake. Once you've downed a few more glasses you'll start to feel hungry again.. go for it, you only die once and there's no better way to go than by bustin' your gut.

Zen and the art of bar decoration

There's a lot of bars in Tokyo, big bars, small bars, reggae bars, hidden bars, irish pubs and S&M Cafe's. Whatever ambiance you feel is most fitting for the funeral of your braincells can be found here.

Since I like my bars small and scruffy looking, I found myself and my friends in Ghetto bar in the Golden Gai area on more than one occasion. Sure, it may seem like a small attic with room for a bar, 4 chairs and a tiny closet in the back that could only be described as a toilet for underdeveloped midgets. Just the stairway leading up is so narrow it'd cause lawsuits in the fatlands of America. But once you're up there, the rest of the world is closed off and you can live for a few hours in this alternative corner of the universe. After seeing bars in Japan, I no longer wonder why some businessmen opt to stay out drinking and then sleep in a capsule hotel rather than risk the long train ride home, where your beer-breath may evoke a dubious welcome.


The decor is as relaxed as the space is cramped. Lovin' it!

And while Golden Gai is a themepark of boozing delight, it is also slightly on the expensive side. So to keep this section more balanced, I shall introduce a runner-up from the cheaper side of town. The elusive bar Beat Cafe in Shibuya, which I was introduced to in Episode IV, failed to find in Episode V and rediscovered in Episode VI is another example of "dingy by design".


Lost & Found @ Beat Cafe

Open whenever the owners feel like opening and sporting such amenities as Self-Service Drink Vending, Eat-Me-If-You-Dare Curry and Bang Your Head On The Doorframe Toilet, it serves as a shining example on how to perform the last rites on your cerebral cortex. For this reason, I name Beat Cafe the Runner-Up to the coveted Black Out Trophy.


To be Continued...
Future parts may or may not include such episodes as "Burger Panic", "Any way you slice it - Sushi vs Sashimi", "Day of the Tentacle Porn" and many others...