Tokyo is a machine. The city itself breathes with a perfect breath. The subway system is unrivaled with 9 metro lines, 4 toei lines and a JR train that together blanket the city in a gnarled mess that leaves nothing within tokyo less than a kilometer away. Any other ground to cover is usually done by bike. There are millions of bikes in the city and not a single one has a lock. Tokyo is best thought of a many cities that grew together because the different downtown areas all have such different vibes. The first spot we hit was the Ginza district. There, Dakota found a fresh food market in which he became infatuated with. The best part of a market like that is the ease of getting common food. Although Tokyo is pretty tourist friendly, there is much difficulty getting any kind of menus in english or at least with pictures. Many a time, we would sit down at a place, grab menu and point to the second least expensive item and smile as the waiter would take our order. Ten minutes later, the waiter would bring back cold noodles and soy sauce with a small piece of fish in some smelly sauce. Delicious.
After spending some time in the Ginza area, we hopped on the train and walked amongst the financial district towers looming over
the streets. Many common brand names like Toshiba and Sony adorned these buildings which stood so high. The one obvious thing about the city is the lack of public trash cans. It's a bit strange because despite the lack of trash cans, no one litters. Next spot was the Harajuku district.
After years of wearing conservative school uniforms, these kids are reacting by wearing the most ridiculous gear possible. They all dress so differently that it would be impossible to pinpoint exactly what they wear. There are obvious influences like the punker kids, the goths, the little girl style, the crazy hair kids, the rockabilly kids. All the different kids just wear the clothes without a care for any of the meaning behind it. It's beyond anything i have ever seen.
Dakota and i saw a harajuku bazaar and dropped in to check it out.
The seven story shop teemed with life. There were harajuku girls screaming sales pitches at every shop. The sights and sounds in this place were too much for two Americans to handle. It was absolute madness. We proceeded up and we were met by the same thing on every floor.
Ridiculous kids selling ridiculous clothes to other ridiculous kids. What a world this is.
A few days later we decided to go to Yoyogi park which borders the Harajuku district because on Sundays the park is supposed to go off.
Wherever i heard or read that was dead on. There were street performers of all kinds. The most memorable were these five rockabilly guys who were dancing in leather and boots. The leader wore a white leather jacket with no shirt underneath and pranced around like a rooster among chickens.
We walked on and saw a few local bands playing on the sidewalk no more than fifty feet from each other. There were all battling for the passing youth's attention. Soon after, we stumbled upon a drum circle. An old man was drumming smiling a tooth-less
was a young guy who had set up a wearable dj outfit in which he simultaneously danced, dj'ed,
and painted. If there was one standup thing about this kid, it was this. He had passion. You could see the fire in his eyes and it glowed outward and shined on the crowd. He would play a beat and jump around a bit as he made smooth brush strokes on the canvas. He would stop the music and face the crowd, scratch a bit and resume the music to start over again. Other notable acts were the jumprope breakdancing crew and Sapporo Man. Sapporo Man was this really queer man in a white suit and yellow rain boots. His performance was that he would pose for a moment and strange noises would erupt from his mouth. Nothing too exciting.
For the remaining days in Tokyo, we stuck around the Taito-ku district and saw the markets and temples of the area. I drank from the public bath and bathed in the incense smoke that bellowed from the altar. I threw a few hundred yen in the collection box and snapped a few shots of an odd looking fellow. Just across the street, there was a woman who had trained a monkey to do tricks. He caught small rings and walked on little monkey stilts. His finale trick was jumping through a hoop held almost shoulder high on the woman.
After we packed our things and got ready to go, we headed to the train station with three hours to spare. As we jumped our our longest and final train to Narita Airport, it soon became apparent that we weren't going to make it on time. Our train was stopping at every public stop and we had 40 minutes and 17 more stations to go. I scanned the train and saw a black guy speaking with a Japanese guy in the corner. He explained what we did wrong and advised us to get off on the next stop. We boarded the right train and went straight through customs and got our boarding passes. We had ten minutes to get through immigration. I spotted some white kids and asked them to cut. They let us in and i humored them with the usual "where are you from" bullshit. We got on the plane to Thailand and Dakota let out a cheer.
