Saturday, 26 Jan
Started the day off in Yanaka (谷中）, an old Tokyo neighbourhoud far away from neon and crowds. The wooden houses and pop-mom shops reminded me of a mixture between the Beijing hutongs and a sleepy French town, and life's a lot slower around these parts of town. It's a breath of fresh air to know that these kinds of places still exist in Tokyo, to give some counterbalance to the Ginzas, Shinjukus and Shibuyas.
I walked around the neighbourhood and crossed the cemetary, which are much more open places than in Holland. Here people just walk their dogs here and supposedly also go Hanami (blossom) viewing in spring, as if it were a park. It's not a place which you'd rather avoid or really need a purpose for going as is the case in Holland. Still I decided not to stay here and get a suntan or something, so I went on with my expedition.
I stumbled upon the neighbourhoods shopping street, called Yanaka Ginza (which may have been a bit over the top to call it ginza (after the most expensive designer store street)). Everything looked so delicious and I was hungry. But I still don't really understand how things work here. Although there an amazing amount of food stalls and people take their food to go, nobody eats it on the street, it's just not done. So with bags of snacks I would have to travel hours to either find a place where nobody's paying attention or take a 60 minute subway ride home.
Desilusioned by this unpractical impairment, I had to walk past the whole street of goodies and find a restaurant. There would probably be some good authentic old-style cooking nearby. I mean, this is one of the most low-key part of tokyo how hard can it be?
And yes, five minutes later I was sitting in a Turkish chairless tableless restaurant with persian rugs on floor and from wall to wall, with pillows and people smoking water pipes. I must have walked too far heading west. And, I will never use the common term, 'he speaks dutch like a turk' again, as the waiter was turkish and rattled at me in fluent Japanese and was surprised I didn't really rattle back that much, because I still speak Japanese like a Turk... I mean, well, a Dutchman. Anyway the food was great, all kinds of turkish and persian 'tapas' were being handed out to everyone in the restaurant whenever they made something new. And I since was by myself that day, soon enough I made friends with the other Japanese guests, the first people I really had the chance to talk to here in tokyo for a longer amount of time in the 'wild', instead of either being introduced to or already knowing them from before. Bit scary, eh.
So after this authentically Japanese gastronomic experience I decided to head back to crowded Shinjuku, where a mcdonalds is a mcdonalds, a department store is a department store and a noodle house is a noodle house and where things are more normal.
There I went to the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, a super-high governmental building in west-Shinjuku. As you can see in the pictures was much better than that clouded day in Yokohama. And, not unimportant, it was free. It was really amazing, as I was there during sunset and the view made me forget the 200 Korean tourists who enjoyed the view with me that day. For a moment.
As the day came to a close, 15 of my classmates and I prepared for an encounter with Japanese retro gaming culture. Yes, A party from 12 .00 to 05.00 in the theme of '80's 8-bit famicom (=Nintendo NES) music mixed with the wildest beats. There was also an contest of who could finish level 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. the fastest. Having done this level over 1000 times as a kid, I knew I was going for gold. You could only try once and the only thing that mattered was time.
So me, being a pro in this game, started my turn at one of the consoles near the entrance of the club, while a Japanese staffmember of the party timed me. Two seconds. I let mario jump right in the arms of the first goomba and that was it. I guess the pressure was too much.
So a classmate tried next and ran into the same goomba. Bad day for the dutchies.
Luckily the party was great. All kinds of bands performed. And 350 Japanese +16 Dutchies went wild. 'Sexy Synthesizer' was my favorite. Didn't have my camera that day but will try to get some live footage from classmates.
Wow this has become a long story, hope you are still with me, reader, will keep it shorter next time. Will just stay at home the coming week so that the stories get shorter ^_^ (=the smiley used here in Japan) // Sayonara!
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