October 2009 Archives

• Excuse me
• Thank you
• I like tripe
• "All you can eat"
• "All you can drink"
• Can I have some water, please?

I love trains. Trains in Tokyo are particularly exciting. First of all, I will spend the majority of my time on them completely lost. Also, there's a 99% chance that I will be the only Westerner (read: round eye) on any given train. The majority of my fellow passengers are wearing suits or uniforms of some kind all seem to be very busy, despite it being 11am. People here love wearing suits. When I was here last summer they were having a campaign to try and get men to stop wearing ties or at the least, loosen them. Apparently it had something to do with a heat wave and trying to cut down on excessive air conditioning. I don't think it worked though, because they sure love their ties.

Last summer Bla and I wanted to go to the Tsukiji fish market. The deal is you have to go at five in the morning if you want to see men shrieking at each other over tuna the size of 5th graders. The night before our planned visit we were perched in a bar called 'Ghetto' in the Golden Gai--a bar that could seat only four people and that was owned by the star of a Japanese action film who also owned a restaurant called 'Horse' that only served the flesh of that mighty beast--we realized that we'd be fools to leave and try to wake up so early. We'd have a much better chance of staying awake with our new friends at Ghetto and going straight to the fish market from there.

Of course we hadn't considered the effect of the fish market on our compromised systems--compromised by Japanese action film stars teaching us exclamations in Japanese accompanied by shots of soju. Needless to say, the visit was terrifying and exhausting, and we hopped back on the train around 7 or 8 to finally get back to our hostel and go to sleep. Of course we hadn't realized that this was rush hour and the train would be absolutely, horribly jammers. Despite the stories of women getting groped on such trains, the other passengers gave me and Bla a wide birth. Reeking of ghetto, soju and salmon, I can't say that I blame them.

You can't take that away from me, I thought, while knowing, of course, how easily they could. Because really, for today at least, that exit row seat was all I had. A ten hour flight begs for a bulkhead. But as I sadly relinquished my boarding pass, I saw the new seat number. 4D. Oh yes, I had gotten the coveted upgrade and have begun my backpacking trip in the front cabin drinking champagne and swaddling myself in cushiony duvets to try to sleep. Try, of course, because I was attempting to go to sleep at 6pm my time.

Two weeks ago I had a brilliant idea that I was going to avert jet lag by waking up 20 minutes earlier every day before I left, with the end goal of being up by 3am for the few days before I left. This would be another example of my attempts at self-improvement through unrelenting self-abuse. Obviously, the plan did not go as hoped, despite me programming my ipod to play Bobby Brown "My Perogative" at full volume in the early hours of the morn. The best I did was waking up at 4am. That night I fell asleep at 7:30pm, and is if to mock my attempt to violently wrest control of my own circadian rhythms, slept for 12 hours.

So despite the plush reclined seat, a couple of valium and some bubbly (only after the sushi, miso soup and soba noodles, of course), your valiant hero tossed and turned for hours before drifting off and dreaming of frequent flyer miles.

And of course, desperate to prove this fact, I decided that I could manage my round-the-world trip with a carry-on size bag. When I go visit New York for a weekend, I can't keep it to a carry-on size bag. So why I thought I could do it now is anyone's guess. The two people I showed my bag to before I left both started laughing hysterically when they saw it. "You're fucking joking," one of them said, flabbergasted.

The other said, "Well, it will be a great conversation starter...like, so, you here for the weekend, mate?"

I had made a well thought out and very conservative list of items to bring. At T-24 hours I started panicking and adding things willy nilly. I need to bring a thermometer, right? I'm not playing Russian roulette with my health, here. I've brought at least 8 or 9 over the counter remedies for various ailments that I like to diagnose myself with frequently, and another 3 or 4 under the counter medications to help me "chill out." In the last few hours I added a self-help book, a polka dotted tank top, a collection of gummy candy that looked like pizza, a grimy white t-shirt, compression bags, hair serum, nighttime moisturizer (to compliment the daytime moisturizer, body lotion and hand lotion I already have) and a guide to reading menus in Japanese. I had to sit on my bag to get it to close.

The plan had been to "travel light" but by the time I made it to Paddington Station I knew that I had royally fucked up. Once I boarded the Heathrow Express I sat down on the floor and unpacked my entire bag. "Be ruthless," I kept muttering to myself under my breath, trying to avoid the stares of the businessmen wondering why I was counting and recounting my underwear and talking to myself. "Be ruthless." By the time the train pulled up to Heathrow I had filled one of the compression bags up with items that I had ruthlessly abandoned and made a solid commitment to myself to divest myself of even more of my possessions on arriving in Tokyo.

One of my friends was trying to understand why me, of all people--me, who considers a trip to the mall a sacred journey, me, who thinks of bric-a-brac as a fundamental human right, was even bothering to try to travel light. The only reason I can give is that I like challenging myself. I like putting myself in situations that I find very difficult, like Thanksgiving dinner with my family. I have a believe that the more excruciating I deliberately make my life, the better a person I will become. And this is why I have packed this child-size bag.

But when filling out my customs forms, I came to the question "What city to do live in?" I have no answer to that. I also have no answer for "Occupation?" When I checked into my hotel today I struggled over "Address?" for ten minutes. Where do I live today?