Results tagged “Tokyo”

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.