Blog entries

• Previous |
• Next |
• All

• Tokyo vid and purikura

  Sunday, Mar 8, 2009 11:52AM / Standard Entry / Members only
  4 comments

  Tokyo in 3.5 minutes:
  
  
  I should mention that it is completely possible to eat cheaply in Tokyo during your entire trip.  I often went to their version of "fast food" places, where you pay at a machine outside (there are photos of some of the dishes) and get a ticket with your order on it.   You go give the ticket to the waiter/busboy when you sit at the counter, and he comes back with your meal.  I went to soba, curry, and gyoza places and ate for $6.  I had sushi at those conveyor belt (revolving) sushi places and the sushi cost half as much as it does here!  I ate at McDonald's a few times and also sometimes got food at Am/Pm, where they have some small microwaveable rice or noodle dishes.
  
  I bought a Japanese phrasebook (Lonely Planet) and it's a very useful book that also contains some phrases that you would like to know but wouldn't normally find:
  
  For bar/club situations: "I'm high," "Fat chance!" "Go away!" and "You're a pain in the neck!"
  For the bedroom: "Oh my God!" "Easy tiger!" and "You're just using me for sex."
  For the hair salon:  "Shave it all off!" and "I should never have let you near me!"
  
  I lost some weight on my trip and am now more limber with more energy than before.  In Asia I would walk around until I was exhausted, but instead of going back to the hotel I'd sit for a while, and then I'd get up and keep going for another 2 or 3 hours.  I learned that I'm a lot more resilient than I thought, and I also learned that you can squeeze SO much activity into one day.  I need to keep up with the exercise somehow... maybe I'll take up hiking. 
  
  I asked my friend Leah about those dolled-up guys who stand around outside in Shinjuku, with their hair all done in crazy spikes, eyebrows plucked and dressed like video game characters.  To my utter shock, she told me: they work for the male equivalent to hostess clubs -- HOST clubs!  Yes, there are places where women go to flirt with cute young men, who in turn try and get them to spend lots of money on drinks.  That's so weird to me!!
  
  These purikura machines in Tokyo sometimes make your eyes look bigger!  My eyes are NOT this big even with "big eye" contacts.  Here I am with Wendy and Sam:
  
  
  
  Me and Leah:
  
  
  Leah's story is quite inspiring -- ever since she went on her first trip to Japan at age 14, she knew she wanted to live there.  She thought of every way she could possibly move there, from foreign exchange to English teaching.  She moved there at age 21, ended up achieving her ultimate dream of becoming a singer and a model there, and is now married with a little one on the way.  She absolutely loves it there and says she would never want to live anywhere else. 
  
  It's amazing to me that as a teenager, a person could be so open-minded as to know that her birth country is not necessarily the place for her.  It could be a place across the ocean, where the language is completely different and where she doesn't exactly blend into the crowd.  For her to leave behind life as she knew it, move there by herself, and make her own dreams come true -- it completely amazes me.
  
  All my Asia albums are up with captions, including Tokyo part 3.  http://picasaweb.google.com/liannelin