Subway sign

I woke up at 2:30 this morning to the sound of Dissident leaving the room. I wasn’t sure if he had left to grab a quick bite at the 7-11, or walked over to Roppongi for something else quick and dirty. When he returned 10 minutes later with a 7-11 bag laden with caffeinated drinks, I had my answer. He also bought a dough ball filled with meat, but he had eaten it in the lobby.

I made it known that I was awake too, so we turned on the lights and started our day. I made a bowl of ramen that was supplied by the hotel and it tasted fishy – yuck! We took showers and also took turns being voluntarily violated by the toilet. We then decided to strike out for the Tsukiji fish market, which is supposed to be a crazy spectacle if you get there early in the morning with all of Tokyo’s fresh fish for the day getting processed and distributed.

Before the fish market, we decided to grab a second breakfast. We walked into a place and were told they were closed – it was only 5:30 AM after all. We finally found a place to get food and were directed to a vending machine to place our order. No English, but there were pictures. Dissident got beef and rice. I got rice noodle ramen soup that tasted fishy and had in it, to my surprise, fish. I ate it and learned to like it. Off to the fish market.

We got a map from the hotel that proved to be of little value because (a) it didn’t have many streets listed and (b) we could find no street signs anywhere. Dissident took a stab at navigation and took us up every steep road in Tokyo. No luck finding the correct subway terminal, so he hands the map to me. I work out exactly how to go, take us back down the steepest streets in Tokyo, and fail to find the subway terminal. We consult every map and guide we had, but couldn’t figure it out, so once again we asked a policeman who showed us on a map on his desk that we were only two blocks away. After we navigate the subway, we emerge on the surface, consulted a city map that was displayed nearby, and walked about a mile to the market to find that (a) we were too late and everything was over for the day, and (b) it was a holiday of some sort so probably nothing much was going on anyway. I wasn’t too upset, I had enough of fish by now anyway just from my two breakfasts.

Regular holiday?

Dejected, we get our third breakfast of the day at a McDonalds, just to be silly and to see what it was like. We both got breakfast sandwich thingies that were small in size but large in taste. Dissident ordered a large drink and was given a small. I ordered a small and was given a thimble.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by the US embassy, which was disturbingly run entirely by Japanese people. Odd that. Dissident was told that he should check in at the embassy because he is a US government contractor. We stood in line for about twenty minutes and then had to go through metal detectors. We were asked to place any electronics we had into a bucket – I had one small camera, Dissident had two cameras, a Zune, his eee laptop, and most of Circuit City. Dissident told about four people along the way that he was checking-in with them, but they all looked confused and kept sending us further into the embassy. Eventually we made it to a window with a nice lady behind it that told us that there is no such policy in place. Well, at least we can say we’ve been inside an embassy.

We go back to the hotel and find the business center to use the computer to post a few articles. Disturbingly, it was $5.25 for 15 minutes, so we worked very fast! Then it was back to 7-11 for supplies and back to the room to bitch about the lack of telephone and affordable Internet. We feasted on dough balls filled with meat and cracker sticks covered with chocolate. Dissident’s ankle was giving him trouble so he decided to take a nap and rest it. I went in search of the rooftop garden that I could see from our window and also an ace bandage for Dissident’s ankle. No luck with the bandage so I look for the garden. The hotel lobby is on the 2nd floor, our room is on the 8th, and the garden is on the 4th. I get into the elevator on the 2nd floor and am annoyed to find that it skips several floors including the 4th. I get off at the 3rd floor and look for stairs, but only find another elevator. I give up, get in the elevator, and am annoyed to find that it skips several floors including the 8th. But, there was a 4th floor! I victoriously traveled to the garden floor, only to find that it was closed. Fuck. Back to the 3rd floor to switch elevators and go back to the room. Defeated, I sit in the dark while Dissident snores away, and I type up the first part of this article. I crash out too for a quick nap. We wake 7 hours later, ready to roam the night.

Untouchable garden

We struck out for Shibuya, which was only 5 stops away from the subway station in front of our hotel. We were in search of a bar called Tombstone, which we’d been to last year. But first we stopped for dinner at, um, well, an Irish pub. Dissident had some excellent fish and chips. I had the world’s best shepherd’s pie. We left and walked for hours looking for Tombstone. We eventually said fuck it and went down into a bar that was blasting some hip-hop. It was ¾ filled with black people, the other ¼ was Asian, and then there was us. We had a couple of Heinekens.  Eventually a black man stood in front of me and winked at me with a fucked-up eye. He then walked over to a table where two Asian women were seated and gestured his head over to them. It was more or less at this time when we decided to leave.

A half block later we found ourselves in Gaspanick, where we watched drunken people bump into each other both accidentally and on purpose. One girl in particular was smacked in the face by her friend as a joke, but it messed up her world enough that she had to sleek off toward the door, just past us, and vomit. Now 11:30 PM, we headed for the subway before it closed down for the night.

We stopped off at the venerable 7-11. Dissident grabbed another dough ball filled with meat, and I grabbed some more ramen. Once again my ramen turned out to be shrimp filled, but I still ate it and was merry. Dissident’s dough-ball turned out not to contain meat but was instead filled with some kind of grainy, black, gelatinous goo of indescribable taste and origin. He was not pleased with it but at least he also had a chicken kebab. After our snacks, we went up to the top floor of our hotel to the Manhattan bar to cash in our free drink coupons. The view from the windows of the bar was life-altering. Tokyo by night is not a sea of dull amber lights like cities in the States. It is instead a crisp contrast of sleek black buildings and bright white lights, accented on top with red lights to tell airplanes to stay the hell away. It is very pretty and very, very massive. A few gin and tonics later, we close the bar and head back to the room where we discuss how fortunate we are to be two slackers who can manage to swing such an ambitious vacation. We also discussed how we proved all our teachers wrong who said that we would not amount to anything – to them, we say fuck you all. We finally crashed out at around 3:30 AM. I woke up three ours later to the sound of Dissident trying to inhale all the oxygen in the room through his left nostril, only to try to expel it a second later though his right. I tried to combat the sound with my noise cancellation headphones that had so nicely drowned out the 110 decibel noise of a jet engine, but they couldn’t do the job on his snoring. Unable to sleep, I wrote what you are reading now. Still tired, I put down the computer and smothered my head in pillows in hopes of a few more precious hours of sleep.

Square root?

Pocky sticks!

View from the Manhattan Bar