No Maps for These Territories

This is a day I was excited for the whole trip.  The Studio Ghibli Museum!  If you haven’t seen the Studio Ghibli films, you’re missing out.  Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke… all animated and fantastic.  It’s been called the Disney of Japan, but I think it’s much, much more than that.  The museum is a bit tough to get tickets for, they only sell them at Lawsons, and the machines only work in Japanese.  I convinced a clerk to buy the tickets for me, which he was very gracious about, and we headed out to Mitaka, a short train ride from Shinjuku.

It’s a very cool little town.

They even have their own bus that goes right from the station to Ghibli!

Just look at this place.  It was built with the sense of wonder of all of Miyazaki’s films.  Moss and vines, tunnels and secrets, huge robots and spiral staircases.

Totoro mans the admission booth.

Aww.

It’s hard to describe how magical the place is, I’ll let my pictures speak for themselves in some cases.

This is the inside.   Large walkways crisscross the interior, and you’re encouraged to just explore.  There’s no guides, no correct path, and very few signs.

Kids should wash their hands before eating, of course.  Everything is built to encourage kids to be empowered and help themselves.

All the custom made stained glass has characters from the movies!  How cool is that?  Here’s a forest spirit from Mononoke.

A spiral staircase inside, where kids can go up three floors.

A massive atrium and fan.

Little kids playing on a massive stuffed cat bus!

Outside benches with built in noisemakers.

Crazy steampunk water fountain.

I want one at home.

Iron Giant has a bit of moss growing on him.

Cats watch you from the windows.

A working well…

With a man on the other side, ready to suck up the water.

More eyeballs!

Then we headed back to the hotel, before heading out to the Park Hyatt, where I wanted to check out the bar from Lost in Translation.  The view from our hotel room.

The bar was fantastic, live jazz music, and a view to kill for.

I tried to get some pictures, but I couldn’t really do it justice.

And finally, as we walked around the neighborhood after the bar, in search of donuts, I found a great sign outside a bar.  I think we’ve all been there before.

Breakfast!

This is a bento available from the bento shop in Ontakesan.  Note that for less than $4, you can have a complete, delicious, healthy meal.  Green beans, squash, salmon, egg, and rice.  The bentos from this place were phenomenal.  I’d kill for a place like this back home.

Rice hidden underneath the bento.

The shop in Ontakesan where they roast coffee to order.

Pimp your PSP!

There’s an absolutely amazing tonkatsu place in Shinjuku that Yuzo had shown me.  They have people walking around with baskets of pickles and cabbage to refill your plate, and you grind your own sesame seeds for the sauce.

Every department store in Japan has a basement completely full of delicious foods and desserts.

Look at all that tasty goodness.

This place did all kimchee and pickles.

A very cool tea store.

And of course, dessert cakes.

And pastries.

There’s a store called Ranking Ranqueen that cracks me up.  Every week, they have the top 3 products in a million different categories for sale.  That’s all they do, an aggregation of the top selling products in Japan.  Here’s the best selling milk coffees, teas, and lemon drinks.

Best selling snacks of every possible category.

The best selling bubble baths, based on your blood type!

Note that the best selling headphones look like M&Ms.

Best selling matchbooks have cat prints on them??

It was pouring rain that night,  but I went out to wander the streets of Shinjuku.

I had to stop at my favorite Indian joint.  This place is run by one single guy, and is open til 5am.  He cooks some of the tastiest curries and rice you’ll ever have, for a couple hundred yen.  I chatted him up for a bit, and he says that the company that runs the restaurant flew him from India, pays for all his meals, lodging, insurance, and pays $30k a year on top of that.  Pretty sweet gig.

And that’s a good end to the evening.

Crazy couple of days here in Tokyo!  Range and I found some great indian food in Shinjuku (thanks to a recommendation by Yuzo), and all of us went to check out Namjatown in Ikebukuro, which is a themed park owned by Namco, the gaming company.  Inside it is Gyoza Stadium, which is  bunch of shops selling gyoza (a japanese dumpling with meat in it).

The inside of that place is totally crazy.  I wish I had been able to go to something that cool when I was growing up, it was like Chuck E Cheese times 100.

Range enjoys his indian feast.

Our new friends in a pub in Shinjuku.  We went to the Hub, and Range tried really hard to practice Japanese on the folks we met there.

I tried to be all Japanese, but she was throwing up the horns.  I got owned!

Salarymen will seriously pass out anywhere.  This is in Mos Burger.

Rough night.

NO PUDDING NO LIFE, SON.

Here we are in Gyoza Stadium.  Lots of little shops selling all sorts of different gyoza, all delicious.

This joint was packed.  We had to fight our way up to each booth to taste the offerings.

These gyoza were amazing, you squeeze some lime juice on them, and it’s like heaven in your mouth.

Inside Namjatown there’s a store selling the weirdest flavored ice cream you’ll ever see.  This one is flavored like edamame (soy beans)

Dracula ice cream is flavored like garlic, of course.

Curry ice cream?

Snake ice cream??  I was going to buy this to make Range taste it, but it was $10 for a little bowl.  It’s funny, but not $10 funny.

Octopus ice cream.

I can only imagine this one was shark fin ice cream.  On earth day, no less!

This ice cream cone was so ridiculous that we had to buy it.  Not only did it have cookies and marshmallows, but it had another smaller ice cream cone EMBEDDED in it!

I would just like to remind you that these boob puddings are being sold at a theme park for little children.

What appears to be a bowl of ramen is actually a bowl of ice cream, made to look like ramen.

We found a pet store in Ikebukuro where you can pay $10 to go sit in a room full of cats and pet them.  We didn’t feel like paying, but I saw these insanely cute little guys sleeping on each other.

On day 14, Yuzo and Range finally convinced me to move out of the hostel, and try somewhere better.  I don’t blame them.  Living ghetto is fun for a bit, but then you start wishing you could sleep without being able to hear every eurotrash fart and overly aggressive cleaning woman smashing cans at 7am.  Yuzo found the Oakwood Apartments in Shinjuku for only $110 a night, and DAMN was it worth it.

My last view of the hostel.  A baggie of found underwear.

A guy passed the hell out at work.  This guy would wake up, answer the phone, and then go back to sleep.

My new private bathroom in the hotel.  Oh yeah, private bathroom with Japanese style tub.

And a private kitchen with…

My own rice maker!

My own washer and drier!

A super comfy bed, with a view of the city!

Kitchen even came fully stocked with dishes and beer mugs.

Coffee maker, toaster, and hot water heater.  This may seem mundane to you, but look back at the hostel we were staying in.  It was like dying and going to heaven.  It’s probably the nicest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in, in terms of comfort and convenience.

Later that day, Yuzo and I hit up Nakano Broadway, which is this insane three floor explosion of nerdy collectables.  There are stores stocked top to bottom with the craziest new and old stuff.  Here’s a John McClane action figure from DIE HARD.  I nearly bought it.

Kick ass diorama of the sand worm attacking the Millenium Falcon.

Lots of super old school Star Wars action figures from the 70′s.

Aww yeah, Labyrinth action figure.  Probably complete with Bowie junk.

Are you a bust man?

Or a hip man?

Or an impossibly proportioned man?

My booty from the grocery store.  I cooked up some fried eggs, washed it down with some beer, and had a nice glass of OJ in the morning.

The insanely cool view out of my hotel window.  Good night.

Today I headed out to hunt down the mythical Square Enix showcase.  For those of you who are not total nerds, Square Enix made the epic Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts series of games, among others.  Their showcase is really hard to find, on a street kind of in the middle of nowhere.  That wasn’t going to stop me though.

A large mechanical man, singing in the courtyard of the Tokyo Opera House.

Found it!  They’re showing off posters for Advent Children, the Final Fantasy 7 movie that’s been doing pretty well on DVD.

They love their slimes.  Slimes are annoying when you fight them in the game, but they’re fun when they’re toys.

Final Fantasy themed coffee mugs.  I got a Sephiroth one.  Aww yeah.

Slimes galore!

All the games and soundtracks you could ever want.  Mostly in Japanese only.

Enormous Sephiroth emtombed in glass inside the showcase.  Pictures don’t do it justice, it’s pretty badass.

You can have a miniature of Cloud riding his motorcycle for just a few hundred dollars.

I went for the cheaper model, shown here.

Yeay!

Twice a day, they show trailers for all their upcoming games.  We checked it out, but NO PHOTO NO MOVIE sadly.

The upper level of the showcase with all the expensive stuff.  T-shirts are off to the left.

More themed toys.

That is one happy nerd.

Later on, I snuck some pictures in the arcade, despite lots of signs telling me not to.

This whole thing is a “medal” game, where you insert useless tokens and try to win more useless tokens.  Last time I was here, these things were rinky shit, like they are in Vegas.   They’ve gotten a lot bigger and more elaborate.

The bottom floor was all fighting games.

Shinjuku at night is a sight to behold.

We met up with TokyoCooney by accident, he was walking into the metro station and I screamed at him.  He was actually surprisingly cool, and gave us a walking tour of the seedier parts of town.  This is a love hotel, where you pay by the hour for a bit of privacy.

An entire street full of love hotels, actually.

Today Yuzo and I explore Akihabara, otherwise known as nerd heaven.  It’s full of some insanely weird stuff.  Then we head off to Odaiba with Kevin, which is an entirely man-made island in Tokyo, covered with shops and bizarre amusement parks.  Full album is here.

First things first.  A fat ass bowl of ramen, of course.  I could seriously eat ramen every day for a year and not get tired of it.

A DVD shop selling mostly weird softcore porn, but the outside is all covered with handwritten signs about their wares.

A costume shop in Akihabara.  I wonder if these guys get these for their girlfriends, or just dress up their Realdolls at home in them.

This mousepad is actually pretty awesome.  I think I’d get in trouble for displaying it at work though.

Maid themed cookies that come in extra fancy boxes.  I assume people collect these instead of eating them.

A copy of FINAL FANTASY VII in Super Potato, the retro gaming heaven shop in Akihabara.  Oh, my favorite Final Fantasy.  How I wish they would remake you on PS3.

The manga reading section at Super Potato.

Plus all the retro games you could shake a stick at.

And a big ass Mario.

Wow, the creepy Idol game, where you train young girls to be super stars, is apparently available on Xbox here.  Not in the US!

What in the world would you use this four bladed Klingon knife for?

I found it!  The pervert holy grail, the used panties.  Plus pictures of the girls that theoretically wore them.  Yeah, right.  They had about five security cameras and signs saying “No Pictures”, but I couldn’t resist.

The train station to Odaiba.

Kind of empty tonight!

The Rainbow bridge over the bay.

Aww yeah, it’s Joypolis.  Several stories of completely batshit gaming action.

Trap!  Let’s soend every day happy.

What’s in muscle park, you might ask?   Let me tell you.

Pitching baseballs at numbers!

Sucking up balls with weird ass basket backpacks!

Ninja training!

Battling with sawblades on sticks?

Hell of a view back from Odiaba toward the mainland.

Stop making polar bears cry with your awful pollution, humans!

That’s a UFO machine, where you can win pints of ice cream.  Joypolis is weird.

On this game, you run on a real treadmill, and try to win olympic games like hurdles and long jump.

Pictures don’t do this one justice.  It’s a 30 foot “half pipe” where you strap yourself to huge mechanical skateboards and try to get points by doing the most flips.

Heading back home into the concrete jungle.  Good night.

Today Yuzo and I check out Don Quixote, a CRAZY eight story building that has every imaginable good and then some.  Then we head out for monja-yaki for dinner, which I’ve not only never had before, but I’ve never even heard of.

Here’s my only bit of life in the hostel room.  I bought a plant, and I put him in my empty one cup sake.  It makes my tiny crappy room a little homier.

For lunch Yuzo grabs a hamburger in mystery sauce.

I go for hamburger with omrice, better known as scrambled eggs with ketchup.

The Japanese will seriously put a hot dog in ANYTHING.  Even a goddamn taco.

Hand made onigiri on the streets of Akihabara.  Very cool.  You pick what you want in it, and they make it to order.

This is a game where you put in money and try to grab piles of rocks.  Seriously.  It’s a game where the only prize is a fistful of small useless stones.

Yum, that’s octopus jerky skewers in Don Quixote.

This curry is very cheerful.  And encouraging.

Neon Genesis Evangelion themed ramen in a UFO machine.  Neeeeeeeerdy.

Bondage themed dongles for your cell phone.  I’m sure your boss will appreciate that one.  Or your girlfriend.  Oh wait, you don’t have one if you have one of these.

Kurt Cobain action figure??

Kevin and Range drink like women.

Monja is crazy.  It’s cheese, mochi (rice paste), and veggies and other ingredients like fish eggs, corn, meat, you name it.  You throw it all on a grill until it’s firm, and then you scrape it off in little bites and eat it.  It looks like vomit and tastes like heaven.

Here’s the start of monja.

And the frightening end result.

Delicious!

The monja crew!

Magical floating noodles on the streets of Ueno.

We have all decided that shochu is freaking disgusting and should never be drunk by anyone for any reason.  Stick to sake.

Good night.

For the full album, go here.  Today we’re off to the Ramen Museum in Yokohama, which is this amazing Disneyworld for ramen.  You get to walk around 1950′s era-Japan with lots of little shops that sell ramen from every area of Japan, and see all the different ways it can be made.  Afterwards we head over to Shibuya to check out the famous intersection, and then get food and do some karaoke.

Range finds his soul mates in the rail workers in Japan, who also like to pose with their fists up.

Kevin shares music with a Swedish girl we met in the hostel on the train.

I would call this stealth beer, but Range is 10 feet taller than anyone else here, so nothing he does is very stealthy.

Yuzo throws up some gang signs with Rob from Amsterdam.

Very cool little cafe with a waterfall behind it, in Yokohama.

Who was that masked man?

The inside of the Ramen museum.

NOM.

Our happy little ramen crew.

The map of all the different areas you can try the ramen from.

Here in Shibuya, there’s a famous intersection that becomes chaos every time the light changes.  On your mark, get, set…

Go!

Yuzo and me in downtown Shibuya on the way to dinner.

Augh!  So many lights!

Hurray, izakaya!  Hurray, beer!

Yuki was so excited by the cheese on the menu.

Our amazing karaoke booth.  Looks down right over downtown with a huge bay window.

The homeless here like to build cardboard forts to sleep in.  It’s all very neat and tidy, and at the end of the night, the streets are littered with forts in every doorway.  For some reason they prefer the main streets to the alleys, even though it’s much louder and they’re not begging for money.

Full album is here.   Prepare yourself for some food porn.  Yuzo’s brother in law, Toshi, took us out for some kick ass izakaya food in Shinjuku.   Course after course of small dishes, plenty of beer, and great company.

Plates of snacks, and an unfortunate look on Kevin’s face.

Range digs into the only salad we’ve seen in Japan so far.

Toshi illustrates some sort of undoubtedly erudite point.

Good times.

Here’s the bowl before we cooked it.  We lit the gas burner beneath this cauldron of meat, tofu and veggies, and sat back to let it cook for 20 minutes or so.

The final result.  Oh man was that delicious.  Once you eat the food, you toss in a big bowl of rice to soak up the sauce.

My favorite genre of food, breaded meat.

Beat the egg, mix it into the leftover sauce, and then add rice.  Not sure what it’s called but it’s heaven.

Range tackles two beers at once.  Like a true champion.

Afterwards, we went on a bar hunt, and found Bar Hermit.  They wanted a seating charge, so we moved on, but not before I got some great pics.

This bar apparently always closes three hours into the future, tomorrow.

Truer words were never spoken.

After the pub, we did what all worthless delinquents do, drink on the street and play guitar.

Rob showed us how to look like a true Japanese local.  At any time, a huge number of Japanese people are wearing these masks either to a) protect others from their colds, b) protect themselves from others colds, or c) protect themselves from allergies.

Range, wooing the sexy homeless men in the street.

Short picture day today.  Working again with Range and Yuzo in Shinjuku.  Pretty much just worked all day, got some ramen, came home at night and hung out in the Beer and Coffee pub down the street.

Corner ramen joint in Shinjuku.  I love that you sit about two feet from where they make your dish, and watch them toss in the miso ball, and cook the noodles and what not.

Preparing the happy.

Yuzo and Range drinking a cold one and waiting.

Look at that.  Perfect little egg, pile of pork, delicious broth.  I love ramen more than a fat kid loves cake.

Victory.

This is the hand drier at work.  There’s absolutely no paper towels anywhere in Japan, either they expect you to have a handkerchief and dry your own hands, or they provide one of these high tech bastards to blow the water off your hands into the trough below.

The japanese-style toilet at work.

That button on the right does exactly what you think it does.  High pressure bum blasting.  Still haven’t tried it. 

Our new friends from the hostel.  Rob is on the left and unable to make a normal face at any time.

As you can see here.  Also, Swedish people are apparently beer thieves.

Rob with his handy reference material.  So far, I don’t think it’s working out too well though.