Travelin Monkey

The final hours approach for this wonderful encounter with myself and the land of the rising sun. I have spoke twice in the last 3 days. Once with the guy at the Imperial Palace who took my picture, and again when I checked out. Last night, I ended up at Ginzu, which turns out to be a shiek area of Tokyo with fashionable stores and resteraunts. Everyone was noticably well dressed, except for me of course. I actually found a place that had English subtitles. What would life be without subtitles or background music? BORING!!

I ate at the Ginzu Lion. I had a booth for 3 with a view fo the city all to myself. There was even a personal button to call the waiter over when I was ready. I walked around for a while and just thought about life, twists and turns, and listened to my music. There was nothing else to do. At one point, my feet began to hurt so much, I called it quits and went home to sleep.

Today, I awoke at 6 am and headed to Tsukiji fish market. I tell you my guides are great (intuition that is). I went to the back alleys and found the fish market for major companies, then the market for the consumers. I was amazed on how they just let me be and walk around, even at the loading docks. Soon, my time there was spent, more because of the pain of walking than anything else.

Back at Asakusa, I took the &*%) train to Daisu, a 100 yen store, which ended up being a waste of time because they only sold junk, not even the good type of junk that you could stick somewhere. Unfortunately, when I returned, it was time to check-out and head to Ueno. The station there is huge and I always get lost. I made it out to the streets, where I found a flea market, but they don’t sell trinckets or have tourist traps ANYWHERE!!! Did I do such a good job finding the REAL Tokyo? Where were the typical salesman trying to sell anything to me?

Hungry, I attempted to eat, but when you can’t read a menu, let alone annunciate something, there is nothing to eat. One place looked promising, with lots of pictures, what was the problem? NO WAITERS!! They have machines with the names of the dishes and prices, but the pictures on the wall outside!! Of course, no one spoke English. And the way the machines worked was you pressed a button, put in money, and gave that to the chef! I finally found a place with a picture so I could at least know what my food looked like when they called something out, and ended up eating Octopus tempura Udon. It was DELICIOUS (i would have eaten my shoe at that point!).

I found a bakery and loaded up on goods. From there, I decided to go to Narita early, mainly out of shear boredom and the pain of walking around. Here are some of the weekend funnies:

1. I hit 2 people, one with my unbrella, the other with my fist, trying to make hand gestures so people could understand me. They were accidents, of course!
2. A blue haired, probably 80+ year old lady grabbed my balls on the bus when exiting. After seeing all the poirn, I doubt it was an accident.
3. Some lady tried to get me to pay 300 yen (US$3) for shopping in her sex shop. At least, that’s what I thinks he asked money for. Did I turn down the world’s cheapest blowjob?
4. An old lady at the East Garden was amazed at my size and NY beanie and was very happy to meet someone from America.
5. When buying the digital camera, the guy told me I had a “rong rast name” and told me “your wercome” when done.
6. Even though they might be dressed as French maids on the street singing like idiots, they still don’t want the Gringo taking their pictures.
7. You don’t need to speak the language or remotely understand what is going on to laugh at the Japanese game shows.
8. Whoever brings the idea of soveneirs and cheap, at least DRAGONS or something, to Japan will make a killing with the tourists!!

Adventure completed… What country is next?

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