Sunday, March 4, 2012

Japan Feb 2012 Part 4

The Flickers - White Heat

That day the girl had to go to work so I was left to my own devices.  My original plan was to go to Ushigome-kagurazaka.  I'd had her randomly point at a station on the metro line and that's what it landed on.  I never got around to checking it out, but there's a lot to do in a week in Tokyo.  Like walk all the way to Kawasaki.
 
I started from Gotanda on the Yamanote.  I just needed to follow dainikeihin south and it would lead me most of the way.  It would also lead me down the Toei Asakusa Line and where I lived as an exchange student.  But first I had to check out the very good Book Off and Tsutaya at Gotanda station.  The Tsutaya had their PS1 games lined up as 4 for 1000 yen.  One of the games was Symphony of the Night (like I needed another copy) and all the Final Fantasies.  I decided I didn't want to haul those around all day, but if they were there that evening I'd buy them.

It was early and most of the secret mall between Togoshi and Gotanda was closed.  The Uniqlo was open and I picked up a GoGo Curry shirt.  Feed the Gorilla.  Be the Gorilla.  The next hour of walking from Togoshi to Ikegami was probably a mistake in wasting time, but I wasn't about to wait 4 minutes for the next bus.

A nice way to make sure no one sits on your fucking rails.

I've never understood this.  Along our highway is signs telling you how far FROM Nihonbashi you are.  Look at the traffic it's going away from Nihonbashi, south.  Why do you need to know the distance you are traveling away from something?  The answer: Japan?

For this vending machine we need to turn on the way back machine and hope I have a picture.

That works.  This vending machine back when I was a student said it was offering Tall cans of coke for 100 yen.  Why else would I have a mountain of TCCC.  I ended up getting a small can in 2012 to remind me that it was still on sale six years later.  Hush don't ruin my point that is ruined.

Final Promise Story Soundtrack - The Final Promise

Ikegami remains just about all the temples in Japan I need.  It's just about always empty and especially gorgeous and a pretty damn large area.  Strangely I had two Americans walking in front of me as I approached the grounds.

kitty!
It's awesome that after visiting this temple/graveyard for six years I still find new things in it.  Like this...thing.

I at down on the steps with that view and started to read more of Gogol's Dead Souls.  This is my second try at Russian Literature after Anna Karenina last year.  A man goes across the Russian countryside buying up the rights to already dead serfs that are still registered with the state as living.  The main thing that kept me reading was the mystery of WHY.  The "humor" is the narrator/author self inserting himself into actually being in the room narrating and discussing things while the main character is heavily annoyed by the fact.  I finished the first part of the book and sold it to a BookOff for 30 yen.  I needed to lighten my load and if I didn't own it anymore I wouldn't be tempted to read more of a book I wasn't enjoying.

That reading built up an appetite and I found out behind Ikegami Honmonji (the main temple of this complex) there was a shop offering Homonji Udon.  Why not!

It was pretty good.  I bought some incense next door for friends that liked incense.  The girl later confirmed my suspicions that I had bought mourning incense.  Whoops.  If you read this friend, I'm sorry!


My slogan for Ikegami Honmonji is still "Fuck Kyoto."  There is never a crowd except on festival days and then there is food and vendors and it's super fun.  You can even visit it at night where it's lit up beautifully.

While I was there this time the main temple was open and had our buddhist monks praying.  Without being sacrilegious (as someone who doesn't follow any religion) it's always fun to hear and see them do their thing.  The inside of the temple is covered in gorgeous gold items hanging from the ceiling.  I respected the no photography signs since I like this place so much.  I threw in all my change at the various collection boxes and a 1000 yen for good measure.  It can't be cheap to maintain the grounds and I hope they continue to do so.

There's even a look out place of Kangawa/Yokohama.  On festival days you'll get a lot of people pointing and saying, "is that Tokyo Tower?"  No.  You are south of Tokyo right now and facing south.

I should mention again this place is absolutely huge.  I eventually walked down the huge stairs and proceeded to Ikegami station.  So that meant even more video game browsing.

The bus was still 5 minutes away so I continued to walk further south to one of my favorite hidden game stores that is now not so hidden because I'm telling you about it.  It's where I got the Hello Kitty Dreamcast and the Sega Gameworks and oh hey they had several Dreamcast Karaoke systems (still.)

bloodthirsty butchers - curve

Find it yourself.  Instead look at that weird hong kong handheld in the top right.  What does that even play?  Here I managed to pick up my 80 yen Omega Boost.  I kept on walking and onto the bridge for the Tamagawa River that also marked the end of Tokyo proper and into Kangawa Prefecture and Kawasaki.

One of the main reasons I take this trip everytime is Book Off Super Bazaar (previously the much better named Hard Off.)  Home to clothes, guitars (including my old guitar that was broke), books, ski equipment, surfboards, junk equipment, and just about everything under the sun.  I tried on a pair of 7 for All Man Kind jeans that look amazing but had tiny tiny pockets and I'm still extremely angry about that.  I bought a couple of Super Famicom games to ease my pain and another Zelda game for the girl.

At this point I was kind of exhausted but I'm also dumb with my walking.  I decided I'd find a Don Quioxte I saw once before that was even further down this highway.  Usually at this point you turn left and that takes you to Kawasaki station (or you grab the bus.)  Either way this book off is in the absolute middle of nowhere.  So further into highway country I walked just to see a Don Quioxte for almost no rational reason.

Well that was worth.  I sat down by the registers and had a nice warm oolong tea from the vending machines and look at the extremely long check out lines.  I saw an ugly JoJo screencleaner that I should have bought there.  It's the only Jojo memorabilia I saw while I was there.  I thought it would be cheaper at an electronics store where it was 200 yen more. From here it was still a long walk to Kawasaki station and at this point walking was just about my only option to get there.
400 yen?  no thanks!

I'm not sure what that is still!  Outside of the obvious.  I then finally arrived at Kawasaki station.  I then dined on the fine Japanese Christmas tradition of KFC.  They had just released the double down here, but I went with just a sandwich.

K-Station is also host to a Super Bazaar that didn't have anything particularly special but was worth investigating.  I also noted two of the arcades had closed in the eight months I hadn't been there.  Which just left the modern state of Japanese arcades: horse racing, medal machines and UFO catchers.

Sonic looks...different.

toddle - shimmer


Since it was one station away I went ahead and caught the train to Kamata.  Back when I was a student you could describe this place as secret Akihabara.  It had about 8 game stores lined up down the street.  5 of those have closed in the intervening years.   Top Boy-K is still a good store for some rarer but recent stuff.  They almost always had DSes in stock when you couldn't find one anywhere else.  This time it was somewhat taken over by another recent change in the game store culture of having a large card game section.  They seemed to be a mix of actual TCGs and the card arcade games.  It's interesting to watch a salaryman smoke a cigarette hatefully and move his dynasty warrior card across the playfield.

Luckily my earlier purchases made me ignore a lot systems so I could just blaze through to check for a few specific games.  Before I could start on one of the oldest stores still standing though, the girl gave me a call and I headed back to Gotanda (circular) in the hopes of eating this delicious.

But that place had been replaced with an italian restaurant that looked incredibly high class for a place with 5 chairs and underneath a train tracks.  We ended up getting curry at a place that at least smelled amazing and tasted pretty not bad.

It was Japanese style with Indian seasonings.  Which means i made the mistake of getting tonkatsu when I should of gotten the chicken since it was tandoori chicken and tasted great.  Still my belly was satisfied.  I went by and saw someone had bought the SotN from earlier in the day and decided against carrying around a bunch of PS1 RPGs.  We headed back to the hotel (yay!) and watched terrible terrible Japanese variety TV.

next time: PLANET HARRIERS AND TRAIN RIDING to Part 5

No comments:

Post a Comment