Japn Feb 2012 Part 7

Persona 4 Never More Reincarnation - Heartbeat Heartbreak

I woke up with my spine being corrected from sleeping on a futon.  It felt good.  Trying to stand up to check the weather I found out my leg -surprise- was still screwed up.  I hobbled over and opened the blinds.  I sat down and enjoyed the dark mountain morning filled with fog and rain.

 After Yuri woke up we went and took another bath.  My leg appreicated that, and again the bath was empty but for myself.  Yuri told me it was the same both times for her as well.  Without my glasses I could just enjoy the wet green and brown outside the window.  I didn't do anything with my hair, the moisture and rain were going to make styling pointless today.  I went back to the room and found my PSP had a save at the last dungeon of Super Mario Bros 3 so I beat it while waiting for Yuri to finish.

While we had skipped on the dinner, we did pay for the breakfest so freshly bathed, in our Yukatas we headed down stairs.  It was marked as a traditional Japanese breakfest and for the second time was more food than I was expecting.  There was a whole dried fish that you recooked at the table, some egg, rice and miso soup, various pickled vegetables.  I ate one or two bites of the fish, but it remained not really my thing.  Yuri ate the whole thing eyes to fins.

We packed up our things and I ended up leaving my brand new USB outlet charger there.  The ryokan gave us a ride back to the station, which we and my knee thanked them for.  At Hanno Station I bought a cloth brace.  I figured if I went to a doctor they'd tell me to keep off my knee for a couple of days and give me a brace.  I didn't exactly have the luxury of taking a few days off with less than a week left in Tokyo.  So I went to the Uniqlo and "tried on" some jeans and put on the brace.  I instantly was without pain or awkwardness, but I was stuck limping the rest of the week.

The train ride back to Tokyo was occupied with passing the PSP back and forth trying to beat the first level of the infamous kusoge Transformers Convoy no Nazo.  Back in Tokyo, I found out I wasn't using any stairs unless I took them one step at a time.  That would make getting around a lot slower and a lot more tiring.  Try going one step at a time all day.

We decided to check out Ikebukuro today.  Navigating one of the more confusing train stations in Tokyo we travelled up the west exit to get Katsuya Katsudon.  Yuri was the only girl in the place and I was the only gaijin in a place filled with salarymen in black salarymen trenchcoats for cold rainy days like it was.

The ever pricey Liberty line of games/dvds stores had started to collapse while I was still in Japan with several stores closing.  The one Liberty Renfrew and I checked out in Akiba had been converted to half of it being an AKB pictures store, where you could buy all your favorite AKB pictures.  The Ikebukuro one had games, DVDs, Figures, and AKB pictures in on a floor the size of your bathroom.  Half the shelfs were empty so I don't expect to see that store if/when I return.  Maybe the pornography upstairs is profitable.

We wondered back to the East exit towards sunshine city.  We made a stop at LABI for the same reason we had stopped at Liberty .  It was Thursday in Japan and that means new video game releases.  I was going to buy Under Defeat.  LABI and Bic Camera have been in a war in Ikebukuro.  Bic Camera built a giant new store, so LABI built a giant store next door so Bic Camera built a secondary store right across the street.  Tokyo was traditionally the land of Bic Camera and Yodobashi Camera for huge electronic stores.  Then Yamada Denki LABI of Kansai started muscling in around 2007.  Now if LABI builds a huge store in Tokyo the other two try their damnest to buy enough property to build a competitor and vice versa.

Yamada Denki Theme

LABI wins for having the best jingle, but I seriously can't imagine listening to it hour after hour working there.

Ikebukuro LABI is huge and sparkingly and even has benches.  It also has vending machines next to those benches in case you get thirsty shopping it's 8 floors.  It now has a whole floor devoted only to Nintendo products with large demo stations to try out...the Wii's weather channel?  I sat down on the couch and couldn't quite figure out what this station was meant to be showing me.  The 3DSes were somewhat easier to navigate and I got to try Final Fantasy Theaterrhythm.  I don't intend to buy a 3DS soon, but I'd buy that game if I had one.

The next floor up is almost night club dark and devoted to Sony (with a small section for the 360.)   I got to hold a Vita in my hands and feel less than impressed.  They ended up only having the limited edition of Under Defeat which had things I didn't need.  They said demand was really high and I should have reserved it.  Dejected we tried the top floor which was now marked "Gundam".  I figured it would be models and I was looking for a Monster Hunter model kit for a friend.  Nope it was an entire basketball court of just Gundam.

 SEBASTIAN X - Sekai no hate made tsurete

We left LABI, walked next door to Bic, and I bought one of seven possible copies of Under Defeat vanilla version.  With that out of the way we headed towards Sunshine City.  Back in June we had spent a night in Sunshine City.  The room was nice and the view was great, but it also had prison windows.

Giant room, tiny little window.  That's why we didn't stay there this trip, despite it being relatively cheap.  In Sunshine we were on the look out for souvenirs and jeans (for myself.)  We stopped for crepes and briefly considered going to Namja Town.  We didn't.  Nothing wrong with Namja.  I tried on jeans while a clerk that like totally hated me man stood nearby.  Nothing fit right, and what fit right was Edwin ugly.  We found two gifts for friends and were still stumped for a third.

We took the above ground route back to the station.  Right next to a cat cafe (which will run you about 2000 yen for a cup of coffee and disinterested cats) was the newly opened Super Potato Ikebukuro.  This time I was the asshole white person with a backpack.  The air in the place was about as bad as Chiba Kanteidan and it was just as packed.  I didn't think you could stock 30 years of video games in an family restaurant booth, but they did.  My knee prevented me from looking at anything below waist level.  I did spot Kuma Uta, the PS2 game where you play a polar bear that sings enka songs, but not enough for me to pull the trigger on the half hour of fun I expected to get out of it.

 With Ikebukuro in the can we got on the train and headed to Jiyugaoka.  We were to have dinner with Yuri's mother.  We dined at Goemon, a pasta place named inexplicably after the famous thief.  The dinner went well, except for once again my Japanese failing me on all fronts.  She genuinely liked my jacket.   I over enthusiastically bowed when parted.  My language had failed me so I physically tried to show my appreciation for coming out on a dreary wet night to see her daughter's boyfriend.

 We had no where planned to stay that night and it was getting late.  The closest big station was my bane, Shibuya.  So we trudged back and up Love Hotel Hill.  Our main criteria that night was somewhere cheap.  That was probably our main downfall (outside of trying to find somewhere not awful in Shibuya.)  We chose somewhere that was cheap and we had positive memories of that we quickly didn't know where they had come from.  The room was probably the strongest reeking of cigarettes and what didn't feel like the cleanest bedsheets.  We passed on showers until the morning, hoping we could just get something then to help wash off the tobacco and disgusting feeling the room emitted.  We could easily hear our neighbors.  Against expectations we never heard any sex, and that probably would have improved the night honestly.  Both of us managed to fall asleep.

In the morning I took a difficult shower in a tiny bathroom with the products on the left wall and the shower on the right with  the toilet in the middle.  Happy to escape the shit hole that is Case De Due, I wished Yuri a good day at work.  I started to explore early morning Shibuya, pondering "how the hell was I here a second time?"

Next Time: Tokyo Second Loop

Your Zen Koan: What does AKB48 have to do with business suits? To Part 8!