Day 11: Ohio Gosai Masu

Day 11 (or perhaps 12)

I desperately needed a coffee fix this AM (no, for a different reason) so I left Dan playing starcraft and headed out into the Japanese Urban Jungle. Such a civilized jungle. Couple of blocks away, according to the internets, is a Starbucks. Oh Joy. I cannot do true justice, with the written word, of a TYUJG taking my order while saying to me all of the japanese phrases that I know and could legitimately respond to:

• Ohio Gosai masu.
• Joto Mate Kudisai
• Domo Aragato

And then, I had a “Cafe Late Vendi” but I am not sure how to write it such that you would appreciate how wonderful it sounded when the your ladies said it. The ladies (plural) said it. Cause, first the order girl repeats my order to me, then the girl next to her yells it to the maker, then the maker yells it back to us. And then everyone says, “Domo Aragato”! Such Fun.

I sat outside and watched the nice people on their way to work. What a pleasant time. Oh, I was blogging then, where is my past self text? Oh right. He put that on Day 10. Silly past self.

Here is one cool thing I saw on the way. See those little cars up on the second floor? That is a haircut place for kids. They get to ride in the cars while they get their hair cut. Prices start at $50. I haven't seen anyone up there anytime I have passed.....

Daniel and I had been surfing for good places to go shopping for Yukata. We Decided to do Asakusa. We could get there by subway with only one change, Mita line to Asakusa line. And we know the area because Asakusa was where we went to see that important Budhist shrine in (oh right) Asakusa. But we didn't have time to do any shopping then and all we saw was the very stub of the shopping district that extends into the region of the shrine. And our guide had gone to lunch and sure didn't give us any insight into how wonderful the shopping district is around there.

But we are there now. Wow. What a bustling place.

Lots of shops. Lots of japanese robe shops. I think dan and I are final Yukata'd out.

 

We had a very nice traditional japanese Rice lunch. It was just some place we walked into. It was a dish where they cook a very course (brown?) rice in a sort of one serving integrated bowl with your requested ingredients on top. I had salmon, Dan had mushroom. It took 30 minutes to prepare our order, but the beer was cold and we needed the rest anyway.

Lots of shopping. We were constantly accosted by school kids that had assignments to track down and cute foreigners to death. I have like 10 origami cranes that I was given for providing answers to questions 3:

1. What is your Name?
2. What is your Quest?
3. What is the height of the Tokyo Sky Tree Tower?

(actually, questions 1 and 2 are really what they asked).

The little kids in red hats were standing in line to ask Dan and I The Three Questions. After red hat #4 or so, Dan and I made a run for it. Can only stand so much CUTE.

One woman came up to Dan while the kids were there. I thought she was their teacher, but she turned out to be some religious cult asking for donations. Hmmm, that seems to be universal.

So, after all of this “traditional Japanese” tourist shopping. We jumped back on the subway and rode 2 exits to the Tokyo Sky Tree Tower.

We have been seeing it in the distance all week, so we just had to go and check it out.

Sky Tree Tower from Askusa Market.

The Tokyo Tower guys must really be pissed. This thing is HUGE and has a HUGE tourist mall attached to it. Dan and I made our way to the base of the thing to see if we could get tickets.

 

If I was going to spend thousands of dollars on a sign with Japanese writing on it,
I would spend the money to hire a japanese speaker to do a grammar check.
Just saying.

But we couldn't get in. They are still testing out the safety systems on pre-paying customer who have signed waivers.

So we went into the main mall building. There we ran into (Guess What?) a bunch of cute young thin Japanese women in uniforms standing in front of a very high tech TV and arena sort of area. I thought it was a demo of a new hand movement detection and control system TV, and I wanted a shot. So when the very gorgeous young woman asked me, well, hell, I don't know what she asked me, it was in Japanese, anyway, I said yes.

Turned out (according to yet another cute young japanese woman in uniform who spoke English) we were going to be playing a game with lots of other Japanese people (mainly older people, by the way) for some prize. Oh goodie.

So, first we had to listen to by far the cutest and fastest talking uniform girl give us a sales pitch. I am sure it was something good. I would have bought a lot of them. MTV had something to do with this. And J Com. I urge you in my most sincere and cute manner, with stereotypical cute japanese girl flat hand gestures, to buy these products. Really.

Then the quiz started.

Daniel KNEW the answer to question #1. Go Daniel !! (the english uniform girl did read us the question, but Dan knew the answer.)

The second question was all about Japanese artists. We had no idea. Our english translator said. “This is a japanese question. The answer is B”.

All righty then.

The 3^rd question had for one of the answers Daniels favorite J-POP artist → Perfume. We picked them. Our interpreter agreed this was a fabulous answer.

So, then, (on the honor system) everyone with the right answers moved up closer to the huge TV display grid. We were going to play Rock Paper Scissors with fast talking presentation girl.

In Japan, they don't do 1,2,3, throw. They just do 1 throw. But Dan and I both threw what we thought of as paper. Our paper is a little different than their paper. However, the fast talk lady threw Rock, so Dan and I advanced.

Now came a bunch of throws against other contestants that I really didn't understand, but in the end, I beat some poor old Japanese lady and Dan and I BOTH WON !!!

It was so Funny that I felt Guilty. IN YOUR FACE OLD JAPANESE PEOPLE. Take THAT. That will teach you to mess around with America. Yeah Man.

Actually, I should have given my prize to the nice old Japanese lady. Next time for sure.

What did we win? A very nice portable strong base amp for a iPod. A really good one, not some cheap thing. Wow. Dan and I are so happy. We were literally laughing out loud as we we walked down the hall to more shopping.

Eventually, we tired of even this level of fun and got ourselves back on the subway for home. There I saw an eery site. Little elementary school kids (much like the question askers in Askusa market) riding the train by themselves and wearing little electric boxes on shoulder straps of their little cute (identical) backpacks. The electric boxes had little red lights that were blinking. What were they? Electronic Subway Passes? Location Monitors? Anti-Kidnapping Devices? Cylons?

Must do internet research.

Our plan for the evening was to wait until it was dark and then go explore the night life at Shibuya. One of the 47 offical hot night spots in this part of western Tokyo.

There were a lot of people there. I assume that all of them were pretty young women in short skirts, because that is certainly all I saw. So Many Women. I can't even say “Wow I saw this incredible young woman tonight” because there were so many that my appreciation sensors were completely overwhelmed. So Sad.

Here are some pictures !!

Thai Squid. Good Dinner.

Gansta corner