Anticlimactic
Wednesday after class I decided to run errands.
First stop, the Continental Ticket Office in Ebisu. Why did I have to go there? you ask. Can't you just buy your ticket online? Well, yes, I could. I made my reservation online, but actually... I don't have any money in the States. Just a couple hundred that I dip into when I occasionally make online purchases (gifts usually), not enough to buy a trans-Pacific plane ticket. Plus, unlike I did in college, I rarely use my credit card - definitely not on a daily basis, definitely not while running around Tokyo. I use cash for everything. You can do that here and everyone does. It's perfectly safe and, I've come to believe, perfectly convenient. What better way to manage expenses than when you know *exactly* what you have left in your wallet and *exactly* what you started with? So at the ticket office I dropped approximately 1000USD. Not what I normally carry in my wallet, but not a big deal here. The best part was that I carried out the entire transaction in Japanese. :-D Granted I'd already done the serious stuff online, but still. A small accomplishment for me.
I took my time walking back to Ebisu station. I've been in the mood to shop lately (*gasp* yes, me, shop!) so I figured if I saw something I liked, I'd stop in. Nothing stood out, plus, even though the Chinese Consulate website had said it was open 'til 12am, I thought it would be safest to get there by 5pm, which is when most offices close, right? So I took the chikatetsu (subway, the kanji literally translate as "underground iron"... kanji are so cool ^_^) to Roppongi.
My first time there, a popular nightspot and hang out for the young, particularly gaijin. (Apparently a good place to pick up Japanese girls.) Clubs, bars, etc... but that's at night. In the daylight it looks kind of skeevy (not surprising). Not blatantly so, but... just a little too dingy, a little too neon. I took my time as I'd never been before and people talk about it so much, but I couldn't really see anything too special about it. Except maybe Roppongi Hills - a giant, upscale living and shopping complex complete with towering glass and garden, but even so it was pretty anticlimactic. The most I get out of things like this are the way they nestle a little pond and garden right in the middle.
I have to admit the architecture's pretty cool, but really it's just another big, spiffy-looking building in a city full of big, spiffy-looking buildings. Plus I don't care much for shopping complexes specializing in expensive European designers a normal person like me could never afford or wear - not just because it's expensive and useless for me but because... I don't know. I feel sort of cheated. Like, Japan should have it's own cool upscale designers to promote... or something. Otherwise I might as well be trying to shop in Paris... or New York even. And I know it isn't really fair of me to expect Tokyo, which is as "Western" and "modern" and basically just another city (like Paris or New York) to somehow be "Japanese," but... I do anyway. :-P
After a bit more walking, I finally found the consulate. It closes at noon. Of course. Why would it *actually* be open 'til 12am? But geez, if they're going to use English, couldn't they get it right? So annoying. At least I know where it is, and it'll be easy enough to go next Monday.
The weather wasn't great, but it was fairly clear and not raining and since I was in the area anyway... I decided to go to Tokyo Tower, my first time. I hoped to catch it around sunset, so as to see day, sunset, and night Tokyo, so even though I probably could have walked, I went to the nearest subway stop. On the way there I saw my favourite Engrish yet.
I think this is an especially cool example of Engrish because it requires knowledge of both English and Japanese. Many English words and phrases are borrowed by Japanese. They write them in a phonetic script called katakana, using Japanese phonemes and intonation. So oftentimes I have no idea what a Japanese person is saying when they're saying what was originally an English word. (For example, Yukiyo-sensei, my dance teacher, once tried to explain something in terms of the Northern Lights or Aurora... only it sounded like "Ororo" to me, and I had *no idea* what she could possibly be talking about until she explained "coloured lights in the sky" or something like that.) So anyway, if you Japan-ized "hangover" it would become, you guessed it, "hangobaa" or "hangobar." Brilliant, right? I thought so.
I took the subway one stop; as soon as I came out of the station, there it was, right in front of me. Well, sort of obscured by buildings and trees and powerlines, but in front of me. I walked up past Shiba Koen, and found myself at its base, in back.
Tokyo Tower is taller than the Eiffel Tower, after which it was modeled (obviously). But really, it's got nothin' on the Eiffel Tower. I remember going to Paris, seeing it from everywhere, riding up to the top for the first time, then lying out on the grass staring up at it... It was really magical for me. If the Eiffel Tower was a tribute to the potential of technology and modern man, Tokyo Tower is like a shrine to capitalism. You can't get under it and look up and marvel at how small you are (like you can at the Eiffel Tower) because they have built this big, ugly brown block of a building under it housing 3 floors of restaurants and amusements. I just felt like, everytime I turned around, there was another way they were trying to get me to buy something. There was no open place to just sit and look and think and marvel. I guess that's what the observation decks were for. I paid for the set, two observation decks. But that was disappointing too. It was a little hazy by the time I got up, but the sun was lower in the sky. It could have been really pretty, like sunlight on water, but it was just kind of... blah, really. I think the problem is that *everything* in Tokyo is tall. The Eiffel is awesome and makes you feel like "Uwaaaaa" (as the Japanese say) because you really do feel like you're on top of the world. I mean I'm not really sensitive to heights anyway, so maybe I exaggerate, but I didn't feel anything close to that on Tokyo Tower. (And it was so annoying to ride in the elevator with a girl clinging to her date going "kowai kowai" [scary scary] the whole time *rolls eyes*.) It wasn't doing anything for me, but I felt like if I didn't stay longer and "observe" I'd be wasting my money.
Luckily I got a text from Christina and Ripley as I was getting desperately bored, suggesting we go see The Da Vinci Code. So I booked it... I am *so* proud of myself. It took me an hour, I think I changed trains 4 times, but I ran into the theater two minutes before the movie started. We had caramel popcorn (better than I expected, considering I don't really care for caramel) and settled into a huge, not-full theater (one of 3 playing Da Vinci Code at the Fuchu theater). Like the book, the movie was disappointing. It was fun enough though, but nothing brilliant. I *was* however very upset with how they changed details about the Catholic church... No wonder people are upset! *SPOILER* The book didn't point fingers at anyone in particular, put good and bad people on all sides, but apparently someone decided to put their own agenda/opinion about the church in the movie. I found that disgusting.
In any case, it was an eventful day. I needed to update. More has happened since, and more should be happening this week, but I have a ronbun to turn in for writing class tomorrow so I'd better get to work!
First stop, the Continental Ticket Office in Ebisu. Why did I have to go there? you ask. Can't you just buy your ticket online? Well, yes, I could. I made my reservation online, but actually... I don't have any money in the States. Just a couple hundred that I dip into when I occasionally make online purchases (gifts usually), not enough to buy a trans-Pacific plane ticket. Plus, unlike I did in college, I rarely use my credit card - definitely not on a daily basis, definitely not while running around Tokyo. I use cash for everything. You can do that here and everyone does. It's perfectly safe and, I've come to believe, perfectly convenient. What better way to manage expenses than when you know *exactly* what you have left in your wallet and *exactly* what you started with? So at the ticket office I dropped approximately 1000USD. Not what I normally carry in my wallet, but not a big deal here. The best part was that I carried out the entire transaction in Japanese. :-D Granted I'd already done the serious stuff online, but still. A small accomplishment for me.
I took my time walking back to Ebisu station. I've been in the mood to shop lately (*gasp* yes, me, shop!) so I figured if I saw something I liked, I'd stop in. Nothing stood out, plus, even though the Chinese Consulate website had said it was open 'til 12am, I thought it would be safest to get there by 5pm, which is when most offices close, right? So I took the chikatetsu (subway, the kanji literally translate as "underground iron"... kanji are so cool ^_^) to Roppongi.
My first time there, a popular nightspot and hang out for the young, particularly gaijin. (Apparently a good place to pick up Japanese girls.) Clubs, bars, etc... but that's at night. In the daylight it looks kind of skeevy (not surprising). Not blatantly so, but... just a little too dingy, a little too neon. I took my time as I'd never been before and people talk about it so much, but I couldn't really see anything too special about it. Except maybe Roppongi Hills - a giant, upscale living and shopping complex complete with towering glass and garden, but even so it was pretty anticlimactic. The most I get out of things like this are the way they nestle a little pond and garden right in the middle.
I have to admit the architecture's pretty cool, but really it's just another big, spiffy-looking building in a city full of big, spiffy-looking buildings. Plus I don't care much for shopping complexes specializing in expensive European designers a normal person like me could never afford or wear - not just because it's expensive and useless for me but because... I don't know. I feel sort of cheated. Like, Japan should have it's own cool upscale designers to promote... or something. Otherwise I might as well be trying to shop in Paris... or New York even. And I know it isn't really fair of me to expect Tokyo, which is as "Western" and "modern" and basically just another city (like Paris or New York) to somehow be "Japanese," but... I do anyway. :-P
After a bit more walking, I finally found the consulate. It closes at noon. Of course. Why would it *actually* be open 'til 12am? But geez, if they're going to use English, couldn't they get it right? So annoying. At least I know where it is, and it'll be easy enough to go next Monday.
The weather wasn't great, but it was fairly clear and not raining and since I was in the area anyway... I decided to go to Tokyo Tower, my first time. I hoped to catch it around sunset, so as to see day, sunset, and night Tokyo, so even though I probably could have walked, I went to the nearest subway stop. On the way there I saw my favourite Engrish yet.
I think this is an especially cool example of Engrish because it requires knowledge of both English and Japanese. Many English words and phrases are borrowed by Japanese. They write them in a phonetic script called katakana, using Japanese phonemes and intonation. So oftentimes I have no idea what a Japanese person is saying when they're saying what was originally an English word. (For example, Yukiyo-sensei, my dance teacher, once tried to explain something in terms of the Northern Lights or Aurora... only it sounded like "Ororo" to me, and I had *no idea* what she could possibly be talking about until she explained "coloured lights in the sky" or something like that.) So anyway, if you Japan-ized "hangover" it would become, you guessed it, "hangobaa" or "hangobar." Brilliant, right? I thought so.
I took the subway one stop; as soon as I came out of the station, there it was, right in front of me. Well, sort of obscured by buildings and trees and powerlines, but in front of me. I walked up past Shiba Koen, and found myself at its base, in back.
Tokyo Tower is taller than the Eiffel Tower, after which it was modeled (obviously). But really, it's got nothin' on the Eiffel Tower. I remember going to Paris, seeing it from everywhere, riding up to the top for the first time, then lying out on the grass staring up at it... It was really magical for me. If the Eiffel Tower was a tribute to the potential of technology and modern man, Tokyo Tower is like a shrine to capitalism. You can't get under it and look up and marvel at how small you are (like you can at the Eiffel Tower) because they have built this big, ugly brown block of a building under it housing 3 floors of restaurants and amusements. I just felt like, everytime I turned around, there was another way they were trying to get me to buy something. There was no open place to just sit and look and think and marvel. I guess that's what the observation decks were for. I paid for the set, two observation decks. But that was disappointing too. It was a little hazy by the time I got up, but the sun was lower in the sky. It could have been really pretty, like sunlight on water, but it was just kind of... blah, really. I think the problem is that *everything* in Tokyo is tall. The Eiffel is awesome and makes you feel like "Uwaaaaa" (as the Japanese say) because you really do feel like you're on top of the world. I mean I'm not really sensitive to heights anyway, so maybe I exaggerate, but I didn't feel anything close to that on Tokyo Tower. (And it was so annoying to ride in the elevator with a girl clinging to her date going "kowai kowai" [scary scary] the whole time *rolls eyes*.) It wasn't doing anything for me, but I felt like if I didn't stay longer and "observe" I'd be wasting my money.
Luckily I got a text from Christina and Ripley as I was getting desperately bored, suggesting we go see The Da Vinci Code. So I booked it... I am *so* proud of myself. It took me an hour, I think I changed trains 4 times, but I ran into the theater two minutes before the movie started. We had caramel popcorn (better than I expected, considering I don't really care for caramel) and settled into a huge, not-full theater (one of 3 playing Da Vinci Code at the Fuchu theater). Like the book, the movie was disappointing. It was fun enough though, but nothing brilliant. I *was* however very upset with how they changed details about the Catholic church... No wonder people are upset! *SPOILER* The book didn't point fingers at anyone in particular, put good and bad people on all sides, but apparently someone decided to put their own agenda/opinion about the church in the movie. I found that disgusting.
In any case, it was an eventful day. I needed to update. More has happened since, and more should be happening this week, but I have a ronbun to turn in for writing class tomorrow so I'd better get to work!
posted by Bibhatsu at 07:01
1 Comments:
Hi. I read your blog once in a while, since I went to ASIJ and lived down the hill from ICU. It's weird to get the perspective on Tokyo from someone older than my friends and I were.
And yes, I was one of those young gaijin who hung out at Roppongi (never picked up any Japanese girls, though...) The bars are actually limited to a fairly small area, and if you went in the Roppongi Hills direction, you might have missed the "fun" part. But you're right, it doesn't look like much during the day.
This is more what it's like.
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