Plastic Choco-miruku

Day 3

The first, by far most important objective of the day was to take my skateboard to a skate shop and get it in working condition. I did my research the night before, and it turned out there was an all-purpose sports shop with a skating section not far from my hostel, so I skipped over there quick as I could.

If you had told me a year ago that I'd be trying to use Japanese to get my skateboard fixed in Tokyo, I probably would've thought you were high as a kite. But there you have it.

I got it fixed, and it turns out the Japanese word for washer is waashaa, go figure. And they didn't charge me anything! I wish I had brought my camera to photograph that place, at least.

Anywho, so I skated back to my hostel, being high as a kite myself at that point, and talked to a guy from . . . Sweden, I think, who was a skating enthusiast, though he was mostly a shortboarder. While talking to him, Marie, the friend from the previous day, showed up, and we decided upon a plan to meet at Ueno Park, the most prominent (but not largest) park in Tokyo, a few hours later, after I'd check into my next hotel and she'd go somewhere else. Well, I got lost trying to find my way to that hostel, and if I wasn't carrying a giant backpack, a messenger bag with a laptop, my camera bag, and a skateboard, I would've taken pictures.

The place I was in was basically a Japanese ghetto. It was rundown, poor, development seemed to have passed the place buy. Old grizzled Japanese men sat at a bar on the corner of the street in the middle of the day, and working guys in jumpsuits littered the back alleys, holding cigarettes in one hand and waving me away with the other. Old women seemed to be perplexed by me in general, and especially by the skateboard, and no one seemed to think I was in the right place.

Luckily, there's this wonderful institution scattered all throughout Japan called Kobans. If you plan on going to Japan, keep these in mind. They're known in English as Police Boxes, and policemen work at them to basically just help people who are in need of help, which usually consists of giving directions. These guys are extraordinarily helpful and nice, and did a lot to get me where I was going.

The hotel I was staying at was a nice enough place, and the girl at the front desk was absolutely beautiful and kind, not to mention gracious. After getting settled in to my 3-tatami mat room, I went back downstairs to try to talk to her a bit. Turns out there was going to be a hotel party of sorts that evening, and she told me she'd be there, which almost made it worth going.

I was pressed for time to meet my friend at Ueno Park, though, so I didn't get to part ways with Noboku (the receptionist) quite as I would have liked, but that's life, n'cest pas? I rushed to get to Ueno station, at our predetermined meeting point, but Marie didn't show. After waiting until 4pm, the absolute latest we agreed to wait for one another in the event the other didn't show, I headed over to Ueno by my lonesome, and strolled leisurely around the park.

There really wasn't much to be said of the park. It's just a park. A nice one, but still just a park. I had my first Japanese ice cream there, though. Choco-miruku aisu-kurimu.

A word about buying things like this to eat: you don't just ask for it, and pay. You put in money into a vending machine that gives you a ticket for the item you want, then you give that ticket to a worker, and then they give you what you want. I can only imagine this is to keep money out of the workers hands. Is there really so much corruption in the soft serve ice cream trade? This isn't a system reserved only for confections, though; I also had to use it to buy my very first meal in Japan, some ton-katsu (a meal of rice, egg, and fried pork cutlet). Its pretty weird, considering the people who are going to make it for you are just waiting there, watching as you select your ticket. Also, lots of places have plastic models of what they sell. Although you could sort of see it for the ice cream in the above picture, here's another one.

Kinda makes me wonder about the specifics of the plastic food model industry. How do you market that? "Our plastic looks less like all other plastics, and more like actual curry sauce!" Yeah, I'd buy that. Pft.

After Ueno, I went to Asakusa, which is Tokyo's primary temple district, with one giant temple complex in particular. Immediately upon arriving, I saw the friend I had looked for earlier. Turns out it took her longer to get back than she was expecting, so she headed straight to Asakusa, which worked out just fine for us.

Here's some pictures of Asakusa's temple:

Right near the temple complex is a bazaar, which has lots of good souvenirs for reasonable prices; more interesting was when the closed; they had those corrugated aluminum garage doors that some shops use to pull down when they close, but instead of just being rusty metal, they were all painted with murals, so I took some pictures of that, and you can see them here, too.

That was pretty much my day. I went back to my hotel shortly after that, wondering when that party would start and if I'd see Noboku again, only to realize 2 hours later that the party was at an affiliated bar just a couple blocks away. Sadly, by that time, it would have been almost over, so I just retired for the night instead.