Les and I walk around the Shinjuku area tonight to get a feel for the town, and it is just like what you see in Tokyo Drift: pure awesome. New York + Paris all in one. Lights galore, and food up the wazoo. Octopus fried balls are good.
If there is anything I notice right away being in Tokyo for about 3 hours so far, is that Japanese folk are very, very precise and attentive to detail. Why do I say this? Well, I ordered a small pork curry sandwich for a snack, and I have never seen a sandwich cut with such intense accuracy with the edges, shape, and size. They are serious with the Ginsu knives. When I ordered my fried apple pie from Mickey D's (which was awesome, btw), the cashier took an extra 10 sec to fold my bag perfectly, even though I was visibly drooling to get my hands on the goodie.
A lot of things I notice are also very box-shaped, and modular-like. Houses, cars, buildings, streets, etc. are somewhat all built to fit with each other, like Tetris. It's weird, but I'll try to post some pictures to show. Streets are very, very clean (no litter, and they have guys with brooms posted every block).
Video games are also serious business here. 6 floors of games at one arcade, and there is something for everyone. You have the traditional ones, like Street Fighter/Tekken fighting games, but then there's also Mahjong, picture booths, a giant Construx/ball-rolling machine, Soccer/Horse Racing, Magic (the card game, but somehow virtual now), and of course, DDR...Dance Dance Revolution. And when I say precise, after 30 min of watching these kids do 150-beat songs with MC Hammer-like moves on the pad, I didn't see 1 missed note. One interesting game here that is popular is the scooper/push coins over the edge machine (D&B has this with tokens), but replace coins with candy bars. Yes, Kit-Kats, Snickers, etc. I guess candy bars are hard to get here.
Also, Pachinko (the little steel balls slot machine/pin ball game) is not as fun as I thought. You get 100 tiny pellets for 100 yen (like $11), and you just watch them fall down random pegs for 3 min. Not as fun or exciting as DDR. But apparently the good players camp at the good setup machines and collect bins of steel pellets all day (which they can exchange for household goods, or money if you go to the Yakuza-owned establishments).
Ok, now that it is 11pm here, it's about 7am back home, so time to put the all-nighter to bed. Tomorrow, some aimless walking about town and maybe another fried apple pie.
FYI, Krispy Kreme donuts is a hit here. The line was out the door all night. I guess they need the sugar fix for the all-night DDR sessions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Sleep is always the last thing you do on vacation and since Tokyo rarely sleeps, neither will you. It's interesting to read a different slant on Japan. We older folk never went to the arcades but did eat, and eat and eat. Have another tako yaki for me.
ReplyDeleteMom