Sunday: the refreshing rain of youth

It was cool! 73 F! And cloudy! So I wore my black shirt with polka dot collar, the one you had me get for nice occasions, Shiver, that I've never had occasion to wear. I took the JR Yamamote, which circles central Tokyo, to Yoyogi, The JR is elevated, so you get more of a view than the subway gives, though I didn't notice anything very special. Oh, but before all that I had breakfast at Sushizanmai again, our standard platter, plus broiled o-toro, plus Joh-anago, high quality sea eel. Which seemed the same as their normal eel, only 3x as much of it. Their normal eel is different than the eel we usually get in the US: longer, and with a much lower sauce to eel ratio.

( elves, cosplayers, Roppongi )

Bonus tangent: steampunk culture, starting out with adoption by some African-Americans.

Monday: sun-bleached bleakness of business

Links: Chinese steampunk RPG thread

Today was not very exciting. After finding out the hotel's laundry setup (coin-op in the back alley) and changing more traveler's checks at a bank with limited language skills, I went to Tokyo Station and downtown. Downtown was, well, downtown. Lots of tall buildings and people in suits. Not much of anything but such things, in fact, so even less interesting than where I'm staying. Hard to get cheap food I wanted, too; some restaurants in basements, a supermarket where I saw my first bento box here, but unappetizing. I hit the palace, which was closed on Mondays, and ended up walking through some huge park. It was hot and sunny again, and the park just had small spaced out trees nowhere near the walkways, so I was defenseless. Went around the south edge of the palace grounds, took photos of what I could, fled into the subway right before reaching the Diet. Went to Ginza, the a big shopping area, having eaten not much besides a Godiva bar and a banana. Finally found an udon place and had a nice sukiyaki meal. The tea was strong, he said it was a variety of bancha, lower quality stuff.

There's actually some shopping I should do, if I can figure out how. Bento box (the actual box), lacquered chopsticks like my family had and I foolishly left with the house, and various kinds of green tea. I'm not sure where, though.

A family friend had said to meet the next day at the Nihon Ki-in, the Japanese Go Association, a name I'd heard a lot as a child. So I went to Ichigaya, and found the place. That took a while; it turned out to be really close, but the maps made it look further, until I asked someone and followed him back there. "Sumimasen, Nihon ki-in wa doko des ka?" After that, home, and vegging out on the Internet.

Tuesday: tiny apartment, playing Go, random observations

Met Ai as she picked up keys for her new apartment, so I got to see what an actual Tokyo apartment is like. *eek* Along the way we stopped by a supermarket, and I got market sushi. Fairly good, for $6. And a pretty complete set of nigiri: salmon, tuna, roe, egg, eel, others, probably like 60 cents a piece.

Then back to Ichigaya, finishing my sushi (but not eating on the train itself, wasn't sure if that'd be rude), to meet the family friend, who founded Ishi Press, then Kiseido. We played Go twice, 9 stone handicap for my 10 kyu (at last stable rank) vs. his 6 dan (amateur, when he last played regularly). I lost around 50-30 the first game, got advice I knew but wasn't applying on cutting and connecting, and not trying to be too clever on certain opening stuff, and lost the second game by a point, much stronger play. And we talked a lot, about each other and my parents, esp. my mother, but that's all for my private journal.

Later dinner at Yoshinoya. No tea dispenser. No water dispenser for that matter. I did get tea by asking for it.

So, to make up for two dull entries, I'll throw in some random stuff.
* train ride from the airport: passed through rural areas, bleak buildings, interspersed with neon blue roofs. Maybe I mentioned that already, but still stays with me.
* no fat people. Biggest I've seen is kind of chubby and stout.
* the sea of black hair gets to me after a while. I haven't seen any exotic dyes, just some girls with dimly reddish hair, like Youko in taika form. *drawings* of people, like ads on the subway, those may be blonde or bright green.
* Japan seems a strong argument against "government doesn't work". Apart from the navigation insanity, the city seems well designed -- beautiful subway system, lots of maps and signage to deal with navigation (but not, you know, actually giving names and predictable numbers to every street and building), signs giving distances to things as in "foobar, 80 meters".

* oh yeah, fashion. I haven't noticed anything special with the guys, and I don't think that's just my being insensitive to male appearance. Well, I have noticed a few older men in traditional dress. But some of the girls... I don't think I've seen full blown elaborate gothic lolitas, but I've seen lots of heels, often shiny, lots of knee-high or thigh-high socks, what strike me as odd combinations such as mundane short shorts and thigh-high socks in the heat. And streetwalker girl -- right, I should go edit Sunday's entry.

* gripe GORRAM INTERNET CAN'T CONNECT TO SERVER GARBAGE ARRGH