Well, not quite Yokohama anymore but we were there yesterday. I`m getting the sneaking suspicion that we`re actually closer to Yokohama than we are to Tokyo (where we are now, in a slightly dingy internet cafe where someone needed a computer to fulfill her iTouching needs, so I figured I might as well). Yokohama was alright, it has "chinatown", which is nothing like any other chinatown I`ve seen before. It was tidy, the streets were wide and really the only difference to the rest of town was that they played different music in shops and the random nonsense was more chinese. Also found a temple with "traditional" stonework, picturing tigers, birds and... kangaroos. Hmm...
I spend the rest of the day getting a bit lost, surprise, but I still think it`s a good way to get to know a city. Well, what can I say. From what I`ve seen, I don`t think Japan is the country of the future, or at least I don`t hope Tokyo is the city of the future. Sure, as it turns out mobiles are so chunky because you can watch TV on them and they make you tea, people don`t send texts anymore, they email, but... if in order to get all of this, I`d also have to take on the xenophobia, I`d pass. Don`t get me wrong, most of the people I`ve met were very nice and tried very hard to understand whatever it was I was trying to get across to them, because even in a shop it`s really me who`s being stupid by not speaking the language, but I don`t think I`ve ever felt so misplaced, and this is not my first time in Asia.
It`s when you walk down the street and even the people who try to shove random leaflets into everyone`s hands suddenly shun and ignore you like you had some disease that you realise that even if you lived here, like the friends we met up with - you`d never fit in. They simply won`t let you, and I find this quite sad.
Other than that, we had Nabe, which was good. Basically you get an unlimited amount of meat and vegetables which you cook in a bowl of broth before eating it. There is, as with most things, only a time limit - 90 minutes. Very tasty, although with slightly less choice in stuff to cook than I remembered it being.
Then today, we took things slowly. We might only have 3 days left, but we`ve also pretty much done everything we wanted to, so we meandered over to the imperial garden and lazed about. `twas good. Today is a nice sunny day, unlike yesterday when I came home and decided not to make the detour I had planned on making because some of the train lines stopped due to the heavy rain. Whoops. Oh and speaking of doom and disaster: No, we did not get stabbed in Akihabara. I only looked up the news after getting a concerned email (thank you) and we weren`t even in the area that day, but we were the day before. And to think that one of our friends had joked that Tokyo was a rather safe place, except for the annual crazy stabbing.
Right that`s quite enough for now. Dessert time methinks!
(what`s with the bulitchu? That`s what we had to ask for in the HMV next door in order to find the Bleach OST)