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I forgot to write about this before, but here’s a short little side story about the adventure I had on my way back from Japan. I had a scheduled 3-hour layover in the Armpit of America, New Jersey, in-between Tokyo and St. Louis. And luckily, thanks to bad weather or something, this was more like a 3.5 hour layover before I could even get on my plane home. Please note as soon as I sat on the plane, I fell asleep.

But anyway, what did I do in the land known as Newark Airport? First I get off the plane, and head to immigration. Not too bad actually, lines weren’t as bad as they could have been. The worst part was having to wait at the carousel to get my luggage. Because of customs and declaring stuff (even though I had nothing to declare), I had to pick up my baggage, go through customs, then re-check my luggage. I completely understand why you have to do this, but when you wait 30 or 40 minutes to pick up two suitcases, roll them over to a disgruntled immigration office, hand him a form, then go no more than 50 feet to a baggage re-check station, you can’t help but feel like you just wasted a part of your life, never to be returned again. Formalities like this are a necessary evil, I suppose.

After a 14-hour plane ride from Tokyo, which included 2 meals, a “snack” of a hamburger (in name only; I can’t believe it was actually meat I was eating), several glasses of water and Sprite, and only 1 visit to the Lavatory, I am not embarrassed to say that after re-checking my bags, the first place I headed for was the can. And oh, let me tell you, you really feel like your life has hit a low point when you have to go use a public restroom in New Jersey. I will spare you the gory details, but let’s just say that it was absolutely revolting. I honestly don’t know if an Asian-style squat toilet would have made it better or worse. Yeeeeah.

With a few hours to kill, I had absolutely nothing to do but go wait near my gate and play DS. I suppose that this wasn’t too bad, and I really can’t judge New Jersey on much more than the airport or the airport bathroom, but either way, I am pretty sure that Jersey, as an entire state, sucks. Sorry Karen.

When I was waiting at Nishi Funabashi Station last Friday, I saw this huge bug flying in the air. Almost as soon as I saw it, it headed right for me, and landed on my pants leg. I took my ear buds out and looking around, and no one really reacted to it. I was expecting a “holy crap look what landed on that guys pants,” but instead I had to deal with this beast on my own. It was a male cicada, almost 4 inches in length. Look at the thing! It’s huge. Cicadas in the states are less than an inch long usually, right? This thing was huge! I shook my leg and it didn’t move, so I finally had to use my other foot to scrape it off, and it flew off with a chirp.

So I’m back home in St. Louis now. I left the Keio Plaza on Japan time Monday at 11:50AM, and after a 25-hour series of bus, flight, layover, flight, and car ride, I was back at home. To be honest, I’m not really sure what everyone means by “jetlag” because I think some people mean different things. If jetlag means not being adjusted to the different time zone, then yes I have a serious case of jetlag since I slept yesterday from about 5PM to midnight. Stepping into the Wayback Machine for a moment, my last weekend in Japan was spent mainly hanging out with people, buying souvenirs, packing, and sleeping. I’ll go into a bit more detail, but I’m in a kind of lazy mood right now so this won’t be as painfully long as a lot of my blogs tend to be.

Spend the day Friday hanging out with Sayoko; went to LaLaPort but realized that there really isn’t anything to see or do there. Defaulted to lunch at Saize, which is awesome because I haven’t been there since last year. That night, met up with Yoko, Tomomi, and Shigeru. Went around Tsudanuma and I just barely made it to the very last train back to Shinjuku. I don’t think I’ve run that hard in a while. There’s a lot more effort to running when you realize the penalty to not making it is having to sleep in the streets for a night. Next day, Bryan made the long journey from Ibaraki. We went to Akihabara where Bryan tried to find a store shady enough to sell a modded PS2, but was unsuccessful. We also tried to go to a Maid Cafe, but there were so many otaku in line that it was totally not worth it. Also, we walked past one and saw inside but it was just pretty boring looking. Like the insides of a McDonalds, but the waitresses just happened to be wearing weird costumes. Akihabara has definitely gotten weird these past few years.

We went to Makuhari that night, saw some of the old sights, then went to Hana no Mae with Sato san. Shin san was supposed to hang out that night, but he didn’t pick up his phone all day, so I’m assuming something came up. Sunday, Bryan went back on his quest in Akihabara and I went to Takashimaya Times Square to finish purchasing souvenirs for people, etc. That night met up with Bryan again in Ikebukuro Sunshine City’s NAMJA TOWN, also known as the happiest place in the world. In addition to Gyoza Stadium and Ice Cream City, the place has grown impressively since last year. Good job Mr. Mayor. Cream Puff Town has been expanded into the Tokyo Dessert Republic, there is now the completed Relax Forest, and they even added Fortune Tellers Street. What an amazing town. Here are some pics:

That night, I was able to do my laundry in the apartment complex coin laundry I found the other day. It was only about a 10 minute walk, and surprisingly the machines not only had hot water, but they actually got my clothes dry! Quite amazing for Japanese laundry equipment. I was almost positive I would have to hang-dry my clothes that night. Anyways, I packed up my suitcases and a 29 kilogram box of my clothes and stuff to ship off to the AEON school. Luckily, there was a takkyuubin delivery service within the hotel, and it cost me less than 2000 yen to ship the box next day to Ichihara. What a bargain.

There weren’t any real problems with getting to the US via air, thankfully. There was of course the “no liquids or gels” rule with carry on luggage, but otherwise things weren’t any different than normal. Lines at Narita were a little long to check in and then go through security, but that might have just been because it was Narita Airport, and not necessarily because of terrorists.

I ran to JR Tsudanuma Station and made the very last train heading out to Shinjuku. As if that wasn’t amazing enough, on the walk from Shinjuku station back to the hotel, I took the underground walkway path. About halfway down, I saw an old man fighting a pigeon with a cardboard box. At first I thought it was a homeless guy since there are a LOT sleeping in cardboard coffins in that tunnel, but this guy was dressed nicer and had namebadges on. I think he was some kind of janitor.

Japan is full of amazing things. I’ll post a picture later of the GIANT CICADA that landed on me today. I’m going to bed now though.

You know how in some video games like Final Fantasy, you spend a lot of time just walking around on a map? Well that’s not really just some creation of video game programmers; it’s because that’s what life in Japan is really like. I guess they added the random battles to make it a bit more interesting, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I got attacked by a Pokemon walking around here somewhere. But anyway, I walked around what seemed like a lot today, and I never really even left the general area. This was only partially because I got lost. I even made a map, thanks to Google Maps:

1. Started at the Keio Plaza Hotel after eating the huge buffet lunch.
2. Walked to the other side of the station, having the go around the station, and went to a movie theatre to watch the Kamen Rider Kabuto movie, God Speed Love (link). Yes, it is nerdy, but it was fun, so shut up. That was my only plan for this excursion, but I decided to do more as you can see here:
3. Went to the nearby Isetan department store to scope it out for work. It’s a pretty ritzy place.
4. Decided I would walk to Takashimaya Times Square, partially to scope it out for work and partially because I wanted to shop for more useless crap. Unfortunately, they close at 8:30PM, so I just missed it. Walk down more of that area, but everything is already closing up (all the big stores and buildings).
5. Began side quest to find a coin laundrymat, so I can clean my clothes without having to pay the ridiculous hotel laundry service prices (like 500 yen per shirt). Walked past the Times Square area and ended up somehow a bit lost. It also started to rain big time, so I had to buy an umbrella. I apparently walked all the way to JR Yoyogi Station. Since it was raining, I decided to just take the Yamanote Line back to Shinjuku station.
6. Got off at Shinjuku Station; familiar territory again.
7. Walked all over in the general direction of a laundry place I found online, and finally found one in some apartment complex. GOAL. I’ll probably head there tomorrow and do laundry. It says for residents of this huge apartment complex only, but I’m sure they won’t catch me.
8. Walked back to the hotel; not too far away.

Yes, after mapping this all out, I see that I should have just walked from point 5 to point 7, but it was raining and I didn’t know exactly how far away I was, so it was worth the 210 yen and the extra walking. I suppose. I have no idea how far I walked this afternoon/evening, but as you can see it was a lot. I blame this on not having a cell phone. If I had one, I could have used NaviWalk and it would have been much easier.

If my life really were a video game, it would be horribly boring.

Since it was raining pretty hard around noon today, I decided to finally try the hotel buffet for lunch. The place has a sweet name: Glass Court Super Buffet. It’s pretty pricey, about 3000 yen for lunch, but it was one of the classiest buffets I’ve ever eaten at, maybe just not as good as Vegas. They had so much gourmet/classy food there let me try and think of what they had: whole scallops, mussels, fruits de mare with uni sauce, crab, grilled lamb, and a variety of cheeses. Although it is pretty expensive, it was really good and I ate way too much than I should have. I’m going to probably go back at least once before I leave on Monday.

Next to the place where the guy grills the lamb meat for you yakiniku style (they called it Mongolian “Ghengis Khan” style), there was a RAMEN STATION. That’s right, all you can eat ramen. This is the best idea ever. Too bad it wasn’t that good for ramen. They should hire the Chinese renegade chefs from Bikkuri, and this buffet would be perfect.

I also got some dessert, and since it is a Japanese buffet they of course had an entire table devoted to different ice creams and cakes. Japanese girls love dessert. But they had some kind of special Hokkaido ice cream, and since it was such a unique flavor, I decided to give it a try. It was CORN FLAVORED ICE CREAM. Yeah, corn. It tasted like you would expect it to; a lot like the Japanese cream corn soup. If you’ve never had that, just think about taking American canned cream corn, blending that until its smooth, and then make ice cream out of it. It was actually a little sweet and not horrible tasting, but you can’t really enjoy it that much because you realize this is an ice cream freak of nature.