The final installment! Can you believe it?

Pattie, Emi and I headed to Shinjuku station together, where we all admired the shiny jewel-like lights and the huge Studio Alta screen which is a famous place for meeting. Why it’s a popular choice is beyond me – it’s so crowded and such a large area, that you’re practically guaranteed to *not* find the person you’re looking for!

We met Takami at the entrance to Kabukicho, which was bustling and full of hustlers. There were few women on the street, except for the women who worked there, handing out flyers and trying to get people into the restaurants and clubs. There were a few really big black guys, which in Tokyo must seem very exotic and threatening. One guy talked to us in English, and when we, with our finely honed New Jersey disinterest in anything that doesn’t have to do with us and our practiced New York ability to smell a come-on at fifteen paces, ignored him, he tried again in French and German. It was impressive, but wasted.

I was dazzled by the shiny, flashy grunginess of the place and forgot to think of Asuka, the lead character of Hana no Asuka-gumi, walking around this same area, enjoying the shiny grunginess, gettiing into fights and saving damsels in distress. I’m a bad fan. We stopped at a game center, where Pattie and Emi played a Taiko drumming game – essentially, you have to drum in time with the little images on the screen. They played to YMCA by the Village People and they sucked horribly. Emi wanted me to play something (no dignity allowed here, oh no…) and I volunteered to play a game where you killed demons and monsters with a sword – totally my style. It was one of these things where you move and the screen character moves too. I kicked serious demon ass for a while, but was flattened from behind – can you believe it? The game cheated! So then the other three played, but (haha!) didn’t beat my score. LOL Emi got as picture of me holding a gun (from the next game over) to Takami’s head while she played. It was pretty funny, because she didn’t know I was doing it. We meandered through a few other arcades and ended up playing a shoot ’em up with a Tomb-Raider-esque feel and a faux-Egyptian motif. Pattie was the best shot by alot, but she was slow to reload. Emi was getting really into it and shooting wildly. I sucked, but I figured I would, not being a gun person. LOL Emi wanted me to play the dog walking game, but I demured.

On the train, Emi had asked if there was any food we particulary wanted, but hadn’t had yet. I said that I’d like to have some chawan mushi (a warm egg custard with seafood and bonito broth which is much better than that description sounds, trust me) but hadn’t seen it anywhere. Emi and Takami couldn’t think of anywhere that had that, though, so as we wandered, they kept checking menus for the dish. Eventually, they looked at a sign and decided to go up to that restaurant and asked. Well, when we got there, it turned out they didn’t have chawan mushi, but I didn’t care all that much, so we decided to stay anyway and…it turned out the place was a karaoke restaurant. Pattie and I both felt a surge of the inevitable, so we acquiesced, preparing for the worst. The place was *huge.* We had a small room – room for 4-6 people depending on how thin they were, and a karaoke machine. There were dozens of rooms and I imagine some held much larger parties, so the place could probably hold a few hundred people at once, all singing crappily. Think about it.

So, we ate, sang karaoke and laughed hysterically, ’cause we all know how much Erica just *loves* to do karaoke. The place must have been soundproofed within an inch of its life – outside a box, you never heard a noise.

I think karaoke is more about how funny it is that you suck and how badly you remember the words, than anything else. We sang a mixture of Japanese and English. Takami started off with the theme to Cutey Honey, and Emi sang Rinbu Revolution from Utena and London Calling by the Clash. Pattie and I sang Daydream Believer and the opening theme from One Piece. At one point, Emi keyed in the wrong song and we ended up with the theme to a children’s cartoon that none of us knew. But the song was so easy to learn that we all sang along anyway. It appeared to be about a monkey. For a finale, they all sang, with great relish and despite vociferous protests, Dancing Queen by Abba, a band I find physically painful. It was really funny. Takami mentioned that when they were younger they’d do karaoke all nighters. Pattie asked why they would do that, and Takami ventured that it was because Japanese people are all “quiet” and keep things inside and that this was a way to release tension. That’s pretty much the party line of karaoke and most other forms of entertainment there. Which begs the question – if they are so “quiet” (the word she used was “shizuka” which means quiet in a sedate and proper way) then why are they the world’s hardest partiers? As they all sang the finale, I kept muttering that I was in hell.

Dinner was not bad – fried chicken pieces, shrimp toast, french fries and a pasta dish of indeterminate nature. Dessert was jello and fruit. It wouldn’t win awards, but it did the trick.

After the karaoke free-for-all, we set off to the Nichoume….

I have to say here that New York has *one* thing over Tokyo – street addresses. I may have a little trouble finding a place I’ve never been to in NYC, but I’ve never had trouble finding an entire section of town! LOL You really need a map with landmarks in Tokyo, not just a map and a street address.

So, there we were, walking street after street, block after block and we kept asking, just to be funny, “Are you *sure* you know where you’re going?” After getting lost no less than three times, we ended up at the Nichoume. It’s a windy, teeny, little street, that looks like any other street. No pride flags and loud bars in this neighborhood. We walked around a bit and found a bookstore (on street level, oddly, now that I think of it, openly selling gay and lesbian publications. This shop felt very Greenwich Village-y and I felt compelled to pick up a copy of Anise, the one regular lesbian publication. And then we set out to find the Mars Bar, one of three lesbian bars in Nichoume. Apparently the other two were more party-girl places, and they thought we’d be happier at a quieter place for “older” lesbians. Gee, thanks.

Until the day I set up a Yuricon party at Meow Mix last year, I had never set foot into a lesbian bar in my life – I’ve only ever been in bars about half a dozen times total. We’d been trying to avoid the Nichoume bar thing, but since it was inevitable, we went along for the ride. Apparently, neither Emi or Takami had been to this place for a while, and were having a hard time finding it. *Luckily* I happened to have the new copy of Anise, which has a map for all the bars! How convenient! Takami and Emi consulted the map, then headed in opposite directions. Pattie and I were hysterical and I was once again reminded of how Japanese humor does not include irony. Sarcasm, yes, cynicism, yes, just not irony.

At last we found the right building and ended up at Mars Bar. It was small and ratty in a well-used and relaxing way, like most bars that are low key. One of the bartenders was dressed in an Indian sari, the other in a cheongsam, and both wore bindi between their eyes. The one in the sari came over and introduced herself as Asako and asked our names. When she called me Erica-chan, they all laughed at me. (It’s a running gag at Yuricon about the appropriate honorific for me. I insist that, as I’m America, unless you’re Japanese, “Erica” is the most appropriate. If you’re Japanese, then “Erica-san” is fine. I am not to be called (especially by 20-somethings from this continent) Erica-chan, or any horrific contraction of my name. And, as I’m not the Crown Princess, “Erica-sama” seems overblown and ridiculous. So of course, that’s what everyone calls me. Or worse, Emi suggested “Erica-hime-sama” which is absolutely cringe-making. Now I just smile blandly and fantasize about creatively murdering people who use honorifics inappropriately. Hence the laughter at my expense.) We talked for a while about Yuricon, America, how New York seems scary to people, 9/11 and how Pattie and I have been together for almost 20 years. Takami said that American butches are nicer than Japanese ones. I was surprised at this, but she insisted that they are more considerate. I said, well of course…Pattie is the Queen and I live to serve. You think I’m kidding….

Asako asked if we knew Anise and so, once again, the magazine was really useful. I pulled out the new issue and pointed out that we had a mangaka in our midst. So, we made Emi sign all her work and Takami sign the article she wrote and then, when we pointed out the ad for Yuricon, she made us sign next to the pictures of us on the ad. (Hahah, Kun, you didn’t get to do that!) Asako called Emi “sensei” and the noise Takami made was *definitely* universal. I howled with laughter. We told them of our Yuri Monogatari and Rica ‘tte Kanji publications and Asako asked for some copies for the bar. Of course I will send her some. And we sat and seriously considered selling them at Comiket. How cool would that be? Pattie asked if there were any famous Japanese lesbians (good question, Pattie!) and that prompted a good conversation about lesbian music and singers and writers. It turns out that there is an actual Takarazuka lesbian couple (which seems obvious, given the whole gender role/cross-dressing thing, but it is actively and vigorously regulated against. Even relations between Takarazuka actresses and outside people are strictly controlled. So an actual known couple within Takarazuka is pretty amazingly scandalous and fun.)

Anyway, about 12:30, we wrapped it up, which was good, because party girl that I am, I was beat and the stools were really uncomfortable. :-) So we got to the train station, took an extended leave of Takami and Emi and made the last train back to Ikebukuro. I tried to be mindful of everything, since this was the last time I’d see it all for a while. Bye, Shinjuku! Bye, Shin-Okubo! Bye, Takadanobaba! Bye Meijiro! All these stations were like exits off 287 for me – familar names that meant I was getting close to home.

And we crashed. Pattie was asleep almost instantly and I sat around thinking of things had forgotten to put in my journal, like:

I love random mis/usage of language, like “Comme ca’ism.” Especially on clothes, where it is essentially meaningless. It doesn’t even have to be English – I just like words. English is popular in Japan, it gives advertising a trendy feel and is often used in ads targeting young people. One wonderful ad was almost exactly right – “Smile is the best makeup.” It was for a dentist’s office. We did see a t-shirt being worn by a guy on TV that said “motherf***er” (without the asterisks) and that cracked us up, and we amused by the “Flesh Juice” sign at a fast food place. But, the winner and still champeen was on a bag that a young woman was carrying on the street by K-books in Ikebukuro. It read, “Nippon Budokan 2003 Happy Motherf***ing New Year.” (Again, without the asterisks.) I wanted that bag so much. I also wanted a jacket I saw in Harajuku that was a baby blue varsity-style jacket that read “Jersey Central Line” with a picture of the Statue of Liberty. If I was three sizes smaller and had too much money, I *so* would have gotten that jacket.

And that about wraps it up. My final thoughts you already know. And I’ve had several haircuts since. I still need new glasses. And I still feel that Tokyo is not impenetrable, or the Japanese inscrutable or anything like that. I loved Tokyo and can’t wait to go back, and hope one day to be less of a ligusitic moron, so I can make myself understood there. I do strongly recommend that if you go you do *not* stay in Roppongi, unless there’s a very compelling reason to. Otherwise, Ikebukuro is a great place to stay. The hotel we stayed at was really reasonably priced, and very nice, with a great staff, who never once made us feel uncomfortbale, tedious or barbaric. It had a view of Fuji-san, a train station across the street, losts of combi and restaurants to choose from and tons of anime/manga stores and game centers within walking distance. How can you beat that?

On the way to the airport, we both decided that if anyone wanted to fund my stay there, I’d have gladly extended my vacation. I’ve been on four continents and in  dozens of major cities and other than NYC, I like Tokyo best. It’s true that you’ll always be foreign there, but who cares? You are! And unlike most warm weather countries where you’re treated like crap until you’re family (which, admittedly is pretty quickly if you make a point of being human and not just a tourist) in Japan, you’ll never be “in” but they treat guests well. If I’m in a country for ten days or two weeks, I’d much rather be treated well.

Oh, one last note about our trip home: travel karma kicked in once again and we ended up at the wrong terminal…isn’t that typical?!

And there you have it folks – my trip to Japan. I hope you had some fun reading about it, but trust me I had more fun doing it. Check back for my future reports about being a vendor at Comiket. :-)

Next time, back to reports on yuri, shoujoai, and events of interest.

We had to get up early today, so of *course* I was sound asleep when the damn alarm rang!

The bus was the same company as the Tokyo Morning Tour – we were picked up, taken on the same route and eventually to the Hato terminal where we got on a different bus. It had a really disturbing decoration on the side, which made sense later. We set off for Fuji-san with about 20 people on the bus. After an hour we had a potty break, then the road started climbing. The scenery was lovely through Kanagawa into Yamanashi – all glacial mountains – alot like the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virgina, at this point along the route. From this point on, we were just riveted to the view of Fuji-san dominating the landscape. Pictures and words don’t do it justice, so I won’t bore you with the hour of awesome views. The day was crystal clear and you could see the whole mountain perfectly.

Because of the snow a few days earlier, we couldn’t go further up the mountain than 1000m, which was fine, because higher up you can’t see the summit. So the bus took us to the Visitor Center which was closed because it was Monday (which turned out to be a good thing, as you will see) for a photo op, then to the gate that leads to the road up Fuji-san. In the spring and summer, the buses let you off at Stage 5, about halfway up the mountain, and you can walk the rest of the way up. There’s a tradition of climbing Fuji-san to see the sunrise during July and August. But since we weren’t going up, we just touched his feet and left offerings. (We bring small semi-precious stone chips whenever we travel, so we have something to offer when we’re moved to do so.) Fuji-san is simply magnificent, we were just blown away. How can you *not* worship something that awesome?

We ate lunch at a hotel not too far from the mountain, next to a huge amusement park – it looked shiny and sparkly in the sun and it explained the bizarre design on the bus, too. There was a great view of the park from the bathroom of the hotel and we had all the women on the tour in the bathroom checking out the people on the roller coasters and ice skating. While we ate lunch, looking out at Fuji-san, the wind was howling like tortured souls in hell. It was *really* disturbing. Despite the fact that it was Western food, lunch didn’t suck (one of the problems of our Nile Cruise in Egypt was the insistance that we eat Western food, instead of Egyptian. We both *much* prefer local food wherever we are, for many reasons. When we finally got food from a street stand in Cairo, it was spectacular.)

The bus took us to the Pacific side of Fuji-san and (because it was Monday and the
Vistor’s Center had been closed) up to a temple in Gotemba.(It was right across from a Ferrari museum, which of course gave me an evil idea for a Sailor Moon Outer Senshi story.) Thank heavens it was Monday! The Temple, which is for a relatively new and evangelical form of Buddhism, was gorgeous and had the most awesome  view of Fuji-san. I was deeply moved by the beauty, as I apologized to Buddha for profaning his temple and using his view for picture-taking.

To get up to where Buddha sits, you pass through a path that had pairs of lions from each of the countries of Asia. Malaysia’s and Thailand’s were magnificent. You pass the big bell and the purification trough up past the lions and up to a traditional incense burner – I paid for some incense and lit that, then changed my shoes for slippers for the marble stairs. The older woman waiting behind me boggled a bit as I lit incense and prayed, but hey, one of the nice things about being henotheist is that I can take my deities as I find them. Today was a banner day for me. LOL

From Gotemba, we drove on to Hakone, one of the glacial/crater lakes at the base of Fuji-san’s feet. We took a ferry across the lake. One the way, we passed a ferry ship that looked like a Spanish galleon, and everyone on our tour wanted to be a pirate. Pattie and I launched into the theme from One Piece, of course and waxed poetic about pirates. We arrived at Komagatake (I think) where we got on a cable car up a very steep and very high mountain and my brain collapsed and died. Between the long day, the lack of oxygen and the cold, I just stopped. The day was getting old, the sky was getty misty and smoggy, but Fuji-san stood there, majestic and amazing and well worth the effort. From the top of the mountain, you could see it on one side, and the sun setting over the Pacific on the other. Eventually we took the cable car back down, had just enough time to be unimpressed by the gift shops, then got back on the bus. The ride to the train station was dull…but we were headed by to Tokyo by Shinkasen, the high-speed bullet train. We couldn’t wait!

When we got to the station, the five of us who were taking the Shinkansen and our tour guide stood there, waiting for the train when another Shinkansen shot through the station. And I mean *shot* through. That thing MOVED. Pattie started jumping up and down like a kid, shouting, “I wanna ride it! I wanna ride it!” and when I said, “You will, honey, in two minutes,” I noticed that everyone else, including the tour guide and myself had a big ass grin on their faces. It *was* pretty darn cool.

The bus ride back to Tokyo would have been 2 hours – the Shinkansen took 30 minutes.The train expanded audibly when we passed through a low-pressure area, and shrank with a “whoomf” when we left it. Things passed by like they were a time-lapse film, the thing was so fast – and we weren’t at top speed, because we were in populated areas. We got back to the room about 6:30 or so. We were trying to decide what to do about dinner,and we decided that it would be a lark to wander aimlessly through Tobu and Seibu, the two department stores that frame the train station. We decided to wander through their food sections and blow whatever yen we had left on whatever food might appeal…they have tons of fresh, high-end, ready-to-eat stuff, so we thought it would be a cool way to sample new things. But when we got to the room, we found that Emi had left us several messages, asking if we had plans. So, I called her and we decided to meet at Takadanobaba at 8, so Pattie would watch Detective Conan. I got us a light snack and some much-needed caffeine and we tossed those down and set out for our final adventure.

Next time: What a night!

We interrupt this broadcast for some Important Yuri Anime News!

ADV has announced licensing of Azumanga Daioh – a snortingly funny look at high school with an honest-to-goodness lesbian character, who is more realiztic in her unfulfilled crush thatn anyone else I’ve ever seen in anime. As soon as you can, run out and buy this – it’s whacked out and hysterical.

And now back to our usual programming

***

Today we had a first – despite the stereotypes and our expectations, we *never* saw anyone on the train reading manga. Everyone was reading the paper, magazines or novels. Today we saw one old guy and one little girl actually reading manga on the train. Woo-hoo.

Also, while I’m blowing stereotypes, I’d like to say that there were plenty of young couples hanging all over each other, holding hands, kissing…you know, the usual PDA (PublicDisplays of Affection) I’ve been told, right up to recently, that there aren’t PDAs between couples in Japan. Well, maybe that *was* true (and it’s obviously still true in anime, where the mere holding of hands has been written in as a *major* plot complication…don’t even get me started about the apparent sexual dysfunction of Japanese men from years of exposure to anime and manga.) Anyway, we saw young folks all snuggly together everywhere we went, except Comiket. Read into that last sentence however you’d like.

People do stare at us, but rarely hostilely. Only the guy in the sukiyaki place, really. Kids are the funniest, though – they are puzzled by us and ultimately, the most likely to smile or wave back. Mostly they just hide from us, while the parents stare. Since I and my friends (who all have “character”) are often stared at here at home, I don’t care much about that.

So the discovery for today was that the question, “Where *are* all the foreigners” actually has an answer! They really are in Roppongi, the section of Tokyo traditionally  reserved for foreigners. I kind of assumed that that was another cliche, but to our surprise, it totally wasn’t. But I get ahead of myself.

Pattie wanted to see Venus Fort, which was out by the Tokyo Big Site, because it’s meant to look like a 17th century Italian village. So we took the Yurikamome line, the way we did the first day going to Comiket. This time I wasn’t so dizzy and sick and was able to enjoy the ride over the Rainbow Bridge.

We essentially headed towards the Babylon project – all sorts of places “reclaimed” from Tokyo Bay. On the first day I had pointed out a cone-shaped pylon in the water of the bay – I *think* its the remnant of the obstructions built by Tokugawa Ieyasu to keep the Black Ships of the Jesuits out.

Venus Fort was a 17th century Italian village as seen through the eyes of a Short Hills mall designer. Pleasant and nicely put together – lots of pretty lights and about as Italian as I am. Which is to say…not. We had a crepe for a snack at Cafe Very Very (they have these filled snack crepes everywhere yound women are likely to be, and they smell *so* good and we totally caved.) We bought some stationery and stickers which were beautiful. The mall had a bagel place, go figure. The sky was painted to look like day turning into evening, then night. They had a laser show in the night portion, which wasn awful, but not awful enough to be funny. The best part of Venus Fort was that it was definitely designed for women. The shops, yadda yadda, but it was the *bathrooms* that really stood out. Every corner of every courtyard had signs to the nearest bathroom and all of them were spotless (and Western style, we noted.) According to the guide book (Yes, Venus Fort was in the guidebook) it has the world’s largest women’s bathroom, with 86 stalls, but we never saw that one. We didn’t consider ourselves deprived.

After we wandered a bit more, pondering the literally priceless plastic fish at Comme ‘Ca (“Le est Comme ca ism” reads the signs) we decided to try for lunch at Moti, an Indian restaurant I wrote into an Utena story and wanted to try. We took the train to Shimboshi, then the Hibiya line to Roppongi…where we answered that age old question…where are all the foreigners? Well, they are in Roppongi..and we should feel pity for them. Roppongi was repulsive. It’s all cheesy clubs, bars and chain restaurants. We “found” the Hard Rock Cafe’…bleah. There are also Thai, Indian and Malaysian restaurants, which we had seen none of anywhere else. oddly, Italian and Chinese restaurants abound all over Tokyo – I guess they aren’t really “foreign” any more there than they are here. Some things are universal….

When we switched to the Hibiya line, we ran into an immediate three foreigners. One blonde woman got off with us at Roppongi, but sprinted away without a word. We saw a few other scattered folks biking the streets, and walking and generally just being foreign abroad. It was creepy, because they all looked like they felt foreign and it was uncomfortable.

We found Moti easily enough with the map from their website and the food was perfectly nice – hot, but tasty. So I, at last, ate at the restaurant in my story. Afterwards, we walked a little, but there was trash everywhere – it’s obvious that the city neglects the streets of Roppongi. We debated whether this was on purpose because its only foreigners, or whether us foreigners are just dirtier.But there we so many chains that by the time we saw Subways, we were skeeving and we turned back. (Not, however, before I bought a Batz Maru washcloth and pencil at a 100-yen store.!)

We decided to go back to K-Books one last time since the first time we were there we were beat and this was our last shopping day. (If I had had one more day, I’d have gone back to Mandarake and looked at the used manga again, ’cause, y know, we didn’t freaking *have* enough, for pity’s sake…) Pattie went upstairs to the doujinshi and I headed downstairs to the used manga section. In mere moments, I had found a couple of good volumes, then joy of joys found the finale to Hen and the first two Devilman Lady issues. I found a few other promising things too, and helped stimulate Japan’s economy, so that was pretty good.

Since the holiday is now over (it’s Monday) the streets have been packed. I love that, walking out of the hotel onto busy people-filled streets. We managed to finally see kids in school uniforms and I can honestly say that I’m amazed. The skirts really are, sometimes, that short. Go figure. So, anyway, the streets were packed and there were hawkers standing around handing out tissue packs all along the main area of Ikebukuro. I made Pattie take one, and I did too. I really like Ikebukuro…I could definitely live there.

We got our weekly One Piece fix tonight. It was a new episode and I didn’t know where they were in the story (its not the same as the manga right now,) but I got to hear Nico Robin, which was cool.

Next time: Worshipping at the feet of Fuji-san

It’s Saturday morning – you know what that means, right? Yes, cartoons! We
started off with Doremi, then had Digimon Frontier and the first Season 2 Digimon Movie.

In stark contrast to yesterday, today was bright and sunny. We decided to start with Harajuku, just because it was furthest away. And because I felt it would be a nice day to walk nowhere in particular.

Harajuku is like Tokyo’s version of St. Mark’s Place; the uber-trendy area, where all the suburban teens come to pose for animal crackers and show how hip they are. We walked around leisurely for a while until we were ready to leave. There were
enormous crowds, but mostly for the Meiji shrine, which was on the other side of the train tracks. There were a few punklings here and there, but few fruits, only one Goth-Loli and no bands. We saw more kimono; some were lovely and some were definitely not.

We had a little trouble getting out of Harajuku, because one track was closed off. So
we switched at Shibuya, went back to Takadanobaba (the place of Takada’s horse) then
on the Tozai line to Nakano.

TV has got a great suspense/mystery show on right now – a sort of live action 1940’s Detective Conan, complete with adorable boy detective in short pants. I stopped to watch because it starred one of the actors from a drama series called Oyaji which I liked, and then a girl
screamed, so we were both watching. All the actors go running into the room to find the girl unconscious and a note from the bad guy. Pattie said, “Zorro left his calling card.” Now, later on in the show, it looks like the bad guy is *actually* Zorro! Beat Takeshi plays the criminal, which makes this the sixth out of seven days that he’s been on some show or other.

Anyway, at Nakano, we headed right over to the Broadway arcade, where we stopped for
sushi at a rotating sushi bar. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but Pattie got a stomach ache. We walked through all the floors, and spent not nearly enough time at all the bits that make up *the* used anime/manga store of Japan, Mandarake. Mandarake is more like a conglomeration of shops, than a shop itself. I bought a Devilman Lady pencil board and Pattie bought me a deck of Sailor Moon cards for one card…a magnificent picture of Haruka and Michiru got up regardless. It’s my wallpaper on my desktop at home. :-)

One of the stores sold used manga – the phone book sized ones, the magazines, not the
tankubon volumes. It was whacked out; some of those were 15 years old and they were
never meant to last that long.

By then we were beat, so we came back to the hotel for a rest. We’ll watch the end
of this mystery show, then take a quick walk in Shinjuku, then come back later.

We walked for about an hour in Shinjuku (which is very easy to get lost in, and an hour can get you basically around the block there.) the night was cold and clear and Shinjuku was very colorful and sparkly, like gems.

Tokyo is a very vertical city. Whereas in NYC the shops are all, or mostly, at street
level, with business offices and apartments above, Tokyo businesses climb the buildings, so the neon signs also climb. Every building has signs going up the sides, proclaiming all the restaurants and clubs on the 1st-10^th floors. As a result, you’re not very likely to just wander accidentally and come across something interesting – unless you can read the signs, or have a clue where you are headed. Otherwise, it’s just overwhelming and dazzling.

For instance, if you’re looking for the Nichoume, Tokyo’s gay and lesbian district (which we weren’t) you’d really have to *know* how to find it and when you did, you’d need a map to find any specific place to go. Not all that unlike the Village (Greenwich Village, NYC’s gay and lesbian district…well, one of them, anyway,) I suppose. If you don’t know what bar you’re looking for, you could wander past perfectly average delis and gift stores forever.

While we were wandering aimlessly, we came across a really neat little shrine, called
the Hanazono
Jinja (Garden Shrine.) It was all festive and packed with people waiting to pray! The line was almost a block long…mostly yuppie-types, which really surprised me. I mean, you just don’t get that vibe off of fashion/status-conscious 20-somethings. Since most Japanese aren’t really religious, it was amazing how busy the shrines and temples were. I guess it’s just like Xmas and Easter or Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. (Satou-san, our bus tour guide, had joked that most Japanese were Shinto in life, Buddhist in death and Christian on Christmas.) We didn’t join the line – we had prayed to a lot of gods by then and we felt pretty covered. But the bells were gorgeous and if it hadn’t been so cold, I might have wanted to ring them.

We were flagging by then, so we opted for dinner in – again.

TV tonight is boring. We have a choice of home movies of Princess Aiko, or some
comedian’s show, which is only moderately funny – even the live audience is unimpressed. (At the Fuji TV building, everyone taught Pattie to make this noise and gesture, that this comedian always does. We watched for over an hour, but he never did it. We flipped.)

Here’s something you don’t see every day – a bunch o’guys in Edo Period dress
playing what can only be called hacky-sack.

Next time: Trip to the Mall

Today dawned ugly and grey. By the time we got out, it was snowing lightly. The weather report calls for cold, grey and rain. In the end, it was snow – a fair amount, too!

Originally, the plan was for Shinjuku and Harajuku, but it was just too yucky, so we
decided to stay local. I decided that it was a good day to go to Seeraa Myu (remember, the live-action Sailor Moon Musical? Geez, you’ve got a short memory) despite Pattie’s protests. LOL She did want to go shopping for more doujinshi, so we decided to do both.

We went immediately to the Seeraa Myu at the Sunshine 60 theater. It was a melee’ of parents and their brainwashed children – tons of 4- & 5-year old girls, many dressed up as Senshi. They were unbearably adorable. A few lone creepy salarymen, complete with trenchcoats and briefcases, and one or two obvious adult fanboys.

Now, let me be clear…the one experience I had previously had of Sera Myu was a video tape that was so awful in every conceivable way that I have vowed to never watch it again. It was a Sailor Moon Super-S type story and it sucked utterly. The music was lame, the dancing was rancid and the plot was a snooze. When the Amazoness Trio is the best part of the show, you just *know* it’s not good. Anyway, I’ve always assumed that all Sera Myu sucked. And since the Utena live-action musical was even *worse,*  I kind of just lumped them all in the “cold day in hell” category. So, I basically expected to be dying of hysterical laughter that had to be suppressed throughout.

To my utter shock, I actually enjoyed it. Quite thoroughly, in fact. The Myu actresses were pretty good, the story was a “S” story, so I had all my favorite things, including tons of Outers. The story had very credible Witches 5 – the job of making their costumes wearble by actual real human people was pretty amazing. The actors that played Kaolinite and the Professor wer really good – even the comic relief was actually *gasp!* funny. That never happens. The lighting effects were genuinely excellent, the music and dancing not horrific and Uranus and Neptune even had a “moment” or two. Sharing it all with 1000 munchkins and a handful of fanboys was the icing on the cake. The small, confused child next to me was appalled that I knew the words to La Soldier.

There is a perfect Yuriko clone on TV – but he’s a guy! If he kept his
mouth shut…he was with a woman with long, dark haired mermaid and I thought, wow, Yuriko and Midori are on TV!

American football in Nippon – the Rice Bowl was played today. The Rice Bowl, can you believe it?

Anyway, I spent the second half of the show, hysterical at the antics of the bored,
fidgety children (and Pattie) around me. I had no idea the show would be so long, so we didn’t have food or drinks like everyone around us. There was a dorky fanboy a few
rows ahead of us who took notes through the whole show. I said it had to be for his fan site/blog – you just knew it was. Like I should talk… lol

When we left, I actually bought a program and found that the actress who plays Uranus
is a whole lot hunkier without the wig. There’s a picture of her in rehearsal,
holding her space sword and she looks kind of hot. LOL I appreciated the fact that during their inevitable death scene, Uranus had to leap across the stage to die next to Neptune. I could actually see being a fan of this, if it was this decent most of the time. I guess my video was just an aberration.

There was a lot to be said for who the actresses who played the roles – they
clearly understood what people liked in each character, like the obsessive love all the Senshi have for their Princess, the fact that Uranus was overtly in love with Usagi and Neptune understood – Rei even had an argument with everyone where she declared that if it came down to Usagi or Chibi-Usa, she’d let the spore die.

All in all, it was fun. My bet is that all the adults there were fans and they were
busy indoctrinating their children.

We stopped back at the hotel for a potty break and then tried the sukiyaki place across the street – this was the only sucky meal we had the entire time. And there was a guy who was actively hostile, glaring at us and muttering every time we spoke. Since we were there first and we outnumbered the guy, we didn’t worry, but it added to the suckariffic-ness of the meal. The staring thing just cracked us up. Pattie was getting a teeny bit freaked by it, but I couldn’t care less. One couple at the train station practically got whiplash turning around to look at me when I spoke. We keep being puzzled though. We *know* Tokyo gets Western visitors and workers…where are all these people? We never see them, except as teeny dribbles, a single black man there, a lone Indian student there, two days later a European….

If we were in NYC and someone walked by speaking German or Nigerian, we’d hardly
blink. I might comment on Afrikaans or Navajo, because we don’t hear that often, but
they people themselves would hardly be whiplash material. (In fact, as an experiment, we counted how many distinct foreign languages we heard when we were in the city last
Saturday…five. Just walking from the train station to a book store and back. Not
counting the multiple times we heards several of those languages. It’s just not all that weird to hear French or german or Spanish in NYC…and if we had gone to a museum or landmark, I’m 100% positive, we’d have come across Japanese, as well.)

So, we walked back through the snow, which was now sticking and very picturesque, to Animate. This had *finally* opened up after the holiday. It was 8 packed floors of anime and mnaga related goods. I should clarify, it had lots of stuff, but it was *packed* with people. The place was mobbed. I bought tons of One Piece stuff, including the crew’s Jolly Roger which now hangs in the bedroom. I bought so much that I got eight free stickers! Next was Rashinban Books where the hentai fanboys cluster and we didn’t stay. I wandered off to get something to drink, and Pattie…here’s a stretch, bought some more doujinshi.

I’d like to say that, at this point, as surreal as most of this trip has been
(Comiket, dancing monkeys…) sitting in a theater with 5-year olds watching Seraa Myu has been the most surreal of all.

Next Time: Where The Girls Are