Japan = Expensive? Pshaw.

The first thing people always tell me about Japan is that “it’s so expensive!” This comes normally from people who have never been here, and now I know why. Japan is as cheap as any American city! In fact, I think it may be cheaper than San Francisco if you want to do it on the cheap. The minimum price on the train is $1.30, not $1.50. A plate of chicken katsu with curry and rice runs less than $4, and a yummy bowl of ramen with pork and veggies starts at around $3. If you were someone who was used to fancy restaurants and 4-star hotels, you’d probably find these things expensive, but the basics are quite reasonable. One liter of Evian? $1.79.

Of course even my own research showed that sushi would be very expensive. Wrong! I’ve had two sushi meals already. Both cost me less than $9! Amazing! Now, let’s go bit-by-bit through my first evening and first full day here.

I arrived at the hostel at around 4:30PM local time, which is equivalent to 12:30AM back home. Granted, I was tired, and going to sleep would definitely have been the easiest thing to do. But then what would happen when I woke up in the middle of the night with nothing to do? I knew I would have to force myself to stay up for a little while longer. I checked in to my hostel, the Khaosan Tokyo Ninja, near the Asakusabashi train station. I got a little flustered finding the place, but now that I know where it is, holy cow is it easy! My bed is basically a wooden box with a sliding door. It has a light and some outlets and a little shelf for things, which is nice. It’s tall enough to sit up in, but just barely long enough for a tall guy like me. It has a lock on it, so you can look in your stuff while you’re out for the day. The hostel itself just opened this year, so everything is nice new and clean. It’s great!

I brought my laptop to the basement, and immediately got into conversation with this British guy, Jason, who had sumo on his list of must-do items here in Japan. Needing to get rid of an extra sumo ticket, I quickly invited him, and he quickly accepted. Some dinner was discussed among us and the two Australian teenagers who have been here for three weeks, and off we went for kaitensushi. I may have spelled that wrong, but that refers to the sushi train restaurants. Basically, it’s all nigiri (piece of fish on rice) and everything runs from 130 to 499 a plate. For example, anago is 130 and unagi is 499. But here’s the thing, one of the Australians is quite good in Japanese, and we ended up doing all of our ordering and asking for things in Japanese. And when we ordered unagi, the chef put it on a 130 plate! I think he was doing it to be nice to the 4 white dudes ordering in Japanese. When I asked for maguro (maguro o kudasai), which was supposed to be 399, he put it on a 130 plate! So I had a small sushi feast for 829 yen! (Please note: all prices mentioned from here on out will be in yen. For a rough approximation in dollars, think of each yen as one penny.)

After this, I went to 7-11 to pick up some sundries. I was told “oh it’s just like 7-11s in other countries.” Sure, if they sell dried squid. I had absolutely no culture shock surrounding the drinks here because these Japanese drinks are so common in the Bay Area. Actually, culture shock has been hard to come by. When I’m surrounded by Asian people, it kinda feels like home. If I were from Mississippi, maybe not so much. I half expect everyone to pull out their cell phones and say “Hey girl! I’m on the train! Yeah, the train!” Of course, no one talks on their cell on the train. It’s prohibited, but I doubt people would do it anyway. The trains can get very (very, very) crowded, so train etiquette is of primary importance.

Saturday morning, I woke up very early to head out to the fish market. The guys had all talked about going early in the morning, and although we had not made specific plans, I thought I would be able to go around the same time we talked about (5:30-6:00AM) and find them there. (This is incredibly laughable. The fish market is huge and complicated.) Instead, when I was on the Internet terminals downstairs in the reception area, people started meeting up to go! So it was one Australian, one Englishman, a Swede and a Dutchman (is that right? Is it a Hollander?) and me. The International Posse of White Dudes! Going to the fish market was amazing. I have never seen so many fish in one place! The most memorable thing about this place is needing to dodge these little carts that go driving around. There must have been 3000 of these carts all going in every direction, down every aisle, one after another. It’s crazy.

After this, we looked for a sushi restaurant to have the freshest possible sushi. We got some help from a 70-year-old cart driver who stopped his cart and asked us in English if he could help us. Then he produced a plastic folder full of hand-drawn maps, and showed us where to go get some sushi. When we found the restaurants, we discovered something very odd. Right next to each other would be two restaurants: one with a gigantic queue (can’t say line — I was with an International Posse) and the one right next to it would be completely empty. Now this was telling. Obviously the place with the four-hour wait was better than the place with no one eating at it. What was the deal? As we did not have our translator with us (he was sleeping), we did our best to determine from some Japanese girls that the ones with no lines … queues … were Korean. I refused to eat at the inferior places with no line, and decided if I want to do the super-fresh sushi thing, I’ll come back during the week when the four-hour queue participants are in school or at work.

Back to the hostel for a quick refresh, and then I was out to Akihabara with Clancy and Sam, the aforementioned Australian teenagers. (As an aside, I should mention that a friend of mine told me when hostelling to avoid the Australian teenagers, as they are rude. This turned out to be completely horrible advice, as these guys are both polite and friendly.) They were on a mission to go to a maid cafe before they leave Japan. So after a walk through a 7-floor electronics store where I bought a travel alarm clock and a camera strap, we found ourselves having lunch at a maid cafe. A maid cafe is a pretty ridiculous place, as it is staffed completely by Japanese girls in maid outfits. They serve food and draw on it with ketchup. They teach you magic spells to perform on your food and drinks. Culturally speaking, this may be sleazy by Japanese standards. By American standards, however, this comes across as remarkably silly.

After this, I was left to my own devices for a while as I wanted to check out some classic Japanese arcades, and the Australians wanted to do some souvenir shopping for their family. I went to Taito Game Station and found the Street Fighter IV machines, which I’ve yet to play. What I didn’t know before trying it is that all the machines are networked, so any time you want to play, you are forced to play against other players. What did this mean? Instant ass kicking! Look at the name of the site this blog is on. I was told later that if you take the American fighting-game champion and drop him into a Japanese arcade, he’d get his ass handed to him. This makes me feel better, but not that much better. The arcades were not quite as cool as I wanted them to be. I’ll check out more later and get back to you.

Then it was back to the hostel for another refresh, and now off to Ikebukuro to see Ponyo. This is the new Miyazaki film. When I asked for help at reception, I was told that it would not be subtitled. I already knew this, of course. I figured I would be able to follow the story pretty easily. And I did! You take your quality animation, music, tone of voice, and my vast history of watching films, it was pretty easy. However, I have NO idea what the motivation of a couple of the characters was. Also, I think there were a lot of themes relating to parenthood in there, but without understanding the language, some of the themes weren’t apparent to me. I’ll simply have to see it again.

Finally, for my final activity of the night, I met up with Sara (from San Francisco but living in Tokyo). We went for more kaitensushi (816 yen) and then to a book launch party for a book by one of the editors of the best and busiest video game blog, kotaku.com. Brian Ashcraft wrote a book about the history of Japanese arcades. This party was another International Posse of White Dudes! I mean … who else in Tokyo reads an English blog about video games? Sure, there were a few Japanese girlfriends here, but only a few. Sara commented that she has never seen such a ratio in Tokyo. I bought the book, got it signed, chatted with some geeks, and off we went. We had a quick crepe and a drink, and I came to sleep.

This morning, I’m chatting with a dude from Morocco, a woman from Sydney, and a girl from Japan. I’m off to sumo in about an hour. The title was clinched yesterday, but the awards ceremony (and of course more matches) are today. The lower ranks may have important matches today — who knows?