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Coolest thing in Tokyo
12 years ago
General
So I did the tourist thing and cycled down to Tokyo, or what I would call "part of the Tokyo urban sprawl" - this in itself was hard. Shrink-wrap yourself, sit in a cranked-up sunbed for 6 hours, and only breathe damp air from a laundry dryer hose, and you'd have similar conditions. Add constant cycling and put a 35lb backpack on, you're getting closer.
But I made it, and I feel so cool. Not in terms of temperature, it reaches 30 celsius and beyond, and humidity never drops below 100%. I mean I am like an animé or RPG character that has come to life and is walking among the normal people. I feel like the coolest thing in Tokyo.
I am rinsing through money like you just can't imagine. Time to budget hard.
But I made it, and I feel so cool. Not in terms of temperature, it reaches 30 celsius and beyond, and humidity never drops below 100%. I mean I am like an animé or RPG character that has come to life and is walking among the normal people. I feel like the coolest thing in Tokyo.
I am rinsing through money like you just can't imagine. Time to budget hard.
Milky tea makes me feel like a cultural philistine.
If I totally run out and need rail fare to the airport, I'll let you know. That's the only critical thing I'll need money for, so I should be able to put some aside. I'm really down on vitamin C, so much so that my teeth are beginning to feel a bit floppy when I bite, not that I'm eating much.
Thanks! I found a lemon jelly drink with 1000 something of vitamin C and already my teeth feel more connected to my jaw.
Did you get the staring?
People here treat me like an absolute freak. Children stop waddling to stare as I go past, parents pull their childs hair to make them turn their head away from me, shop workers back away and make sales at arms length, young men laugh sometimes, young women scorn.
In my home town, people were buying me drinks, I partied into the night with the students, a guy took me fishing even though we'd only met five minutes earlier, young women still scorened, but still, there was some regard. In Tokyo I feel at least three levels too cool for these miserable cunts.
As a group, many Japanese seem timid around me, but a smile seemed to help quite a bit. Mothers had me pose for pics with their kids, as they were instructed to seek out non Japanese, so they could talk about it in school.....I can imagine a child, arms spread out as far as he could, saying "I met an American this summer, and he was THIS big!"
What I like about the Japanese, aside from having psychotic warrior poets in their past (like my ancestors) is that they mind their own business, and even though they may dislike you completely, they will still help you if you need it.
I like their attitude of "that offends me, I will ignore it" Whereas many Yanks see anything that offends them as a god-given right to have it banned.
Yeah, in reflection anything of actual harm didn't come.
I may have horrified them but they didn't seek to steal from me or hurt me, like a lot of people do here.