change of scenery

allow me to introduce to you, snoopy and mr. no-neck. gotta love this picture. don't i look like the father from the family guy, except with longer hair?

tuesday. i'm now in yokohama chinatown, sitting in a dining room table with my laptop typing up this blog on notepad because my laptop doesn't have msword on it. on the tv, nightline. most likely from last night since japan's a day ahead. i'm at my aunt's condo right now. i got in on the train/subway last night which was a bit nerve wrecking because it was the first time that i've been alone on japanese public transportation. luckily, no one complained about my suitcase, but then again, i wouldn't have known what they were saying.

shawn came back around 7:20pm last night from work. he said that he would have been home earlier, but he was stuck on the bus for 40 minutes because of traffic. i am now watching the seibu lions play the fdh hawks in the japanese baseball league. besu boru, as they call it. the lions just scored on a single by some guy, who went to second on the throw home by the outfielder. anyway, shawn told me my aunt called him earlier and that i should call her back. i did and told her that i'll be coming over tonight and i'll call her with what time my train will leave when i'm at the shibuya station. some guy just hit a 3-run homer for the lions. the pitcher for the fdh isn't doing very well, giving up four runs in the first inning.

getting back to my story. after calling my aunt, shawn and i took a bus to this japanese curry restaurant for dinner. it was a pretty small place, probably seating about 20 people at most. when we got to the restaurant (the pitcher finally got the final out to end the inning), we got a seat immediately, which was great since we were both starving.

flipping channels. i'm now watching this show that talks about seafood at hapkaido. the host is eating some sort of crab and he's like fucking having an orgasm or something. oo... ooo.. ooo... oishii!!!!! (i'm not sure if i'm spelling this correctly, but it's japanese for delicious). he's now at a sushi restaurant. probably wanting to cum again. the food must be really fucking good. i need to stop getting side tracked. hmm... now he's making sounds like he's constipated. good stuff. i have to say that the sushi looks pretty damn good.

UNI! he's now at a place that specializes in uni, i think. well actually, it looks like a sushi shop, but he's asking especially for uni. i keep hearing uni, uni, uni. the guy behind the counter is talking. no idea what he's talking about. the host looks pretty excited though. okay, so he starts out with some squid sashimi for about 800 yen (roughly US$8). now he has some stewed fish for 1500 yen (roughly US$15). damn, now he's eating a bowl of uni rice. the whole bowl is covered with uni. god, that must be good, and very high in cholesterol. advertisements. how this guy is still alive, i don't know.

i think at the last restaurant he was asking where he can go for uni, now he's at an uni restaurant. a set meal. bowl of uni over rice. good lord, it looks amazing. a piece of salmon, eight little bowls of pickled vegetables and various appetizers and a bowl of miso soup all for 2800 yen (roughly US$28). advertisements.

okay, sorry, back to last night. shawn and i ordered the pork cutlet curry, i didn't really want to spend time looking at the menu for something else since i couldn't read it and i was a bit hungry. shawn said that this was the only restaurant that has a 5000 yen plate of curry. yeah, that's right, curry for Us$50. insane. but they do use a special type of meat in that dish. we chatted for a bit about life in japan and the people i met the previous two nights. we also talked about how he felt like shit earlier in the morning because he was hungover. the funny thing was charlena, the girl who was drunk out of her ass, went into work still. that's pretty amazing. she looked really bad the night before. couldn't even walk on her own.

after a bit, the food came. it was really good. i'm not a big fan of cutlet curry, i hardly ever get it at LA's curry house. but i really liked the pork cutlet i had last night. it had the right amount of spiciness, and the curry tasted somewhat different from what i've had in LA. the curry came boiling in a heated ceramic pot and the rice and cutlet came separately on a plate shaped like a banana boat. they served beer, but after drinking so much the two nights before, we settled for water. we made fast work of the food.

wow, was flipping the channel, and saw a clip of a mudslide in japan that took apart a 120m stretch of a road. it was kinda strange, everything was sliding from the upper left corner of the shot to the bottom right. tore some telecommunication cables as well. awesome clip.

we sat at our table for a little bit after we ate since there were people waiting inside the restaurant for tables. after paying for dinner, which came out to be 1365 yen (roughly US$13.65) per person, we decided to walk back to shawn's apt to see what's around his neighbourhood. there was a ramen place that shawn finds disgusting and questions why it's still in business (shawn's going to be shawn no matter where he is, hahaha), a big supermarket that's too far to be useful, and a beer shop that only had draft beers. along the way we also saw people getting stopped because they were riding their bikes with out proper headlights (one woman used her mobile, which was kinda hilarious). you're suppose to have headlights when you ride your bike in japan.

we got back to shawn's place around 9pm. i didn't realize it was already so late. i grabbed my suitcase, as well as a box of goodies (shawn helped carry this to the station), my laptop and backpack and headed out to the shibuya station with shawn. we walked around the corner to the bus stop and got on an empty bus without having to wait. within 10 minutes we were at the shibuya station. we headed upstairs to where the toyoko line platform is. the toyoko line starts from the shibuya station and goes all the way to the yokohama station at the end. to get to where my aunt is, yokohoma chinatown, you have to stay on the train (which turns into a different line) for four more stations. a pretty simple train ride in certain respect.

however, let me interject something here. for a foreigner like myself, i think the japanese railway/subway system is incredibly complicated to decipher. there are so many lines going everywhich way and sometimes it's hard to figure out which platform the train is at. there are certain trains on the same line that only goes up to certain stops, meaning they don't always go all the way to the end of the line. the maps of the different routes aren't any much clearer either. luckily, i have shawn there to help me out. oh, and then there are normal trains, express trains and super express trains to further the confusion. basically the express and super express trains don't stop at all the stops. maybe i'm just stupid, but shawn says that after being in japan for two months, he's sometimes confused by them as well.

the express train for yokohama chinatown was schedule to leave at 9:45pm so i had to hurry to get all my stuff through the ticket gate and down the platform and into a sparsely populated cart. i quickly said goodbye to shawn and said maybe i'll see him friday. after a hardy handshake, i turned and walked through the gate. shawn wanted me to go partying with him and his friends friday night and experience what is known as the tokyo all-nighter. trains in japan stop running thirty minutes after midnight, so those who live outside of tokyo either have to stop partying before then or just stay in tokyo until the trains start running again at 4 or 5 in the morning. in many cases, people just stay and party until the trains start running again, thus the tokyo all-nighter.

in addition to staying up and partying, shawn wanted to go get sushi at 6 in the morning at the fish market. i have to say that intrigues me more than the partying bit. to have sushi at the fishmarket, that's like having bread right out of the oven; having sushi from fish that were caught hours ago. however, i'm still on the fence about this because i don't want to have to lug my suitcase back to shibuya on a friday night. it's crowded last night, which means it'll be horrendous on friday night. we'll see if i'm up for it. partying is a lot of freaking work, not to mention i have to leave for the airport around noon on saturday. hahaha, i'm tired thinking about it.

when i got into the yokohama chinatown station, the train had thinned out considerably. a lot of people got off at the yokohama station probably to take other rail lines home. when i got off the train, i was trying to figure out which way i should go. the platform wasn't very crowded and i saw some woman running towards me. my aunt. she had talked the ticket counter agent into letting her go down into the platform to meet me. she's a pretty smart one, my aunt linda. she said that when she got to the station, she discovered that there were many exits. since i don't have a cell phone with me, it would have been a pain in the ass to try to find each other. after getting my luggage up several escalators and through a ticket gate, we got them into her car and took off for my grandfather's company's office located about half a mile away.

after calling my parents to tell them that i was in yokohama, we went to the market to grab some bread and ham for breakfast. oh, yeah, my aunt has a little dog named snoopy. it's the cutest thing, but the thing he does that's really annoying is that he barks at male strangers. so he's already barked at me several times. oh, and he's already tried humping my leg. it wasn't very pleasant. he likes getting all the attention and loves playing with people. a very cute, good-natured dog. my aunt got him for free from one of her clients who paid 130,000 yen for him, or US$1,300. that's mad. thirteen hundred dollars for a dog.

we drove to her condo building which is about two blocks from the office (that's where she parked the car). the condo is really nice. it has three bedrooms and a pretty large living/dining room. i have my own room with a bed, which is really nice. after giving my aunt some stuff from aunt jo and uncle ellie and myself and a quick shower, we went to bed. it was already 12:30am and she has to go to work in the morning. it took me awhile, but i was able to go to sleep for about seven hours.

i woke up in the morning, but didn't want to wake up my aunt with snoopy's barking, so i stayed in my bedroom for several hours reading digital fortress by dan brown. i finished it this morning. a pretty good book, but i think the da vinci code is his best book yet, followed closely by angels and demons. so at around 9am, i came out and played with snoopy for a bit until my aunt got up. she cooked me breakfast of some noodles with veggies and chicken meat. after breakfast, she headed off to work, and i watched the yankees/blue jays game on tv then went into the bedroom for a quick nap.

several hours later, my aunt called me on my cell phone (she gave it to me so she can reach me and vice versa) asking me if i was hungry. it was around 2:30pm and i wasn't too hungry so i told her i'll call her later when i am. she also mentioned that my parents had called and that they were having lunch with my sister. i think today was my father's full body examination. poor guy, he wasn't allowed to eat anything 12 hours before the examination. she said that they might call my cell today but they never did. after watching some more tv, i called up my aunt and we went to have lunch at denny's. not many places were opened for lunch at this time. most of the restaurants were getting ready for dinner so they closed for several hours in the afternoon. after lunch, we went back to my aunt's work and i took a walk around chinatown. took some pictures and went back to the condo where i started typing up this blog.

that was about 9 hours ago. currently it's about 2:38 in the morning. in between, i've had dinner with my aunt. she bought home some okonomiyaki, which is know as japanese pizza. consisted of some fried eggs with some meats and noodles. it was pretty good. it came with some gyoza, fried sweet potato slices and octopus tenticles. pretty good meal. then we talked for a couple of hours about terrorists, the election in november, school and finally driving accidents. she's gone to bed now, and i'm about too as well, it's getting late. i've been bitten by mosquitoes several times since i've been here in japan. mostly on the right leg. it's funny, but snoopy keeps licking one of the bites. i hope his saliva won't infect the bite.

anyway, goodnight and until tomorrow.