Morning of September 3

Okay, so a little bit of an update.

Yesterday, other than temples and Akiba we went to the kitchen district, which I think is called kappabashi or something. I remembered a few minutes ago when Collin asked me but now it's a little fuzzy. Frankly I'm still a little drunk from last night. Here in Tokyo we've been largely living out of conbini (Japanese convenience stores like am/pm or 7/11), where they have extremely cheap food, drink, and alcoholic drink. You can get a large can of chyuhai "strong" (8% alcohol) for 201 yen. I'm glad we have Garrett around to tell us the cheapest and best ways to drink. Anyways so far we've been having 3 or 4 of those a night and that gets me fucking wasted. But in a good way. As I was telling our new friend Taka-san last night, it's ironic that America is all about freedom, but you cannot drink anywhere! Here in Japan, we can go buy drinks at a convenience store, start drinking (or do any intermediary part of the drinking) in the cobini, then wander the streets wasted and still drinking! Then you can go pee in an alley. I know it sounds crude, but seriously Japanese people do not care. Japanese people seemingly do it all the time, as I've seen it happen and it's only been 2 days. Actually, yesterday when we first ventured out there was a homeless dude (maybe?) who just walked over to some plants by the street, facing the street, and just started peeing right there on a major road! It was hilarious and awesome. Anyways that pretty well convinced me that we can do no wrong.

So the kitchen district was actually pretty cool; I wish we had more money because I saw a lot of stuff I wanted to get for the girls (Akemi, Lindsay, and May) but that I really just can't afford in good conscience. But I picked up a little something if y'all are reading this =) There were huge crazy knives, stores full of awesome dishes and serving things and crap the name of which I do not know because I am very inadequate in the kitchen. There were also some funny stores full of signs you can use for your restaurant and cash registers for like thousands of dollars. Actually we have noticed that Japanese will eave out tons of shit that is worth hundreds of dollars each with absolutely no on watching. I swear to god people here would probably go put their money in the cash register if no one was around to take their money! It's crazy! Even here in Tokyo, which kind of surprises me.

What else was cool yesterday... like I said we walked all the way over to Akihabara, which was about an hour, and we got to see lots of neat stuff. We went to a depaato (Japanese department store) which was 6 or 7 floors of women's clothing, and 1 floor in the basement full of cheap amazing looking food. Then on the roof there was a kids' amusement park and pet store! Hilarious.

Had my first ramen, which was alright.

People in general have been fairly nice to us. There was a crazy lady at the sensou temple yesterday who tried to trip Collin and was babbling inanely either at us or to herself. But more commonly people have been very happy that we speak some Japanese. You can definitely feel the racism: dudes in the basement of the Akiba electronics store wouldn't ride the elevator with us, people avert their eyes or try to ignore us or whatever. But it's not that bad (probably because we're men and Collin and Garrett are big enough that they're afraid to be mean).

Speaking or racism, I left off last night when we were about to go over to an onsen with Frank. Well we grabbed a chyuhai strong on the way and we were still drinking them when we got there. Well the guy who was working there didn't like that (although Garrett tells us that at a lot of onsen they will even sell you alcohol) and made us leave, then we came back after finishing and he wouldn't let us in because it's dame to be drunk there, although we obviously weren't and we told him so. Basically he was just being a racist fuck and didn't want us there. So that was a little annoying. But on the plus side the night turned out great regardless.

We wandered around drinking for awhile, and went to a cool arcade in a department store. They had a cool, really difficult looking competitive game for which there was a tournament when we went, which was pretty sweet. There were a bunch of salarymen gathered around watching and playing, and one of them looked back and smiled at us when we spoke Japanese and clapped for the winner with them. Then we came back here and sat around talking to some Germans and a couple of pretentious fashion designer girls from Hawaii. Collin and Frank met this cool guy named Taka who I mentioned earlier, who speaks great English, and they introduced me. So then we wandered out onto the streets and drank more, then went to a random bar where we made friends with the girl who worked there (kind of... it's hard to tell if people here are being polite or if they actually like you). We had a pretty amusing conversation basically about sex tourism, and just generally had a good time there. Taka has been all over the world evidently and had some funny advice about getting laid in foreign countries. I think he might come with us tonight to go drinking but I'm not really sure and I'm not really sure where he is. Drinking all the time is exhausting but it's so cheap and fun here it's hard to resist. In any case then Collin and I came back here (Frank was staying at K's still) and took showers and passed out.

So yeah, we're making friends and adventuring and having a great fucking time. Tonight hopefully we'll actually get to go to an onsen or something. Oh wait we're going to see Capsule at Club Asia tonight! There's no nightlife here in Asakusa, but today we're heading over to Shibuya and Harujuku and partying all night so that should be cool. Then it's Tsukiji fish market for the most amazing fish breakfast we'll ever have at 5:00am. We'd better get going!