I arrived at my hole in the wall capsule hotel in Asakusa around midnight. I understand that most capsule hotels have cool space age capsules with controls and cool stuff inside. That was not my capsule hotel. In my room there were basically a bunch of horizontal cubbies with a curtain to cover the sides. There was a broken TV inside, and also a snake lamp the end of which was also broken so you couldn't actually make it point where you wanted it to. I guess there was a radio but... why would you listen to Japanese radio? I didn't even try it so it might've been broken too for all I know. The bed was actually quite comfortable, which I was happy about, but as it turns out there were a bunch of German frat d-bags (that's just how I would characterize them, I have no idea if they even have fraternities in Germany) who always came home at 6:00 in the morning after partying all night and made a ton of noise for an hour or two, and then later at 9:00 there was usually a bunch of noise from people, and really just at any time there would be some prick making noise. I especially hated crunchy chips guy, who at 1:30 in the morning was eating chips really loudly for like an entire hour. Or there was one morning where this Italian guy I guess was really drunk (which I heard later) and had to catch his plane (which he missed), but hadn't packed his stuff, so he just kept walking in and out of the room and unzipping and zipping his bag up over and over again for hours early in the morning. Basically, in spite of the fact that my bed was comfy, I don't think I ever really got a full night of sleep. Oh yeah and sometimes the buff German who was in the "capsule" above me would just stand naked in front of my capsule after he took a shower and walked in and out of the room (whose door was really loud by the way), which once gave me a nice surprise view of his junk.
Other than the sleeping issue the people were all really nice though. I was kind of done partying, but they invited me to go out with them if I had so desired. There was one really strange funny incident that happened while I was in the common room practicing the LSAT though. I was just listening to music and minding my own business, and there were Germans over in the opposite corner watching TV. This Asian guy sits down in the table in front of me and makes ramen for a little while. Then all of the sudden I hear him through my headphones just screaming at the top of his lungs for no reason. The other people look confused and ask him why he's screaming, and he just starts shouting like "fuck you! I hate you!" and such at them. He keeps screaming for awhile, which is really confusing, and then the people who own the place come up and ask him what's going on, and he acts all calm and says some really weird stuff about how nobody understands why he had to talk to someone or something. That was a little worrisome from my perspective - having some really crazy kid somewhere around where I sleep. Afterward the buff German guy talked to me about the incident a little bit and was talking about how Asian people are under a lot of stress and sometimes they just snap. At the end of the conversation he was like "watch your back," which was... strange? Not necessarily out of place for him to say, but strange that I was in that situation.
While I was there I usually just did LSAT stuff all day. I went over and saw sensoji again a couple of times, once in the day and once at night. I looked around the touristy shopping street for a couple of last gifts, but in the end decided to just walk back over to kappabashi (the kitchen and restaurant supply street) to get stuff because I figured it would be cheaper due to the absence of tons of gaijin, and I was right. Also on that walk I found an awesome 250 yen bento box place, which was amazing. After whatever I did in the day, I would grab a strong or two and sit out on the street, maybe smoke a couple of cigarettes and watch Japanese people at night. I saw a pretty incident in which a young guy and girl were walking across a sidewalk and the guy was so drunk that he fell over in the middle of the street. Somehow the girl had also lost one or both of her sandal/shoes. The girl was asking him to get up and come meet her across the street, but he kept laying there as a joke and started like pounding or kicking the ground in a kind of baby-like fashion, then threw one of her shoes over at her. Then cars started honking at him and he got up and crossed over and apologized to all the cars. It was pretty funny.
On my last night Akemi met up with me, and although I told her I just wanted to go somewhere cheap she of course took me to this really fancy place, which was apparently the first Western style restaurant in Tokyo. It was really great seeing her again, and just seeing anyone I could talk to again frankly. She was of course insistent on paying and bought a few really nice dishes that were really delicious. The place was really crowded, and you basically just sat anywhere you could fit, including next to other people. A ways into the dinner, this interesting guy showed up. If I understood correctly, some Chinese people had beaten him into a coma a few months before, and he had just woken up the day before. Akemi told me afterward that he was a weird guy because he only wanted to talk about himself all the time, which is true. It was also funny because while she was in the bathroom he told me that Japanese people always say he's a strange guy. I guess I didn't find him extremely strange, but I did want to talk more to Akemi than he really allowed. He kept showing Akemi like old blog posts of his and a newspaper article he was in and stuff, which she initially I think found interesting, but in the end was kind of bored of. However, the guy was pretty interesting. He had worked for Sony for like 23 or 27 years, and given away a patent he created for some kind of information collection and distribution system. He had really nice stuff, and I saw him take out a huge clip of bills that were of such a high denomination I had never seen them before. He let us eat his food, and also bought us a bunch of this drink that is famous for that area called "electric brown." It was really pretty good, but also really strong, and comes in a really small pitcher for that reason. So I got fairly drunk off that stuff. Afterward Akemi and I went over to a small bar for awhile, and I bought us a round of beers because I felt bad about her paying for all that stuff. She managed to barely make her train back, but said she wanted to meet me in the morning.
So I met her the next morning, and she insistently took me to this really awesome sushi place, maybe tsukiji sushi sen or zen. Definitely the best sushi I have ever eaten. The guy made me this really amazing tuna hand roll because it was my last day in Japan, and also had us try this weird Japanese pudding-like substance that rather than being sweet was, as Akemi put it "Japanese flavor." To be honest I don't usually like things with "Japanese flavor." It was okay and weird and hot, but with the consistency of pudding. I didn't get too much because I didn't want Akemi to have to pay a lot, but what I got was all amazing and it was plenty for my brunch. It was pouring rain outside, so in order to walk around I went to get a cheap umbrella. Amusingly about 1 minute after I started using it the wind blew it inside out and broke it. So in the end we went over to an arcade and did purikura, which was very amusing and girly. She helped me find the train back to the airport and we said our fairwells. She definitely made my last couple of days in Tokyo way better than they would have been and I'm really grateful for that. So that was the end of my Japanese adventure. Well, almost I guess. There was a Japanese guy sitting next to me on the plane who was going to go to Arizona, and I talked to him for a long while. He was surprised that I spoke Japanese and we talked about a wide variety of topics. Interestingly enough, he actually knew where Fukui is and really likes that place. That's where my friend John did his JET service and most people don't know about it.
I arrived in San Francisco a few hours before I left.
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