I have become a total weekend warrior these days. When the weekend hits, I hit it back. This weekend I went to Tokyo. I went on Friday night with my friend Declan with the intention of going clubbing. We never got round to it though because we had a very late dinner. We ate at a nice little spot in the Shibuya district called Who’s Food. I got to watch some of the snow boarding in the Olympics which I hadn’t watched at all yet. I watched the women’s snow boarding and ski jump. It was good. I got to have Mexican food too which was incredible. That isn’t really a style of cooking that has caught on here. Then we went to Karaoke till the wee hours of the morning. I grabbed an hour of sleep in an internet café. I did a little shopping and sight seeing and then headed home around 6:30 last night. I bought a couple of CDs the best of which is a Blossom Dearie album by Verve. I had it before but it got scratched coming here so I re-purchased it.
I enjoy Tokyo because you can see all the things that everyone thinks about when they think of Japan. There are the drunken salary men passed out on the train platform, the crazy fashions of Japanese young people, great electronics shopping and all the rest of it. You might think that all major cities wind up feeling the same but you could never feel that Tokyo had much in common with Toronto. I like Toronto too but this is different. You never feel like that many people are around in Toronto. In Tokyo, there are people everywhere. You are always in a stream of people. It is easy to start going in the wrong direction because you find yourself just moving with the pack until you stop thinking about where it was you want to go to on your own. It has a strange effect on you because although you are literally packed in people, if you are walking around on your own, it is easy to feel completely alienated from other people. In some ways thing is a nice feeling because you can do what ever strange thing you want and not worry about anyone else. It puts all of your impulsive thoughts into action. I like to put in my iPod and sing to it at the top of my voice while I walk.
I got to the English floor of a big book store in Shinjuku district. There were people working there to pull you into the elevators so they didn’t wait around. That was a little scary. You can feel claustrophobic easily enough in an elevator with someone pushing it full of people while shouting instructions at you in Japanese. I bought a little book called The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I think it was a very fashionable book to read about 7 years ago but I didn’t have time to read it then. I had forgotten about it until I came to Japan. It is very popular here, they call it Arukemisuto. Sound it out, it’s practically the same. I also got a great Point and Speak Japanese book. That will really come in handy. I found some kids having a soccer practice on the tiniest soccer pitch I have ever seen. I watched them for a while but they were mainly practicing throw-ins. Then I found a little temple by the Keio Plaza hotel. It is always weird to find a temple in the middle of a huge urban area. I took some pictures of all the huge buildings that surrounded it but it is hard to get them both in. There were also some of the first cherry blossoms out in a park but could get a picture because it was so surrounded by other photographers.
Today, I slept as late as possible and then cleaned the house within an inch of its life. Well the first floor anyways. Things broke in the house this week so I had repairs people in. The washer overflowed everywhere after Tom came over to “fix” it for me. A man’s touch, eh Tom? The microwave is also stuck on the convection mode. I think I will buy myself a nice new oven and just forget about the microwave part altogether. It would be better to be able to cook lasagna than reheat my tea. I miss lasagna. Other than that, nothing much is new. My bike got returned to me. I was pretty surprised by that. I had to go in and see my board office supervisor and there it was at the front door. Now I have a guest bike which is pretty sweet.