Tokyo Road Journals – Part Three

2am
I am awoken by the sound of squealing tires outside of the hotel window. For a moment I have no idea where I am. Where is this place? Is that a photo of the backside of a horse on the wall? Why am I on the floor? Oh my God, it’s finally happened just as I always knew it would. Aliens! Goddamned aliens. Sure, my ass feels penetration free but I bet it was probed with the vigor of a wiener dog digging into a box of Snausages. They’ve left me here in this unknown room, striped me naked and rendered me incoherent in an effort to cast doubt on my raving tale of abduction. No, wait, maybe it was kidney thieves. I was walking around, minding my own, maybe searching looking for some donuts or Mallomars and up game the van, the door is tossed open and three masked men with Uzis toss me onto the cold floor inside…all is darkness and five hours later I wake up in a dark hotel room stripped naked with a long scar running down the left side of my body. But the left side of my body is fine and I remember that I am in the Hotel Princess Garden, a happy land of rainbows and unicorns, or so the name of the hotel would suggest. With a name like Hotel Princess Garden why are the walls not made out of candy? Damn it, now I was hungry for donuts and Mallomars! All around me I find shavings of myself, pealed skin from my sunburned arm. That Wakayama beach sun really did a number on me. Small patches of discarded skin are now showing up on both arms and not just the large portion of decaying me on my upper left arm. I clean up the dried, dead skin and toss it. I wouldn’t want the maid staff to get any ideas. Everybody has heard the stories of hotel maids finding Canadian skin in Japanese hotel rooms and knowing how big a market there is out there for Canadian DNA they thieve said skin and sell it for top dollar to mad-Japanese scientists who then proceed to clone the Canadian using the skin for the soul purpose of ruining lives and world domination. You know, the usual tale of hotel rooms and dead skin. Yeah, Snopes.com claims urban legend but when a younger version of you walks into your life 14-years after the hotel room, goatee evil and ready to kill, you tell me it’s an urban legend. No sir, I’m flushing this clone creating mess before other mes are unleashed upon the unsuspecting public. Glancing over at the bed I see that Mog has not returned. Haven’t the trains stopped running, I thought? Somewhere I now picture him in a bathtub full of ice missing HIS kidney. Mog’s kidneys being much larger would be worth far more then mine on the black market. Ah but Mog’s a smart guy and I was sure he could take care of himself. I deduced that his night of a few drinks had just extended into a night of a dozen drinks and somewhere, right now, a drunken Mog was on a Tokyo dance floor trying out his best Japanese pick up line: “Howsabotus I be Godzilla and you be downtown Tokyo?” or maybe “Would you like to touch my little bonsai?” I figured he be back in a few hours, stumbling in, maybe crashing into the bathroom door, before taking the Nestea plunge into the bed. I just hoped I wasn’t crushed on the floor in the process of this stumbling. Maybe I could make a fort around me with the desk, the bed stand and one of the hallway porn card machines? Nawwww, I’d be alright.

5am
Still no Mog. I’ve just removed the Do Not Disturb sign from the doorway and locked him out. I figure if he comes back, and now it is really a big if because I am sure he’s been attacked by wild Pokemon that stalk the night streets for victims (I never trust anything that can only speak it’s own name). I still don’t take the bed, though. There’s always hope that Mog was able to fend them off using bar coasters and napkins.

7am
Mog has just returned offering this line as the only explanation to his whereabouts before he passed out in the hotel room bed: “I didn’t know I’d be aiding and abetting one of the world’s best drinkers.” He said something else as well, mumbling something about booze, bars and what sounded like a New Kids On The Block lyric before he was dead to the world. He didn’t look good. His eyes were tomato red and his face hung down like it was melting candle wax. In fact, I was starting to think that this wasn’t Mog at all but a zombie version of Mog smelling of booze and cigarette smoke…a very lazy zombie who has chosen to eat my brains after a good nap. I was thinking of grabbing a little breakfast but the extra sleep could do me well. I had a mountain to climb tomorrow and more rest could only strengthen my body in preparation. Mog starts to snore. Hummm….I wonder if the Wendy’s is open.

11am
I made it to sleep anyway. Mog is now showering and puking up whatever he dove into last night. He told me of a night drinking with his friend’s father who, from the description, was a reincarnated Bukowski. Various bars and drinks later and Dad is going strong while Mog is seeing little trolls on the dance floor with the head of Balki from Perfect Strangers (okay, so I made up the last part). With the trains no longer running he and his friend leave the father to drink the last drop of booze in Tokyo and return her hotel room where he would stay the night. What comes from the bathroom now resemble the sound rocks make when tossed into a blender. Sorry, mom, but I still hold to my story that it was all in the name of science. The first man to liquefy rocks in a blender would have made you proud. Did I not offer to pay for a new counter top? Mog and I planned the day before his brief affair with the hotel room toilet. Earlier on in our planning he mentioned an Indian buffet that sounded amazing but yesterday I wasn’t up for chowing down on chutney. We’d hit the place for lunch, we decided, and then visit downtown Tokyo before heading to a place Mog had never been before, a place not in the Lonely Planet guide, that contained some large shopping centers and some interesting avantguard architecture. We’d then call it an early night after a visit to one of the city’s main shrines, the last thing on my short list of things to see in Tokyo. Mog exits the bathroom in a cloud of steam: “I’ve puked. I’ve shat. Let’s eat some Indian food.”

Later
Mogs Indian join was called the Raj-Mahal and was some of the finest Indian food I’ve ever eaten…in Japan. It is strange to walk into a foreign food restaurant in another country. I can’t quite explain it. Back home you are used to seeing Indian people, Japanese people, Chinese people excreta due to the melting-pot society that is Canada. When you walk into a foreign food join you expect the to speak English which is generally the case and thus ordering your shawarma or bowl of pho is a quick process. Hell, you can even get your Gai Phad Med Mamuang delivered! Here, walking into an Indian restaurant and seeing Japanese people is strange but walking into an Indian restaurant and seeing Indian people is even stranger. This place would have both. The layout was of typical Indian food joint fair but the images of Vishnu were absent. Our waiter, a tall Indian man who spoke perfect English, escorted us to our table. We sat next to a trio of Indian men enjoying plates of fine smelling whatever that is. Having only been in restaurants of Asian fair packed with either Asian folk or the occasional white traveler, this was an interesting experience. Before the waiter spoke I wondered if he would talk to us in Japanese or maybe Hindi. English didn’t spring to mind and why would it. Restaurant staff haven’t spoken to me in English in over half a year. The pricey buffet lunch was worth every Yen. With four different curries, two salads, chutney, Nan, spicy potato dishes and tantalizing deserts (complete with a complimentary drink of which I choose the Lassi [no, not a liquefied Rough Collie but a sweet yogurt concoction]). I tore through three plates of the buffet, sampling everything despite my better judgement. You may recall an incident of me gorging myself on all items in an Organic buffet a few months back that lead to a mighty upheaval in an Osaka station bathroom. And you know, looking back at it now, Indian food may not be the best of meal choices the day before hiking up a mountain. I foresaw an evening of hell played out on my lower half and a mere hour and a half after leaving the Raj-Mahal this premonition was already starting to bear fruit as I worked my way from train station bathroom to train station bathroom. Indian food goes through me like sand through a sieve.
















And then the skyscrapers finally came. I had begun to wonder if all the images of Tokyo I’d seen, the shots of a towering metropolis, had been fabricated or, if anything, never rebuilt to their former glory after the last lizard, giant moth or flying turtle attack. Mog and I were now in the heart of Tokyo and the towers were giant beasts of steel and glass all around us. Here the sun was blocked out by the mammoth structures offering a bit of a cool reprieve from the scorching Japanese sun.






If there was an appointed leader of these castles in the air I’d say the crown belonged to The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. There, smack in the middle of it all, this two towered, 51 story giant was completed in 1991 at a cost of 157 billion yen. The building was funded by cash from the public which has earned it the nickname Tax Tower. The design of architect Kenzo Tange was meant to create the image of a Gothic cathedral and in that he succeed if you can look around the steal and glass and picture lots and lots of bricks. The area below the building looks like a Greek theatre or even a Roman coliseum. The building and it’s surrounding certain stick out in their uniqueness.




Statues circle the grounds and although I didn’t know what they meant one can easily get Biblical images from some of them. The woman holding the apple, for example, could be Eve and the nearing man Adam. The building is open to the public and you can ride a speedy elevator up to the top of both towers to visit the observation decks. Tower Two was closed today so Mog and I lined up for Tower One. Before entering the elevator you are subjected to a search, a very brief search. If this was the US there would be armed men and sniffing dogs. Here you get three guys pawing at your bags for a few seconds before they usher you through. Mog’s tripod bag wasn’t even checked and surly if anything was concealing a weapon it was the long, circular object. The elevator to the 51st floor takes only a few seconds. Midway your ears pop. My right ear, nearly emptied now of the wax build up, needed a good pop.






The view from the top allows you to look over the city from every angle except for underneath. Mog pointed out some of the areas we’d already been before venturing off to capture some HD photographs with the camera and seek out new Kitty Chans. Although I am not a big city kind of bloke, I have to marvel at the architecture in places like this. I was enthralled by the scale and the construction of these buildings and my camera roamed over the contours of them to take close up shots of their design. I’d have taken more but the Indian food attacked again and I spent the next 15 minutes vacating the Rear Admiral from 51 stories up. Man, that chutney is a killer.




4pm
Odaiba is a man-made island in Tokyo Bay. Sometimes referred to as the futuristic sounding Tokyo Teleport Town (due to the main train station on the island), Odaiba was conceived in 1853 as a hub for a series of fortresses that would protect Tokyo from sea based attacks. The modern day Odaiba started construction after Expo ’85. For a cost of $10 billion, the island would grow to be a futuristic world outside of the city. In fact, the idea was to make it a city unto itself which could be home to thousands. However, when the Japanese economy started to plummet in the early 90s the area because a ghost town of empty parking lots, unused land space and vacant stores. 1996 saw a redesign of the area to allow more entertainment and commercial development were the residential areas had failed. Hotels soon dotted the island and the Fuji Television moved it’s studios to Odaiba with the construction of a unique building. Two towers are split by smaller ones creating a patchwork of sorts of building and open space. Near the center of the tower is a giant, silver ball. This is but one of the unique, avantguard structures you can find on the island of Odaiba. The island contains a few large shopping malls, the more popular being Decks Tokyo Beach (there is a beach on the island although swimming in the bay is not recommended) and Aqua City. Zepp Tokyo, a huge nightclub, is also located on the island. One of the biggest claims to fame is the Palette Town Ferris Wheel. Standing at 115m this, for a time, was the biggest wheel in the world (the London Eye would take that spot a year after the Palette opened). You can even find a little slice of New York City here with a replica of the Statue of Liberty. The structures on Odaiba are out of control in some places, as though the architect closed his eyes and his drafting table, made a couple of lines and rolled with them. All the buildings here are unique in one way or another with their structures exemplified by eccentricity. Mog and I wouldn’t spend much time here which is unfortunate as there was so much to see. The sun was setting and there was a shrine to visit but one could have spent an entire day here. We made it as far as the main mall, stopping to grab some bottled Coke (and Canada Dry!) before stumbling upon either a museum of car show devoted to Toyota vehicles. Shawn and Steph, your eyes would be bugging out of your head at some of the cars in this place. As for me, I wasn’t impressed by much save for the two cars of the future and the robotic baby seats. There was even a little something for the kiddies as a life-sized Pikachu stood on stage for snapshots. This guy was like the Easter Bunny here as a long cue of kids waited to meat the famous, yellow Pokemon in the fur. Is it fur? Does Pichachu have fur? Des, help me out on this one. Alright, time to leave this island of the future. A couple of moving sidewalks, some domed buildings and some flying cars and this could be a live action Jetsons movie set.



9pm
And now another day is over. Mog and I have just returned from the Asakusa shrine and though I’m not particularly tired, lots of sleep last night, knowing what lies ahead tomorrow leads me to the pillow. But first, let’s polish up this day in the road journal. The Asakusa shrine was about to close up when we arrived so we had to hurry down the path of souvenir shops (most which had already closed) to see it. This shrine is located next to the Buddhist temple of Senso-ji and I’d only get a glance at it before we would shuffle off. The temple of Senso-ji held more interest to me as it is the oldest temples in Tokyo. Passing through the kaminari-mon (Thunder Gate) where a giant paper lantern hangs, you walk down the path of tacky shops which have become synonymous at large tourist spot to get to the temple. Legend tells of a Kannon found in the Sumida River in 628. The two fishermen who discovered it returned it to their village where it was inshrined in the chief of the village’s home, now made into a temple. Light up at night, the temple is a pretty spectacular sight. Though most of the areas on the site were in the process of closing down or had already done so, I still was able to visit the Kau Cim stalls. Kau Cim is a type of Chinese fortune telling where an oracle answers the faithful inquirers of those who believe in such things as oracles. You know, like Morpheus. The oracle at Sanso-ji is actually a bunch of metal containers. The fortune seekers wobble a branded stick taken from one of the contains and remove their “answer” from a one of 100 drawers. Interesting. Wouldn’t it be fun to place “Drink more Ovaltine” fortunes in every one of those drawers? The crowds had dwindled this late in the day so I was able to get some pretty interesting shots of the shrine. Blazing red and resembling a few of the other temples I’ve seen what sets Senso-ji apart is the dramatic lighting of the buildings after sunset. The pagoda alone is a gorgeous site against the night sky backdrop. On our way back to the train Mog and I passed a mural that told of the history of Asakusa.


Once the main entertainment area of Tokyo, the spotlight on Asakusa has faded, replaced by Shinjuku, Shibuya and Roppongi. I’d later discover that Asakusa is host to one of the few geisha areas in Tokyo. None would be found this evening. I did finally find a Gamera related item in one of the shops leading up to the temple and sometimes a flying turtle is all you need to get you through the sleepy train ride back to your hotel room. With that, the final day in Tokyo comes to an end. I nicked off all the sites I wanted to see and Mog introduced me to a few more. Overall, I’d say I was underimpressed but not as much as I thought I’d be. Tokyo was supposed to be a way station, just a stop on the road before the mountain, but a few golden eggs were discovered and though I’d never want to live there (or return, even) this one time stop in the famed Japanese megalopolis was enjoyable. Out go the room lights in this last night in the Hotel Princess Garden. The alarms are set for the early morning hour of 7am. We would have a bus to catch. Tomorrow would be spent heading up. I was both excited and dreading the mountain and as I turn out the lights I see lots of pain in my future. I also see an unforgettable experience, for good or ill, a souvenir you can’t find in those cheap shops and though tonight half of me is already feeling the burn the other half is already on the peak.