The train was hot and crowded with drunk people, some asleep, some awake, some stuck somewhere in between, all victims of another hot summer’s evening spent drink, no doubt in some cramped small corner somewhere that smelt of stale beer and vomit caked into the walls after years and years of the same rough cycle.
This was Tokyo as he had come to know it. A sticky, sweaty, hastily slapped together swirl of lights, stress, and piss. Continue reading
Hey there, it’s been a while.
Sorry for the lack of updates but I’ve moved back in with my grandparents and they don’t really have a working internet connection. Besides, at this point, I’m pretty much contractually barred from saying anything interesting anyways.
Yes, I signed a contract and, as of last week, am now going to Yoshimoto Kogyo’s comedy “school” in Tokyo and will be doing so for the full year. And the company doesn’t exactly want us giving away trade secrets or talking about how hard they ride people (or not*wink*) in class and all that sort of stuff.
In other words, aside from the occasional food post, don’t expect much content up here. Sorry.
Peace out.
STEPHEN
PS You can keep up with my exploits (and all the times I get yelled at) on Twitter.
Last week I found myself making a fortuitous trip to Tokyo for a quick business meeting and with time to spare over the weekend (At least, my weekend). As anyone who has ever seen me can tell you, I enjoy eating and, while in Japan, enjoy eating ramen in particular. And eat ramen, I did.
Since I was staying with my grandparents on the southside of Tokyo, I hit up Tabelog (the Japanese equivalent of Yelp, except on Tabelog, people don’t give one star reviews because the bus boy looked like their ex-boyfriend or five star reviews because the baby at the next table was really cute) and searched for the best ramen in the neighborhood. This is what I found. On Tabelog, anything above a 3.5 rating is usually pretty darn good and anything above four stars as a destination meal. So imagine my surprise when I came across Takano, a ramen shop but a mere several kilometer walk from my grandparents’ hovel with a sterling 4.05 star rating. My gastronomical target now in my sights, I laced up my new too-big-for-my-feet Clarks and left for an early lunch.
So after a fifteen minute walk from my grandparent’s house, I arrived at the place twenty minutes before opening and still found a decently sizable (that’s what she said) line awaiting me. As it turns out, waiting in line is customary here (as with any other great ramen joint in Tokyo- or the rest of Japan, for that matter).
From the outside looking in
Once I actually got inside, I found myself at one of those classic stereo-typical L-shaped counter-only Showa-poi shops with one of those maneki-neko’s waving at me from a shelf over the stove (along with a plaque noting its place in the Micheline guide). Not exactly stunning decor but the place was clean enough and gave the impression of a place people would actually be semi-comfortable in in a sober state. I mean, I’m not taking a chick here on a date probably ever but I’d come here with food friends on a weekend.
After another ten minutes of waiting (this time seated), my bowl arrived. And what did I get for my 970 yen?
In case the sodium-laden broth or pork didn’t raise your cholesterol, the egg’ll do you in.
Quintessential Tokyo-style noodles and broth (fishy and salty but not overpowering) topped with melt in your mouth slices of char siu pork and a perfectly cooked agitama flavored egg. Worth the wait (though I still think waiting two hours is a bit much during peak hours). I just wish I wasn’t fighting a cold when I went. Guess I’ll have to come back again.
Rating: 4 and a half Stephens (out of five Stephens)
Happy birthday to me.
Happy birthday to me.
So it’s my birthday again. That happened fast. It felt like it was only yesterday that I was complaining about it being my birthday (and a particularly cruddy one at that) and waxing poetic on the utter banality of celebrating being born. But really, it turned out to be a year to the day.
I’ve always felt like the first couple of years of someone’s life shouldn’t be counted in someone’s age. I mean, the first couple of years, you can’t even take a dump on your own, let alone tie your shoes. Really, I don’t think we should count that years before someone has to start paying taxes against their age. In other words, I’m actually five years old. Someone buy me Power Rangers bedsheets.
Funny things, birthdays. For the first ten or eleven years, they’re the greatest days ever (even though, for some reason, you always wound up bringing the cupcakes and stuff to share with class to celebrate your own special day, which I’m pretty darn sure is actually some sort of Stalinist brainwashing technique meant to acclimate us to socialized medicine and gulaugs, or maybe I’m just paranoid). Then, at some unknown point in time, they suddenly turn into the worst days ever. (“Oh god. It’s my birthday. I hope no one notices. Well, I hope they don’t sing… Crap they’re singing.”) Maybe birthdays stop losing their importance when they stop becoming massive goallines where you suddenly level up and are granted the ability to drive a car or drink a beer. That isn’t to say that you can’t go for a joyride when you’re fifteen years and three-hundred-and-sixty-four days old. It just means that, for whatever arbitrary reason, you’re suddenly adult enough to do it without having the cops send you to juvie. It’s not like you’re anymore mature on your sixteenth birthday than you were the day before. It just means that some fatass bureaucrat in some cushy office somewhere looked at the calendar and decided that 16th birthdays were the perfect day to give someone the right to text behind the wheel.
You know what else I don’t understand? The Happy Birthday song. Who the hell is that for? If I wanted to hear off-key singing and proclamations of how “dear” I am to someone (A little too North Korea-ey if you ask me), I’d just listen to the latest Taylor Swift album. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the fact you guys are singing for my benefit but at the very least put in a couple of practice rounds before you’re all making me go deaf. If you really want me to have a happy birthday, you should all just shut the hell up and leave me alone with my cake. Amnamnamnamnamnam <– That’s my flat slob shoving food into his face voice, in case you found that too confusing.
And most of the time, “Make a wish!” comes off sounding more like a threat than a good-natured whatzit. “Make a wish!” you all say as cheap-ass wax candles melt all over a previously perfectly fine cake. Make a wish or what? Are you going to just let the candles burn down to stubs, coating the entire top of the cake with melted wax in some S&M perverts wildest fantasy unless I make a stupid wish? Are you going to think any less of me if I don’t make a wish but pretend I did? What if I wished for something stupid? I mean, solving world hunger is great and all but what kind of eleven year old would wish for something like that? Find me a kid who says that’s what his wish was and I’ll find you a pair of parents that should probably have their kids taken away from them. Being a kid means being a selfish asswad and promptly not getting whatever stupid piece of crap it was that you wished for. I think we should just ban those sorts of wishes. That way starving Ethiopian children don’t get their hopes up that little Johnny’s wish for world hunger to stop is going to magically make it so Africa isn’t a stinking hellhole anymore.
You’re five years old, kid. What the hell are you wishing for a cure for AIDS for? Two-faced lying bastard.
You know what birthdays are to me? An excuse to be a fat bastard. Let me preface this by saying that I have generally stopped drinking for my New Year’s Resolution, which means that I merely a fat bastard and not a fat drunk one, which would just be excessive.
Since I have to work Saturdays (Thanks, Obama!), most of my pigging out had to take place on Friday. And, since I am a loser who doesn’t like to socialize, most of my pigging out took place alone in dark, secluded spaces with me crying to myself and shaking uncontrollably like one of those “Vietnam vets” you see at Pier 39 who you’re pretty sure are half-tempted to buttrape you the second you turn the other way. Okay, that may have been a bit of a fabrication at the end there but I digress. I did eat alone though and with my earphones in because I live to eat in an isolated realm of flavor because I’m one of those douchey foodsnobs who thinks they’re better than everyone else.
Because I was coming off of a six day work week and because I am a night owl to the Nth degree (thank you American sports), my orgy of gluttony got off to a late start, with me leaving my apartment bright and early at 3 PM, after which I proceeded to Mito Station (pretty much the one happening spot in my entire city) and its Ramen Road, one of my main haunts mainly due to the fact that it is home to pretty much my favorite bite of food on the planet at this current moment: A bowl of tsukemen from Tsukemen TETSU, a branch of the mighty Tsukemen Tetsu based in Tokyo, one of the apparent originators of tsukemen (in which the noodles are served separately to be dipped into the ultra-flavorful condensed pork/fish broth). Served with thick cut char-shu, bamboo, and the stunning ball of flavor and cholesterol that is an ajitama (seasoned soft-boiled egg), were it not for the fact that I would be dead after a week, I would eat here for every meal of every day if I could.
You know you want it.
After that, I promptly got on a train and rode because what the hell else was I supposed to do with myself at 4 PM on a Friday? After a good thirty minute ride on a train populated almost exclusively by noisy high school kids and old dudes who are probably rapists, I wound up in the town of Hitachi, Ibaraki Prefecture’s northern hub and, who would’ve guessed this, the home of the large Hitachi Corporation. Sure I got there late but the sun was still up and a nice breeze was rolling in off the water (might be important to note that Hitachi is only 100 or so kilometers from Fukushima) and so I walked around and generally just looked like someone casing the city for a crime spree. But hey, at least I took this picture.
Precariously positioned houses by the same Pacific Ocean responsible for 3/11.
I didn’t eat in Hitachi because I was too scared to go into a store (and every single place seemed to be closed down). And so it was back onto the train, this time packed to the gills with sweaty salarymen, weird people, and old dudes that were already blacked out drunk at six in the evening, getting their nasty unbrushed teeth breath all up in my grill all the way back to Mito. Uncomfortable doesn’t even begin to describe it.
I got back to Mito and ate a bunch more crap that ranged between good and okay (but really everything pales when compared to the tsukemen object of my desires) but this post is getting really wordy and my writing muscles are getting tired and I’m rapidly approaching a brain strain and I may have had a bit too much birthday whiskey. Needless to say, I lack any self-control and pretty much have to gorge myself at any given opportunity. So really, who’s a year old now? I still eat everything in sight like Baby Pacman.
This restaurant was literally abandoned. I might have actually been served by ghosts.
No birthday is complete without something that will take ten years off your life.
Hiho there folks! Sorry for the recent lack of updates. I was in Tokyo for most of last week for work stuff and then, when I got back, I was sicker than a slug. Couple that with the insanely beautiful weather right now and it’s really any wonder that I’m writing something at all!
Anyways, since I am doing my best to keep the JapaNEWS as a weekly-ish show, I pumped out a March 31st edition of the thing, no matter how unprepared or sick I was.
On this week’s/ last week’s show, I discuss:
A dude is released from Japanese Death Row after 40 years.
A Fukushima cleanup worker dies but not from what you think.
The Japanese tax hike and its fallout.
And finally, the big Tokyo Youtube Hanami thing happening on the 5th. Also promoted here
As always, if you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to leave them either here or on the youtube channel OR on twitter (@STEPHEN_TETSU).
And with that, expect this week’s installment to drop in a few days.
-STEPHEN
PS Sorry for the total lack of updates. I have been really busy with work and sicker than fish. I promise to be better going forward and if I’m not, you can shoot me.
I’ve never really been all that bothered by long airplane trips. Sure they pack you into a tight enclosed space with some of the least comfortable seats imaginable and you’re essentially strapped in place of hours on end like some sort of mental patient in a Kubrick movie or something. And then there are the several hundred other passengers also thrown onto the flight for good measure, some of them almost certain to be quite ill or small children who will undoubtedly spend half of the flight screaming like someone just sawed off their leg. Sure (until recently) you’ve been forced to inexplicably turn off all your electronic devices for what seems like half of the flight because, in all their infinite wisdom, the world’s best and brightest apparently just can’t figure out how to make it so airplanes won’t explode because Cousin Jimmy is playing Angry Birds on his iPhone, forcing you to resort to (a) reading a book, or (b) cannibalism.
But with all those caveats, I don’t mind the mind numbing immobility of a long haul airplane ride. Hell, I might actually like it. In a modern world filled to the brim with all sorts of stimuli and crack-monkey culture, sometimes it’s good to just take a chill pill and enjoy the pleasantly tasteless monotony of airline food.
In terms of this bleak world of cross-oceanic airplane travel, my flight from San Francisco onwards to Haneda on Wednesday night was a freaking trip to Tahiti. The main reason why? Free space.
Unlike most of my other trips between Japan and the states, this flight was relatively lightly travelled, giving me an entire half a row to myself. Add in the fact that I was on a newer plane (the ironically named Boeing 787 Dreamliner, I’ll get to that a bit later.) and I was practically staying at the Ritz. Okay, well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration but it was still better than the usual situation where you have to stuff your full-sized adult legs into a space that could have only been designed for the legs of a ten-year-old girl and a small one at that. The great thing about the new Dreamliner is that the in-flight entertainment system is new, in other words, not the 1980s reject systems I had to deal with all my other times across the ocean. One thing not so awesome about the Dreamliner I was on: there was a constant buzz through the entirety of the eleven hour flight, meaning it was even more impossible to sleep on the Dreamliner than on the usual run-of-the-mill aircraft.
As per usual, the movies on the plane were either things I’ve already seen (Pacific Rim) or complete and utter crap (World War Z). Since Pacific Rim was one of my favorite movies of the year, I didn’t mind watching that again but I want the two hours I wasted on World War Z back. Spoilers: Brad Pitt saves the world and Peter Capaldi doesn’t use his TARDIS. At least the screen they built into the seat in front of me was bigger than an iPhone screen like the old ones almost were. Audio system’s still crap though.
Gonna make this a two-parter because a lot happened once I landed and I kinda want to keep posts coming at a normal pace/whenever I’m near a stable internet connection.
-Stephen
As I was writing this, I just experienced the first earthquake of my new life in Japan (only a 3 on the Shindo scale, magnitude 4.8). My grandparent’s house rumbled and shook for a few seconds but nothing too major. It’s an old house made of wood with paper thin walls, which means it’s freaking old but also durable when it comes to tremors. How did I react to the shakes? I stopped writing for a brief moment and simply admired nature at work. I suppose I should have a little fear in me but what’s the point? If I freaked out about every earthquake I felt in Japan, I’d probably be freaked out all the freaking time.
Stephen Tetsu 