I am writing nearly a year and half after this took place, so excuse me if I gloss over everything of note. NIIIICE!

DAY 1, Tuesday
I arrived at Narita Airport, huzzah! I took the train from there to Ueno, but I didn't know what to train to transfer to from Ueno station, so I sat around for an hour feeling incredibly helpless until a kindly old drunk ushered me onto a train. On the train he continued drinking the tall boy of beer which he was carrying, and he harangued the other passengers about english vocabulary so he could chat me up. He was totally awesome!

I arrived in Asakusa where I was staying, and I just wandered around for a while before going to sleep. NIIIICE!

Day 2, Wednesday
I woke up real early because of my jetlag, ate some breakfast then took a nap. I was supposed to meet my friend Haruka to hang out, so this nap was bad news. Luckily I woke up just in time to meet her. More on this day will be written once I have pictures scanned in.

Day 3, Thursday Today I was supposed to meet up with Reika, whom my friend Mike had introduced me to. She showed me around all the record shops in Tokyo, because, pretty much, I'm a huge music nerd. I told her that my goal for the day was to eat weird Japanese pizza. Unfortunately, we went to Shakey's pizza and they were already closed, but I went there a year later and discovered the glory that is Shakey's Pizza!!!

Here we are doing purikura, which Reika said she hadn't done in 10 years! Huzzah!



Day 4, Friday


Here I am at the Dienoji Rock Festival, where I had the good fortune of seeing Breakfast, the Zazen Boys, The Pees and... THE GING NANG BOYZ. Niiiice! Many thanks to Reika #2 (pictured left) for showing me around all night, and being totally nice in general.

My plan earlier this day had been to explore Tokyo more, but I found out that Japanese ATMs don't accept American cards upon entering a bank in Akihabara. I only had $100 to my name, and it was actually Paul's money which he had given me to buy him a Honda shirt (which, by the way, are horribly overpriced/ugly). I decided to go to Kawasaki (home of Club Citta, the site of the Dienoji Rock Festival) early as to not spend any money, and save it all for the concert that night. I was there for about 4 or 5 hours by myself, reading Foundation by Isaac Asimov, before anything even started to happen. Reika and her friend had also arrived pretty freakin' early, so I struck up a conversation with them outside of the convenience store next to Club Citta, and Reika knew who I was already (more on this later). Luckily for me, they ended up being the nicest people ever.

It turns out that at big Japanese concerts, your tickets are numbered, and you're admitted inside in ticket order. I was 217 of 1000, so they showed me the place to wait (a sweltering underground parking garage) and eventually I got in. Apparently Reika was on the Ging Nang Boyz guest list, so she just waltzed in at her leisure! Inside, out of the goodness of their hearts, Reika and her friend bought me drinks and food (the amaguri/chestnut was especially good) and we hung out most of the night.

After about 6 or 7 bands, the Ging Nang Boyz played, and before I could really gather my bearings regarding how awesome they were, Reika told me that she had tracked down the Ging Nang Boyz's manager, and he told her that they wanted to meet me. This leads into a whole different story, but to make it short, my band covered one of their songs, and the word spread that I'd be at that show. The singer Mineta wrote about it in his journal, which apparently the zombie masses of Ging Nang Boyz fans read everyday. That is how Reika knew who I was ahead of time, as well as a dozen other kids who were at the show.

I was pretty nervous about meeting them since as I was a huge fan, and my Japanese language skills were pretty atrocious. My friend Mike had already introduced me to their guitarist Takahiro so he was expecting me to be there, and the rest of the guys were tight too. I got a few pictures with them and some shirts, then I went and took a nap on a couch because that jetlag hit me with full force by 2 AM. Here's the awful thing: Summer in Japan is hot all the time, so I never carried a sweatshirt or jacket with me, but the inside of Club Citta was air-conditioned to the point of being freezing cold, so I felt like a shivering derelict lying there on the couch with my arms in my shirt, trying to stay warm.

The show ended around 7 AM, and to be honest, after the Ging Nang Boyz, I only caught a few more bands because I was totally exhausted. I took the 45 minute train ride back to my hotel and slept till 2 or 3.

Day 5, Saturday
This was the only day I spent by myself in Tokyo, and basically just wandered around Shibuya and Shinjuku aimlessly and looked at stuff. My goal had been to find Tokyo Tower, but a few days later my friends told me it's not that great, so I guess I didn't miss out on anything.

Notable thing from today: I saw a public trash can! Trash cans don't exist in Japan, except for in front of convenience stores.

Day 6, Sunday
Today I went back to Shimokitazawa and bought Fruity's "Rocky Colt & Tum-Tum" 7", as well as Going Steady's "Sakura No Uta" 12" at Disk Union. I totally got lost in Shimokitazawa and was kinda freaked out, but ended up making my way back to the train station somehow. Later on I met up with German Mike from Foothill in Shibuya (once again getting lost) and we wandered for a while, ate curry, and went our separate ways. He had been studying Japanese at a language school there, but it seemed like he was getting worn down by the daily grind of commuting from the rural suburbs an hour every day.

I had to part company with Mike early because I was planning on going to see Coquettish play at the Match Vox in a Tokyo suburb called Hachioji. It took about 40 minutes to get to the Hachioji station, but when I got there I really had no idea at all about where the club was. I saw a punk rock looking girl on the train and considered asking her if she was going to show, but thought that I might seem like a creepy gaijin, so I didn't do that. Instead, I did something genuinely more creepy. From 20 feet behind, I trailed three punk looking dudes with Operation Ivy buttons out of the station hoping that they'd walk up to the club. Lo and behold, they did!

The show was hit and miss, mainly miss. 4 of the 5 bands were these sappy pop-punk bands, singing in broken english, and boring in general. Coquettish played 4th that night and were the only band that got the crowd moving, which was fun. Most of their songs come off a lot better live than recorded. While they do sing in broken english too, they're not boring in the least.

Side notes from the show: Skate videos in between bands = entertainment; second-hand smoke in a small club = burning eyes; punk rock girl from train = punk rock girl at show.



Day 7, Monday
My homeboy Daisuke met up with me at my hotel and we went to his house in Chiba. I'd be staying there for a few days. We went to his university, in a part of Chiba called Kashiwa, because he had to give a presentation in his English class. Homeboy's definitely a step ahead of his classmates linguistically. Afterward, we met up with his posse of friends and went to buy fireworks. I didn't know until later, but this was apparently the first time in months that they had all been able to come and hang out together, so it was pretty special for them.

Before I get into the fireworks, a tangent: My last 2 experiences with fireworks involve my friend Raph. One time I went to the park near his house with our homey Mike, and we shot roman candles at each other, which wasn't the greatest idea, but it was fun. The other time, involved Raph shooting roman candles out the window of my car at a van driving behind us in Tijuana. This was definitely not the greatest idea, and pretty scary to boot, since the van started chasing us, and we could've gotten shanked by some angry Mexicans had we not escaped.

Back to the point though, we went to a park a little outside of town to shoot the fireworks. Unlike America, apparently it's perfectly cool for a bunch of young folks to shoot fireworks in public. I mean, the five fire trucks (no joke) across the park totally didn't care. There's not much to be said about that, except it was totemo N!

           

After that some of us went to an onsen nearby. An onsen is a Japanese style bath, and it's quite relaxing. An onsen is separated into sections for men and women, and everyone gets naked. The main reason I mention this is because I found it funny that all the little kids and old men were running around perfectly comfortable with their nakedness, while all of us young adults self consciously held little towels over our goods. There were different types of baths available, some built out of certain types of wood or stone, but there was also this insane one that shot electrical current through the water. I totally got into that pool to see what it was like, and I don't remember it being pleasant at all, but for some reason I totally wanna try it again. Here's some pictures of us cold chillin' after getting our bathe on...


Day 8, Tuesday
Today we went to the University again to meet up with Daisuke's posse. I suppose I should've introduced them earlier, but instead I'll just list their names here to make up for my oversight:

Dudes - Katsunori, Hiroshi, Waka, Yoshinori and the other Daisuke, aka Shirota.
Honeys - Mami, Ayumi, Hiroko.

I told them that I wanted to eat weird pizza, which I had unsuccessfully tried to do when I hung out with Reika in Tokyo. This time however we were successful, and I totally got a pizza with mayonnaise instead of pizza sauce, and squid and tuna as toppings. DUDE, you wouldn't believe me, but it was actually pretty tasty. As a self respecting Mexican/American I'm very ashamed.

We totally rocked karaoke next. Japanese karaoke places have the most amazing selection of songs. I performed "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix A Lot, "Party Hard" by Andrew WK, and "Doutei So Young" by Going Steady with assistance from Waka. Waka was very impressed by the perverse lyrics in "Baby Got Back", and thus a bridge between cultures was built. Also, as the only native speaker of English, I was enlisted to help sing English parts of songs that the Japanese folks were slightly embarassed about, which meant I got to do such classics as "Sk8er Boi", "Breaking the Habit", "Pretty Fly For a White Guy" and "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". Some of these folks, particularly Yoshinori and Katsunori, were hella studly crooners, doing these sweet ballads with panache to spare.



Next, the bowling alley! I was wearing my awesome ichiban t-shirt, so I was dubbed "Ichiban" for the night, and everyone else had Japanese nicknames which I didn't know! I didn't do too well, but bowling is always fun. This bowling alley was very well organized and clean compared to the ones near my house. The balls were all sorted by size and they weren't all greasy like the ones here. That's that. After that we went to Katsunori's aparment which was about the size of my bedroom, and I fell asleep on the floor whilst the other fellas talked all night. Actually, before that we watched some crazy Japanese sketch comedy videos that were like 10 years old. It was the show that the hosts of HEY!HEY!HEY! were on before they started doing that. I don't think I'll ever understand the appeal of Japanese humor, unless I start immersing myself in 3 Stooges videos or something.



Day 9, Wednesday
I don't really remember what happened on this particular day until I went to Tokyo with Daisuke, Hiroshi and Katsunori. We went to Ikebukuro, a part of Tokyo I hadn't seen while there. We went up Sunshine Tower, this 60 story tall building, the tallest in Tokyo if I'm not mistaken. The view was insane! You could see everything from up there, even almost all the way out to Yokohama and Chiba. The mass of lights went on forever, except for the black spot devoid of lights, which was the site of the Emperor's castle in the middle of Tokyo. On the top floor of the building there was a little museum dedicated to Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro, this Japanese cartoon about monsters. It looked pretty cool, I wonder how come it's never made it's way to America.



In Ikebukuro we also ate at a restaurant where you prepare something called Okonomiyak1 for yourself. It's like an omelette made with scrambled eggs and various other goodies. This was definitely some of the better food I had on this trip.

We went back to Chiba and to Katsunori's apartment again. We played some golf game on the PS2 and drank tall boys. I fell alseep really late, and woke up really early...

Day 10, Thursday
...to get back to Daisuke's house to get my luggage and then head over to the airport. Daisuke and caught a taxi over to a bus station to transfer onto a bus to the airport. At the bus station there was this freaky-deaky kid. Allow me to explain: He had his hair permed into a sort of Dragonball afro, and it was bleached a sort of dark golden color. His skin was also extremely tanned a dark brownish-gold. He was wearing a hawaiian shirt/clamdiggers combo with a flashy black and white camo pattern. I had a seen some semi-freaky dudes around Harajuku a week earlier, but the thing that made this guy great was the fact that he was waiting at the station WITH HIS GRANDMA! How ashamed she must be...

OK! On to the airport. It took about an 30 minutes to get everything checked in with the airline. Then I met up with Daisuke, and he led me over to where Mami, Hiroshi and Katsunori were waiting to surprise with me a farewell! N!!! We went to a restaurant and ate some food, and everybody gave me farewell gifts! Truly the nicest people ever.

At this point, I noticed that I only had about half an hour until my flight was to depart so I rushed over to the departure gate. UNFORTUNATELY, it took about 25 minutes to get through all the customs, and I was completely freaking out. I ran to the gate and made it there barely in time. The folks at the airlines were looking for me, and gave me a light scolding. N. Aside from that the plane home was uneventful, and I got to watch Welcome to Mooseport with Ray Romano, but I don't remember anything about it. Ray Romano is pretty N, but the movie was only so-so.

FIN!

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