Day 46 (January 3, 2013)- Colleen Conveniently Gets "Sick" And Brent Has To Forego The Red Light District. Coincidence? I Think Not!

Not surprisingly, we started off my Mom's final day on the great continent of Asia with a visit to the most American of establishments: Denny's.  It was a bittersweet celebration of sorts.  On one hand, it was sad to see my old roommate Mom leaving, but it also meant that we were getting closer to hitting up some more tropical locales very soon in the form of Thailand and its surrounds.  My Mother's departure also meant that I would hopefully no longer have to spend any more nights on the floor; that is unless I pissed Colleen off immensely, which I'm sure was bound to happen in the weeks ahead (stay tuned to find out!).  Originally the plan was for my Mom to go back to the airport that day the way we came when we arrived in the country, by riding multiple trains/subways/cabs and praying to whatever God you believe in that you will arrive there in one piece.  Rather wisely, she nixed this idea and we decided to buy her a bus ticket which would take her directly to the airport.  I guess everyone doesn't share my enthusiasm for close-calls and getting super stressed out before a flight.  So, we said our farewells and waved goodbye to my one and only Mommy.  I felt so sorry for her, flying home first class from Tokyo to Toronto (some perk they gave her for working for Air Canada for 600 years).  With my maternal connection now gone, it was time for Colleen and I to paaaaaaaarty! And by party, I mean we promptly went back to the hotel and I enjoyed a nice, long nap on my miniature Japanese bed which was actually a HUGE upgrade over the floor I had been sleeping on the previous two nights. 

The illustrious Hachioji Hotel.  not surprisingly it was full of people who smiled a lot and had straight black hair.

Since we were well rested from our afternoon siesta, Colleen and I decided to take the subway over to Shinjuku, one of Tokyo's more well-known districts and explore it by foot.  That was the plan at least.  Seeing as how we were going to be heading to Thailand in a couple of days we had sent home our heavier coats with my Mom and decided we were going to tough it out like champs in the cold weather and just wear our sweaters.  Well, at least that was my idea.   Colleen quickly nixed this idea though and after a short time wandering around lost and confused, we decided to grab some dinner at place called Kirin Beer House.  I must say the food was fantastic and the brews were delicious.  Highly recommended.  I was hopeful now that Colleen had her fill of tasty food that she might entertain the idea of sauntering over to the "Red Light District", but alas she claimed it was too cold out and that she wasn't feeling well.  Instead, we headed to some 15-storey shopping mall, the not-so-originally-named "Times Square", and proceeded to shop for jewelry.  Funny how things work out sometimes. 

Inside the Kirin Beer House. Tasty times.

Back at the hotel, I was still feeling pretty crushed about not getting to see the red light district.  I mean, come on baby, I just wanted to compare notes with Amsterdam's version!  Research I tell ya, research!  With my heart in my hands, I was left to do my first and thankfully last load of laundry in Japan.  The dryer took over  90 minutes to dry six items, which I can only assume is because it was not used to my "Godzilla" size clothes.  Either that or our hotel just had a shitty dryer.  I'm gonna go with the first option though cause it just makes me sound more bad ass.

~Brentski~

In case you didn't know...

Day 44 (January 1, 2013)- When One Monkey Bends Another Monkey Over And Proceeds To Hump Him, Is It Called "Monkey-Style" Or "Doggie-Style"?

Not surprisingly, New Year's Day got off to a late start for us after our attempt the previous night to maximize our value at the all-you-can-drink festivities.  After we were all semi-conscious and presentable, we strolled on down the street to Denny's for some breakfast.  During our first few days in Tokyo we had been avoiding Denny's because, ironically the pictures of the food they had looked too exotic for us.  I never thought in my lifetime I would be avoiding a Denny's for fear of its cuisine being too much for my palate.  Alas, we dug up the courage and made our way inside.  I am happy to note that Denny's in Japan does sell lots of regular crappy diner-style food in addition to the tons of fish dishes that the Japanese people seem to live for.  The only real gripe I had with Denny's (and other establishments in Japan) is that they still allow smoking inside!  I find it odd that a country as advanced and seemingly "worldly" as Japan still allows people to smoke in restaurants.  It just didn't feel right, sitting around all these people who no doubt invented Nintendo, Toyota, and Hello Kitty to be smoking Marlboros while eating a stack of flapjacks.

Peter likes Japanese balls....in his mouth.

 

After our uber-Japanese American breakfast, we pondered what to do with the remainder of the day and decided to check out Mount Takao. It is basically like a poor man's Mount Fuji  but a lot closer to where we were staying.  Unfortunately, Kiel's jet lag coupled with his hangover were getting the better of him and he was unable to join us.  With that in mind, Peter, Colleen, my mom, and I headed over to the mountain to see what it was all about.  Seeing as how most of the literature we could find was only printed in Japanese, all we really knew was that there was a mountain, a cable car, a chair lift, some monkeys, and a temple.  What more could one ask for in life?  We also surmised that because there was a temple, it would probably be crazy busy there as Japanese people love to go to temples on New Year's Day. 

View looking out from Mount Takao.

 

Upon emerging from the subway station at the base of the mountain, it became quite clear to us that it appeared just about every person in Japan had decided to come here to ring in the New Year!  There were literally thousands of people everywhere, but fortunately the Japanese people are very orderly and polite so this does not create as much pandemonium as it does in other places (see: China).  Once we got our bearings, we got in line for the chair lift that would take us part way up the mountain.  Having ridden many a chair lifts in my time, this was the first one I can recall operating with no lap bar of any kind, and all I can say is "insurance claim waiting to happen".  In fact, if such a thing were operational in America, I have no doubt that people would be intentionally throwing themselves off of it in an attempt to sue the pants off the poor bastard who was running the thing.  Once we got to the top of the mountain we wandered around for a bit and just followed the massive herds of people.  Sadly, due to the insanely large crowds, we were unable to get anywhere near the actual temple, so we had to settle for wandering around and looking at a bunch of shit that we really had no idea what it was as all the signs were in some foreign language.  Probably Japanese.  At least we got some cool pictures though!  Our next stop on the Mount Takao tourist express was for us to visit the not-so-famous monkeys that they have on display.  Luckily for us, we rolled up right when the monkey-keeper(?) started his show.  Now if anyone knows anything more funny than watching a zookeeper babble on in Japanese while monkeys swarm him for  food I challenge you to tell me.  Oh, and to make it even better, while most of the monkeys were swarming the zookeeper, a couple of them decided that they were going to have at it doggie style off to the other side of the pen.  They would hump for three seconds, stop, then go at it again.  This continued for a solid ten minutes and definitely made me feel shameful about my bedroom exploits.  Although we all loved the monkey sex + feeding show, eventually we had had enough.  Due to a couple members of our party's fear of the safety-featureless chair lifts, we decided to take the cable car back down the mountain, which proved to be much more frightening in my opinion, as we had to be crammed into a small space one on top of the other and transported at a very slow speed down a mountain.

Colleen monkeying around. The sign reads, "If you're a dumb tourist make sure you pose beside this sign acting like a complete a-hole"!

 

Back at our hotel, we were all pretty exhausted from our day out and the jet lag was definitely starting to hit us.  We opted to go to an Italian restaurant not far from out hotel for dinner, cause, well that's what we do.  We eat Italian food in Japan because we're all a bunch of weak-stomached-poutine-eating white folk from Canada.  For the record, it was fucking delicious though!  That night I unfortunately lost the "sleeping on the floor" lottery (we only had two rooms, each with one small bed for the five of us).  As usual, I turned to my two favorite crutches: sleeping pills and Asahi beer. 

~Brentski~

Safest. Chair lift. Ever. Peter and Dawn scared shitless.