the first real day

We wake an some obscene hour (5am, I think), and the typhoon outside has not relented. Intrepid explorers that we are, though, we simply throw on our rainjackets and head out. The young-ish European dude (couldn't identify the accent) smoking under the awning outside, looks at us incredulously, "You guys are going out in this?" he asks. "Sure," we say. The plan is to keep out of the elements by going to Sunshine City in Ikechuburu (probably spelled that wrong), a supposedly massive and labyrinthine mall with an aquarium, amusement park, and observation deck inside.

So we brave the typhoon (which fortunately gave way to some sun by early afternoon) braved the JR (Japanese Rail) system (which once you get the hang of it is actually the most convenient thing in the world); brave the crazy old Japanese man who accosts us in the train station and proceeds to quiz us on American politics and launch into a prolonged diatribe about how the Japanese people are weak compared to Americans and need to overcome their shyness in a "revolution," which we supposedly could help by just saying "Good evening" to Japanese people we run into (don't ask); and brave the mall (which was more like an American mall than we would have liked, despite the strange stuffed toys you could win in the arcades; see below - yes, those are pink bears in medical gauze, dripping blood).



Sickening quickly of Sunshine City and with the sun suddenly coming out, we decided to hop back on the train and go to the Imperial Palace in Chiyoda, which turns out to be the equivalent of midtown in NYC, with the park and palace appears suddenly amid the personality-less skyscrapers much like Central Park. The gardens of the Imperial Palace and the palace itself are, we discover, both are closed on Friday (today), and so we move onto plan C, which is to hit up Shibuya, an area which has been described to us by Maya's Japanese classmate Yoko as "the East Village of Tokyo."

Place is alright - kind of like the East Village now, not when it was cool. Lots of shopping to be done. But it's not nearly as "out there" as I had hoped. Teeneagers dress crazy, no doubt - lots of big Eighties-glam hair, gothy babydoll dresses, titillating thigh-highs, and, believe it or not, medical gauze accesories of their own (I spot three separate punky kids sporting gauze eyepatches, apparently for the outre fashion of it) - but most of the stores are like stores in the U.S., and we can't seem to find anything truly perverted, which is my personal goal. The closest we come is Mandrake, the insanely huge Manga store we stumble on. Thing is way underground, down five flights of stairs, which are decorated with stalactites hanging from their ceilings and seizure-inducing strobe lights. Once we finally hit the store itself, it's full of thousands of comic books and toys, a jaw-droppingly large number of which feature adolescent-looking Anime girls with massive boobs in various states of undress and/or defilement. Here I am infront of a wall plastered with posters of some of these fine ladies.



Needless to say, we plan to go back to that store.