#13 Finding quiet areas of Tokyo

Transcript

Welcome to the morning convenience store report. So I decided today I would just walk basically the opposite of yesterday. I went to Shibuya and Juyogi. So today I just went the other way. And I found one of those nice walking paths that cuts through this neighborhood, Senganjaya, although I might be out of it by now, I'm not sure. And these really are the best. Either walking along a river or just these paths that are just made for pedestrians that cut through the neighborhoods definitely quieter than usual and just so so nice. It's the only thing about, I mean, I think it's a neat thing to do to record outside, a little outside podcast, but traffic. Traffic's so loud and it is a little weird that 50% of these podcasts are traffic. But areas like this make it a lot easier. And yeah, I think it's, it's kind of ironic too that I'm just moving away from Shibuya. I kind of realized, I guess the thing I was saying about Air B and B stuff where being central is just kind of rough, you know. I mean, I noticed that before COVID, too. The landscape was different before COVID, but one thing that was the same is the prices of Air B and Bs that I would stay at. I mean, I always trended toward cheaper stuff, but the niceness of the place was never really dictated by the price. The very low prices were generally still very, very nice. Because the price wasn't for the property, the price is for the location. And it just occurred to me this morning, one of these obvious things. But if you're just on a normal vacation, if you're only in Japan for a week, then being in Seng and Jaya, very close to Shibuya, is a benefit because you can just get to wherever you would like to go. You don't want to eat up a bunch of time traveling. It's just because I'm doing the 90 day dick around for the whole time. That's where it becomes like a reverse thing for me. I got all the time in the world to just travel around. That's what I want to do. I want to get away from the middle. So I'm not sure how I would approach this next time. I mean, I still think the idea of getting a place nearer the airport is a good idea. But I guess we still have some experiments to come because on the way back to the airport, before I go to Fukuoka, I didn't want to go all the way from Western Tokyo all the way to the airport in one day. Because I did that once my very last day in Japan last time. And it did take all day. I left at like seven or eight in the morning and my flight was in the afternoon sometime. But yeah, I was looking at it on Google Maps and to get from west of the Tama all the way back to Narita. It said it would take like six or six and a half hours because it's also not a rush hour. So they're not express trains. It's all just limited. You stop it every stop. I was like, geez, did it really take that long? Did I really spend six hours traveling across Tokyo on the train? I think I did. That's insane. So what I did this time is I got a place in Chiba for a few days because I've never been to Chiba. And it's close to the airport. It's only like 40 minutes or an hour to the airport from there. So maybe that's what I would do next time. Like I think the the general theory of make your first place accessible from the airport is a good idea because who knows what time of day you're going to get in. And you're going to be all discombobulated from traveling. But just it can be a quick little stopover and then head off to head off to the outskirts. This is my plan. I was thinking to like, I wonder, what if you went the other way from Narita? What's even over there? Are there Airbnb's at all?

I didn't even look. How do you get there? I mean, does the train stop at Narita? Does it keep going? I've never looked into it. That could be something for next time.

Jam, moving away from the hustle and bustle and one of the telltale signs of getting away from the center is when you find drink machines that are ludicrously cheap. I mean, and again, it's not like a miles away. I'm not that far away, but just that I'm moving away from away from the big famous neighborhood. Like I found a drink machine that had a little chocolate milk in it, a little warm chocolate milk for 50 yen. We're usually a hundred yen. That's that's a pretty good deal price. 50. I was like, all right, let me try it and it was all right. And then I found another one that had a black coffee for 80 yen. And I'm like, quite sure I don't like 5:00 black coffee as I've been chronicling or I'm just trying to find my perfect Japanese convenience store coffee. But it's like, let me try one. It was UCC coffee, a fruity blend of something or something, and it was gross. I just hate black coffee. So I stopped at a 7-Eleven, got like a 7-Eleven latte and I mixed it with my black coffee and then it was all right. But yeah, one little convenience store discovery I made. So I was saying how my favorite thing that I used to always get, there was this 1 7-Eleven near Nakay Tabashi station where I just went every morning to get breakfast. And they always had this thing that was too onigiri, like 1 salmon and 1 tuna. And it came with just a little ball of fried chicken with a little skewer in it so you can pick it up. And that was my favorite thing. And I didn't really see those, but I did find one similar at Lawson's the other day. But instead of just the ball of chicken, it came with all kinds of stuff, little tamago. It's like the egg thing and a meatball and a piece of chicken and a sausage. And I think there was a plum stuff, pickled plums, all kinds of stuff. But the rice balls themselves were super duper, that's a word, like the frugal version, where they were a salmon and a tuna rice ball, but instead of having that stuff on the inside, they just kind of had like a smear of fish paste on the outside. So it was still good, but it was like very much rice. It was like 95% rice. So at the 7-Eleven, I found the two rice balls, but this time it was a tamago, a sausage and the chicken ball. So a bit of extra stuff than just the chicken ball. And the Onigiri were a lot fancier than the Lawson's ones. They had more innards, but they're still not like if you just buy an Onigiri by itself. It was still a lot more just kind of rice content than that. So it's weird. It's like these things kind of still exist, but it's like a zero sum game. Like maybe they just want to keep the price as it has always been and to not up it too much. So for every little thing that they add in, that amount comes out of the rice balls. So I think it's better to just buy the rice balls by themselves and maybe some sides. But it was just so perfect because Japanese fried chicken, I mean, to be honest, it's a little bit. It's really greasy. It's like kind of gross. I don't want to buy a great big Japanese fried chicken. But when it just came with a little one, just a little greasy ball of fried chicken. It's like, hmm, perfect. Just a little tiny bit. But that's the Onigiri update. Oh, I also bought some socks. I bought a pair of socks. Because I got an extra couple of days of this Airbnb more than I realized. I thought today was the day I was leaving, but I got two more days. And I got enough shirts. And for some reason, I have mountains of underwear. I'm just looking at the mall and I'm like, why did I bring so many pairs of underwear? It's kind of confusing. I thought, I mean, I guess all I did was I just went through all my clothes and I picked sort of the best of the best, you know, if I had any clothes that were starting to get little holes in them or anything, it's like, okay, I won't bring those. All my premium t-shirts, my premium socks, my premium underwear. I guess I just had a lot of premium underwear because I just have too many. There's like no way I need this many pairs of underwear. Not a bad thing to have.

But I'm one pair of socks short to make it to my next Airbnb where there's a laundry machine. I mean, and I realized like, oh, you know why though? I would have made it perfectly except when I was in Montreal. And I had to use one of my socks as a piece of toilet paper.

So then I was just stuck with a orphaned sock. Although I just kind of put that in. I've got this little, this thing my mom had, this she gave me, that one of these things I wouldn't have thought to get for myself, but it's very handy. Just like a little bag you can sling around under your shirt to just put important documents in. So I just have my passport and a spare bank card in there. But since it's right next to my skin, it gets kind of sweaty. So I put the spare sock in there. So if it gets sweaty, the sock can absorb the sweat and not my passport. But yeah, I would have made it perfectly if I still had that pair of socks. But just went into the 7-Eleven bod pair of socks for four bucks. Not a great deal, but I just love it because I was like, I don't want to go to like Cebu or one of those big stores just to buy socks. And I can't really buy extra stuff because what am I going to do with it? I just don't have room for it. To go into a huge store just by one pair of socks is kind of weird. So I thought maybe if I was going to do that, 10:00 I guess I could go to Uniqlo at least and get a fancy pair of socks. But even still, to go through the whole rig and morale for one pair of socks, a little silly. Meanwhile, I can just go to 7-Eleven that I was going to go to anyway. Just get a pair of socks. Fucking awesome. I could live my whole life at a convenience stores probably forever. I don't think that'd be a problem at all. And today, just to set the scene, still very nice, 17 degrees Celsius, but much more overcast than it has been, much cloudier. So the day is not as bright.

Still easily t-shirt weather, but a bit colder. It doesn't feel like 17. But I thought this episode I would talk about adaptability while traveling. It's one of the things I think is kind of fun and interesting is when you do only have this one bag and what you got is what you got. How do you adapt to situations? How do you make do with just what you have? And part of that is the cool successes of like, wow, I figured out something. I made this work. But then there's also when you got to accept that you're beaten and you're not adapting and you just got to change it up. So let's talk about that first. Last episode I was talking about just being just cranky. I'm kind of like I'm not really in touch with how my body feels most of the time. It's like I didn't really feel necessarily tired. I just knew I was tired because I was getting annoyed at little things. Little things like my phone not working right. And just these little spikes of annoyance that are unnatural, that I have not felt the rest of the time I've been here. And it's like, oh yeah, right. I didn't get much sleep as a maybe I just haven't been in general, but especially the night before. And then I left early because of the construction near Mayor BNB. Now that's coming back to roost. But the weird thing is like even realizing I was in that position, I still just didn't really feel tired. Like after the last podcast, I did a whole episode of my writing podcast after that. Talked about a big idea that I had from a novel. And then I went and sat in a park and did some writing, you know. It wasn't as late as it seemed because it gets dark at like five o'clock. So it was only like seven, 30 or something. But again, I still just didn't feel tired. But then when I got back to my Airbnb at like eight, and I was like, all right, I guess I don't know. Packed open the laptop, catch up on YouTube, do some social media stuff. I don't know.

And I just couldn't. I got hit by a wave of tiredness that is unnatural for me. Usually I'm a bad sleeper. It's hard for me to fall asleep. It's easy for me to be woken up. I'm usually not fully rested. But I guess I've just like adapted to it. I'm used to it. Even when I'm exhausted, it's usually still hard to fall asleep or I'll fall asleep for 20 minutes and just wake up or whatever. This was like, I mean, in hindsight, I didn't even think this at the time because I couldn't think anything because my brain turned off. Like I wonder if this is what other people feel like when they get tired. When you're just pulled down into bed and you're just pulled down to sleep and there's like nothing you can do because I got in my little, my little bunk thing, pulled my little curtain closed, pitched black in there and it's just like, fuck, dude. Oh, like the very idea of pulling out a computer or something or even checking my phone is just like insane. It's like I just can't. The most I did was I did take, I have like a knee brace that I wear that's just like a compression elasticy thing. It's not a big deal but when I'm laying down, it feels especially compressy. It feels like not the kind of thing you should have on when you're asleep, I don't think. I managed to get that thing off and that was it. Besides that, I just fell asleep in my clothes. I didn't just wearing everything. Wear my jeans, wear my socks, wear my shirt, wear my little hoodie. I was even, I realized when I woke up, still wearing this little, this little sling that's got my passport in it which was a bad idea because I was laying on it and the passport would be fine but I just, I was like, I don't want to like break my, my bank card. You know, if I snap that little plastic bank card, it certainly won't be useful no more. But yeah, I just zonked the fuck out and it's like I guess part of it is probably time zone differences, catching up to me. But I think a lot of it was just carrying that freaking book bag, just carrying my big book bag and my laptop around and just, it's just wearing me down more and more and more and my shoulder blades hurting more and more and more 15:00 every day and walking too far too. Just walking like an erratically far, just walking, walking, every day I've been here, I've walked so far and it's like where am I, where do I think I'm getting to? I'm already there. Where I am right now is the same level of awesome beauty coolness as it will be two hours from here. I like the active walking, I like the feeling of walking, I don't just want to stand still, but I can walk a lot slower and go a lot less far and it'll be the same experience. I'm not getting to anywhere, it's Tokyo. I could just walk until I passed out because there's no end, there's no where to actually get to. And oh yeah, and I got a blister, I'm one of my toes, which is very rare, I almost never get blisters. So I mean, so many signs, I'm like, you got to leave that laptop at home, you got to leave that big book bag at home.

And you got to calm down with the neurotic walking pal and don't just walk, walk, walk, walk, walk and then walk all the way back for hours and hours and hours. I don't know where I'm going by the way, I just saw a sort of forested trail and there's like cool trees and stuff and people here and I see some other tourists ahead of me. I don't know what this is, I'm going to take a gander.

This is called Goto-Kuji Temple, and it must be pretty famous because there are foreigners all over the place here. It seems pretty nice, you know? Temple, incense, cemetery. Foreign or etiquette is kind of weird too. When I very first got here, you know, it's like a kind of my inclination was to say like, oh hey, to every white person that I saw, but, you know, I was like, oh, that's just so lame. I mean, yeah, I am a super shallow tourist and I'm just excited that I'm in Japan on a completely base level. It seems weird to apply that to everyone else. Like, aren't you excited too? Let's just commiserate about how cool it is that we're just walking around Japan. So instead, I just treat them like everybody else and just walk by. But then in the occasional time that I walk by and somebody is, because like, I guess it's the thing, it becomes unnatural because I would probably just nod and say hello to anybody just in Canada, you know, just because we're walking by each other. It's almost annoying in Canada. We're just always acknowledging each other and being friendly. But I started not doing that because I don't want to seem like I'm just saying hello to foreigners because that is, in fact, what I would have been doing. But then when there was a foreigner who was giving me the nod and hello, I would kind of miss it. Like, oh, Joupe, sorry, I didn't realize, I didn't realize you were doing that because I was kind of just ignoring you. I don't know, there's no great way around it. And for a second, I thought I saw a guy that I knew, but it's like that would be fucking wild. But it was not. Although that can happen. I remember this guy knew, because I'm from the East Coast of Canada. This guy I knew in high school named Mark, who I lost touch with after high school, but then I moved to Vancouver. Other side of the country, West Coast didn't know a soul. And I got a job at a movie theater selling frozen yogurt. And just sitting there in my little uniform one day at the TCBY questioning my life, that turned out to be cool, because later I got a job as a projectionist. So I got to be one of the last batch of projectionists before that job became digital and disappeared. But I'm sitting there in my little hat, my little outfit, and who should roll in on a date with some chick, then get old Mark. That's like, holy shit, dude. And he's like, hey, check this out. This is my friend Keith from back home. Look at him in his lowest moment. Look at him in his uniform, but that was cool. And he told me like, yeah, this isn't even remotely the weirdest place I've bumped into someone. He said he was in India, and not in like a major area. He was like in a back street somewhere and he ran into somebody from our high school. It's like, holy balls. So I haven't had that experience yet, but you never know, someday. Man, I wonder. I mean, no disrespect to my fellow tourists, but that place was just crawling with tourists. I've never seen so many tourists in one place.

Is that what travelers do? Is that how visiting works usually? If people just pick the big symbols on the map and go to them, because I only ever just go 20:00 places back, so this was a perfect example. I never heard of that place. I didn't know it was here. I'm just walking. I didn't have the location even turned on on my phone until I got there to see what the heck it was. I just happened to walk by. That's why I still haven't seen the Tokyo Tower, for example, because I just haven't accidentally walked past there.

I don't ever really just pick up place to go. I just go and see what happens. But those people definitely picked up place to go. And apparently, Goto Kouji Temple is a place to go. J-O-T-O-K-U-J-I. That's one thing they're looking at our map. I was saying the other day I was looking for Lawsons because I wanted to try their bitter coffee again. Somehow, I walked 90 minutes with that seeing a single Lawsons. That must have been a miracle of accidental... I don't know. It's like if the Lawsons were motion detector sensors and I was trying to infiltrate a place, I somehow did it. I don't know how I didn't see a Lawsons because then as soon as you bring up a map, even that day I saw... Oh, look at that. There's a Lawsons. There's a Lawsons. There's a Lawsons. Just now I'm looking at this map of Goku Kouji Temple Gate and there's a Lawsons. There's a Lawsons 7-11. I mean, that would be insane if I started pulling out the map to try to find specific convenience store types. I'll just take whatever I walk past. That's fine. But yeah, they're everywhere.

Already, this is working out much better by the buy. I have one shoulder that's always a little bad anyway, but I feel way better than carrying around that big book bag. But yeah, so since I was leaving the book bag, instead I've just got this little teeny bag that I bought, one of the bags I bought when I was in Montreal. And I realized it's pretty handy to have because it's just like a very tiny little knapsack. Man, I'm so tempted to buy every machine I go buy. I'm so tempted. I just, they did have a washroom at the temple. I'm always like, I wonder if there's going to be a washroom. Maybe this place is too, I don't know, holy and pious to have a washroom. Of course not. It's a tourist trap. No offense to the temple. Of course, it had a washroom. So as soon as I use the washroom, I'm like, hey, isn't that a room now? Room now for a new coffee? But this is why I'm constantly in search of a washroom. I'm doing this to myself. Just keep walking. This one though, it's just called Boss Caffeine. So I think it actually has, yeah, that means it has extra caffeine in it. Caffe moco with extra caffeine, geez though. I want to try that. Just keep walking. There's machines everywhere. You don't need to do this. But that's one thing I love too about the drink machine culture. Oh, there's a cigarette machine. Those are super rare now. You hardly ever see them. I've only seen one so far, and then I saw a cigarette shop, but it didn't have cigarettes in it. The one I saw was in Sangajaya on a major street. It was full. This one, this is way more. Just the back streets, man. You can only put in coins. The place to put in a bill is covered over with tape, and it just has random, occasional, it's like not full of different types. Lucky strike, cool, Kent, Meevious, seven stars. Aspreso T, curing aspreso T, smart break with aspreso T, all right, fuck it. I got to get that. I've never seen that before, and what does that mean? You don't put aspreso in tea. You don't make friends with salad. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, it's only a hundred yen, because I've realized lately that anything with the word aspreso on it seems to be the type that I like. All right, curing aspreso T, hook me up.

It's cold. The reason I thought it might be hot, but no, I guess I'm just, I'm not used yet, it's pretty simple system. The blue labels are cold. The red labels are hot. But this just seems like the kind of thing that should probably be hot is cold as the fuck. But yeah, also, I like these small cans, because I sang the other day how when you get the two different competing sizes, you know, when there's a big size and a small size for almost the same price, how bizarre that is to the North American mindset, that just seems like crazy, that you would ever get the small one. But when there's only the small one, like most of these coffees are a little tiny cans, they do have, like, you can get monster, 500 ml, big size, Matuya cider, and Calpis soda. Those are kind of neat. I'm not actually sure what that stuff is, but yeah, 25:00 this like milky soda stuff. And here's like a melon soda. I might have to try to get one of those but Calpis, that's just a funny name. I mean, Pokkari sweat is funny because it's just weird. Calpis, I'm sure, is fine in Japanese, but every time I hear someone say it, I can only think of Calpis, piss coming from a cow. It's like an identical sounding. But yeah, I like these little cans because I get to do this type of shit. I get to feed my addiction of just drinking little drinks all day long without dying. Like, if each one of these little tiny, go under, does it say how many milliliters on this one? This one doesn't say, but I mean, you know, tiny little can. So, it's not going to hurt me too bad. You know, I get to see what it's like. I get to have a taste. It's not going to destroy my bladder. And then I can move on to the next machine. Oh yeah, it does say hot or cold on here. So you can get them hot, but not in this machine. All right, let's try this bad boy. Oh, that's not good at all. What is this?

Like when it first hits your tongue, it has the tea taste, which is fine. Tea out of these machines is pretty good. That's what I'm saying. How even when they're really sweet, I don't really like the overly sweet coffee, but the overly sweet tea is strangely good. But then that initial tea taste is followed immediately by just a strange bitterness that is not, is it even bitter? Let me see.

Oh god, that's just shit. This is just really bad. That is not a good mix at all. This reminds me of, I made, I guess I would call it bitter, but not the good kind of bitter, just the, this is a mistake kind of bitter. But I tried to invent a drink in Toronto called it an oil slick, where I don't like red wine by itself or white wine. But red wine, you can mix it with fruit juice and just make ghetto sangria. And that's fine, but we didn't have any fruit juice around. We only had Coca-Cola. So I mixed basically 50, 50 red wine with cola, maybe a little more wine. And it looks awful. It has like this terrible film that develops on the top, and it just looks like dirty water. So I called it an oil slick, but there was no need to name it because no one would ever make it again because it was fucking gross. It was just two things that clearly don't go together. It's like fucking orange juice and milk. That's what this is. That's why when you see espresso tea, I think my surprised reaction was appropriate because it's like what? But those don't go together and turns out they actually don't.

Oh God, I mean, I guess I'll at least with the black coffee I got earlier. You know, I just held on to it, bought a 7-11 latte and mixed them together and that was fine. I don't know, there's really no mixing this. This is just a disaster. I mean, I've never thrown away a drink of my life, though, and they're very small. I guess I'll drink it. It sucks though. It's terrible. I can't believe a bad that is. Well, we're nuts and gum, man. Together at last.

But yeah, I got this tiny little knapsack, this wee little bag in Montreal, and it was really good on the plane because once stuff is in the overhead compartment, you can get into there, but you shouldn't. You're just getting in everyone's way. So I just realized I could strap this little bag to my back or my chest and just put whatever I would immediately need in there. Mostly just phone chargers and, you know, whatever, cough drops. I grew an ol' bar. Just whatever I thought I might need during the flight. So I'm using that today. It is very tiny. It's hard to figure out what to take and it's basically that same stuff. But in the big book bag, I had layers. You know, I had an extra shirt. I had an extra pair of socks. I had a hoodie. No room for that now. So I've got a thermal shirt that I've just got tucked into my back pocket in my jeans. And with how warm the weather's been lately, surely that would be enough. But I think just growing up Canadian, that makes me nervous. I'm like, that's not enough layers. What if the weather goes crazy? What if something awful happens? Like there's just nothing worse than being out in the cold and not being prepared for it.

If you are prepared for it, the cold is delightful. I like the cold way better than the hot, as long as you're ready. But if you're stuck out there with not enough layers and a bitter wind is biting through into your bones, it's the worst. So even with the limited space that I've 30:00 got in this bag, I crammed another thermal shirt in there. But pretty much as soon as I left the house, I realized, especially because it's so cloudy today, much more overcast than it's been. It's like, well, first off, I mean, I'm just never going to need the second thermal shirt. It's 17 degrees for God's sake. You know, it gets a bit colder as the sun goes down, but then it always warms up again in the evening. I mean, I think even in January, the average temperature in Tokyo is like six degrees. That's still above freezing. One thermal shirt would probably still be fine even there's no way I needed this. And it occurred to me almost immediately like, why didn't I bring an umbrella? So hopefully that doesn't come back to bite me. But yeah, already the new technique is working out fine because yeah, just walked down this little path. And what I've been doing is every time I'm trying to walk slower in general, just to remind myself that like, where am I trying to get to? I'm already there. I'm there right now. Every little place and every little thing is what I'm here to see. It's not going to change down the road. It's all going to be Japan.

And every time I see something interesting, I just mosey over there. So like I saw Shrine pretty close to my Airbnb. I moseyed up and saw it. There were a couple of older ladies there who did all the temple stuff, which I did not do because not only do I not know the ritual, but I just feel like it's disingenuous. Even when I was at the Meiji Shrine the other day, there's all these all these white guys and with book bags doing the bowing and stuff. I don't know. Maybe I just have a bad attitude about my own people, but I feel like what are you doing? It's so performative. Stop pretending. This doesn't mean anything to you. But then maybe I'm the one being disrespectful because I'm not doing. I'm not going through the motions. I don't know. But anyway, I tried to find a happy middle of I wasn't doing the stuff, but I stayed aside till the ladies did their stuff and did their bowing and their prayers and stuff that they were doing. And then after they left, I wandered up there and I just sort of stood in the coolness of the of the shrine and did a little bit of writing, just a little, but these little bits add up. And then I kept walking and what was the next thing that I saw? I don't recall now. I've already forgotten.

But this technique seems to be working. Just take it slow, go toward whatever looks cool, and at each stop, try to do a little something. Oh, the second thing, it was just the 7-Eleven. While I was standing outside the 7-Eleven, after I packed away my new pair of socks, I did another tiny bit of riding. I'm still just carrying this espresso tea without drinking it. Until next time, I do come across a park with a washroom or something, and I'm just going to down this thing like it's medicine. Like I'm just going to drink it for its fantastic caffeine-filled properties. But for taste, yikes, that's the worst thing I've had here ever. That's fucking terrible.

So yeah, that's my example of how to adapt by giving up, I guess. Just forget it, just give up on the laptop thing, give up on the book bag thing. It's serving no purpose, it's destroying your shoulders. Just give up. But I was thinking how I also have some examples of ways that I did manage to kind of adapt, and just the puzzle of I've only got these many items. And in an extreme case, if I do need to buy a new item, what might that be? And where will it go? But generally, even just with this one book bag, it's like, yeah, I pretty much got what I need. And I got some little examples of stuff that I managed to just figure out. Oh, hear that?

I only know that jingle from anime, but that's the school jingle. I guess there was a school back there. There's also the five o'clock song that pretty much every neighborhood seems to. It's like, I don't notice that there's speakers around. They're certainly inconspicuous, but then at five o'clock, it makes me wonder if in old Japanese role playing games or even up to Pokemon and stuff, is this where the concept of just town music comes from? You know, you walk into a town in a video game, and there's a little theme for the town, because every day at five o'clock, I think it's meant to just alert everyone that is five o'clock. So if you're a little kid, it's like, go home. It's dinner time. Time to go home. But just this jingle just starts playing from out of nowhere, just plays all over. And it's like, wow, that's so weird. It's so cool. It gets me off guard every time. I'm like, whoa, I forgot about that since yesterday.

God, I just want to drink all these things. I wish the way cows have four stomachs. I wish I had four bladders. I want to drink this.

English afternoon tea was by the Duchess, candy tea. I want to try that. Hot lemonade. That's like a lemon drink, but with honey.

I want to try that. Ayataka cafe. It's a matcha tea. I want to try that.

And what this song is coming from this building. No fucking idea. I do not know what this is. The blinds are down.

The curtains are closed. The sign is not an English. I don't know what that place is. But it has drink machines outside because, hey, why wouldn't it?

But yeah, before I get into my rambling about my more successful adaptations, I'll take a little break and just wander some more.

Oh man, let's talk about washrooms. Shout out to Isha Batouquet Park. But I really do remember, I mean, when I first had the idea for this podcast. I used to do a podcast with my friends called The Vinyl Countdown. It sounds like a music podcast, but it wasn't. But on that podcast, I mean, we just talked about gross stuff, like any, any unfortunate situation involving, like, let's just say that episode when I was in Montreal, and I had to use my sock as toilet paper. In The Vinyl Countdown days, that story would have been a lot longer and a lot grosser. So I really kind of thought with this one, like, yeah, you know, let's try to stick more with a travel vibe. It doesn't have to be just about shitting all the time. But I'm really making my peace with it that a huge part, if anyone ever makes a pie chart of what this podcast is about, a big slice is going to be washroom culture. It's just what I'm interested in. That's what I care about. So I got that, I managed to down that horrible espresso tea combination. Total shit. Never got better. Taste terrible. Just tastes like bad tea. Tea that has been ruined by putting espresso in it. So predictably, I had to pee. And I'm just walking along and, you know, it's like, it's going to work out. It always works out in Japan. But it came upon a little map of the local area. I'm just on another little walking path now. Still walking westward from the vicinity of Goku Koji temple. And on the map, it's like, oh, there's another temple near here, which I guess that is one of those things that does seem a little weird when you first get here is that the symbol for the temple is a swastika because they had it first. So they're like, we're not going to change that just because of Germany. Fuck you. But when you first look at it, it is a little weird to a North American. But predictably, on brand, I was like, oh, it's interesting. There's a temple, but I'm not going to go out of my way to go to the temple instead. Look at that. One, two, three, four washrooms. There were four washrooms, almost an easy walking distance. I was like, what the shit? That's the best. That makes me so happy.

And then I was bracing myself a little for a squat toilet. I was like, yeah, you know, that happens, that happens. But there's a western toilet, too. Well, I got me to pull out the recorder is everything was meticulously clean, everything was perfect. There's the toilet paper roll. I will say I do not enjoy cheap Japanese toilet paper because it is so thin. That combined with the day culture, which I'll get into that in some future thing. I do love the bidets. But this toilet paper is so thin when it gets wet. It dissolves like cotton candy. It just disappears. I don't know. It defeats the purpose of trying to make cheap toilet paper when I just have no choice but to use incredible amounts of toilet paper because a single drop of water makes it fucking hard. It doesn't go away. It makes a hole happen in the toilet paper. So I don't enjoy that. But they had the toilet paper. And next to it, I've never seen this before, but it's just so awesome. 40:00 Should that main dispenser run out of toilet paper, there was a whole second dispenser. Just a great big tall thing full of toilet paper rolls. So you could replace the rolls, should you need to. And I just love that care and attention to bathroom culture. Again, just to thinking that this matters, that it's important that we pay attention to a public washroom. Because it's not coincidence that this whole idea of using your socks as a piece of toilet paper. It's not coincidence that I learned that lesson in Canada. It's not a coincidence that I was in a washroom in a public park that was just barren that had no toilet paper within fucking 10 miles of the place. In Canada, the vibe is, hey, you're lucky there's a washroom here at all. You know, we're not going to maintain it. We're not going to look after it. Someone will be here in eight to ten weeks with a new roll of toilet paper. And until then, go fuck yourself. It's so annoying of all the things to have asked. It should not be public washrooms. You should pay attention to them. You should be able to go to them with relative confidence that you'll be able to wipe your ass. You just should. It's a human right. It's a basic human right. If I were king, I would run a weird country. I would have some weird rules that were like basically basically exclusively around washrooms. I won't get into it.

But the one thing that is a little bit of a problem, kind of enough of a problem that maybe I'll make it a mini mission to try to solve this issue for myself though. I'm not sure how is there is almost never hand soap in the washrooms. You can wash your hands with water, but that's it. I remember when I was a really little kid, I never washed my hands. It just didn't occur to me that that would matter. And then something happened, you know, at some point when I was like seven years old or so. It's like my brain came online and it just suddenly occurred to me how germs work and how transferring fecal particles works. That's like, you know, that hand you used to wipe your butt. I mean, yeah, you didn't maybe, you know, there was toilet paper involved, but you should still wash your hands. And ever since I had that realization in like second grade, I graduated from just being a fully gross little kid, only a semi gross little kid. So now I just, I have that radioactive feeling. I just feel like until I wash my hands with soap, my hand feels a little radioactive. Like I don't necessarily want to touch things with it, but it only needs to be the barest amount of soap. If I just brush my fingertips across a wet piece of soap, that's fine. Or even if it's like one of those little pumps where you pump out liquid soap, but it's kind of out and nothing's coming out. But if there's a little bit of soap residue on the little nozzle and just enough to make my fingers feel slidy, like that's enough. I just need a tiny bit of soap just psychologically to feel like, yeah, there we go. I at least wash my hands to some degree. But it's very uncommon for there to be soap in the washrooms here. It's the one thing. It's pretty good trade off. I mean, if everything else is going to be nicely maintained, it's okay to have this one thing not there. But the one place that there was soap was also very cool in that like Japanese ingenuity way where they just come up with neat interesting ways to do stuff, which usually is on a corporate level of like, you know, you buy a product and the packaging is really neat in a way you didn't expect. This was just a homemade version of that, but I've never seen this before and it was so cool. It was that park I found in Setagaya, I think is where it was, with like a bunch of baseball fields. And all of the bathrooms there had soap that was in a little mesh bag. And then the mesh bag was tied to the faucet. So it wasn't just a loose bar of soap that somebody could take or would disappear. Like, I don't know, maybe that's why there's not soap. Maybe they find if they leave soap, it disappears. And if these washrooms just weren't originally built with dispensers for liquid soap in mind, maybe it's just hard to add them in now. So this way, you could run your wet fingers over the soap, get a little soap leather going enough to just wash your hands with. But because it was in the mesh bag tied to the faucet, the soap wasn't going anywhere. It was going to stay there. And it was like, perfect. It's so perfect. I was like, what if I bought a bunch of bars of soap and some of these little mesh bags and I just went around and started including them in all the washrooms. 45:00 I don't hear me. Fucking, again, just weird behavior. Probably best I just don't, you know, just stay out of it. But there's the bathroom break. Man, twice so far, I have managed to turn myself around 180 degrees and literally start walking the exact wrong way. That is fucking wild.