#16 A chill day at the Arakawa river, Tokyo

Transcript

Hey, yo, this is Keith from The Future. I'm down by the coast. I'm walking along the shore. Waves lapping at my feet. This is a spoiler for a future episode. Stay tuned. Someday. Someday, eventually, I'm going to make it to a coastline, south of Tokyo, and walk along the beach.

But the reason I'm jumping in is I wanted to just announce a little update, because one of the few pieces of actual, useful, actionable advice that's been on this podcast is the episode I did about arriving in Japan and getting to the airport, where I realized that when you go on visit Japan Web, the website that gives you a QR code to help you get through customs, initially it was this system that would give you three different QR codes. One for entry, one for customs, and one for COVID stuff. By the time I arrived, they took away the COVID one, so it was only two QR codes, but I didn't actually realize that. After I got my first QR code, I thought I was done, so once I got to the airport, I had to do... I had the customs one. I had to do the entry one. By hand, not a huge deal, but you know, I had to get the little piece of paper in the pen and write all the stuff out, and it was it to do. So I advised to make sure you get both QR codes, but I just saw an update from Amy from the YouTube channel Cakes With Faces, who's very good about keeping everyone abreast of these things, that as of January 2024, this system is going to combine those two into one QR code, so that advice is no longer relevant. Now, at visit Japan Web, once you get your QR code, you're good. You're good to go, just one. Maybe they found multiple people were in my shoes, not realizing that they had not completed the website properly, because it certainly was not clear. I did spend a little time, I remember dicking around with it at the time, just making sure that I crossed all the tees and dotted all the eyes, and I still didn't. So hopefully my folly was like a tiny little drop in the ocean that helped expediate the change. If I could be one of the idiots who did it the wrong way, to the point that they're like, we gotta change this, then I'm proud to be that idiot. So yeah, that's all, just one QR code now.

Though whenever you're heading to Japan, don't take my word for anything. Definitely go look all this stuff up, because that was my other problem. I sort of forgot about that process, and I did it the night before I left.

It's kinda asking for it, and again, whatever, so I just had to fuckin' fillets of shit at the airport. It wasn't the worst thing that ever happened, but that's the update.

Oh, it is a windy day on this coastline. It is a chilly one, but man, it's pretty. Oh, look at those surfers. You guys are fuckin' insane. It's way too cold for that shit. Alright, now to the current episode, the journey to the Arakawa River. How's it gonna go? What's gonna happen? Let's find out right now!

I'm crossing over the Shin Gashi River, and I'm always saying how, from my weird East Coast Canadian perspective, my idea of a river is so enormous, that I'm always surprised that the smaller ones in Tokyo are also rivers.

But this one is definitely a river. As soon as I saw it, I was like, whoa, boom, there's a river, alright. And that's actually the smaller of the two rivers I'm heading towards. So my overall mission being in this neighborhood, like I was yam, or in a bit about last episode, is I wanna go to Naka Itabashi Station, which I'm about 20 or 30 minutes walk from, because that was my original Airbnb that I got when I first visited Japan in 2019. And I wanna walk down one of the smaller rivers to OG Station. Then from there, there's a really cool park, and I presume I will walk up to Ikebukuro, and then probably walk back. I mean, I could always take the train to Naka Itabashi, but traditionally, on this visit, I just keep walking everywhere. But that's gonna be a pretty good journey. That's gonna take the day. I'll leave in the daytime, and I won't get back till it's night. And that's just what I've been doing on this trip, is just head out and walk all the live long day. 5:00 So now that I'm finally in a little private Airbnb, where I have my own apartment, and I'm not just packed in with people, you know, my little lesson incentivized to just get out of the house. There's my Canadian out of the house, out and about the house. So for today, I thought I would just chill out a little. I got to sleep in for the first time, really. That was nice. There is a little sound yesterday night that I was like, is that a train going by? What does that sound? But then I checked, and there are no train stations near my Airbnb. Turns out what it is, is like an above ground highway. I can't see it. There's like all these nice trees, and the view out of the back window of this apartment looks awesome. Nice little balcony. There was a cat on it this morning, just chilling. So you can't really see it, but you can hear it. But they put up these like soundproofing sort of walls on those highways, and it works pretty good. So it was really just like a little rumble in the background that really wasn't that bad. So I always sleep with earbuds in that are playing rain noise. And when I was at my last Airbnb, I just had the rain noise cranked semi-high and just on a loop. So the half hour rain sound would just loop all night, because I just needed oral defense against all the weird random noises everyone else was making all dang night. In this case, I didn't need to do that. I just put on the half hour version to help me to help lull me to sleep. Then the half hour ends, the rain sound stops, and that's it. The highway noise in the background was just kind of a hum. It wasn't nearly enough to stop me from sleeping. So I mean, I guess that might make it, I was saying last episode of this place would be like an amazing little writers retreat or something. Maybe not because of the highway, but you know, just listen to music or something, you're good. And it's funny, because you'd think like a highway, yeah, that's gonna be the worst for noise. But it made me think of the apartment I stayed at in Fukuoka, which was also an individual apartment. It was probably a little nicer than this one. It's very close. Those are definitely the top two. I mean, of the very few places I stayed in Japan, but the one in Fukuoka had like a loft for a second floor. I think that was probably the clincher that made it slightly better, but they're both awesome little apartments. But the Fukuoka one, what really surprised me is it was quite a quiet neighborhood.

But at night, right outside my window, I was like on the second floor and then it sloped down into a rice field. And the sound of, there may have been some cicadas, but they were definitely frogs. And they were so loud, it was crazy. Back in those days, I just wore earplugs. I didn't have the idea to play white noise directly into my ears. But I had the balcony door closed, the earplugs in, and the frogs were still loud. So having frogs right outside compared to having a highway, a little distance away, the frogs were worse. Nature was worse. I could not believe how loud they were. And I kind of forgot about that. Yeah, that was, that was crazy.

So I certainly can't complain about the highway. No big deal. But yeah, I thought I'd take today off from extreme journeys. I've been walking for an hour already, it adds up fast. You know, I was going to stay home, just do a little Internet-y computer stuff that I haven't had any chance to do. Edit a podcast or two or whatever.

But since it gets dark so early, it's early November now. And speaking of trains, there's a train. Yeah, I was like noon by the time I rolled out of bed and got my shit together. I couldn't figure out how to make the shower be warm. I've run into that problem before too, where as long as you know how the mechanisms work, Japanese showers and baths are really cool because you just set the temperature and then you can fill it to that temperature. It's not just like a guessing game like how our taps work in North America. But I just couldn't figure it out. Even the Airbnb people gave me a little YouTube video showing. But there's this one point where there's like a red light that's supposed to turn on, but the red light's just blinking. And yeah, I just couldn't figure it out. Where I did that at Naka Itabashi also. But what happened in that case is I had turned off the hot water heater inadvertently. 10:00 It was a point where that was a communal hostel. But there was a lot of my stay there where I was the only person. And I turned off, there was just this panel outside of the main room. That looked like a heater. I'd see a temperature thing and I was like, oh well it's summertime, maybe somebody just left this on. We don't need heaters, so I turned it off. And then the water in the shower was cold. And I was like, yeah, that's all right though. It's the middle of summer. It's blazing hot. I'm not going to bother the people who run this place right away. Let's just let it sit and see what happens. And after a few days I figured out, oh I did that and I turned it back on. But that's also where I learned a bit about cold showers. That's what I did today. It's just like, whatever. I'll just have a cold shower because it's still 23 degrees today. And I always thought cold shower theory was interesting. You know, this idea of like, hey, you want to get your day started, you really want to wake yourself up, get your fucking blood flowing. Take a cold shower. It's hard to first, but you'll get used to it. Or I mean, even guys that it's like, coach. There's like online coaches who try to help do stop masturbating all the time. It's become a weird problem in the post-internet age especially. Whereas there's just too much access to boobies, just how it is. And I always thought one of the more interesting standing techniques is like, hey, anytime you want to play with your pud, touch your tallywacker, masturbate your wrecked penis, just go take a cold shower. That'll snap you out of it. And then do it again in 20 minutes. Do it as many times as you need to, but you'll just train yourself out of the habit. It's like, what an interesting idea. That sounds like that would probably work. But I think anybody who is recommending cold showers for anything, for any purposes, should also mention if they happen to live in Southern California, for example. Because it just didn't make sense to me because growing up in a big drafty old, 100-year-old East Coast Canadian house where it's just cold even in the summer and it's insane in the winter. It's like, I can't take a cold shower like I legitimately can't. I would be actually risking physical bodily harm. I could die. You can't just take cold showers, it's insane. But whether like this, this is where it makes sense. I'm like, ah, okay, I mean, it's cold. I didn't like luxuriating it. It was a little uncomfortable, but totally doable. And I'm only there for a little under a week. If I never figure out how to make the hot water work, I think it doesn't matter. I think I'll just take this opportunity to be a cold shower gentleman. But yeah, I got my stuff together. It was like noon and I'm like, well, I don't just want to sit here in this apartment and edit stuff because also this time of year, you know, it gets dark really early. I've only got a few hours of light. So I should go do something until the sun goes down. Then I'll come back and do my laptop crap.

Hmm, I don't know if the audio caught that. To foreign guys walk by, but they weren't speak in English. Again, not that that's so weird, but it is more weird when you're way out here. So I was looking at the map of this surrounding area, just like, what's around here? I could just wander at total random, but let's see. And I saw the Arakawa River. So when I visited it in 2019, I was, I had like a 7-Eleven burner. My phone was like, not totally useless. It had some semblance of maps and stuff, but I never really used it because it was so sucky. So I didn't know the name of anything. I just knew things as, oh, the river, you know, not what river it is, for example. But I started doing this thing while I was trapped at home during COVID times, where I bought a Chromebook, and I wouldn't really recommend a Chromebook. It was kind of a pointless computer, because it doesn't have the portability of a smartphone, and it doesn't have the utility of a real laptop. I'm not quite sure what the heck it's supposed to be for. It doesn't do anything very well. So I just had next to my real computer, just this other little crappy computer sitting there. So I got into this habit where, you know, sometimes people put fish tanks or fireplaces on the 15:00 screen and just let them play. That's when I realized that there's this giant boom on YouTube of people walking, walking cities. Pick any city in the world, and I bet you can find somebody just having a nice hour-long stroll through that city. And I started looking up Japan, and it became like a little game. I was like, hey, can I find that place on Oiyama Road where I got a haircut? Yes, I can. Now can I find it? But somebody walking from the opposite direction? Yes, I can. Can I find it on a rainy day? Yes, I can. And even as it got more obscure, it's like, hey, when I met up with my friend Brad and Fukuoka and we were like, hey, meet me at this family mart. But it took a second to figure out because there was two family martes, like a block apart from each other. Can I find that specific part of Fukuoka? Yes, I can. Can I find someone approaching it from the opposite direction? Yes, I can, et cetera, et cetera. There's so much of this stuff. So I found this one guy who is Japanese who would post his stuff with no English. He would post every day a different random area of Tokyo, but not with English words. So I started developing a little game for myself. This is where I started learning the actual names of some things, much more than I knew when I was actually here, where I would copy and paste the name into Google Maps, and then see how many times I had to zoom out before I could figure out where I was. Oh, I met the Arakawa. I assume because there's big steps and a bunch of grass, and I can't see over this hill. So I'm guessing this is the edge of the river.

Men, this is one of these things, too, even though I've never been here, just the way this looks just from anime and manga mainly, but even from the occasional live action thing that I've watched, this seems familiar. I've seen stuff like this before, or just the way this river bank looks from the outside of the river, from the street level. But yeah, I would just look around see if I could recognize anything and then zoom out a step. So there were very limited, you know, I knew around Nakahitabashi to Ikibukuro, that area, and OG, that triangle, I guess. And I knew Tajikawa a bit, and Hajima, and then in the rare event that he was way over in Akiruno, I recognized that as well.

So I would just zoom out, zoom out, zoom out, zoom out, till I saw something relating to one of those places. And I slowly just started to piece together more and more how Tokyo is laid out.

Okay, so this bank I just went up, there's a park on the other side, it looks like a golf course. The river itself is actually quite far away, not quite far away, 100 meters or so. There's a car bridge to my left, and another bridge even bigger to my right further away, that I also presume is cars, I don't know if people do or even can walk across those. But if I understand right, I believe what's over there is Saitama, which is the city that is north of Tokyo. And from here, I just see buildings, it just looks like just more buildings. And I've heard people say Saitama is kind of boring, I know, the guys from the Trash Taste podcast when they first moved to Japan. If I remember right day, I lived in Saitama, and they said it's kind of a pain, got a commute all the way into Tokyo. However, it seems like, I mean, I've seen some gorgeous stuff in Saitama. Obviously, all these areas are really big, but it seems like if you keep going north and you just get away from the city stuff, that's when Saitama seems really nice. But this bit that's bordering on Tokyo, I think there's no need for me to actually try to cross this river. I was considering it though, that was sort of my plan for today, but this is close enough, I don't need to actually do that.

But yeah, this was one of those things. I guess I did know the river, the Simita river, that went next to the Skytree. I guess yeah, I recognize that as well, the Simita and the Skytree. And I quickly realized that that river I mentioned before, the Tama river, that's the one that I 20:00 crossed from Hijima to get to Akigawa Station. I didn't even know what it was called when I was actually there. But then I started to realize too that obviously these things are rivers. They, I would get thrown off a little, I'm like, okay, there's the Tama river. So I would see Tama and think like, oh, I must be in Western Tokyo. All right, see Arakawa and think, oh, it must be by the Skytree. And you know, my dumb brain pieced together that, you know, these are rivers that cross the entire city. So following the route of these rivers that I was a bit acquainted with or had some reason to know what they were, that's why, you know, the other day, I saw the Tama, but a totally different part of it. And I was like, oh, let me just go try to get there. And it was similar to this. Couldn't really get to the river bank. That's just not to, not what you do around these parts. You get river adjacent, but you don't have to get to the river.

But the Arakawa stood out to me because, you know, I noticed it because it was over by the Skytree. And the Skytree was just notable because I had never heard of it. I didn't know what it was. I just saw this tower in the distance in 2019. And I didn't realize it's one of the tallest towers in the world. It's like, oh, that doesn't seem that far. I'll just go walk to it. And it took forever. It was so far away. I saw it the other day, actually. I mean, I guess that was yesterday. When I was walking from Shinjuku to Itabashi, there was this one point where I crossed a bridge that didn't cross water, just like a land to bridge. And from the top of that bridge, way in the distance, poking between some buildings, I could see the Skytree. And it's a similar thing. I was like, hey, look at that. It's right there. But it's not right there. It was probably three hours away. You know, but it looks close because it's so big. But yeah, that night I made it to the Samita. And then apparently behind this Skytree was the Arakawa. And I realized the Arakawa went up and looped around fairly close to Itabashi. So I was a little surprised that I'd never gotten to this river before because I was like, you know, I was up there for 40 days. All I did was walk around up in that neighborhood. And I didn't go north very often. But I did a bit. So I was just surprised. I was surprised I'd never gotten to this river. So I just thought today, I'm like, hey, there we go. It is pretty close. I never actually technically made it this far north. Let's do it. Let's just go to the Arakawa river. And that can be today's adventure. And now having done it, I mean, yeah, it only took a little over an hour. But it's not as close as it seems. It's quite a twisty, weird route to get here. And I guess I can see why now that I'm here. There's a lot of cyclists here. It seems like a good, it's like a paved path that goes along the river. A lot of people on bicycles have passed me. And then there's these guys playing golf. Maybe there's other stuff along the river. But you could just feel like the city was not at all funneling a person toward either of these two rivers that I just, you know, the one I just crossed or this one. This is clearly a bit of a special event. If you don't just come to the river for no reason. So it was a little tricky to maneuver my way down here. And I guess yet now that I'm here. Now I don't know what to do. It's just a fence and a golf course and some trees and a river. And then on the other side of the river, it's like, Tom. I guess I did it. I guess I got to decide if I want to just keep walking along this river and see if something happens or just head back. Yes, sun is still quite high in the sky, but that won't last. It's going to go down quick. So last night my plan was to do laundry. And I pulled it off, which is, you know, the Google Translate thing on my little Android has been far from great. There's times when it just doesn't help at all. It didn't help me with my shower, for example, earlier today. But man, when it does come in handy, it is extremely useful. Because I think that's the only reason I successfully managed to do laundry yesterday. Because that also brought back memories of that's why I failed to do laundry when I first got to Japan in 2019. Because none of the local laundry places had any English signs. And I just couldn't figure out how to do it. You know, it doesn't take much. You think you can just fiddle around with these things and something will happen, but maybe not. It doesn't take that much for things to just not work or to not fire. You just have one little thing set wrong. And then that's it. It ain't going to function. So I'm sure that would have happened here as well. But this place has gotten a cool. So I went to a 7-11 and I bought laundry detergent, 25:00 but it looks like I didn't need it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. I guess I'll drag it with me to the next Airbnb and see if I need it. I don't know what that situation will be. But I'm certainly not going to drag it all the way to Fukuoka. You silly. You just buy more at the other end. I mean, I guess I can just leave it at the Airbnb if I don't use it. It's just detergent. Like it totally doesn't matter. It's like a few dollars, but but the reason I didn't need it is because this laundromat had a bunch of different machines. But since I just wanted to clean everything including my jackets, which man, this certainly seems silly too. I was thinking like if I'm going to be over here until the end of January, again just thinking of Canadian stuff, you know, layers and things, it's like what would I need to survive the cold? So I have two thermal shirts, a hoodie with no hood. I got a nice fluffy hoodie and a rain-resistant cool jacket that I actually bought in Montreal. And then kind of a proper winter coat. And it's like, man, this is all way too much. But in Canada, that probably would be maybe not quite enough. You know, it would be okay so you could just go outside and do stuff. But if you went outside walking all afternoon, you know, I don't know, maybe. But I really underestimated how warm it is here. It is fully summertime. I'm just sweating like crazy right now. I'm taking cold showers, you know. It's ridiculous there. And then Fukuoka's south. Starting to wonder like, should I just abandon some of these? I don't know.

But it's just so, so insanely warm. It's so warm.

Like a day like yesterday when I was just traveling between places, like basically I just take all these coats, wear them all at the same time and take them off so that they're like one big silly coat and just tie that to, you know, my book bag has a, like yeah, a handle. You click, pull out the handle, and then you can just use it like a wheelie bag so I just tie those to the handle. You know, it's not the worst. It's pretty, pretty doable, but I just, I just have too many, way too many.

So laundromats. So yeah, I used the Google Translate to actually figure out what was going on at this laundromat and the laundromat machines all automatically do, they do everything. So I did not need to buy that laundry detergent. So yeah, this thing was great because they had the different sizes of machines, but I just wanted to wash every damn thing, including all these millions of coats. That's how I got under the coats. Again, just because my last place had what turned out to be a very minor bed bug situation, but it can't be too minor, you know.

But if you wash your clothes and importantly dry them, it's the heat that really kills bed bugs and the eggs and stuff. So I wanted to put everything through every process that they had. And they had these gigantic, bigger than I've ever seen before, laundry machines that were like 10 kilogram machines. I assume it's probably for like futons and stuff, right? Like if you got to put a great big giant mega blanket in something, it's not going to fit in a normal laundry machine. So I put everything I own in this book and machine and it was like not even half full. It's like this is the best. And it was expensive. It was $10. 1000 yen, but it did everything. It had its own detergent system. It washed the clothes and then in this very same machine, it dried the clothes and all I had to do was stand around for an hour. It's like, man, in this specific case, that is amazing. That is worth $10, dude. That's everything. That's everything that I needed. And it's just kind of fun to just hang out at the kind of like enforced downtime like that. Just hang out at the laundromat. And all he did was some writing. Just did some writing. Because I always struggle a little bit to squeeze writing into the day because I'm always a little too neurotic and I'm always just doing something else.

I haven't done any today, for example. So being forced like that. That's why it's also important for me not to have data plans on my phones and stuff because I would just start doing all that crap, social media junk and stuff. Because I always check. I'm like, hey, maybe the laundromat has Wi-Fi. It didn't. So I'm just standing there. There's nothing else I can do but write. And that is the best, that's the best method for me. I got a corner myself a little bit. But then once I get going, it's fun. It's just like, yeah.

Doing some writing, hanging out at the laundromat, feeling accomplished, eradicating the evil. Even though I was quite sure I didn't bring any bedbugs stuff along with me. That's a hubris to take. How can I tell? I didn't have any actual bugs but you can't tell really with eggs and stuff. So it's like, boom. 30:00 I felt much better after that, much more psychologically calm. I'm just like, pretty sure that problem is over now. That's somebody else's issue and not mine.

The beauty in the curse of the Airbnb life is, you never know what situation you're going to walk into but then you can leave it behind and it's not your fucking problem anymore. Which is nice. But then yeah, having this apartment to myself brought me back to like Fukuoka having an apartment to myself there or Akiruno having an apartment to myself there where I would get just like stuff I haven't even touched at the 7-11 yet. Stuff like just weird little nut mix cheers and rice crackers and just weird little stuff or even just like little dried squid stuff. There's a whole aisle in each 7-11 that is like super local stuff that is like kind of probably not really that good to the North American palate but it's fun to try. But it's not something you would just eat while you're exploring Tokyo you know where you buy something and you eat it outside the convenient and you throw away your stuff. Because yeah, it's like you know little weird squid tentacles and dried fish and stuff but that was great when I had an apartment. Get some nuts, get some crackers, get some weird fish products and maybe get a beer or something. But this brought me back immediately to remembering like oh yeah because the first drink I had in a Japanese convenience store it was like I'd been here like two weeks before I even tried one. Because I'm just not I'm obviously a caffeine guy you can tell obviously from this podcast that's my thing. Much more of an upper than a downer guy. But there's this drink called Strong Zero that there's a tag team. They were in New Japan at the time now they're in AEW but they have a they're finishing move is called the Strong Zero.

Because it's the drink that gets you fucked up in Japan. And what it is is just like it's like a Mike's hard lemonade or whatever it's kind of a sweet fruit flavored thing. They've got different varieties but it's like 9% it's like crazy. And I remember the 7-11 not too far from here where I tried it. And just one of those things I thought maybe I would do that for the podcast like let's go back to that 7-11. Let's get another Strong Zero. But I might not because what I got was not the Strong Zero but I got a high ball. I think or Kirin I don't know but I guess high ball is just whiskey and something whiskey and soda I don't know. Not especially flavored but very good very tasty but this thing was 7% and with 500 milliliters so it was huge gigantic can of 7% for under $3. Like I just can't believe how cheap it is because that's where like Canadian booze is weird because it's very overpriced. Very expensive but it is fairly high alcohol content but I don't really like that. I kind of prefer American beer that's just sort of watered down very low alcohol content but it costs a lot less and you can drink a 6 pack without ruining your life. In Canada a 6 pack will ruin my life which is ruins my whole night. I get too drunk and then I feel too shitty the next day. This was more along those lines you know I only drank the one can but again it's this giant can 7% where to me 3% is fine. 5% seems a little much 7 is a lot. And I drank it over the course of like an hour so but yeah I just got like I was like maybe also because that was really tired. And I was on a bit of an empty stomach too. I didn't really buy any food with it because I had that huge ramen meal during my journeys yesterday. That feels like at the time like you'll never want to eat again but then in the evening I probably should have bought something. But anyway I was like unpleasantly drunk like oh geez that's fucking a lot. And it's like yeah I just don't really like drinking like that. And that's what reminded me of oh yeah this happened to me last time too strong zero is not my thing. But then I found you can get I still didn't drink that much after that but a little bit here and there. But you can get either just beer that's not crazy high level of alcohol. But you can also get these like grape I found this like grape stuff that was like some kind of grape alcohol that was again like 4% or less. That works way better for me. So we'll see who's just this feeling of just the summertime feeling and having my own little apartment. I do feel like I just want to go buy some nuts and some rice crackers and some dried octopus or something and a beer. But if I do it's got to be way weaker beer.

But I also made me realize I had this like revelation when I drank that strong zero because I mean strong zero is sort of famous for being the most strong. 35:00 Although then there's like rice wine you can get that at most of the convenience stores. And I guess that's even more because it's wine. But this stuff is all so super affordable and it's just everywhere.

And that's when I had this realization that like when you're in like like the western side of Ikebukuro. You know it's nighttime everything's all lit up and pretty and there's like old guys just walking around. Or especially I guess Pachinko parlors. I've only been in one or two just to just to say that I went but it's just fantastic amounts of noise and craziness and stuff. And I just kind of realized like oh especially these old guys that clearly just kind of wander around with no particular aim. I bet these old guys are fucked up. It never occurred to me but if you can just go into any convenience store and get this fucking drunk for under $3. I bet these guys are all fucking wasted. It makes a lot of sense. It would make a lot of sense of why how do you even tolerate a Pachinko place. But even if you're just walking around just sort of stumbling around staring at the lights. It seems like a good place to be a drunk purely for the cheapness and the accessibility. I guess the closest thing in America there would be quite a bit of like homeless guys who would buy the little tiny mini bottles of hard liquor. Which I believe. I mean when I lived there it was 2008 so this is out of date information but I think you could get them for like a buck sometimes. Or Canada is just different. Like those little teeny tiny airline bottles of booze are like $5.95. Everything is so expensive in Canada. It's not a fun drinking culture even though everybody does it in Canada. I had this one friend in Toronto who he just loved going out to bars him and his girlfriend. More so than drinking at home and stuff or having house parties. And yeah he would just get rum and coax doubles and he would take the straw from each one and fashion it into a little triangle till he had like a string of them like a little like a lay like a little necklace. And his bill would always be like $120. It's like this is fucking bananas man. You could get that fucked up in Japan for 15 bucks. You could you could die for 20.

So this has actually been pretty nice. The reason I'm not walking right now is you could tell I did too much walking yesterday. Oh that explains it because I was like why does my shoulder hurt? But it's my right shoulder that's my bad shoulder. My scoliosis shoulder that always hurts. My left shoulder was hurting. I'm just sitting on these concrete steps that go up to the river bank. And I've just got my arm propped up on the arm rail as an armrest. And it's like yeah there we go. That my shoulder doesn't hurt. But I just realized why that shoulder hurts because that's the shoulder I used to drag my book bag for four fucking hours across half a Tokyo yesterday.

So yeah it's a good thing today to take the time off. And it enforced down time. This has been kind of nice instead of just walking because where am I walking too? I don't know what's down here. There's nothing down here clearly. Just sit. Just have a reason to be forced to sit. Just soak it in. Just watch the cyclists go by and in the distance there's some people playing golf.

But yeah that's my adventures so far in Itabashi.

Oh they had a little street festival on my way here. They had a street blocked off. And they were doing like Halloween stuff even though it's early November now. But it was kind of cool. They had just like Halloween inflatables and stuff set up. A bunch of little kids dressed in Halloween stuff and they were playing this is Halloween. This is Halloween. Yeah and like I was saying last episode it's definitely true. Like even just stuff like the laundry. I still you know I couldn't have navigated it properly without the Google translate. But that I just felt less intimidated to try. I just really do feel more comfortable on these outskirt areas that are less busy.

All that stuff in Seng and Jaya was pretty decent. And I assume. I mean I assume I'll add it to the itinerary like next time I visit Japan. I'm sure I'll make at least one trip out there just to see that neighborhood. But I'm not sure what the target would be. You know it was nice just to walk along the like green belt walking paths that set up. And it was nice to walk along the various rivers down there. But I'm not sure that I found a thing that was just like the thing. The thing was to walk away from there. So I don't know maybe not. You know it was still pretty cool. Like hey I'm back in Japan I'm doing stuff. But now that I'm more in the middle of nowhere. 40:00 I'm just going to eat the basche, no offense. Patrons of the Arakawa River. It's just so much more clear that this is what I like. So I guess we'll see. We'll see how the second half of this journey goes. When I get back to Tokyo after I go visit Fukuoka.

Because that's where I got myself a capsule hotel near the sky tree. You know the whole end bit is basically right back in the city. So I guess that'll confirm it. Maybe it'll be like oh this is fine now maybe I've acclimated. Or maybe I'll realize like this really is what I want to do when I come to Japan. And then maybe we can go from there right? Like there's so many other cities and stuff.

Fukuoka is still I think the fifth biggest city. So again I'm going to the outskirts of it deliberately. But what if I went somewhere that is only the outskirts? How would that go? What would that be like?

We will see but that's one thing I love about where I've been in Japan. Is with Canadian cities it's a little tricky. Vancouver is pretty good for that. Like if you go to the outskirts of Vancouver it gets pretty interesting because there's a lot of water and there's the Rocky Mountains right there and there's a lot of nature and parks and trees and stuff. Montreal not so much but I felt okay just being in the middle of Montreal. It's fine that place feels comfortable to me. But Toronto say or New York was even worse. You just feel like you can't escape you know it just never stops. Like Toronto just it stops being interesting. The middle is the only interesting part but the bland outer suburb areas literally never stop. They just go and go and go for hundreds of miles and just to other increasingly more and more bland cities. No offense Ontario.

And New York yeah that was the first time I ever had this feeling of like like what if I did want to get out of here in my not having a car life? Not easy to do. Pretty much stuck and I mean I actually stayed in a pretty low-key area. I lived in Flushing right by Flushing Meadows Park where the unispir is. You might know it from Grand Theft Auto 4. But it was like a great big park right outside of my apartment. And I think that's what kept me sane. That was I guess my first example of like you're paying how much for rent to live in Manhattan? I don't even like to go into Manhattan. Why the fuck would you do that? It's when I started to realize the type of person I am and Tokyo is so great for this because the middle's there. If you want to go see bananas town it's all there. But you can just hop on a train and come out to these nice quiet areas like this that are eerily reminiscent of anime and stuff you may have watched. Especially if you watch the Yasha case, slice of life anime that I watch.

But you don't even need to get on the train. I fucking walked here yesterday. It took all day but I did it. I walked from the big bad center to here. Wasn't that bad?

This city has kind of got it all. Man, it's got everything. Everything you might want. Except I guess English-speaking people. But again, that's on me. That's my fault. It's my fault that I never learned how to ask for chopsticks. It's on me.