#17 Travel nostalgia in Japan

Transcript

I just had a little Canadian moment of motorists being too polite, where I was just waiting to, you know, a little red, the little red man that says, do not cross. So I was just waiting for him to become the little green man. And some dude stopped and was like gesturing like, go ahead, cross. But the other way was like a truck coming down the street. And it's like, no, no dude. I'll just wait for the little green man. It's fine. So I mean, that's the exact same complaint I had in Canada, motorists of the world, any country, anywhere. If you think you're helping, you're not helping. Don't stop. Just go. Just follow the traffic signals and everything will work a lot better. Because even in the event that you are stopping to let someone pass, and it works. Still, now I got a hurry across the street in front of an idling car. Why would I want to do that? I can wait 30 fucking seconds and just walk leisurely when the little green man tells me to walk. Don't try to help cars. You're not helping.

Just just go. Just fucking go. I fucking hate cars. So yeah, unexpectedly starting off on the wrong foot. That just happened. So why not bring it up? But yeah, now that I've got my own little apartment to myself, instead of the previous Airbnb that was like a million bunks all packed in together, I'm out at the edge of Itabashi, not that far from the Arakawa River, which is the prefecture break to Saitama. So I'm pretty much as far north as you can get in Tokyo. So it's a lot more relaxed, a lot more just a random neighborhood. See, I got this little apartment. So I was like, cool. Now I can spread my wings a little at the local convenience store. They're not all 7-11 here. There's a few family marks, but I have seen no losses at all. So I feel like maybe that initial feeling I was getting that there were less losses. I think it's true. It's definitely less guaranteed than the other two if you go to some random neighborhood. In my informal study, it's either all losses or no losses. But yeah, I figured I'd get some, you can get like little rice sticks, wrapped in seaweed, and just, you know, wasabi flavored peanuts. I got some freeze dried squid tentacle, which man, that stuff gets stuck in the teeth. I got a floss right after I eat that stuff. But it's all stuff that just from, I remember there was this one manga called Shortcuts. It was like a four-panel gag comic. It was really good. But one of the things that happened and it was this guy's 50-year-old dad got transformed into a hot idol, a hot teenage girl. But he's still acted like a 50-year-old dad. And I remember that was the thing. He'd always be walking around the house and his underwear with just a towel around his shoulders, eating dried squid or dried octopus or dried whatever, and drinking a beer. So I was like, I'm going to be that guy. I'm going to be the middle-aged Japanese guy. And there's always the one section that has the dried shredded fish and stuff. The sort of most traditionally weird to North Americans, quote-unquote weird, you know, stuff that you just would never see at a convenience store anywhere else. And I'm starting to like it. I don't know, I should just keep at it. Just keep buying stuff till I find one I don't like. I mean, they're very fishy. It's a bit of a weird thing to just snack on to our palate, but it's not bad.

But the one thing I didn't get was the beer because the sun was on its way down and I'm always like I've said in previous episodes. I'm weirdly disconnected from my own body. I get like kind of over-exhausted and stuff without realizing it. So that day I felt fine, but something in me was like, I don't think you want a beer. I don't think that's what you need right now. Get a coffee. Get one of those little weird, bitter espresso coffees. Go ahead. Oh, and I also got just like some bentos now. Now that I got a fridge and a microwave, I can get like 5:00 the whole platter of stuff. Although I got to admit, I don't think they're that great. Everything, it's like so cheap to get like an own a Geary or something. When you get the whole bento from 7.11, it ain't that great. And it's like five bucks, five fifty. It seems like a big price jump for something that's not that impressive. But yeah, even with that coffee in me, I got hit with another wave like I did the other day of mega-tiredness. This kind of tiredness that I rarely ever feel where it was only like 6.30 or something. And I just like closed the lid on my computer. And it was like, I'll be right back computer. But I just got to go lie down. And then I fell asleep till like midnight. And I woke up and messaged a couple people because it's a good time to social media since it's noon, back home. But then I fell back asleep and woke up at like seven in the morning. And it's just like, whoa.

And I wish after all that sleep. I wish I could say I felt super rested. But the same way I can't really tell when I'm tired. I can't really tell when I'm rested either. I felt about the same. But I wonder just trying to sort of theorize based on random personal evidence that has no basis in anything.

Is when I visited Japan before, it was very early summer. And I still spent quite a bit of time walking around at night because Japan's so beautiful at night. It looks amazing at night. Night is half of the, you know, it's like two different trips at once. You get the daytime version and the nighttime version. And they're both really cool in their own ways. But since it was day for so much of the day, I was often walking around at two in the morning. That happened all the time. That hasn't happened at all here because it's dark by six. So I get to have my taste of darkness. And by eight or nine at night, you know, it's been plenty dark. I got to walk around in the dark. See all the pretty lights. I don't need to stay up all night anymore. So I wonder if last time, maybe I was staying sort of more in line with my normal sleep cycle from back home. Where this time, it feels like my body is really pushing me to adapt. Like maybe the jet lags really hitting me. I was just like, nah dude, just stark as hell out there. Just go to bed. Wake up at seven in the morning. And it's like, yeah, actually, I don't hate this. I could get used to this. I rarely get to be the guy who wakes up early in the morning. If all I got to do is go to a literal 12 hour time difference to make that happen. That's not so bad. So I got up way early in the morning and figured today is the day I would do some podcast editing because that's one of those weird things I've heard. I can't remember who said it. This weird quote about writing that was like, I don't enjoy the process of writing, but I like the feeling of having written, you know, like the person liked it when it was done, but didn't like doing it. I don't feel that way about writing. I don't really care about writing being finished. I like the process of working on it. But podcasts are the exact opposite. It feels really neat to have a podcast done and have a little trail of podcasts go behind you. But the actual act of sitting down and editing a podcast is a pain. And because I so charmingly record while I'm walking around a loud random world, it's kind of a lot of editing. Just to get this shit ass podcast that sounds all fucked up, you'd be surprised how much editing it takes to make this not just an un-listenable cacophony of fucking noise and nonsense. So as I get right, I'm up early. I can hang out in this little apartment, do some work, quote unquote, some podcast work, still have plenty of day left to go do something. So I was just going to hop around the corner to the nearest drink machine to get some drinks. But when I got there, I realized I didn't have enough coins. I had to go break a bill. So I had to go find a 7-11. And I've got two phones. I've got like my real shit phone that I just listened to music and podcasts and stuff on. And then I got my pretty good phone that's like a Google Pixel whatever. It's not the new model. I still got it cheap, but it's like a real phone. So that's the one that I used for maps and stuff. But I didn't bring that because I thought I was just going around the corner. And it's amazing how you know went to 7-11 got some stuff. So I still have a map, but I do not have the blue dot on my crap phone. It took me back to what it was like when I visited here in 2019. Even though I was 10:00 only a few minutes away, it's like holy jeez, I'm instantly lost. I don't know how to get back. And it was fine. It all worked out. But dude, the little blue dot happened the GPS in your phone. It is worth it. It is a worthwhile thing to have. I mean obviously I did fine last time. Everything worked out. But I think a big part of that was because before I could stop at every convenience store, hop onto their free Wi-Fi. And through the Wi-Fi, then I could get the magical blue dot of like where the heck am I. But now that public Wi-Fi is way, way, way less prevalent. Like way less. It cannot be counted on at all. I would definitely say if you're coming to visit Japan. I mean presumably everybody is a bit higher on the technology curve than me. Everybody's got a phone with GPS in it that shows them the little blue dot of where they are. But if you don't have it, get one. I mean that Google Pixel, I got it for like 60 bucks. You can get phones nobody else wants. It's not a big problem. But yeah, Japan is so confusing. I just couldn't believe how fast I got lost. It took minutes. I was like, oh jeez. I also did some research about my weird shower with the cold water. And it turns out I've got a system that was popular in the 70s because this is just a really old house where it's like a gas-powered water heater connected to the shower. So the modern Japanese stuff, it's like electric I guess. I don't really know for sure how stuff works. But where you can set specific temperatures and just press a button to fill the tub and all this cool stuff. Where this article I found was like, yeah, this was stuff was like between the 70s and the early 90s. This was pretty common. But even a lot of people in Japan now, if they move out of home or whatever and they move into a crappy apartment to go to school or something, they might bump into this and not be familiar with it or how it works. And even with a little guide on YouTube and stuff, I just couldn't, I don't understand how gas stuff works because we've just never done that anywhere I've lived in Canada. I guess I did have a stove or an oven, a stove top in New York that was gas-powered. You had to do the little click, click, click and then it would light a little flame under the burner. But I really didn't cook much if at all in that apartment. So I still had very little experience with that.

And I just don't understand it. I just don't know internally what's going on. I have no sense for like gas. Like when is it dangerous? You know, if you leave the gas on exactly what happens? Am I gonna blow everything up? Yeah, that was my main concern. It's just trying to figure out if I had the gas turned on or off because I was like, you know, even if I just don't do this, but I'm just okay with cold showers for the next few days and I just don't care. I just gotta make sure at least I'm not leaving the gas turned on, right? Does that matter? I mean, it's obviously better off. I don't even know. I don't know enough to even know what's dangerous. I just wanted to make sure it was off. So I at least figured that out for sure. But yeah, the part where we do the little pilot light tick, tick, tick. And it's supposed to ignite, I guess. And then heat up the water. It just isn't working. But it's like whatever. Again, I just don't care. Like this morning at seven a.m., the idea of a cold shower seemed a little suspect. But I just took one at like two in the afternoon. No problem. I mean, it was a little chilly. But as the day warmed up, again, this is no big deal. If you just think of these apartments as like as cottages, you know, if you're out camping, maybe by modern apartment standards, they're a little strange, but by camping standards, they're fine. They're actually pretty, pretty sweet. But speaking of that, I was also looking at, you know, like I always read the reviews of Airbnb's just to make sure things aren't super terrible. But then it all kind of blurs in my brain. So it's kind of neat sometimes once I've been to a place to then go look at the reviews again, now that I've been there and I actually understand the place. And all the reviews are really good for this place, except one guy who had a bee in his bonnet. I don't know, you can always kind of tell if there's just one review where the guy seems to have all these weird problems. 15:00 And every other review is great. You can assume he's an outlier. But it is funny how people will kind of couch their language or like if they feel good about the place, but there were problems, you know, they are careful how they bring it up. Like the one that I was thinking of as I stated this place in Vancouver where it just smelled like cat piss. It's just ridiculous. That's a story for another time. But I was like, how did the reviews not bring this up? And I look back at them and they sort it did. You know, they found these weird little ways to kind of bring it up and not fully bring it up where in that case they should have just brought it up. It was like what's going on here. But in the case of this apartment, it would be stuff like, you know, because it's an old house. Wooden frames and everything. Just the climate of Japan. You might get some little visitors is the way the person put it. That person's review is actually kind of cool because they stayed for an entire month. And they were saying how yeah, like the hosts got us a little table so we could work from home. We lived here for a month. It was cool.

What? Because, you know, just the way Japanese houses are, it's, you know, it's partially, it's like you're outside when you're still inside a little bit. You might get some little visitors. Although they did say like, oh, although that's not always bad, you know, we had a really pretty moth to come into the apartment. But there was only one person. The person who had to be in there bonnet, but they did bring up this one true point of that there was a cock crotch on the little bath mat in front of the washer. And I did also see a cockroach in that exact same spot, which is funny. It's like, it's right in front of the, like, as you enter the place too. It's like the little welcoming, like, hello, I'm the cockroach here to welcome you. I wonder if they like the moisture, I guess? I don't know really anything about cockroaches either. It's a running scene in this podcast. How I don't know. I don't know anything about anything. But yeah, I mean, that's the only one that I saw and I did realize that I don't know if it came in from the outside or how, again, with old houses and people keep bringing up the wooden architecture. But I don't know how that's relevant exactly. I don't know if it came in from outside or if it's inside somewhere. But I did have pretty much all the windows and sliding door by the patio. I just had everything open. I was like, yeah, let's just get air flowing through. Why not? I realized, well, maybe I shouldn't have everything.

But yeah, it definitely didn't seem like a big deal because this place really is just immaculate, immaculately maintained. So I feel like that's just the price of doing business in a warm climate like this. I feel like this is different from bedbugs. Bedbugs are like, uh, uh, this sucks. I was like, well, who am I? The king of fucking Canada? I deserved it never. I mean, I think I was just saying that in the previous episode. Like, you know, I like this about Japan that it's like indoor and outdoor blends the two. You're one with the outside world. Well, you can't say that and then get upset about an insect being in your house. But I just thought I'd bring it up because, you know, if you do happen to be listening to this and you haven't been to Japan, you know, just what to expect.

Especially if you're in an older place, that could totally happen. But yeah, because I spent all day inside doing computer stuff, it's a little later in the day. Well, it's like three o'clock now, so I got a solid couple hours left before it gets real dark. So I thought I would just go to Naka Itabashi because it's, I mean, it's a very small neighborhood. And there's literally nothing there. There'd be no reason to go ever. Except that it's where I first stayed when I first got to Japan. So no big long journeys. Probably still good to give my feet and stuff a little rest. Toward the end of all that walking I was doing at the last Airbnb. I did have a couple little moments on each foot where I felt like a little sting, a weird little sting in my foot. And it didn't lead to anything, but it's like, I should probably pay attention to that. My feet aren't good. I have flat feet. I'm wearing things right now, little rubber things around my big toes, so I don't develop bunions. If I feel stinging in the feet, that's, you know, take a day off on the feet thing. So, you know, I had a pretty easy day yesterday and I have another pretty easy day today. 20:00 I don't intend to run off anywhere. I think I'm literally just going to hang out in this tiny little, because the way it's the part of the neighborhood I like, it's not that the neighborhood is necessarily so tiny. It's that there's just a little spot between the train station and the Shikouji River. And that specific little neighborhood is just where I just, I just love it. I'm just going to go walk around it. Go to the 7-Eleven that I used to go to every morning. I don't know if there's going to be anything to report about that, if anything interesting is going to happen, but I guess we'll see. Somehow, I've still managed to Yammer this long about nothing happened on anything today.

I hear something I can Yammer about that it's already getting fuzzy in my brains. Maybe I better catch it now while it makes any kind of sense.

As I was saying, when I first got back to this neighborhood where I first stayed in Japan, there was this sort of weird sense that I was walking into a daydream. Because during COVID times, I would just kind of, especially at night to help myself go to sleep, I would just kind of walk the old neighborhoods of any city, it could be Vancouver, it could be Toronto, it could be whatever.

But it was very often Tokyo and Fukuoka. Just like a little meditative way to help me fall asleep was just to walk my way through these old neighborhoods. So, as neat as it was just to visit Japan at all, suddenly having it just sort of the whole world shut down and then just using it as this little meditative practice, it sort of made it feel extra like a bit of a strange dream, more than a real place.

So, I was noticing when I was in Sengenjaya, I'd be outside all day walking around Japan and then when I got back, especially for the first two or three days, and I'd be tucked away in my little weird bunk in my little weird Airbnb. And it would be like the two things would be clashing a little bit, of like I would still have that feeling of like, oh yeah, the dream, the weird daydream place, those weird neighborhoods in Japan that are so awesome and I can't wait to go back to. But at the same time, I am back there, I've been walking around Japan all day.

So, partially, maybe it was just settling in, you know, just letting my subconscious and my brain figure out that I was indeed back there. But then I also realized a bit when I got back to the actual neighborhoods that I'd been to before, then maybe that was part of it, like I was at a place that was almost the same, it was mostly the same, but it wasn't actually the same. But yeah, then everything kind of came into alignment and it's like, oh man, amazing, I'm really here. But now I'm already starting to notice getting a little lost on the way to Naki to Bashi, I'm almost there though. Now it's sort of normalizing, it's like, yeah, just walking around, just walking around Japan. I don't know, it's not extremely interesting. But just that phenomenon of like, you want the thing and then when you first get the thing, it's like a little bit unreal. Then everything lines up just right and then you sort of are just like, yes, just my life now, it's just normal. But that's one reason I'm doing this podcast too, where the podcast is gonna take a lot longer to come out than the actual events. I'm gonna start taking it for granted, probably by the end, I'll be a little bit ready to go, that's how I felt last time. By the last week in Japan, it's like, you know, I have been here pretty dang long time, maybe it's starting to get weird. But then I'll be gone and I'll be like, gosh shoot, I'm not there anymore. So the podcast is like the little ducklings trailing by behind me, that I can remember all these silly little days. Because I think that's what'll be cool, is that my memories were like pretty vivid of my first visit to Japan because the whole thing was such an unusual experience for me. But there's only so much you can remember.

Where I'm gonna remember all these weird little days. So right here, for example, I'm approaching from a slightly unusual direction, because I used to always just get off the train at Naka Itabashi. Or maybe walk back from Oyama.

Yeah, no, this isn't it.

Because I was coming in from a different direction, there is an overpass, one of the train overpasses, with a 7-11 near it, and that was the first 7-11. Where I ever bought booze in Japan, where I had a strong zero. When I do that today, it's not dark yet. It should be dark for the full experience, but I think really what I want is probably just the lemon flavor of a strong zero. I should get one of those vitamin C lemon drinks, because I was just saying, as recently as that might have been last episode, how shockingly drunk you can get from Japanese drinks. And that was only a 7% that I had. Strong zero is a 9%. So I probably don't want that, just because I want a little bite of like awesome lemon taste. And you get that fun little zing of like, oh, booze. But then I got to walk home. Like that. I probably don't want to do that. But it's a move point. That wasn't the right spot anyway. I had this idea that I would just like go on weird pilgrimages back to all the old neighborhoods I'd already been to, and just redo some of these things that I wish I had done a podcast about the first time. But that hasn't really happened, and I don't know how much I will do that, because it's a bit. It seems a bit weird. A bit of a weird thing to do. It's going to happen for sure in Fukuoka, because I want to go hike the mountains. And I don't need to get too wild with the mountains. I want to stay more or less on routes that I know that won't lead to me getting lost in the woods, and killed by wild boars. Jeez though, I wonder, the blue dot, the magical GPS blue dot, I got pretty dang lost on Aberyam mountain once, and I'm going to try to do that route again. But I mean, I never was actually that far from civilization. It was a highway, like 15 minutes away, or 20 minutes away from where I was. I just had to walk the right way. I used my amazing mountaineering skills of just walking down the mountain, follow a dry riverbed, it's got to lead somewhere, and it worked. But maybe the blue dot, maybe the blue dot could have saved me. Man, it's amazing how confusing this is. I guess it's because the train cuts through the neighborhood diagonally, and the neighborhood is not exactly a grid to begin with. I just got to get to Nakkeetabashi and go from there.

Sam walking past the bookoff, that's the used bookstore, that's right by this station, full of the books I can't read, and I'm like, hey, there's the bookoff. Hey, there's the family mark where I get bananas and whipped cream in a crape thing, and I just went to the 7-Eleven, I used to go to every morning, and certainly wasn't bad. I got like a pork cutlet sandwich, and they've got these sandwiches. I'd forgotten all about these. You know, everything is sort of not everything, but stuff in Japan, it's either super hard core, like, you know, just dried shredded fish parts, or it's like candy. Even the sandwiches are like candy. They're just white bread with all the crust cut off and stuff. But they have candy sandwiches, where the ones I had before were strawberry and blueberry. The ones I've seen around this time are, I don't see them a ton, but they're always orange, so maybe it's like seasonal, but it's the fruit, so orange in this case, and whipped cream on white bread with the crust cut off, and it's pretty fucking good. I'm really not sure which one is the best. I was thinking, like, surely orange isn't as good as strawberry and blueberry, but then as I'm eating it, I'm like, seems pretty goddamn good to me.

I think the best kind is just whichever one you're putting in your face at the moment, because they're all so goddamn good. So yeah, I got some stuff, I stood outside, and I ate it, just like I always used to. And yeah, it was all right, but I mean, I guess again, like I was saying that shock of being back from a couple of days ago, that's worn off, but I knew this was gonna happen also, because I was just thinking back to these nostalgia trips I've been on, like I lived in Flushing Queens from 2008 to 2009, and then in like 2012 or 2013, I was back in New York, and I took a bicycle and I biked out there, not all the way from like Manhattan, from like a story. 30:00 And it was kind of cool. I was like, hey, there's the old apartment, there's that delicious pizza place I used to go to. They made these like swirls. They were like cinnamon rolls, but with spinach. Man, they were good.

But that was the best thing, really, was just getting the spinach roll again, like just seeing the stuff again. And you know, it's not relevant anymore. My friends don't live there anymore. I mean, really, I guess it was just cool because I was there. Just because I was there every day is what made it cool. Or the apartment I lived in in Toronto. I mean, I lived there for like four years, five almost. So I needed an Airbnb in Toronto anyway. And I found one for like a week, literally across the street from the old apartment. And I was like, whoa, cool. You know, because my friends from those days, they all still live in the Toronto area, but a lot of the moved kind of outside of the city a bit to get proper houses, raise some kids, do all that stuff. So I was like, need I get to go back to the old neighborhood. But that one felt extra weird. Because I'd get up in the morning and walk out of the house. And it was like the same block and everything. And it's like, here we are. I'm here. But I'm seeing my morning routine from the reverse angle, from the 180 of how it was before. And there's just some other random people who live in my old apartment. And in fact, now I'm intimately aware of what's in this door across the street that I never thought about ever before. And now I know what that whole house is like. It was strange. Just a strange feeling thing. Not like some fun homecoming. But I mean, not terribly there. I don't mean to over dramatize it, but it just felt weird. Just kind of an empty experience. So I mean, I kind of knew that was going to happen here, too. It's like, so I'm standing outside of the same 7-Eleven. Who the fuck cares? You know, all this stuff, quote-unquote, I'm seeing. There's the old drink machine. There's the old convenient. There's the book off. It's all the same stuff that's in every other neighborhood. You know? I knew it wasn't going to be some weird, deeply meaningful experience. But I also knew I couldn't not do it. You know, I got to still come back. It's still nice. It's still kind of cool to wander around here again. But in a way, I think I was kind of saved from myself. Because I literally would have done the exact same route as last time. If I could have got all the same Airbnb's for the same amount of times in the same neighborhoods I would have. We're all ready. I learned about the giant gorilla in Sang and Jaya. All kinds of stuff about the more central parts of Tokyo. And it's just going to go on. I got like nine different Airbnb's. Even in Fukuoka, I tried to get stuff on the outskirts. But they're different outskirts, you know? It's still an hour's walk away from my old Airbnb and the other one's even further. But all this stuff is good. When I'm just, you know, a year ago.

Daydreaming in Canada about going back to Japan. Of course, I was just daydreaming about all the places I'd already been. It's kind of lucky that, you know, like this Airbnb I met now. It's kind of handy that it was only available for a week or the next one I'm going to. You know, I got it in my head that I love Akigawa Station. I love the western side across the Tamariver. I love that countryside area of Tokyo. But how much do I love it? You know, I stayed there for weeks before and that is this beautiful memory. But to go back there, I mean, there's literally nothing there. Whatever is there is exactly the same stuff that's here. You know, there's convenience stores, there's drink machines. There's just a lot more fields and open space. Going back for a taste is plenty. So yeah, rescued, rescued from my own... ...dalgae goggles. But yeah, this is still nice. I think maybe tomorrow. I'm just walking along the river. Tomorrow, I'm going to do the full run that I keep talking about. From here to OG to Ikubukuro. But again, last time I was here, I mean, I did this run every couple of days. I did it a bunch of times. I would just wander randomly around this area. But I mean, that's the point, right? I already did that. I can do it one more time just for the fuck of it. But even a place like Ikubukuro is really big. It's like my favorite of the major neighborhoods. But I never buy anything. I don't have room in my book bag to buy stuff. So what am I actually going to do there? I would just do dumb shit. As you cross from the west side to the east side, there's an underpass that goes under the train line. And if you hang a left right there, there's just this area where people just hang out and smoke. 35:00 And I would just go hang out there and do writing on my phone and stuff. It's just a cool place to hang out that people feed and homeless cats and stuff. It's like, okay, that's kind of cool. Why would I want to do it over and over? When I was fantasizing about coming back to Japan, I guess I had a lack of creativity. Even that I'm just going to Tokyo, Fukuoka, the city's already known. Thank God that my friend Brad was in Fukuoka doing his language course. So I even got that experience because at least that gave me enough that I understand how to travel. You know, I figured out how to use peach air to get a cheap flight. And I mean, that kind of opens up everything. I could go anywhere, really.

But it would be easy to never do that. It would be very easy just to stay in Tokyo. There's plenty to do around here.

So yeah, I suspect. I suspect next time I'm going to be stretching my wings a bit. I'm also already pre-planning. I keep thinking of when I come back from Fukuoka how I got this this capsule hotel for like two weeks right by the sky tree. And that's kind of a good example. The sky tree is a great memory for me because I walked there one night just this epic long walk. Which I was like, should I do the epic long walk to the sky tree again? I mean, I might, but I've done so many epic walks already. I've taken some of the vim out of the idea of the epic walk. It doesn't get much more epic than I mean, that walk I already did from Shinjuku to here. It's fucking long as fuck dude. That pure experience of just walking through the endlessness of Tokyo how it just will never end. It's pretty great. But, but I already did it by accident almost. Oh man, here's a poster for there's this all women wrestling group called Stardom. I only know it's that because I'm a wrestling fan because there's no English here. They're champion. Her name is Julia and she's in the middle of this poster. There even a date on this. November 21st. I really don't think I'm gonna because like pro wrestling is weird. I'm a big pro wrestling fan, but to go to a pro wrestling show by yourself is a little tricky because they're always extremely long. It's a lot more fun if you go with your friends. You know, you can talk to them and shit.

Not only would this be not with my friends, but probably not even with anyone I could communicate to at all. Yeah, generally my traveling is just to do nothing and I think I'm gonna just probably stick with that. My traveling is to literally just travel to just move around a place, not to do stuff to go places. But yeah, I guess I will tell the story though of this Airbnb because it's really in hindsight not surprising that it's not an Airbnb right now that they decided that's enough of this and they did not get it up and going again after COVID because I picked this place just because it was cheap and I just at the time I had a prepaid credit card so it's just like I could only run a thousand dollars through this card per day. So I just did that. It's like how many days can I stay in Tokyo for a thousand dollars and then from there I'll go to Fukuoka and meet my friend Brad. And at that place it was 43 days which was then 42 days because I got trapped overnight in Russia.

Man, this is bringing back a memory where again I'm just like it seemed like that 7-11 where I got the strong zero was so close and so easy to get to. But I can't figure out where it is and just kind of mosey and in wander and it's like I could have swore it was right around here but it's not tricky. Everything is so tricky. Oh man, so there's apartment buildings here that are one, two, three, four, only four floors high. I found an apartment building when I was going to the Arakawa River that was like 15 floors. It was enormous, maybe not 15 but it was a lot and it was like buildings encircling a courtyard. I kind of wandered in by accident. It was like whoops, this is just the courtyard of a building. I got to go back out. But if you ever read the comic domo, a child's dream, it was by Katsuhiro Otomo, the guy who did Akira but he did it before Akira but it's a bit similar. It's just a psychic kid versus a psychic grandpa and they have a battle in this big apartment complex and it looked just like that. Like as soon as I got there and I looked up I was like whoa domo, 40:00 holy crap. But yeah it was quite strange that this one place was so cheap at the time because all the places that still exist around here, they're still some but they're all pretty pricey. So this place was real cheap which again I guess maybe just because they were trying to get established or whatever but it was a room on the bottom floor that had six bunks but they were real big, way bigger than the bunks that the place I just was and that one tended to be it seemed like people would rent the whole room like if you wanted a whole room for families and stuff so it was not often used but when it was it was everybody and there was a shower and a bathroom down there then upstairs was a bigger room with 10 bunks and again way bigger bunks and a way bigger room so it was like a similar sort of situation to the Airbnb I was just at but just with everything bigger it was just comfortable it didn't bother me to be there with all these people it seemed fine and then there were more showers and more washrooms and it was pretty crowded because I didn't realize at the time it was golden week I'd kind of heard a golden week where it's like a bunch of vacation days kind of put together so I guess a lot of people in Japan use that time to go traveling and stuff so I guess a lot of people who aren't from Tokyo were traveling into Tokyo and staying there because it wasn't just foreigners it was everybody who's a big mix of people there I don't know why I'm trying so hard to find that 7-11 because like I said I don't think I'm gonna do this wrong zero plan but it's like is it over there is it this way I'm just surprised how easily I'm getting lost again over and over all the time but yeah once this place cleared out man did it clear out to the point that there'd be sometimes just like me and two other people or sometimes just me and one other person which was actually kind of weirder because then it really is like you have a roommate but you don't know who they are it's just this one other person across the room from you in this complex but a lot of the time I was there it was just me you know people would show up on the weekends but for most of the week it would just be me which again is obviously economically bad for them I don't know why I'm surprised that that place isn't running anymore because of course it isn't like you can't make money when one fucking guy is like paying less than $30 a day to stay there but it's a great example of how you just never know what's gonna happen with Airbnb's I assume if you're a high roller and you're spending big money on your Airbnb's is probably a lot more predictable you probably get what's on the tin you know you're assured certain things where when you do what I do and you just get cheap stuff you never know maybe it's gonna smell like capy or maybe it's gonna be a two-story building all to yourself because the staff even only showed up when they needed to change bedding and stuff when somebody knew was coming in or somebody was leaving most of the time they weren't there and what the hell is this there's steps up to some kind of walking thing I gotta go up there how have I never stumbled upon this what the fuck is this but you had the staff usually wasn't there so if there was stuff like how I was so dumb that I turned off the water on myself didn't realize that I did it or times when the internet would stop working there was nobody around I could uh mention it too but I just didn't bother too anyway because like not having the internet for two or three days was fine it was kind of nice it was nice to wake up in the morning and not have the internet that's a rare experience or remind me it felt like it was then like the 90s you just wake up and you just do stuff you don't check anything because there's nothing to check and then you know after three or four days somebody would come in and they would reset it or whatever but yeah they'd change the door codes periodically and just send me a message hey by the way here's the new door code so I'd just be walking around Japan especially this neighborhood around Dikibuka road just walking walking walking all the live long day walk around till two in the morning just soaking it in okay these steps just go up to off street hmm I'm gonna go back down and try the other way see if I can find that seven eleven but yeah it was wild because after spending the day walking around come back here two thirty in the morning everything's quiet and dark go to this building which I never really noticed at the time but it's evident now now that I've had that taste of Shibuya adjacent life that all the buildings around here are a lot older and a lot more 45:00 weathered and a lot a lot more run-down looking which I like it's comfy but that building I was in it's still after four years of not seeing it it still looks super duper fancy pants and brand new and spikenspan so I'd roll up there I'd put in the little door code and walk in and I'd be the only one there I could pick which shower I wanted to use first for her second floor I had one of the washrooms with the toilet seat up now one of the washrooms with the toilet seat down so I didn't even have to change my toilet seat I could just go to whichever washroom I wanted to use and then there was a third wildcard washroom if I wanted that for some reason as well basically I just had a two-story building four stops away from Ikibukuro all to myself for like I think it was 26 dollars a day it might have been 27 whatever a thousand divided by 43 is I suppose I could check right got a phone holy fuck yeah it was like 23 26 so under 24 dollars a night what the god damn fuck cuz yeah like I was looking at places in this neighborhood and they're all like 50 60 dollars a night shit so just what a weird place what an odd situation I don't know what was going on there but clearly it was not financially feasible and when COVID hit they were like okay nuts to this seems like they probably were gonna say nuts to this well before I was glancing too how I glanced in the window yesterday and it looked like there was just stuff stacked up in there but no it was some kind of a divider so I really have no idea what's going on in there outside was a mailbox maybe it's just an apartment now maybe somebody just lives in there but I guess that's the point is like to have a two-story building to yourself in Tokyo you either gotta be rich as fuck or porous fuck you know the only reason I took that place is because it was so ridiculously cheap and by doing that I accidentally got the rich guys set up I got the I have a whole building in Tokyo motherfucker like how rich would you have to be to just have a two-story building that you just wander into sometimes you know it's not even where you live it's just a place where you go hang out and crash sometimes god damn it was fucking good but that's completely unrepeatable again unless you're super rich unless you just want to pay to have a whole place but it's just so weird that I got it for that cheap even I guess in my mind I had escalated how expensive it was because it's like it has to have been right but it wasn't man that shit was good But that's not like actionable advice or useful information, you know. There's really nothing you can do with that, because you can't make that happen. I can't make that happen again. That was just... That was just lucky, but even that's like a weird way to put it, because it was lucky for me, very not lucky for the people running this place. Oh, that's got to fucking be it. I'm walking along a train line. This sidewalk is sloping downward. The train, this road's got to go somewhere, which presumably is the underpass I remember. And I see a 7-Eleven sign. If that's not it, I'll be a fucking monkey's uncle. That's got to be it.