#18 My Favorite Tokyo Walk - Naka Itabashi to Oji

Transcript

Today I'm doing what I would say is officially my favorite walk in Tokyo. The walk from Naka Itabashi Station down the Shakuji River, which is a name I'm still having a hard time internalizing because I never looked up the name of it before. It was just by my Airbnb. But if you walk down the Shakuji River to Oji Station, I'm not saying it's the best walk. It's actually pretty average, I guess. But to me, it's my favorite because this was where I first stayed in Japan and I walked this more than any other one walk. But I guess, when I say it's my favorite, I mean, I wasn't really counting out in Akiruno, but that's technically Tokyo. It's just so far west, it feels like a different place. The point is I shouldn't put pressure on it. What's the point of grading my own fucking memories? What was my favorite random place? Who fucking cares? This is a good one, that's all that matters.

As I went through here, I walked through the little Naka Itabashi neighborhood again, like I did last episode. And something occurred to me, it's very obvious. But I mean, in a way, that's a good thing. When something is this obvious, it's weird that it took me so long to realize it, but it's also probably true. It's not like some complicated deep thought. It's just some simple thing I didn't think of before. As I was walking through it again, and much like yesterday, I was like, yeah, it's fine. It's a pretty good little neighborhood, but it just, you know, doesn't feel like it used to feel. But as I said last episode, that's the same thing when I went back to my old neighborhood in Flushing. And I was like, yeah, this is fine, but it doesn't feel the same. When I went back to my old neighborhood in Toronto, I was like, yeah, this is fine, but it doesn't feel the same. The obvious thing that's missing, I suddenly realized, is I don't live there anymore. I don't have a home there. I don't have a door I can go in, and a place where I can put my stuff.

A place with friends and roommates, and possibly TVs and video games, and people that I know, and just, you know, a home. I don't live there.

Even in this case, that it was just an Airbnb, but it was an Airbnb for 40 some days. I was there for a long time. It really felt like I lived in that neighborhood. So that's the obvious secret sauce to all these places. It's not the actual place. As long as the place isn't actively bad, then the place will be good. It'll just be cool because that's my home base. That's where I go back to at the end of the day. That's where I wake up every morning, that makes it feel significant. And yeah, that's all. That's why it doesn't feel special anymore. I don't live there. Oh wow, there's that overpass already. Geez, I just started walking down this path. I didn't realize how quick you get to the overpass, but yeah, this was when I walked from Shibuya.

Oh, that means the weird little squat toilet has got to cross over the river. It's all right up here. I can pee out some coffee as is my tradition. But yeah, I had that to the list of the home spun wisdom of the Roaming Holiday podcast that's always way shallow and super obvious. That's what I, that's what I market in. That's what I pedal. There's a word, but how it occurs. Yeah, even from this distance, you can hear the traffic.

How strange. I would always get to that overpass and sidle over to the side a little to the crosswalk. Wait for the crosswalk. Get across and then just get away from that thing because it's obviously a giant loud nightmare compared to the nice water flowing and birds chirping of the river route.

But it's just so weird now that I just kind of looked down the street and it's like, you know, now I have a pretty good idea of what lies not only that way, but the next three hours or so that way. I mean, it's just a straight line. It's just a street that never ends, but I just walked down it and it's like, dude, that's pretty fucking it's a weird thing to have tucked away now in my mental catalog. Man, very weird weather today. A couple little raindrops just hit me. But yeah, according to the weather, still above 20 degrees today, supposed to be like 23. But as soon as I left the apartment, all I've got is my t-shirt and in my back pocket, I've got a long-sleeved thermal shirt. And the one day I brought more than that, I regretted it. I just absolutely did not need that kind of warmth.

Yeah, I'm just passing a kind of cool little shopping street. But I'm not going that way today. Oh, yeah, and here's the little side path. I missed it, though. I missed the entrance. That's the way out, but just a little horseshoe loop.

With a little stream. Oh, the old men were out in force today. Tons of them fishing. But yeah, when I left the Airbnb house I met, there was a little cloudy. There was definitely a little chill on the skin. It did not feel like 23 degrees. And I was like, should I go back in? Should I get more layers? Is this the day? Am I going to regret this? But no, I've decided, because again, it's just so warm around here.

So I decided today I'd make the weather have it. There's this saying when you play Magic the Gathering as all extremely cool people do. That it's like, oh, you know, I want to make this one play. But if they have this certain card, I'm going to get destroyed. But you can't just be timid all the time. You just got to go for it sometimes. So the phrases make them have it. Like just do it. Make them have it. And if they have it, if they have the right counter card, then you lose. I'm going to make the weather have it. I'm not going to bring anything more than this one extra layer until the weather has the counter attack. You're going to make the weather have it. And if it doesn't have it, this is what I'm going to do. And also, to squeeze in another layer, I have to basically take out my umbrella. Seeming like umbrella is a better idea. But yeah, the weather keeps, you know, it's a little overcast, a tiny little chill. Then the sun comes out and it gets all warm again. It's very weird.

Yeah, even I'm still feeling these couple little raindrops. But if anything, it's just sort of adding to the humidity. It's not really making things colder. Well, here's something I've never seen before in the drink machine. Sparkling apple. However, not really in the mood for that. Doesn't even have caffeine in it. But that's kind of neat I haven't. I'm starting to get pretty familiar with the different drink machines and what's in them. This particular time of year, not a lot of unexpected things like that. I tried a weird drink though at the 7-11 this morning. It was like a mixed berry lassi. Came in a carton. And it was all right for something without caffeine in it. Not the worst. Oh man, this walk is so good. My memory, this is holding up pretty well. There's this little washroom. It's quite a few washrooms on this route, which, of course, I love. But it's right before this university. And there's something about walking past this university. You know, just seeing the people around here. I did not go to post-secondary education. I was so glad to get out of school after high school. I was like, I'm fucking out forever.

I'm never going back. You can't make me. And I suspect it would have been pretty lame even if I went. Because there's a university in my hometown, the University of New Brunswick. So it was not exactly an exciting prospect. It's like I already go to the university all the time. There's an anime club there. And speaking of magic cards, I used to play that shit there. As a high schooler, I hung out at the university all the time. So just would have been like, oh great, more university except now I get to go to class. At least moving away to a different city would have been some kind of an adventure. But I do always think sometimes of like, hey, that is one of those things though. Most people did that I did not do. And as far as the education part of it, yeah, I don't care at all. Not even a tiny bit. But from a social perspective, I bet it would have been kind of cool. Instead, I kind of feel like when I moved to New York, that was like, that's where I got my college, frappoy movie version of, you know, I got to go travel somewhere, live somewhere weird, meet a bunch of new people, get drunk all the time. Just didn't have to worry about going to classes or any of that stuff. That was my surrogate experience. But I don't know, for some reason, walking by here, or like I walk through the campus a couple times, just seeing the people here, I guess, I guess it's maybe partially because there's so few people in Tokyo that I know what their life is like. You know, I just don't know how a normal life run to work, so what people do day to day, or career paths, basic, I don't know anything. The people on the university track, it's easier to imagine, even if I don't actually know. But just to imagine little stories in my head, or a little, you know, like my favorite manga, or just like domestic sort of relationship-based manga, and it's just so easy to imagine, like somebody having their school adventure and they're stressed out with class, but there's this one person they really like, and they're having their meet-cutes and their little relationships, 10:00 and it's just like, just for whatever reason, just walking past this place just made me just like weirdly inspiring for like a story. And just these super random memories. There's a family mart in passing that was the first family mart I ever went to where I went into the frozen section and got ice cream. It's like, who cares? There's the fuck cares about it, but I just remember it, I don't know. It's a really hot day, and it was delicious.

It's interesting, too, walking down this route where, like back where the old guys are fishing, it's a pretty low-income feeling area. Whereas this university is hoidi-toidi as fuck, fancy pants is shit, and in fact I just realized for the first time ever, I could find it where this place is called. Takeo University Hospital. T-E-I-K-Y-O University Hospital. I didn't know there was anything to do with hospital stuff. Man, that's interesting on the map, too.

You know, when you walk down the river, it just seems like you're walking straight, but you sure aren't. This thing really hurts all over the place.

That was something, too, because of the curviness of this river. Something I could put a lot more time into researching if I still lived around here is there's this route down to OG, but then sometimes I would just cut through the city and go straight to Ikebukuro.

And I didn't realize that some of the streets that I would commonly walk down were really close to parts of this river, would just bend over near the street, because I remember I turned a corner once. I was like, I just had a curiosity, let's just go down this little side street that I've never tried before. And in like a block and a half, I bumped into this river, and it just blew my fucking mind, because also I was basically a maplest Jones last time I was here. And I was like, wait a minute, this is connected to that? How is that possible? Also I'm just my sense of direction is so shit. That happened to me in Manhattan one time. There was this one bar that this guy I knew really liked, and this restaurant called Remedy that the girl I was dating really liked, they were freaking around the corner from each other, but because we always came out of different subway stations and walked from different directions, all of my sense of direction is basically always just, it's all relative, you know, it's all based on the previous landmark, it's not cardinal in any way. So I knew I go from here to here to here to get to that place, so I'll go from here to here to here to get to that place, the idea that they were around the corner from each other again. I just, I still can't believe it. It was over 10 years ago. How is that possible? The way my brain works is that it doesn't work. I'm so bad at figuring out where stuff is.

Hmm, this 7-11, instead of the traditional green lines on the sign, it's black. It's weird in me out. I'm going to try to take a picture of that, it just looks so creepy. Why is it black? Didn't used to be black, it used to be normal.

But I don't think like the sun would make that happen, it wouldn't bleach it out like that. Even if it did, it wouldn't make it black. It's just so strange. Like is this the, it's like this is the black market 7-11. Like this is the 7-11 you go to to get the cursed items if it was an RPG. How creepy.

Oh man, this walk is nice. It's definitely not just that I had personal nostalgia for this. I like this one better than the other rivers that I walked down. I just got a lot of greenery on either side and a lot of weird variety. Oh yeah, I was going to say too about the hospital university being very affluent. But then as we get a little further down here, you get just like the weird outlet store that just feels like it's like from the countryside or they don't sell anything with a brand name and everything's just kind of a cheap place to get socks or whatever. There's one of those. And then as you go further, once you get to OG, it's like bon bon bon super fancy.

So this thing it really has at all. It just goes up and down the economic scale. It goes up and down the nature back to city scale. It's got the little overpass and the shopping street, but then it's got these quiet parts. Here's another washroom coming up just as I need to pee. It's so good man, what a good walk. I love this fucking thing.

I'm getting rained on more, but the skies are clear ahead of me. 15:00 So I'm just going to put this recorder away either till it clears up or till I got a whip out in umbrella.

Oh man, this walk is so good. It's like better than I remembered. It's so good. Just crossing over because there's some kind of weird statue. Is this new? I don't remember this from before. I know there's like a Buddha statue coming up later. And this one is definitely new. A bunch of birds just on a crescent. According to the little Google Translate, it just says Yesuri Waterside. Don't know what that means at all. That's cool. Still raining a little bit. It's very minor. And here's this area where it's like a little elevated park. There was one of those de-elevated areas too. Like I talked about with the McGurrow River. Like why are there these parts where you, they're always blocked off. You can go down to a little tablo, a little lower area. Halfway down the riverbank. They're always blocked off. Don't know what it is. But it passed one of those. Now I'm heading up, up to this little elevated park area. I was going to say, though, keep forgetting what I'm talking about. Just that in the the aisle of the, you know, unusual dried fish products. The stuff that we would never have in my crappy hometown in Canada.

The thing I tried today was deep fried squid chips. And it was one of those things, like the first moment I put one in my mouth. I was like, no, I don't think so. Because it's like starts off kind of sweet. But it's not crispy like chips. It's a bit soft. Kind of soggy-ish feeling.

And then as you chew it, it has the fish aftertaste. But as I ate a couple, it's like, oh no, actually, I don't mind this, you know. This is actually kind of good. But it's in that weird middle zone of, I don't mind it, but it's clearly something my palate's not used to that I didn't grow up with. And I realized stuff in that aisle, it's not expensive, but it's not cheap. You know, I was thinking like every time I go to a convenience store, I should just go try something from that aisle. But realistically, it's mostly just dried shredded fish. And it's going to be like $350 or $4.00. I think I should still be a sometimes food.

I mean, this is so cool. There's all these like steps in the hill. Just all these nice little chairs you can sit on. And it's funny because like, I mean, I guess all of my early memories were around this area, because just again, it's where I lived. But I remember when I lost my passport. I'm sure I'll tell that story more in the future, but I was recording an episode of my writing podcast. And I was sitting on a bench in this very park. Try and not to let on how unbelievably stressed out I was. But if you ever go back and listen to those episodes to how to write a novel podcast by Keith McNally, there's an episode called Moscow to Tokyo and then just it goes on from there the next batch. I don't exactly recommend them because it even stresses me out a little listening baptism. It's like you can hear it in my voice like I was stressed because I didn't have a passport or a birth certificate or anything. Where now I've got... I got my birth certificate tucked away back at the Airbnb. Got my passport strapped to my chest under my shirt. And it's possible this thing, the strap could break and it could fall out without me realizing, but it's not likely. Wow, I never looked from up here. From one side, you know, is the river. That's not a bad view. From the other side, you can see just over the top of the buildings to some big crazy nightmare overpass. I mean, what the fuck sums up Tokyo more than that? Beautiful scenic river on one side, nightmare overpass on the other side. And a cool park right in the middle. If you have from here, you can see this washroom that I'm looking at down here. I've made my piece with the fact that this is just the washroom podcast, but this one's extra good because there's a lot of washrooms on the way here, but you know, like squat toilets and stuff. They're great if you got a pee, but this one is the full you can just close the door and use a western-style toilet. Although, man, I ran into one of those just on the way from... I don't remember what the neighborhood is called at my Airbnb in Beeson, but from Northern Itabashi to Naki Itabashi, there was a... on my way here from the Airbnb. I've never seen this before, but I ran into a... a washroom with like the door, 20:00 the sliding door was just stuck. It wouldn't close. And when I checked with Google Translate, it said something about an automatic door. I mean, I guess there was like a button or some technique, something to make it close automatically. Maybe it would have sensed if I sat down on it and totally pulled my pants down, but I mean, I just... the door was just open. It's like, oh, I can't... What's going on here? I can't use this bathroom, and I couldn't figure out how to make the door close. Classic, classic dumb guy visiting Japan, or can't even make a door close.

But yeah, so this washroom though, to be the top one of my favorites. But also, there's a 7-Eleven. You can't quite see it from here, but it's tucked away right around the corner. And I'm going to go there for old-time sake, because that one, after I lost the passport and my birth certificate, all in one fell swoop. I had them all together. I just fell out of my pocket somewhere. I didn't realize her days that I'd lost it. But that was one of the weird... I mean, it would probably be like this anywhere, but it was extra this way in Japan is... since I didn't have a birth certificate, my mom scanned my birth certificate because I did have a copy back home. And then she notarized it because she's a lawyer. And I don't know if any passport office in the world would care about that. But they certainly didn't hear, because that's just not... that's not how the rules are supposed to work. Which is fine. It's just weird that what did work is I just had to order one from my home province. But it could obviously never get here in time. It was just being sent back to my hometown. But just the confirmation that I had ordered it was enough to proceed. But it's just weird. It's like you guys still have nothing more than you had before. My notarized copy is actually much more substantive. It's an actual birth certificate instead of just the phantom checkmark that a a birth certificate is on route somewhere else in the world. Like that just doesn't matter, but it does matter because it's required of the process. And even that wouldn't have been such a big deal except that was before I had. At least now I have like a sort of visa debit card and I have a backup. I have a second bank account in case I lose my first card. I mean I guess it's too big of a story to get into. But my bank cards were all fucked up too. It was extremely difficult to even order that thing. Who cares? Who cares? But the 7-11 near here is not every 7-11 has a printer, but a lot of them do. And that's where I printed off this picture. And I couldn't believe how well it works because I didn't have a proper computer either. And I just had this horrible burner phone. But I got this scan through some Wi-Fi at the 7-11 onto my phone and then I connected the phone to the printer with USB. And even through all the Japanese menus and stuff I figured out how to print it and pay for it and everything. And it's just like even though it didn't help me at all, it's still like a point of pride. I still have good feelings about this 7-11 because I did that. I made it through this weird circuitous process. And it was just cool. You know what added to my like I love Japanese convenience stores. Oh there it is. I can see I can see the sign with its green orange and red not black. But why why didn't it have a black sign? Anyway I'm going to go to that 7-11. If I had to guess I had to predict I'm probably going to buy a bunch of dumb junk.

And yeah what time is it? That's not even 330 yet. So yeah I still got a couple hours till it's pitch black. Plenty early enough to drink coffee. And then I'll probably just hang out in this park because again it's like the last, it's the last excellent washroom before OG. So I'm just going to hang out in this park for a bit. Drink the coffee, drain the coffee, and then at OG station home. My lord it's so amazing. It's just like the days and stuff. It's like the bathroom of the future.

Although at least my Airbnb this time it's not a super fancy toilet but it does have the little bidet thing. But yeah again I'll do a podcast about toilets at some point.

But I've become a fan. I like it. So it was weird when I stayed in places that just had plain toilets that did not have any of these cool fancy stuff. It was such a bizarre feeling of like I'm going to go to Hyjima station or OG station to use the fancy toilet. Like that would just never happen anywhere else on earth that your apartment is kind of like I don't know. It's not my favorite washroom of all time. But at the subway station there's a fancy toilet. Oh man and they have, 25:00 yeah this has definitely become much more rare but they have the garbage cans outside of the store here. I love that. It used to be the most of these stores had had garbage cans outside. Now most of them don't. But yeah this whole time I've been carrying around one of these cups.

Oh it's a family mart cup dark roast latte. But whatever 7-11 I'm afraid you get my family mart garbage. I'll make it up to you by buying a bunch of stupid junk.

There I'm sitting on the exact same bench where four years ago I was lamenting my fate about losing my passport. Yeah because I remember I talked for like 20 minutes just about writing stuff and then it's like I was trying to put it off the whole time and then it's like oh I guess I should bring up this thing that happened that I'm trying to pretend I'm not the dress man I'm so stressed. Yeah it's so weird I cannot predict what I'll set off minus nostalgia circuits at all where yeah it was a little weird yesterday it's like yeah there's the old neighborhood there's the old place not not necessarily getting much in the way of filling minus nostalgia tanks unexpectedly I thought I would but just going in that 7-11 I can pass the the printer the photocopy whatever the everything machine saw that and it was like awesome I got that little twinge like that fuck yeah and the lady gave me on the receipt there is like she was kind of trying to point out to me this one specific I can probably figure this out but it's like a coupon you see see that's a coffee brand right but yeah that's okay it I think I'll survive if I don't use the coupon for a coffee the cost of dollar 20 yeah the 270 millilitre it's pretty small anyway that just reminded me though last time I was here was certainly no different with my inability to understand anything it's kind of nice now at least because they're clearly moving a little bit away from plastic bags that if I just kind of make the gestures of yeah no I'm good I don't need a I don't need a plastic bag they just go with it that's fine is there's no tug of war about it because last time it was not that way I tried to ask to not have a bag and it became a hole to do it's like but you got to have a bag and if you don't take a bag we got to put stickers on all your stuff to prove that you paid for it now they're fine it's like yeah okay good good I don't know to give you a bag I should have my balance on this too I assume it probably doesn't do that if you use like a bank card right that you just have your or maybe it does because yeah I've got 102 dollars on this thing roughly in Canadian but yeah I guess there actually there was a story a little while ago of I think it was Hideo Kijima the video game producer he was at like a gas station somewhere and somebody posted his receipt because they were just excited that they had met him maybe it wasn't a bank balance I guess it was it showed how many like gas points he had with that particular gas chain you know inadvertently that's not why I think I was posting it but it was just a little bit of a minor thing people were like hey dude you shouldn't have done that don't give away his info that's not cool but let's do a brief audio mucbang I got a precious coffee moments wonder if I can translate that it's really hard to translate stuff that's a lot logo you know it's it's not so bad when it's just straight up plain utilitarian text be I no dice with that it's not even on a flat surface but a precious coffee moments established 1933 Kobe brown gluecoast millimeter diarrhea can I save this image that's fucking ludicrous come on dude there's no fucking way it says that darn I lost it brown sugar yeah I doubt I can make it say diarrhea again that was fucking weird yeah brown sugar containing milk yeah I mean that's obviously what it really means take my word for it dude it said that it was hilarious it's not coming back but oh well I got to see it at least I got to witness the perfect moment but anyway I just thought I'd try this because it's an unusual coffee brand I think I might have had it once before last time but it had the 30:00 white label and the brown label which now I'm seeing the brown label is brown sugar slash diarrhea but even though I always kind of you know whenever I get chips I'm always a little underwhelmed but I don't get them every day just a few days try some chips so these it is a smaller bag and it's a soba soba noodle chips so let's try it oh they're shaped like noodles more than chips little wavy noodles flat noodles soba noodles oh it tastes very much like soba I don't know it's kind of it tastes like I'm just eating raw mr. noodles well it can't complain but I don't care for that but onto the main event since I was talking about dried fish earlier so I liked the the dried squid so let's try smoked squid it's just a little bit different hmm yeah definitely less dried hmm smells like something I mean sort of fishy but what is that I can't quite put my finger on it something I've smelled before hmm the consistency is more like cheese and it basically tastes like that deep fried squid I had earlier so I assumed that the batter on the stuff I had earlier had sugar in it but this also starts sweet and then becomes more squid-y is that just with squid taste like I know I know or squid taste like maybe I don't hmm I suspect these and those soba chips actually go together pretty well so I'm gonna do that after but enough of disgustingly hearing me eat let's just try the diarrhea coffee oh that's nice that's good It's still, I mean, it's very sweet, but it's not the generic sweet taste that always just reminds me of sugar crisp. Just, you know, drink the milk that's left over after a sugar crisp. That's what most Japanese coffee tastes like. But that one's a little different. It's a little smoother. It's good. When I think the clouds are passing by, perfect weather to sit here and eat a bunch of squid.

I just got hit by an unexpected little nostalgia slap, where I was just sitting there eating my weird 7-Eleven food that I bought. I was going to do a podcast and I just kind of my mind drifted off a little bit. And then when I snapped back to the present, just for a second, I turned my head and I was like, wait, what the fuck? I'm sitting right here. I'm sitting right in that spot where I sat and complained about my fucking passport being lost or whatever. It's just a tiny little, just for a split second. I sort of forgot that I was there and then it's like, what the heck? What am I doing here? I think this might be one of those days, too, where I'm more tired than I realize I am, because that's a little bit weird. That little thing that just happened. Yeah, the reason also, another little thing I'd forgotten about. But the reason I got that particularly kind of unusual batch of stuff from 7-Eleven. I was just going to get an Onigiri, but they had almost none. There was only like a couple. I'm not really sure I wanted to dive back into Nato. I've had Nato before. It's not the worst, but I have a feeling it. If I get it again, I'll probably regret it. It's definitely something you eat for its healthy properties more than its delicious flavor. But yeah, that was something I'd forgotten about with these sort of smaller, more out-of-the-way convenience stores. The ones out by Akigawa Station, this happened a lot, too, is that they don't get a bunch of stuff in the morning and then just let it sit there all day. They're getting deliveries all throughout the day, which is obviously a good thing. Keeps things more fresh. But in this case, yeah, they didn't have very much, so I got all that weird stuff instead. And then when I went back to get rid of my garbage, these 7-Eleven delivery truck was there. He was bringing in new stuff. It's definitely a cool thing, but there are some times. Well, I guess here, you know, I mean, that was probably pretty representative. There wasn't anything... There was a bit of a lack at that very moment, but then when I went back in 20 minutes, it was getting fixed. Where I do remember out by Akigawa. Sometimes there'd be like a sign that said like, hey, sorry, we're kind of out of stuff. And there's none coming for a while, you know, because it's just a real fringe branch of the store, of the chain. 35:00 Hey, here's that, that kind of outlet store I mentioned.

You know, some socks probably wouldn't kill me, but trying to hit the perfect balance of just like how much stuff do I need before it gets to be more than I'm using.

I'm not totally sure yet. I probably need some socks, but I'm not sure. Oh, and of course there was one more washer, but I forgot about on the way to OG, because of course there is, because this is the best. I'm really pleased with how much I'm enjoying this walk. It's not that long of a walk. 90 minutes at most, you could probably make it in an hour at a decent clip. I'm not sure, because I always amble very slowly. But I think I'm coming to the end here. But it's so nice and having bumped into some of the other little mini rivers like this, these canal sort of concrete rivers when I was further south in Tokyo. And yeah, they're similar, but they're just, this one is my favorite. This one really is my favorite. This is kind of awesome. It's not just nostalgia. It's not just that I happened to end up here randomly, because I picked a cheap Airbnb. I really like this walk. Nakai Tabashi, to OG station, fully recommended. There's a bunch of little parks. This is like at least the third one I've passed. And here's another one of those, and this one's huge. These areas where there's steps going down to where this one goes all the way down, almost to the bottom of the river. Usually they only go halfway. This one goes way down. But they're all blocked off. No one's allowed down there. What the hell is this for? It's almost like this one's like a little marshland. It looks very nice.

But yeah, as good as this walk is, and how nice it is in general, and it's got a lot of trees and stuff. And like I was saying, it's got a nice mix of, it's got the outlet store, if you need that, but it's got the fancy university, and it's got, it's just kind of like a little mishmash of everything. As you get to OG station, that's the part that really surprised me. It starts to taper down. And then that's where it gets like all traditional.

The like really old school looking in my terminal, shallowness, I don't even know what to call them. Because to me, they're just like buildings from old video games, you know, from Shinobi or something. And like paper lanterns and stuff. And it's just, I think it's actually restaurants, mainly what's down there. It's just so freaking beautiful. I'm coming in on it at pretty much the perfect time, because the sun is still going down.

A cold snap hit, so I put on my thermal shirt, and then all of a sudden it stopped raining, and it's getting warm again. So I might not need it. I got tricked. Keep getting worried. Like, oh no, am I going to get caught out here in the cold, and I don't have enough layers. Am I going to have to commit the cardinal sin of actually taking a train instead of walking home? But no, it's fine. Everything's fine. Also, our still ominous clouds on the horizon though.

That song just started playing out of the heavens. I don't know where it's coming from. I can never see these speakers, but it's... There must be a bunch of them, because it was everywhere. And it's not five o'clock yet. It's my 430. I thought it was a five o'clock song, but is it a 430 song? I don't know. Anyway, I just thought I'd record that, because that happens. I mean, I guess pretty much every day. And it freaks me out every time. It's like, how? How is RPG Town music just playing all of a sudden? What the heck?

OG Station, man. What the heck? What a premium station. So it's interesting first off just how my memory was closed, but not quite right. How I thought there were paper lanterns. All the lights do have lanterns on them as you approach the station, but it's more like western style lantern, which could be a Japanese style lantern too. I don't know where the lantern originated, but all the lights have that shape.

And I don't really know what's in this neighborhood. There's all kinds of buses, and I'm sure these trains take you to many fine places, but I don't know. I've never gone anywhere. I always come to this station just because this station is so awesome. And there's a park near here where I'm going to go now. But just because it happens to be at the bottom of that river, the Shikouji River.

If you go a little beyond this main square where everything is, it's quite bustling too. There's a people handing out stuff. And I feel like the amount of activity would make it easy to let everything be more crazy or kind of worse instead of how it is, which is awesome.

Because if you go beyond this main square, if you go a little further, there's a smaller square that has a washroom there. That has a squat toilet that's like from the beginning of history. It's so old. And I remember I used that one once because I didn't know I had other options.

Like I've said, I don't necessarily mind using a squat toilet, but I kind of equate it more with the sort of more outskirt areas. It's weird when you're in a major spot to use a squat toilet that is also in terrible disrepair and old and all fucked up. Because that's definitely not how OG station is in general. I don't know what's up with that toilet. I don't know what the story is with that. Because the rest is, yes, super duper modern and it's all like Starbucks and McDonald's and Mossburger. And the washroom is just as good as I remembered. You just go in and it's like super duper from the future. Everything is amazing. I went in and I was like, should I... I mean, I'm still in a really busy public space. I'm flashing back to the horrible time I had to use the bathroom and grand central station.

And it's like even though this seems pretty dang sweet, I shouldn't use the bidet here, right? Like surely not. In this public bathroom, there's no way that's a responsible thing to do. It's like whatever I'm going to do it. And it worked fine and it was great. And it's like, this is insane. How is it so good? And then by accident, I kind of got a little view into why it's like things aren't this good by accident. I was trying to figure out how to flush. And of course, I should have known there was a sensor you don't even need to touch. You just have to wave your hand in front of it for full future technology. But there was this non-descript button I pressed first and nothing happened and I pressed it again and nothing happened. And then I saw the other one. So then on my way out, I was rinsing my hands. And an attendant came in behind me. And he doesn't know it was me who touched the button. Thankfully, although he probably guessed, it's probably pretty obvious that the button got pressed for no reason. It's probably the idiot white guy who doesn't know what the fuck's going on. But this guy looked like he worked at a casino. He's got his little vest on, his little proper black and white outfit. He's wearing a mask and he was obviously just a bathroom attendant. I pressed the please come attend to the bathroom button. I don't know where he was stationed, but it must have been nearby. Because he was there in like 30 seconds. And there was nothing to fix. Everything was fine. Everything was perfect. So I don't think I put him out too much, but I still felt like a whoops stupid me. Sorry, sorry whoops. But I got a little window into why the bathroom at OG Station is so amazing. Because there's a guy they hire to make sure that it's amazing.

Now this is one thing I remembered a little less. I did not remember it being so loud here. But it obviously isn't always was. It's a huge, huge central area where a million different buses and train stop. But next to OG Station is this park. Asuka Yamapark, ASUKAYAMAPARK. And I'm walking up these steps to it right now. The sun is most of the way down. The lamps here are just normal lamps, but there's lamps everywhere. And this place has a, I didn't notice it at first, but it's got this teeny tiny little tram system. Because for whatever reason this park, which is not that big, is like three stories up. It's just like up on a, it's just a hill. Which is one of the things I like so much about Japan is all the random hills everywhere. It's just neat. I mean, maybe that's why they made this into a park. It's just a big hill here, all of a sudden. And they're like, yeah, just with a park up there. Just leave it, leave it as it is. Don't build stuff there. Actually, I heard that about Central Park, too, that it's one of the reasons why they dedicated that much real estate to a park in New York. When they're obviously all fucking insane and would prefer to just be horrifying office buildings and condos. It's because the ground in Central Park, a lot of it is just rock.