#27 Gatcha and Laundry in Tokyo

Transcript

Another perfectly beautiful day in Akiruno, Tokyo. Beautiful blue skies, even less cloudy than yesterday.

Literally perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. Just stopping by 7-Eleven to throw away my garbage.

So yeah, I had one of the little pre-prepared meal things from 7-Eleven, just like a rice bowl with beef or something. Anyway, I had that set up for breakfast, but I was like, oh, I don't have any coffee. But just so delightful that I could just put on my shoes, just go out front of the building. And there's a coffee machine. It's so fucking wonderful. I bought a coffee, brought it in, used the microwave to heat it up. It's so fucking convenient to have coffee at every corner. It's so good. But yeah, I stepped outside and it's just such a perfect day. And there's a part of me that's like, ah, do it. Go pick an adventure. Go pick a thing to do. Just go do a thing. But I can't. I gotta take a day off. Today, despite how perfect it is, today's the day to do nothing.

Oh, but before I explain that, I'm a quickside note on my continuing adventures of cough drops. So the black label hauls. I think they might be a little less powerful here than they are back home. They're a bit smaller. But they're pretty dang good still. Whenever I buy cough drops, I don't want subtle cough drops. I don't want them cough drops that are more like candies that are a little bit of a cough drop.

I wanted to blast my face with men's-related anti-coffing properties. It certainly does that. Delightful. Anyway, I think this is a sort of interesting period because this is such a long visit. I got the 90-day visa. If this had been a short trip, like I'm just in Japan for two weeks, I think I did well. I think I pretty much packed a bunch of stuff into my time so far. And this neighborhood in specific, you know, I kind of went out of my way to come back to Akiruno, spent a little more than I wanted to spend. Because I like this neighborhood so much. And really, I mean, I think I did it.

I did all the nostalgia runs that I wanted to do of the stuff that I missed from last time. I even snuck in a bonus one yesterday by accident.

And then exploring new stuff like the Spider Mountain and Camine Park. All of that was totally unexpected and was super awesome, especially Camine Park. Going to Musashi-Itsukai-shi station and exploring from there, all kinds of great shit. But if anything, that was almost too good. Two episodes back when I did the whole- I mean, it was like a legitimate Indiana Jones adventure just going like over the ridge of a mountain on a barely labeled path.

And then on an additional journey through a jungle with snake warnings and finding the waterfall in a technical sense, even though I somehow missed the actual waterfall itself. I got to the area and then I made my escape through a secret back forestry road. I mean, that day was so freaking epic. That is like the platonic ideal of a relatively safe adventure. You know, if you like exploring and you like doing mountain hiking and stuff, but you're not actually good at it and you don't want to really be put in any specific danger, it just can't get better than that. It was fucking awesome. So that was one thing is that that's tough to live up to.

But then yesterday, not only could an adventure to the site of a former castle just wasn't as amazing feeling as that, because everything but the castle was actually just walking through semi-industrial neighborhoods. It kind of destroyed my illusion a little bit of how cool it was to hike up into the mysterious mountains at night. And it turns out as you see it in the daytime, it's just a lot of trucks. There was a stable and there were some people on horses and then somebody went by with a pony. That was pretty cool. But other than that, it was pretty bland. And it was just that I was just tired. It's just tired to fuck out. Because even when I stumbled upon one of my old stomping grounds by accident yesterday, that should have been very exciting to me. 5:00 That would have been incredible a few days ago. But compared to the waterfall adventure and just being exhausted from trying to sleep next to a train line and stuff, I just wasn't feeling it. And then heading home, I curved around to a high-jamestation, which was not remotely close. That was a really long walk. It was pitch black by the time I got there. And kind of my favorite part of the whole day was just the hell is that? Kind of my favorite part of the whole day was just getting home, was just getting back to the apartment. So I mean, I think it's all a very clear sign that I just need to take a day off. Instead of just spending the whole day walking and exploring stuff, I need to rest up. It's not hitting me anymore. It's not feeling meaningful. It's just wearing me out. I'm at the hard off. I'm going to go in just to see if they have anymore of these cool Bluetooth headphones. I don't think they do. But just take a listen. Listen to this fucking jingle that plays all day long in this store. It is so terrible and loud and obnoxious. It makes me feel very bad for the people who work here. Check this out.

It's even playing outside of the store through a little fucking speaker. They love that goddamn jingle, man. I find that psychologically terrifying.

That that's been playing. It's been days since I've been in that store. It's been playing the whole time. And realistically, it's been playing for years. Maybe for decades. I don't know how long they've been playing that jingle. But it's not even like subtle. If it was kind of in the background, you know, maybe just a weird little earworm who gets stuck in your mind and just sort of subtly make you think about hard off. Maybe that would be one thing, but it's very fucking loud. God, I just don't understand it. Who thinks that's a good idea? And upstairs there are tables set up. So people can play magic and yugio and stuff. The one-piece trading card game. So, you know, you clearly want people to kind of hang out at the very least up there. That's not going to help, man. And no one's going to hang out to play cards for a couple hours when they got to listen to that little tiny one-minute jingle on it, a fucking endless loop. I was fucking so weird to me.

Anyway, they did have a couple more. What I was looking for, it's a Bluetooth headsets like earbuds. But what I never knew this existed, but instead of the two separate earbuds that you just put in your ear and then you put them in a little recharge case, I don't hate those, but I don't love them. I got some as a gift and I kind of liked them, but I wouldn't buy some for myself because I just don't like how you got to watch out for them to, you know, not fall out of your fucking head. And if you lose one half, you're fucked. So, it turns out you can get them with just wires. Just a wire that connects them that runs behind the back of your neck and has a little battery in it. And even on my epic day, my epic fucking waterfall journey, the battery was still at 50% when I got fucking done. So, it's plenty fine for a day and just really great. I love it. So, they did have a couple others, but they aren't Sony brand. So, that would be fine if, you know, if these ones break and I need replacements, and I can't find anywhere else, I'll swing by here and grab those and try them out. But I always buy Sony headphones. Sony, I know, is a trusted brand. So, if they had any more Sony ones, I would just buy them and tuck them away. I want as many Sony ones as I can get my greedy little fingers on. But yeah, my only other sort of plan for this neighborhood, which is not even a plan for this neighborhood really. The only thing I didn't do that I kind of meant to, is there's another line from Hajjima Station that goes up to a station called Ome. 10:00 You see the Ome line all the time. It's relatively famous. But it's way up north from here, and then if you go even further, it's a Okutama. I think it's called, and it's like the farthest station away. It's the farthest you can go on the Tokyo train line, because I'm most in the woods. So I'm curious about both those places. I almost got an Airbnb at Ome, but it was like a communal thing, and I found another place, a little south of here, for the same price that was a whole unit to myself. And I believe it still shouldn't be that hard to get connected on to a train line from there that goes to Hajjima. So I can go up to Ome and Okutama and check them out in the future, I believe. So that was my plan. To go explore one or both of those, maybe just to start at Okutama and walk back to Ome, or start at Ome and try to walk down here to Akigawa, just to see what happens. But all of these plans would take all day. It would be another all day walk, so those can wait. This is when I'm most conveniently situated to go to those places, but it's all on the train line. I can get back there in the future.

And yeah, I just got to take a little break. I am wearing myself out here. It's a good problem to have, I'm not complaining.

But it's kind of interesting on a 90 day visit somewhere. I mean, I know it's going to go by fast, and a week after I leave Japan, I'm going to wish I was back here, but I'm sure by the end, I'll be like, I'm kind of ready to go. And then yeah, it'll flip flop. There's no helping it. The human brain.

But because it's so long, at some point it stops feeling like a visit, and it does start to feel a bit like you live here.

And in the sense of feeling like I live here, I mean, I've just been going out and walking around all goddamn day, every day. You know, I'm not getting anything done. My plan is, again, it's not a big deal, because this podcast is just a new weird thing I'm trying. It has no momentum or particular listenership at this point and maybe never will. But my plan is to put out an episode every week, and I don't even have one done. I'm going to go for Wednesdays. It's Tuesday right now. I don't have an episode done. I just haven't even had time to sit down and edit a podcast. It's time to tap the brakes a little bit. So today, my big adventure is to go back to the A on Mall, hang out at my favorite fucking Starbucks, and just edit some stuff. And then after that, I'm going to do some laundry. And then tomorrow, I'm off to Chiba. But yeah, you know, even this, I mean, it sounds compared to swashbuckling adventure of finding waterfalls and seeing castle ruins. It's like, yay, Starbucks in the mall. But to be honest, I mean, this is something else I wanted to do again while I'm here. Still trying to grapple with that 21st century fucking duality of the weird world we're in. I love nature hikes, and I love seeing weird cool stuff and just exploring around. But I also love the A on Mall. I love it. You know, I love going there. I love sitting at the Starbucks. I love both the things. So yeah, it's an insanely perfect day. I've gotten a little taste of what the winter is going to be like, and it's mighty cloudy and mighty cold. So days like this are extra precious. There's not going to be that many of them probably. But I can still absorb the beautiful day as I walk to Starbucks. So that's just how it has to be. And actually, since I'm heading down to Fukuoka soon, like next week, it's further south. So I think I'm going to get an extension on this beautiful fall weather. Then for the last leg of this trip, when I come back to Tokyo, it's going to be smack dab right around Christmas. And I bet then it's going to all of a sudden be quite a shock of winter. But who knows? I mean, that's part of the point is just to see. Just to see what's going to happen. And I've been extremely pleasantly surprised so far. I just can't even get over. I've rid the weather issue.

But alright, there's my, it's gonna say morning rambling. It's actually a little bit afternoon. On a nice hike to Starbucks, so I'll stop back in after because I have a feeling for some reason doing Laundry. It always seems to make me philosophical. 15:00 I somehow have things to say about it. Stay tuned for Laundry adventures. I guess that's the thing too, right? I mean, I don't have a specific goal with this podcast. I just wanted to be kind of on the ground field recordings, you know, slice of life, visiting Japan podcast. So to get the full experience, it can't be all fucking weird mountain paths and giant substations in the forest. Some of it's just doing Laundry. As is nice too, this is how I can tell I'm on the right path to the A on Mall. There's this building. Oh, here's another one of those. See, this is so cool. So it's one of those things where they leave fruits and vegetables out that you can buy. Again, 100 yen seems to be the standard idea. So there's a little box you can put your 100 yen in. There's some kind of peppers and there's lemons. Cool. And that's kind of neat because the other ones of those I've seen are all in the more especially rural seeming parts of Akiruno. This one too, I mean, I guess yeah, there are little there are little gardens here growing stuff that I never really noticed because this is on the route to the mall. There's still this stuff. It's all it's also mixed together. So it makes this neighborhood cool. But I can tell them on the right route to the mall because there's this building. Do you remember that Simpsons joke where they're painting an orphanage or something? And it's like a beautiful shade of sky blue and then it's a joke about the limited color palette of the Simpsons that the building is the literal exact same color as the sky and then a helicopter flies right into the building. There's a building here just as ORC or C or the orc building that looks like that. The blueness of this building is almost exactly the same color as the sky behind it. And that's my sign that I'm heading to the mall.

Hmm, laundry adventures. It's actually pretty noisy in here. Let's step outside. Problem is I'm washing my jacket. So it's a little chilly in a t-shirt but that's okay. Oh yeah, that's better. There's a little bit of traffic on this street but that's not so bad. And some interesting laundry things I noticed. See I bought some detergent, some liquid laundry detergent before I first did laundry in the beautiful country of Japan and I didn't realize that a lot of these machines they automatically. They do the whole thing. You put in the clothes. It does the laundry stuff. It does fabric softener which I never use so that's a bonus. I get that. And then it dries it all together. And in the future that's going to be handy because once I take off to Fukuoka I'm abandoning my detergent. So afterwards now that I know that this will be very useful. But in the meantime I'm trying to find places where I can use some of this laundry detergent since I bought it. So the first place I went only had the automatic machines. But it sure was fancy. It had a little corner with manga that I was going to thumb through but oh and it had a Genkon. You know like you go in and you take off your shoes and then you put on slippers. I've never seen a public store or do that. Every single apartment and every single house does that. You're not supposed to wear your shoes inside which is only sensible to a Canadian. We also do not wear shoes inside unless it's a big rustic sort of farmhouse type of situation. I don't know why Americans wear their shoes inside. It's truly bizarre behavior but they do for some reason. Anyway the rest of the world thinks that it's weird. But I've never seen a laundry place where you go in and you take off your shoes so that was kind of cool but I couldn't use that place because I wanted to use my detergent. Luckily there's four different laundry places all nearby. Only one of them has poor reviews but I thought hey if I have to I'll go to that one because surely it doesn't have any fancy machines. But the second one I went to it's all good. Get to use some of my laundry detergent. But one thing that a lot of these places have that I've never seen outside of Japan is a dedicated little place to clean your sneakers. It's a little teeny washing machine and a little teeny dryer. Let me see if I can see 20:00 how much it costs into the loud place. 200 yen to wash your sneakers and then 100 yen for 20 minutes of drying in the dedicated drying machine. Oh actually maybe the sneaker won 200 yen or 100 yen. There's two different cycles. So I guess you could clean and dry your sneakers for only 200 yen altogether or 300 if they're real fucked up. One minute left on my laundry.

What is that? What is that sound? That's a static speaker way up in the corner that is completely inaudible. Oh and you can actually buy laundry detergent here. Nice I haven't seen that before in any of the other places. Is this done? Nope. Got to wait for the door to unlock. But I spent the whole live long afternoon at the Aeon Mall and it was delightful. It's a nice day in its own way. I'm glad I got to go back to the mall one more time while I was here. Oh it is done. I'm just a fucking weekly and I can't turn a knob on a machine. All right hold on I got to put this shit in the dryer.

Listen to this rocking tune while I do that.

There's just something very satisfying about just doing laundry and just getting everything in its right place. I like having just everything I own fit in one little bag. It's just nice to have everything all settled all prim and proper. All sorted out. Although in this case the two pairs of jeans is like still not enough. I feel like I need three pairs because they're both so filthy from my travails through the fucking woods. But I can only clean one pair of jeans at a time obviously somewhere in the other one. But then since I'm going to a new Airbnb tomorrow traditionally on travel days I wear both pairs of pants because because I can't squeeze a pair of jeans in my luggage jeans take up a lot of space. So I guess I'll wear the clean jeans on the bottom and wear these dirty ones that I'm wearing now over top. So I mean it sort of defeats the purpose in some ways of cleaning your pants because I'm still going to roll into the new place with dirty pants. But they're not that bad you can't really tell. The ones I was trekking through the freaking jungle with they were like muddy and stuff. So it's all working out but also while waiting for the laundry while I was waiting for the cleaning cycle I saw so there's a hard off and book off. I saw another prong in the in the franchise it's off house not house off off house. So I went into off house and it's more you know like camping gear home appliances furniture a lot of clothing and then there is still some overlap still some toys and stuff a lot of the bigger toys like there was a Voltron and some transformers and all kinds of cool shit. But that same jingle blasting super loud next time I see a book off I'll have to go in I haven't gotten in one this trip to see if they play that music there too. I mean clearly it's the off jingle but it's a shit jingle it's way too loud and yeah I was just thinking like if I was in like debate club or something and they pitched me try to mount a defense for the off jingle that the off stores play I just couldn't I would refuse I would get an F grade I would rather they gave me something crazy like mount a defense for eugenics or war crimes or fucking any awful thing in the world nuclear weaponry anything I could find an angle you know just for the sake of debate that fucking jingle I can't even make one up I'm more against that than anything I can think of it's so insane it's so insane it's like in that Neil Gaiman story I think it was good omens where there's these minor 25:00 demons and the minor demons just do the small things that ruin people's lives and eat up your time that you don't realize just like stuff like traffic you know just little innocuous things that all add up to ruin your life and it's one of those a fucking demon came up with that idea of just blasting that stupid fucking tiny little jingle like if you're gonna play your jingle all day at least make it a 45 minute prog rock epic don't make it loop every minute it's fucking I honestly honestly I cannot think of a single justification for that that is evil it's evil shit but I was also surprised just going through all the anime stuff because they still had quite a bit in their random figurines and just you know whatever chachkis and I went to an anime store today in in the A on mall that had all kinds of stuff and whether it be like a store with new stuff or store with old stuff I'm always surprised how completely impossible it is for me to find anything about any anime that I like like I have an extremely narrow taste in anime basically all I like well back in the day I used to watch these like domestic romance dramas like Maze on the Cocoo and Marmalade Boy and child's toys like a bit more zany but still along those lines how do you already don't go all this kind of stuff and they're basically just romance cartoons and they that whole genre sort of dried up it's very hard to find stuff like that anymore so I'm not too surprised that I can't find any of that stuff because it's old and a weird genre so I always thought that was a little there's a little bit of a bummer when I was visiting Japan in 2019 that I just had no target like even though I can't really buy stuff because I have no room for it it would at least be more fun to look through these stores and not just to marvel at all the stuff in a general way it's just more fun to have a potential target like what if what if I do find a thing for the show that I like but it was really evident that you know they they do a shepherd old video games very well around here you can find old video game stuff all over the place but old anime they don't give it shit and I got to assume it's because they're just cranking out so much anime that that would be like it would be like coming to America and expecting to find merchandise for wings or empty nest or something you know it's just an old TV show no one gives a shit you know sounds like alright I mean that makes sense but it is sort of there's a little bit of a bummer just be fun to have a target and then in the ensuing years during covid I found out about a new genre that I really like it's this youtuber named ginger guidance who she pointed me towards this genre called yashike that it's like chicken soup for the soul kind of shows it's like you're just supposed to watch these two relax their shows that have no particular conflict and very minimal plot and I really like them And there's a Nanan Biori is probably the best one, but it's a little bit old also. It's just about these kids who live in the countryside, and it's just like the fun of your endless summer as a kid when you have nothing to do, but every day feels really long, and you just pick around with your friends. But it's kind of one of the, I mean, I think this genre technically started in the 90s, but Nanan Biori was when it started to gain enough notoriety to have a name that people recognized, or to recognize it as a genre.

I started, I think, over 10 years ago, so it's getting old. I'm not too surprised if there's not Nanan Biori stuff around. But then Eurocamp, Eurocamp is about these girls camping, and I find it so surprising that I haven't seen a single stitch of Eurocamp stuff, because Eurocamp's also a few years old, but they did a couple of seasons of the anime, and a movie just came out, like last winter. So I thought, I mean, if anything, I thought maybe I would find some Eurocamp stuff. If not at a store, is it like those gacha machines where you put in money, and a capsule comes out, and you get just a random item from whatever the particular capsule is, because in Ikabukura, one of the new things is the biggest capsule machine store ever with 3,000 or 5,000 machines. I don't know so many machines. But what I found is there's a lot of repetition in these machines. It might have 3,000 machines, but it's only got 800 different ones. Or something. Everything is doubled and tripled up. But yeah, no Eurocamp stuff at all. I guess the other thing I was looking for is I was curious about wrestling, but I was not surprised that wrestling's hard to find. Same thing in North America. You know, wrestling's a niche concern. I did eventually find a gacha machine in Fukuoka, where I got a new Japan keychain. But for anime, yeah, just nothing. 30:00 But then in Ikabukuro, I did find one of the shows that I like. I finally found a gacha machine with stuff from a show that I like, and then I found seven more copies of that gacha spread throughout the city later on. But that's fine. Just that there were any at all. It's fucking remarkable. And it's this show called Super Cub. I think I brought it up briefly. The Super Cub is super weird, because it's based on light. Yeah, it's when I was talking about light novels. It was a light novel originally, which is just a, you know, a light novel, a novel that's easy to read. And it's this girl who just conveniently has no family. They never explain why. She just lives on her own, goes to school, has no particular friends. She doesn't have a ton of money, but just apparently presumably she got some money from whatever happened to her parents. And basically she gets into motor biking.

She gets a little Super Cub, a little motorcycle, and she gets it cheap because the guy who sells it to her is like, hey, this might be a problem, but some people died on this thing. And she's like, that's fine. That's fine. Give it to me. So she gets it for a really good deal. And she just learns how to maintain and how to use a motorcycle. And then she makes motorcycle friends. And in particular, even if you only watch one episode of that anime, because it's got a little up, some ups and downs, some episodes are better than others. It only ran one season. And the whole thing feels like an ad for Honda, but it's still just really good. In the first episode, she's just learning how this thing works. And she drives to a convenience store that's farther away than she's ever been. It's not near enough to walk to. She's learning the powers of having a motorcycle and the sort of freedom it's going to open up for her. She gets there in its nighttime. And she buys some stuff, but then she can't get the motorcycle started. And she's just in the parking lot sitting there. There's no idea what to do. But it's such a weird introvert that she also doesn't want to ask for help. And she's just like, fuck, like this exciting adventure has just turned into a big failure. Like, what am I going to have to do? Like, walk home from here? And then sort out what to do with this motorcycle? Like, the whole thing is just an embarrassing calamity.

And then she sees somebody leave the convenience store and a coin falls out of the guy's pocket. And that's when she remembers that when the guy sold her the bike, he told her, hey, if you need the user manual, it's here under the seat. You use a coin to unscrew this thing and you open it up and you get the manual. So she does that and she reads through it and she figures out what she was doing wrong. And she gets the thing going.

And man, that is relatable as fuck to me. I mean, I think that's why I just like days like this where I'm just doing laundry and stuff. I just like figuring out little things and sorting out the small problems of life and just I don't like juggling things that are too difficult. Because just normal juggling is hard enough. You know, just that's what I hope is interesting about this podcast is that nothing serious is probably going to happen. No big calamities. Even last time when I lost my passport and stuff wasn't really that bad. It's just the daily processes and the daily problems and the weird little situations and just trying to keep the ball in play. To me is more than enough stress and is more than enough of a feeling and is more than enough of a feeling of accomplishment when you pull it off. So I just that's why I don't like anime that's like giant world shattering fights and shit. I don't give a fuck. I can't relate to that at all. But if you give me a small problem, that feels big to me. Suddenly I believe it. It's good. And that's why I used to like those romance stories back in the day too. Like May's on a coco. It's just these like courtly small unspoken issues between the two main characters. You know, it's like they're circling each other. Like we want to try to have a relationship. We want to try to make this work. But there's so many questions and so many potential pitfalls. We want to make sure that we can trust each other without saying anything about that. Or like in Marmalade boys just that the girl is a she's just emotionally fragile and childish. And she just wants her boyfriend not to hurt her feelings. It's a tiny thing, but it's just that's the kind of shit that I like. 35:00 If you pull out a giant laser cannon, I don't give a fuck. You can fuck right off. I don't care anymore. So I found a gacha machine of Super Cub and all it was was keychains, which is obviously perfect for a show about motorcycles. So I put in my 500 yen. I got a cool metal kind of heavy pretty pretty decent like Super Cub logo keychain. It sort of looks like the grill on the front of a vehicle, but it's got the logo. And I was thinking like, hey, maybe this also isn't just useless. It's a keychain. This could probably be handy, but it turns out not really because whenever I get a key from an Airbnb, I have like a key loop on my wallet. It's just better to put the key right there. So I keep it all together. Even if I have a key on a keychain, that's still a separate item that I'd be more likely to lose. I'd rather keep it all together.

But it's small enough. I'm willing to take that. I was saying how I got the fancy box of chocolates from the cool vending machine the other day. So I'm going to take my little fancy pants, boutique chocolate box and put my Super Cub keychain inside of it. And then maybe some other junk. Whatever also fit in there. But I actually bought a thing. I'm willing to be sentimental with one tiny item. And I still got my eyes peeled. You know, I'm not going to find none on Biori somewhere. I've seen some Ramna one half stuff, which is, you know, also a good series, but made on a cocoa really is my favorite Remiko Takashi series. I'm not going to find any of that stuff. It's just not going to happen. But Yuru Camp, I still just am like, come on. Come on. There's going to be some somewhere. I'm going to find something eventually. So I have a mission now. I have a reason whenever I go in these stores. I have something to look for. Which is just, you know, fun. It gives it a little extra reason for me to go up and down the aisles.

Three minutes left on the dryer. Jesus Christ, though. That gacha fucking place in Ikebukuro, the biggest gacha one in the world. Man, my brain started glazing over in there. It is too many gacha machines. But yeah, I also realized I realized that they are, they were just repeating. So I'm quite sure there was no Yuru Camp gacha hidden in the corner that I missed. I wonder too. I mean, there's probably some larger conglomerate at play that I don't know. You know, like it's probably not just random anime and random whatever from across the spectrum of stuff. It's probably all stuff owned by the same mega corp. If I had to guess, so that might explain why there's things that just are not there. But man, if I had stuck with reading one piece, you know, I started reading it back when it first was being translated. And it's like, yeah, this is all right. But a man, if I had stuck with one piece, I'd have an easier fucking time. That shit's everywhere.

But I found something, so that's cool.

All right, laundry adventures. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next time.