#43 Remembering Ikebukuro's magical SEGA building

Transcript

I'm definitely getting my wish. I remember when I was in Japan in the summer in 2019. And all the drink machines had cold drinks. And I was like, I'd be so cool to get the hot drink. I can't wait to come here when it's cold and get the hot drinks. So it's, I don't know, it's about 10 o'clock at night. It's pretty chilly today. So I just got, I just got a cocoa, hot cocoa, Van Halten cocoa, from Asahi, out of the machine. And, you know, I got something without caffeine since it's late. It's like, I can drink this. Still go to bed. But I might not drink it at all. I might just toss it in the fridge when I get back and have it tomorrow morning. Maybe get some black coffee, do some alchemy with it. But yeah, I just got it to hold a warm can in my hand. And it's very nice. Feels very good. So today I finally took a day off. I've had some other days where I mostly took a day off. But then I still am like, ah, the last moment, you know, when I've only got three hours of sunlight left. It's like, oh, I should really just run out and real quick go up a mountain. Or something. Today I actually did stay in all day, although I guess I'm outside now. Now I'm out, but I don't think I'll be walking around too long.

Just my head feels stuffy and weird if I'm inside all day. But it was pretty overcast. It's a lot prettier now that it's nighttime. Pretty overcast today. And I just got hit with some insomnia last night, but it wasn't like that really miserable insomnia where you're just like laying there unpleasantly trying to sleep. Though I guess a lot of that does just have to do with what you have to do the next day. If I had to go to work at seven a.m., you know, it would have been miserable. But it wasn't that I couldn't sleep. It was just that I kept waking up. I woke up over and over. It's like, geez, three a.m. and I woke up again. What's going on? So I just was not well rested today. So I woke up at like noon and I still felt way tired. So I'm like, yeah, fuck it. Stay at home today. Finally going to just stay home and do some podcast editing and stuff.

And yeah, I know it's the kind of thing that again, I've said this before, but, you know, people with real responsibilities and actual jobs and families and things. Nobody wants to hear about how the guy galavanting around the earth with no job doesn't have enough time. But it's just it is kind of remarkable. I'm starting to realize that being trapped in my hometown during COVID times and how super boring it was, I mean, I still went out for a little woods hike pretty much every day. But I really did spend a lot of time just sitting at the computer because just to get stuff done really takes a long time. Again, good problem to have. I've been having too many adventures in Japan. Too much just go out and do stuff and see stuff and just everything seems so awesome. Even just right now. It's like, this is so great. I have a walk around here at night since the first night I got here. And I'm going to a new Airbnb soon. That is near those regional trains. So it should be a lot easier for me to get downtown. Apparently that Christmas thing I saw be inside up at Hakata Station is Hakata, Tenjin. Those are pretty much the major Christmas markets. Though I think there's maybe other stuff too. I don't know, I'll research it. But it's kind of based on on German Christmas markets apparently. And it'll be a lot easier for me to get to those soon as well as my other idea to go the other way on the train and just see where I end up.

That'll also be easier. So these last couple of days here. It's like I just don't quite know. I mean, I guess I did what I came here to do. This particular Airbnb was the closest I could get to Uma Bayashi Station and my preferred approach to Mount Aburayama. And I definitely did that. So yeah, my last day, tomorrow, my last day in this hood. I don't know quite what I'll get up to. I didn't notice whenever you look up Mount Aburayama online. Whatever they're showing is nothing I've ever seen before. I'm like, what even is this? It's like, you know, there's like a lodge or whatever. And like a rope bridge kids can play on. And there might even be a suspension bridge. I'm not sure. Anyway, I looked it up and it seems like it's not the golf course that I ended up on the other day. But there's a second golf course. You got to go past the golf course and then you get to like the main official entrance where, you know, if you're taking like school kids and stuff, this is where you take them. And it has its own trail that is like supposedly the best like marked, the best setup trail to climb up to 5:00 the top of the mountain. And I don't quite know what peak it takes you to or what the views like or anything. Apparently, it's quite to do to get to. It's like an hour's walk from the nearest bus stop or something. It's like, geez, I kind of like my approach. I'm just go to Uma Bayashi Station and swing by the old 7-Eleven. Get some cranky super max or whatever the heck those were called. Mega cranky head on up. So I was considering that. Who knows, I guess we'll see how I feel tomorrow.

But I've been up that mountain many a time. I can take a little rest I think from climbing a mountain maybe. I'm very satisfied with my mountain climbing exploits while I've been here.

Man, though, I looked at up a little too of like, you know, if you're looking for hiking stuff in Fukuoka. So the stuff I've been doing is definitely very obviously considered easy, easy level. And it doesn't really get beyond intermediate. But just reading about it, I'm like, man, some of this shit sounds fucking hard. Like this is the, you really should have proper equipment and be a real hiker type stuff. You know, it's tough to get to the start. Then it's like a six or seven hour hiking loop where I only passed a little over 400 meters of elevation. This thing is more like over 900 meters. It's double. And there'll be parts where it's deep enough that you have to like hold on to guide ropes for like a long stretch, like an hour or 40 minutes at least. I don't know. It's like this sounds like some serious shit, dude. I'm not saying I wouldn't do it, but I don't even know how to get there. I don't even know how to get to the start. Beginner hikes feel fine to me. I'm all good with that. And speaking of, when I came down the mountain yesterday and I went to the Apariyama Kitai observation deck, the official big paved one, the guy who sells hot dogs was in fact there. And it's just such a, it bring up stuff like this because it's the tiniest thing in the world. I bought some hot dogs. But all these things, they feel significant to me because, you know, all of his signs are in Japanese. He did ask me some stuff and all I could do was say, thumbs up, yes, whatever you're asking me if I want, I want it and give me the thing. You know, just, we couldn't communicate at all. So, I mean, it feels significant to me that I, I did it. I ordered some hot dogs instead of just waiting and going to a convenience store later. Basically, he had, he did have some fancier hot dogs that were like 350 yen, but the basic one was 250. So I just put down the 500 yen coin and was like, can I get two? And yeah, whenever he asked me something, I just said yes. And it was pretty fucking delicious. It was like, there's like cabbage type stuff on it. There was cuppy mayo, Japanese mayo, which is so fucking good. And just like, I don't know, some kind of wasabi mustard maybe. And I think some kind of barbecue sauce, just a bunch of stuff is real good. It's real good. His little setup though. It's creepy, but I think kind of inadvertently, I think it's just because he probably set this up. Who knows when. And just never looked at it again. Where it's basically, it's like a little pink minivan. That he just opens the back and that becomes the store front. And he's got stuff set up, little like toys, little figures, little motorbikes and stuff. But one of them are little dolls, kind of like little weird cuppy doll looking things. But I think they've just been there a long fucking time getting pelted with fumes from the gas stove and just age and weather in general. And they looked so scary and creepy. Like the dolls in particular is like, Jesus, what the fuck is this?

Though I did notice he had a poster that said oil mountain. And I do remember when I was trying to Google translate one of the signs up on the mountain. It said oil mountain briefly, but then that went away and then it gave me a different thing. So whenever it's just randomly giving me different words, I just assume maybe none of them are right. But it turns out oil mountain was right. Something around there is called oil mountain. I don't know what. And I might not remember to look it up until I'm editing this very podcast ages from now. And then I'll figure out what the hell oil mountain is. But that's another thing. It's like in a very low stakes pointless way. And not just with Japan. I mean, it's more this way with Japan because it's so hard for me to tell what's going on. But even just in the Netherlands and stuff, part of what's neat about just roaming around by yourself is it's like a little detective movie. It's like your Batman. And 10:00 you're just like looking for clues and just trying to piece things together. And there is no actual mystery. There's nothing you're trying to solve. You're just trying to connect dots in a general sense. But it's kind of fun because it's okay if you don't do it. It doesn't really matter. But when you figure something out, it's like, ah, cool. It's like a little game that I solved. Like a little video game puzzle.

Test, test, test. Yo, yo, yo. So the time has come. I said in this podcast where I'm like, ah, someday in the far flung future when I'm editing this podcast, then maybe I'll think to look up oil mountain. And it's true. I mean, it's been a little while. It's, uh, it's months later in real life. I'm in, uh, on Jeju Island in South Korea. And I forgot all about that oil mountain. You know, I didn't remember anything about that. It's like, all right. I'll take your word for it past me that you saw some signs for oil mountain. So I looked it up. And, uh, first, I mean, I glued into this a little while ago, but it's too late now. I already recorded all these podcasts is that the mountain is called Mount Abura. Yama is the Japanese term for mountain. So Abura Yama means Mount Abura. So I keep saying Mount Abura Yama. And I'm just saying Mount Abura mountain. But oh well. Again, like I said, too late, man, too late. I already, uh, I already recorded all the stuff. So, uh, apologies, Japanese speakers for, uh, how dumb I probably sound. But yeah, if you search Bukwoka oil mountain, the first result is the Mount Abura Wikipedia page. And Abura means oil in Japanese. So Abura Yama is oil mountain. However, I don't think they mean oil like, uh, you know, Texas tea, a bubble and crude. Mount Abura is the location where the Indian Buddha's priest Saiga produced the first Camellia oil from seeds made in Japan during the Nara period.

Camellia oil is tea seed oil, which is something I've heard of, but I actually have no idea what that is. An edible plant oil, it has a high smoke point. So it's the main cooking oil in some southern provinces of the people's Republic of China, such as Hunan, especially in mountainous regions. So, that's the mystery of oil mountain. Now we know. Cool. All right. Let's get back to the podcast. But then the other thing I did, which I don't know how this has become such a common through line of this podcast, clearly it's the most fascinating subplot of this podcast is my stupid hair clippers. Time is it actually feels late because I've been inside all day, but there's still buses going and I saw somebody walk in the dog. Yeah, it's quarter after 10. Not early, but it's not late. But I think this never ending Saiga of the hair clippers, obviously it's boring. No one cares. I don't even care. Really, it's really, it's just the, uh, because it's not about the hair clippers. I think you got to look at it like here, here's what I'm trying to pitch this as something worth talking about. Now that I've talked about it so many times already, I'm going to talk about it one more time. Is it's not about hair clippers, it's about when you travel, you have such a limited baggage space that everything is important. You know, everything that you own is valuable and useful or like it's taking up space, it's adding weight. It needs to be something. So that's how I'm justifying my constant yammering about about my hair clippers. But to recap, I had wireless hair clippers. I forgot the wire in Canada. I bought plug-in hair clippers in Montreal and they don't work here. There's something about the voltage or the hertz. I'm not sure what that's making them not work. And then I didn't look closely, but when I was at, when I was at Yoda Bashy camera the other day, I briefly looked at some electric hair clippers. And I don't know what the deal was with them. I wasn't looking very closely. Maybe I just misinterpreted or something, but I don't think so. You know, basically you just move the decimal point to two places over and you get the price in approximate Canadian dollars. These things were like between 140 and 250 dollars. And it's like, man, what are these four like shaving a fucking wild boar? They must be the greatest fucking hair trimmer things in the fucking world. But then I stopped in second street. The second 15:00 hand shop that there's quite a few of here in Fugloka. And I looked at what they had and they had exactly what I was looking for which is like I was thinking if I could get some USB charging hair buzzer stuff. That'd be perfect because there's always USB around. And they had one but it was like too shitty. There was just a little... these things were new as well. They had like a bunch of them. It was more of a clearance item than a second hand thing I think. Where it was a little USB very small little hair buzzer. Another stick for only 980 yen for 10 bucks. And then they had another one that was like $17. And it was a little bigger and more elaborate and it had like a base you know you plug in the stand and then you place it on the base and you charge that way. And at first I was like well I guess I should get that one because you know I've kind of... I haven't bought enough stuff to know if this is true. But I've heard in Japan that you know at these types of secondhand stores you kind of get what you pay for. Like things are priced properly. What I always heard about specifically was video games. You'll see very distinct differences in price between like old game boys. And you can tell okay this one's crap because it's $14. This one over here is $60 but it's perfect you know. So I thought like oh I guess I should buy the more expensive hair clippers. But then I realized like I'm looking at these and they're all these are actual just they're both just made in China trash. They're just garbage. Like what's the difference between $10 and $17. Who cares. It's garbage and garbage plus. And I don't want like a stand I got to plug in and all this extra crap to carry around. So I got the little tiny $10 one. And I was just like there's no way this is going to work. It just can't. You know. $10. But I'm glad to report it seems to work just fine. It's not quite the USB I was hoping it would be. Because it's not USB on both ends. I can't just use a generic USB cord to charge this thing.

It still needs it's specific cable to plug into the this fucking buzzer. And then you plug that into your computer. But I'll just have to not lose the fucking cord this time. And even if I do for some reason again $10. I like when stuff's cheap because that especially traveling because I don't like to have to worry about it. Like I used to deliberately buy like three or $400 cheap laptops. So if something happened to them it didn't matter because I one time I think it was when I was cramming my bag under a seat of an airplane. This one I realized I should put my laptop at the back of the bag not at the front because I think I like was cramming it under there. And I crushed my laptop a bit. So half of the monitor stopped working.

But that was surprisingly manageable because I just resized all my windows to be half the screen. And I kept using it while I was traveling. And it was not that bad. But again it was a cheap $300 computer. So who cares. Now I got like a $1,200 real laptop. And it's very nice to have you can actually render video without leaving it on for three days. But you know like I went that whole hike when I went to the golf course. I had the laptop on my back and it all went pretty well. But I would feel a lot more comfortable about hiking around with a computer case I fall down or I get rained on or something if it was cheap. So I liked that these hair clippers are cheap. It's nice. And even though I've only got two weeks worth of hair growth it was a little rough at first. I mean these things are very small and obviously they're $10. They're shit. So it was like this is like a little uncomfortable. It doesn't hurt but it doesn't feel great trying to buzz this hair off. But then once I got through that I think what I got to do is just every day or two just before I take a shower. Just treat it like a scalp massageer. Just give my scalp a nice little massage. And as long as I keep on top of it and just keep my hair buzzed down. These little $10 things are going to work. I think the Odyssey is over. I've learned you can get hair clippers or 10 bucks. The charge through USB and they work great. Perfect. Amazing. It all worked out in the end.

Oh man. I just put my little hot chocolate can in my pocket. It's still just a teeny bit warm. Not bad. Not bad.

Yeah especially now that I'm walking around this really bad but I do have my little stretchy gloves on. It's just a touch. Getting a little touch cold.

Oh yeah and speaking of weird realizations and just learning stuff. So you know the other day I found the two euro camp gotcha machines and I was like cool. I had this to my gotcha haul. Add it to my super cub fucking keychain. But I was like doing a little super cub research and it's like yeah they sold over 100 million supercubs. I think they started in the 50s. They were big in the 60s and 70s in America especially. But big all over obviously especially held in high regard in Japan. But a very very famous brand and like they were saying how on the wiki page. The super cub is kind of some people put it alongside things like BMW's and Jeep's and even the Model T Ford just like a 20th century icon of industrialized you know transportation. So I was like man yeah the super cub is pretty fucking famous and really that whole anime and the light novel series that came before it about super cub really is just a love letter to supercubs. It was this passing the 100 million mark that kind of inspired the guy to start writing it.

And not only did I find one super cub gotcha I mean it's always the same machine.

But then later I found a couple more copies in Ikibukura and I found some where was the other batch of gotcha. I found another big bank of gotcha somewhere in Tokyo. I don't remember where that was.

But anyway here in Fukuoka also I saw them and it just suddenly occurred to me like just because I had never really even heard of a super cub. I don't know anything about cars. I don't have a license. I don't fucking know anything. I like that anime because of the larger idea of having a specific interest, having a specific fandom, having a specific hobby, not because of the specific hobby because I don't know anything about motorcycles.

I'm just an anime nerd so I see super cub. I think oh that's that anime I watch super cub. But it just occurred to me that the characters from the show super cub were not anywhere on that machine. And they're not anywhere on the items that came out of that machine. You know it was just I mean it's the perfect companion piece to the anime. It fits perfectly a keychain. And then when I watch the anime I'm like oh yeah there's that logo on the front of her super cub. That's what's on my keychain. Cool.

But I realized that I was trying to find that keychain. And I did a little Google search for super cub and it just brought up motorcycles. And I was like oh yeah I got to type super cub anime. But then I realized I don't have to type super cub anime because really what I've got is a keychain with the super cub logo on it. Not the logo of the anime super cub, the logo of the fucking super famous hundred million units sold super cub motorcycle. And all of a sudden it hit me. I didn't find a gacha machine about the anime super cub. I found a gacha machine just about motorcycles, about the motorcycle super cub. And you know I mean that's fine I'll take it close enough. It's one and the same to me. But it just cleared up all of a sudden of like oh I thought it was so weird that I found super cub merch before Euro Camp merch. But I really didn't. What I found was nothing to do with the anime. The anime is just as obscure and unmarketable as I expected it to be. I still have not seen any super cub anime merch that I probably never will. So it took some time and I had to go to a different city to find it. But Euro Camp as I predicted, I predicted Euro Camp would be the one that would be the show that was most likely for me to find something about it. Because it seemed to be the most current and most famous of the stuff I've watched. And yet it turns out it was. It took a couple extra weeks. But I did in fact find Euro Camp merch first. The super cub merch was just a happy accident. An inadvertent crossover. Because yeah there's all those weird gacha machines that are just like Coleman stoves and stuff. So that's what this was. This was just a stuff gacha. 25:00 Just luckily I happened to be watching an anime about said stuff. But yeah that did not occur to me at all. And then just all of a sudden I was like, oh of course. Probably wouldn't have taken Batman weeks to figure that out.

He would have clocked that right away. But to be fair he's the world's greatest detective. So give me a fucking break.

Jesus actually kind of a size of a lake in the middle of this neighborhood I never saw before. Kind of cool. Although it's super dark right now. It's a bit creepy and unnerving but also cool.

See I think I'm just going to try to find a convenience store. Maybe I'll buy another warm drink to fuel me on back to the Airbnb. But yeah I also thought speaking of E.K. Bukuro where I saw the super cub gacha for the first time. That also reminds me since this is the day that I just finally took a day off. Didn't go anywhere. Didn't do anything. Just walked around the neighborhood. Which I guess that is a thing too that is a little different about being non-central in Fuquaoka. Is in Tokyo this would be the adventure. This is fine. You don't have to go anywhere. Just leave your place and go walk in around and there you go. And in central Fuquaoka probably pretty similar. I bet if I was there right now to be all lit up.

Where? I mean hey there's nothing wrong with this. This is fine. I am enjoying this little walk. But this neighborhood and especially over where I was before by Umabayashi. There was just nothing there. There's not nothing but there's very little. I like being in these slightly further out parts of Fuquaoka nearer the mountain. But you do kind of have to... I mean that's kind of been partially what's been eaten up my days. Is to quote unquote go somewhere. You know you got to get out of here.

You got to travel to somewhere else.

But yeah I think being nearer the train should be... should be nifty. And then even if I do want to just get back to the old mountain. I can just take the train to Umabayashi station. So it should work out all around.

But this is a nice neighborhood. I like it. I'm even coming to terms a little with my weird Airbnb where you know I don't know what it is about the place. Just the windowlessness of it, the tiniiness of it. I banged my head today. It's just very small and cramped feeling. But I'd say today I even... I felt... it felt medium cozy. I guess you just you know you get used to stuff. It's not so bad.

And I like the mega smallness. I like that if you're sitting at the little kitchen table. The mini fridge is right there. The sink is right next to that. On the other side I've just got like a hand towel hanging off the back of the bathroom door and it's just right there. You just reach everything. You don't even have to stand up.

But yeah, in the spirit of taking a day off and just kind of catching up a bit on stuff. Just this is just you know whatever little anecdote that barely has anything to do with Japan. It's just something I've been meaning to Yammer about since I went to Ikebukuro. And I just keep pushing it back and pushing it back. It's like I'll just mention that next episode. But there's just always other stuff happening. And then my rambling podcast, you know it may be just rambling. But there does always come a point where it's like okay that's the logical end of what happened to me today. I can't just break out another random story of a sudden for no reason. That would be weird. So I just been putting this off the whole time. So let's Yammer it out today on the day off.

In a nice chilly evening walking around the last day of November.

Yeah, even that's appropriate, I guess. It's about to be December in about an hour. And this has Christmas connotations. So, there is the video game company SEGA, which nowadays is just, they just make games. But back in the day, they were trying to be a competitor with Nintendo, as far as making actual consoles and systems go. So as a kid, I obviously wanted an Nintendo entertainment system. As everyone did, and they were right too. It was a fucking incredible, incredible system with just some games that to this day are amazing. Like, the stuff they pulled off with that hardware is nuts. I mean, there's a lot of bad games too, but why focus on them? Focus on the good ones and your mind will be blown.

Bionic Commando, River City Ransom, you know, and then there's all the, you know, Mario, Mega Man, et cetera, et cetera, but there's so much stuff.

So, my mom didn't want us to have video games, and I can't really blame her because I always had a bad temper with video games, and I more or less got that under control as an adult. Now, luckily, even though my mom, if she had her brothers, there would be no Nintendo's. Luckily, my dad also wanted an Nintendo, so that was handy. But it was such a big ticket item that our little town of Frederikton, New Brunswick, small city, was sold out. There were none available that Christmas season. Shades of the Wii later on, you know, just like, ah, geez, trying to get this thing. It's not enough to go around. And my dad had this genius plan because we had before we had rented an Nintendo for like a week once, and a bunch of games. So, his genius plan was he was going to buy an Nintendo, but just tell us that he rented it. And that would have been fine. That would have been more than enough of a Christmas present. Like, cool, we get to rent an Nintendo again. Like, hey, I'll take it, man. Hook it up to my veins. And then when the week was up, that's when he was going to tell us, like, guess what? Second Christmas a week later. I actually bought this thing. We get to keep it forever. Whoa! And it would have been a pretty amazing moment, but yeah, his plan was spoiled.

So instead, he got us a Sega Master System, which at this point, I don't know, was it 1987? I'm going to say maybe?

It was already very clear that Sega was not winning this battle. You know, they had like 5% of the market or something.

Truthfully, it's hard to call myself like a big Sega kid. I do think of it that way, but it was only because we had no other choice, you know? Sega was all that was available, so we got a Sega. But once we had the Sega, the Sega was awesome. Sega was great. It's a way shorter list on that system.

There's like a Wonder Boy 3 fantasy star. And I could have swore I had like a third go-to game that still kind of holds up. But now I don't know what it might have been. Jesus, is it really just those two? Anyway, it was way more like arcade-type games. Sega had a lot of arcade games. You could get versions of them on the Sega. And it was kind of extra cool because we were just kids. Our taste wasn't necessarily that good. And Sega was already kind of on the outs to the point that it was more popular in Canada than it was in America. And I think the same held true in Europe and especially Brazil. But you could find Sega games on clearance, Sega Master System games for literally like $5. You know? Every once in a while my dad would come home with a stack, with a stack of new Sega games, like an actual stack. Like here's like seven or eight new games where if we had had an Nintendo and each one of those things was like $50, that's not going to fucking happen. And then you go through the stack and you're like, this is some pretty dubious material. But it's not like the Atari 2600 where it had actual just trash games. All these Sega games were perfectly cromulent games. They were totally worth $5 to $10.

But the true power of Nintendo is the reason I know that story of what dad was going to do. He didn't resist telling us. He's like, so you guys good with this? You cool with the Sega? We were like, fuck yeah, we're cool with the Sega. This is fine. And he's like, yeah, okay, cool. But let me tell you my plan. This is what I was going to do. And he told us that Nintendo plan and we're like, oh yeah, that would have been pretty sweet.

And then I do remember asking. I really tried to word this as delicately as I could for like a nine-year-old. And I was like, yeah, you know, very happy to have the Sega. This is amazing. Everything is wonderful.

But do you think at some point we could still rent a Nintendo? I mean, Nintendo is still Nintendo. Because there was just like Nintendo was moving away from the arcade style and to the home style. Just their games being more elaborate and deeper and you could play them for longer.

The Sega was technically a better system. The graphics are better. But the depth of experience on the Nintendo was clearly deeper. 35:00 So yeah, I think that is when Dad thought like, okay, I see where this is going. We're just going to end up buying a Nintendo at some point. And we did. So eventually we had a Sega end in Nintendo. But because we started with Sega, I always had an extreme soft spot for Sega. And when the Sega Genesis came out and Sega was actually a competitor for a while, we got one of those.

And then we never did get a Saturn. Never even saw one until I came to Japan. But then my brother did buy a Dreamcast and then sadly Sega stopped making systems at that point. But yeah, Sega, man, when I think back to my childhood, I always think of Sega first now. When I just think of that feeling of sitting in your living room as a little kid, oblivious to the worries and stresses of your parents, just thinking it's all good. Ah, here we are. Nice, happy, good old family. Everything's going well. And I'm playing Sega. Or like if I'd wake up later at night, come downstairs for a glass of water or whatever. My dad and his friend would be beers around, smoking, playing golf or baseball on the Sega. So even they got into the Sega.

Oh, I met the little outdoor shrine that I found the first night I was here. I've never walked by here in the daytime. How weird. I can only come here at night.

So, yeah, so shinto shrine and Buddhist temple.

And this is definitely Buddhist because these statues, at least three of them are of the Buddha. So I guess that makes this a Buddhist temple. But it's very tiny. It seems strange to refer to something this small as a temple. To me, a shrine feels like it could be a little. A shrine could be any size, right? I don't know, I still just can never figure out what I'm talking about. I can never get these things straight. But let's pay our respects in some way that is probably disrespectful. Since again, I don't understand what I'm doing.

Quietly, so it's not to bother the neighborhood.

But yeah, then later on, I met one of my really good friends, this guy Terry. I met him because I was talking about Sega. It's school in the school library because he was a year ahead of me. And our school was kind of split into the English and French halves. I was in the French half. So I doubt I would have met him at all. But he was like, you got a Sega? Holy shit, fuck, I got a Sega. So we started trading Sega games and we were friends for years. Now it's more like I see him on Facebook. Sadly, I haven't really hung out with him in some time. But technically, we're still friends. And then through him, I met my friend Ray, who just texted me today. I'm like, hey man, what are you up to? What's going on? And I met a bunch of people through having a Sega because it was more common in Canada. So I knew several people, because I know a lot of American people. You know, they're like, I didn't know anybody with a Sega, or they'd be like that one kid in the neighborhood who had a Sega. It was kind of the reverse for us. It's like I had to go out of my way up into the fancy suburbs to play my friends in Nintendo's. For some reason, in my neighborhood, everybody had Sega.

So yeah, Sega holds a very special place in my heart, even though if you place Sega in Nintendo's side by side. Nintendo obviously wins by a landslide. But I like that I got that experience, you know? It's like I got to get both experiences. I still played all the Nintendo games. I'm still very familiar with all that stuff. But there's like an extra layer. It's like marbling on a roast or something. It's like I also know this Sega stuff that is just cool to know and just feels a little more personal.

But yes, Sega faded pretty, pretty quickly, and then just arcades in general, faded in North America. So it was quite a fucking sight to me to arrive in Japan. And my first Airbnb was at Naka Itabashi, four stops from Ikebukuro. And Ikebukuro, the first thing I did was I got off the train there on the west side just randomly. And there's not as much going on on the west side, but it had the Taito arcade. And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. Good old Taito, space invaders, can't go wrong with that. So that was pretty neat. But then eventually I realized like, okay, you could book over a split down the middle. 40:00 And the east side is where the big stuff is. And I walked down the street and I saw the Sega arcade. And just that logo, that super duper famous Sega logo. I mean, famous to me. I mean, I think it's sort of famous. But in my life, it's huge, you know. And it was such a crazy feeling because the Sega arcade building was like the whole block. So fucking huge. Just this giant Sega sign that takes up like half the block. I mean, maybe it wasn't that big. It's fucking big though.

And it was so insane because I was like, man, here is a representation of Sega that in real life is as big and prominent and notable and important as Sega was to me. And I'd never seen that in North America, not even a slight hint of that in North America. It's the kind of thing you just, you think you would never see. It's like from a dream. It's like, what the fuck is this? This is like some alternate reality where Sega won for some reason instead of Nintendo. Which don't get me wrong. I don't think that should have happened. I think we're probably better off with Nintendo. But it's still a wild thing to see. It's just like, wow. I'm in a different world. It's like that Christmas when we got our Sega as a runner-up prize. But then learn to love it. Learn to gain great fondness for Sega.

This was like, what if that was the main event? It's like, what if that Sega we got was because Sega was the best. And then decades later, this is the result is that there's buildings, Sega buildings, that fucking blood out the sky they're so fucking big. And then there was another Sega building that was less wide, more tall in Akihabra. And you know, that was the second one I saw. So it wasn't as insane. And I guess I was aware of that one. I'd seen video of that one before. The Ikebukuro one double got me because not only was I really there seeing it in real life, I didn't even know what Ikebukuro was. I didn't realize it was such a prominent neighborhood. I didn't realize I would come to like it so much.

You know, to me it's kind of better than Akihabra. It's kind of better than Shibuya and Shinjuku. It's not quite crazy sized, but it's still got all the stuff you could ever want, including a gigantic Sega building. So I didn't even know it was coming. I just walked down the street and bam, you know.

So it was one of those things I got to tell my dad when I came back from Japan. It's like, man, you remember Sega, of course. And he's like, yeah, of course, because my dad, you know, he used to do stuff too. They had like an arcade joystick for the Sega semi like an arcade. It wasn't really like an arcade joystick, but you know, as opposed to the control pad that you just hold in your hands. But this thing, it was a little bit small. The base of it was kind of small. So my dad got clamps and he clamped this thing to the table so he could play games like it was an arcade machine. Because that's what he was more familiar with.

Incidentally, it's also no mystery where my bad temper with video games came from, because when we did rent that Nintendo, there's this game Gunsmoke, this Capcom game, that's pretty good, it's like a top view shooter game, except it's got a Wild West theme, so instead of being like a spaceship or a World War II fucking fighter, you're just a top view of a little guy with his two guns, but it's cool because you can chew forward or diagonally to the left and right, but you had to find a wanted poster or the level would just loop forever. And I don't know why, my dad found a bunch of the wanted posters in the later levels, he could never find the one in the first level, it's just in like a barrel or something, but he just could never find it in the level would just keep looping and looping. And man, he got so mad at that game. That's where I got it from for sure, but anyway, I was like, you remember Sega, of course, and we reminisced about Sega a little. And I was like, yeah, like, there's this fucking arcade, you know, and inside, it's not like it's all just Sega games inside, it's claw machines on one floor and a photo booth on another floor and rhythm games on another floor or whatever, the actual Sega involvement, 45:00 as far as stuff on the inside was minimal. But I was like, yeah, it's just this gigantic building in the showroom, the picture, like bigger than anything we have here, bigger than anything that makes any kind of sense. And it says Sega on it. That's another side memory. There was this great big arcade, there's this huge mall called Metro Town in Burnaby, the city next to Vancouver, it's all connected to Vancouver. There was this huge arcade there when I first moved there. And I tried to take my dad there when he, you know, literally, I don't know, three or four months later, he came to visit. And I was like, oh, let me take you to the big arcade because he would always take me and my brother to the arcade when we were little and give us each like a whole roll of quarters, which, you know, I know now is an adult with a roll of quarters, ten bucks, but that was fucking crazy to me as a kid. It's like, what could be better than that? You go to the arcade, a whole roll of quarters, and arcades in the 80s and early 90s, it was this time that can never exist again, where for a quarter, for the price of a fucking quarter, you could literally see the future. You could play games that it's like this is what games are gonna be like in two or three years at home, but you get to play it now. You know, it's fucking insane feeling. But yeah, I tried to take him to this arcade in metro town and it fucking closed. It had just closed. I only get to go one time, like our kids are just, they just fucking evaporated in North America. Now there's like weird barcades and stuff, at least there's something. But anyway, that was by far the most, because I don't know, I didn't really know what else I could tell him about Japan. He doesn't like sushi. He doesn't know anything about Japan. He doesn't care about like anime and shit. I don't know. But I could tell him about the Sega building and it's like holy crap. That was real that building and I was like, it sure was. Anyway, the Sega building is no longer the Sega building, but it's not as sad as it sounds. At first I was like, oh man, like at least I got to see it. At least I got to have that experience, because yeah, all these temples and shrines and stuff, the Sega building. That was it to me. You know, that was like holy shit. It's like I traveled the mecca, but I didn't even know that's what I was doing. I didn't even know it was here. It's like I found my weird north star by accident. This thing that was super relevant to my life and my past and just in this other country to some degree, even if it is just a building full of claw machines mostly, it's like wow, over here, this is also relevant. Like what a fucking cool feeling. Sega's a weird company too. It was actually founded by an American. Sega means service games. They just fixed arcade machines and stuff and then it was bought out by Japan. So yeah, I heard that the Sega building was closing and it was partially COVID. Obviously COVID messed up Japan pretty bad where I'm going to keep hearing about how bad the yen is right now. That it's at like a historic low right now. Which what does that say about the Canadian dollar that we're still basically on par. I mean, it's nice when I take 300 bucks out of the bank that it costs about 300 bucks, like 290 or whatever. But yeah, these Americans that are like holy crap come to Japan right now. It's amazing. All your money will last forever. It's like yeah, well obviously the Canadian dollar is much much worse than that.