#61 Walking to Tokyo's giant Gundam

Transcript

Ah, nice. I'm just walking through the little restaurant on the first floor. And it's a beautiful day outside. Out the door into Tokyo. I couldn't tell because there's like a little window, sort of kind of in my Airbnb room. But I think it's just like a balcony that is exactly pressed up against the next building. So it always looks kind of dim and I'm always afraid that I got up.

So does that mean it's overcast? And then as I was walking down the steps, again, there's like a window. But it's, I don't know why there's a window because it's like one inch into the wall of the next building. But as I'm peering over and staring through and like, can I see sunlight through there? What's going on out there? But there's just no way to know. I checked a little weather website and it claimed sunniness, but I mean, I don't know. I feel like. That shit's pretty unreliable.

The idea of a little sunshine graphic is pretty variable. But it turns out it's yet another beautiful day. What even? The day is it even. I'm really losing track. December 17th.

One weird little thing I hadn't really thought of too hard is where I was staying during Christmas, because I mean, I don't really care about Christmas. I just wanted to do like, yeah, cool. I'll do a Tokyo Christmas. And I was like, maybe, what if? I know it snows in Tokyo sometimes. It's happened before. But yeah, no, it's insanely warm and insanely beautiful.

So I'm going to be in this little communal Airbnb for Christmas. And I was like, I guess that's a little weird. But I do think that's kind of better because right after this, I'm going to like a, a little guest house that's like attached to a normal house at West. Just kind of living like in the side part of a house that some family owns. And then we got to, we got to share the washroom. And I think that'd be kind of worse because like, that's what I don't want. I don't want an awkward, weird Christmas around some other family. That feels weird to me. Yeah. Christmas all by myself walking around Tokyo. No problem. No problem. Socially awkward Christmas where somebody might feel like they got to ask Christmasy around me. It would be bad.

Not that anybody takes Christmas too seriously around here. It's just, you know, lights and some music. And then apparently it's like the 24th is the day. The 25th is the day they tear up all the fucking Christmas shit.

But yeah, I guess I was thinking like, oh man, I can't believe I booked this place for Christmas. What was I thinking? But I was thinking that when I had all the crazy snorers, really is just truly weird how when I first got there. Just a bunch of people snoring like crazy. One of them in particular, but all of them kind of everyone but Daniel from Canada. And now it's like a monastery. It's so quiet. It's crazy. I'm like, are you people even alive? Have you died? Here we go. The 100 yen star vending machine. Star vending machine with the brown sugar latte to start off the day. Don't mind if I do.

And it'd be terrible if I ran out of coins. I happen to be at the point where I ran out of 1,000 yen bills because these machines can also take bills, but I've only got 150's, no 10's left.

So I'm going to have to break the 50 next time I'm buying something. But yeah, the one little thing is very tiny, but just a little thing I noticed, we've got to let this cool down so hot. This is more of a minor quirk with whoever's sleeping underneath me now, but I just think it is funny. Is that they're into a cologne this person. They have like their weird little bag of toiletries that was in the shower. And I was like, did someone piss in here? What is this? But now it's just a weird perfumey smell of something. I don't know why you like this anyway. But it's one thing, you know, when you get up in the morning and you're heading out in the world and you've decided that the cologne life is the life for you, the perfume to life. Like, okay, different folks are different folks, whatever. I put on deodorant, that's it. That's all I got. And I mean that kind of thing, I guess if you're very careful with it, if you're very subtle with it, I guess it can be kind of nice. But what I really don't get is this guy last night, he hops in the shower, and it's like you just took a shower. There you go, you did it. You're all clean. Everything's great. And then he just put on a bunch of like cologne shit before he went to bed. I mean maybe it was aftershave, which I guess that at least has like a purpose where like if you nick yourself shaving or whatever, the alcohol soothes the burn. 5:00 But even if that is the case, he still put on way too much and I don't think so because this was like powerful. And it's like, dude, why would you do that? You're just going to bed. Like perfume is not cleanliness, you know? You haven't, you just made yourself unclean. You just took a shower. And then, and then you put a bunch of crap on yourself before you go to bed. What a weird thing to do. Why would you do that?

I mean, it's probably just culturally or whatever, just never thought about it. Just always did that, but it doesn't make any goddamn sense. And yeah, like I could smell this shit. Dude, it's like suddenly, I guess because like we're each in a bunk with little curtains around them. It's kind of like that, that smell the only place it could go was up up to me. And it didn't last long, but man, it was mad powerful. And it's just like, I feel like you've never thought about why you're doing this, my, my lad. But it's fucking weird. You don't need cologne to go to bed. Dude. All right, star vending, brown sugar latte time.

It's powerful sweet. Yeah, so even though mixing this with a black coffee yesterday was actually really good, I just don't want that much coffee in me today. I don't want that much liquid. I'm not desperately trying to wake myself up today. So just take this little sugar blast in the morning. I do think too. I mean, this is kind of good. It does definitely taste different from a normal sugared coffee, but it is. I mean, there's clearly something going on here where I just want to find the thing that's harder to find. The fact that this is only in one machine, I did see one other star vending machine actually somewhere on the way to Tokyo Bay yesterday, but it's pretty hard to find. And that obviously tickles my fucking dick.

So since I've been going on all these wild exploratory adventures in Japan day after day after day, but my shoulders in particular, they've been barking.

Because I've been dragging my laptop around and it's catching up to me. I thought of my Yammer a bit about instead of just exploring around as great as that is, that it's also kind of awesome to not like to just settle into a neighborhood and be like, yeah, this place is kind of cool. Because I was thinking like, that's why I have such fondness for that walk from Nakai-Tabashi to Oji station and then over to Ikebukuro. I mean, it's beautiful for one thing in that river. The Shikouji River is awesome. But it's also because the first 40 days I was in Japan, I was just there. I didn't necessarily go off on a big exploratory adventure every time. I actually did that a lot less than I've done this time. I still did plenty of it, but a lot of days were just walking around there. So it's just like, yeah, this is the hood. This is the neighborhood.

40 days is enough time to get like this weird feeling that like, this is your life now. That old life was but to dream. But then the reverse happens when you leave and then especially after COVID and stuff, it really started to seem because it was only a month like that Oji station walk. That was the dream. Did that really happen? Was that really real? But I was there every day. It was definitely a thing that it just started to feel like otherworldly and super cool. So I mean, it's kind of cool in both ways. It's cool to see something that you only saw once because it'll really stick in your mind in that way because it's like, wow. That there's nuts and I only saw it once. I don't know. Get crazy view or a big waterfall or something intense. But then there's the stuff you settled into and it really just like sinks into your brain. And I already feel like I don't quite know what I'm talking about. Maybe I won't try to explain overly. I mean, it's not a deep concept, right? It's just neighborhoods. You get to know a place. It's kind of cool and fun. Maybe speaking up, I met that museum already. I didn't realize it was this close. I knew it was. But yeah, there was that. And similarly, the walk in Fukuoka from Umabayashi station up the mountain to the observation deck. Again, beautiful walk. It is awesome in and of itself. But because I was right there for three weeks and I just did that all the time over and over. 10:00 Even though half of that neighborhood involved being in the woods and being on a mountain, that was still like the hood. That was my neighborhood. That was where I hung out all the time. So I was like, yeah, that place is cool. And I was definitely starting to develop a thing like that in Desaifu for sure. You know, that was just like my natural inclination. It was so close to my Airbnb. Just go a couple stops on the train. Go to best convenience system and then pick a mountain. That one didn't really have a chance to develop because I wasn't there long enough. But it was it was common. It was developing. So today I was looking around at maps and stuff and I'm like, yeah, what could I do? Where could I go? What direction could I wander in? But then I kind of realized like, you know, I think that's kind of happening in this neighborhood too. Like, I don't need to be walking around all crazy and especially when I need to just let my body recuperate a bit. My mind just started wandering through this neighborhood. I'm like, what if I did what I just did? What if what if I just wander down to the star vending machine? Get myself a brown sugar latte. And then I moseyed over to 7-11 to see if they had soy ginger mackerel and they did not. But I'm like, all right, that's cool though because that was what I was kind of thinking is if I find one of those as I walk, I mean, I just can't deny it. It's so good. But if not, I'll just mosey over this way, pass the museum like I just did. And then a little further on here is the, the Daily Yamazaki with its own bakery. Get some like curry bread and stuff. I'll eat that instead. And then I could just mosey down to the river. Because, you know, I'm always also talking shit about the rivers in Tokyo and how they're so little and I wouldn't call them a river. The Samita, I would call a river. I think it might still not be quite as big as the St. John River I grew up on, but it's about as big. It's similar. It's big. It feels like a river. Actually, it's definitely smaller now than I think about it. But it's still big. And I was thinking like yesterday when I bailed out of my trip to Tokyo Bay. And I was like, yeah, get me out of here. And then where I just wanted to go back to was like, yeah, just take me to take me to the Samita, take me to the river and all the little rivers that come off of it. And all the little islands and stuff. I'm like, yeah, that's the place I wanted to be. That felt good. Just strolling home through that. It's like, this is this is the stuff. So I was like, yeah, I could do that today and go to the star-vending machine. Go to the daily Yamazaki slash get macro at 7-11, whichever one works out. It's looking like daily Yamazaki unless the 7-11 comes through. Clutch at the last moment. I can head down to the river bank and just sit on one of the benches there. It's like a teeny bit chilly today. I think the website said it's 13 degrees. It's a little bit windy and it's going to get even windier when I'm down there. But still, certainly not bad. Not bad for December 17th. And yeah, I can just chill in this neighborhood because I like it. I'm coming to very much like it.

I've also kind of been looking for my bags within bags theory as definitely the main discovery I've made this trip because I just had my one bag and in it was the second bag that I bought at Ouyama Road back in 2019 and then everything else was just piled in there. Where this time, I got my main bag, I got my Osprey bag that I put my clothes in or right now, it's just my laptop. I got my OG station bag which is just mostly stuff I rarely need like a mouse for my computer and my birth certificate and just whatever. Stuff I do need but not immediately. Oh shit, there's Ali Amazaki. Change course. It's a block away and then I bought this day bag at Ouyama Road again and I mean this thing is just great. I don't know what I did before. I guess I just had all my stuff in my pockets. I do have a lot of pockets but it's a lot more convenient just having it here. And then I bought one little pouch from a thrift store when I was in Montreal but it's just kind of an ugly little pencil case thing. Oh I got that too. I got a pencil case to put my shaving stuff in. But I realized even in this day bag within the day bag I needed another little bag because I've just got you know like a charger for like a portable battery and cords and stuff to charge my phones and things which I just conveniently did by accident. I did that properly when I was checking my bag for the flight from Fukuoka. Maybe I said this then but you're not allowed to put that stuff in a checked bag like a little portable battery because I guess they can I don't know, catch on fire blow up or something. You got to keep mine your person and I had them already on my person. I was like oh convenient I did it right. But yeah just having all these little cords and stuff kicking around in my little day bag when I don't usually need them if I do it's not 15:00 till the end of the day. It's like yeah these things are kind of getting in the way of just whatever else is in there dental floss and cough drops this recorder that I'm using right now. So I just took my little ugly bag for Montreal my boring little ugly bag and just put my stuff in it but I always had my eyes peeled for a cooler bag and I found one in this little neighborhood right by here. It's just walking by a shop and it had all these really cool bags and this one has it's like a little fabric bag with it's like it's like rabbits mostly and an occasional frog designed but it's like they're they're in black and it's a dark gray bag. I don't know it just looks really cool. Oh my god speak of the devil see what I mean about just the little neighborhoods because I was just going to explain like as I went in this was out front and uh and then I went in to look at the shop proper to see if there's anything else in there and inside was mostly more expensive stuff fabrics and things and it was a Yukata I think it's called a Yukata shop it's like a kimono shop but but not quite kimonos but they were fitting somebody or maybe it was kimonos also.

But it was two ladies fitting a third lady and then then they had a younger girl come out to sell me this bag which was like nine bucks eight bucks maybe so it was like a total girl shop it was a shop to get dressed in a cool fancy Yukata dress and I was thinking like oh that's kind of appropriate that just the bag that finally caught my eye happens to be from a store where they don't sell things for men because I noticed that at one of those um second street stores in Fukuoka also I was in the part where they were just selling like purses and stuff for for women and there was this this wallet it looked so cool it was you know girly as I'll get out but I was like that thing is great but what what I ever do with it so this was a nice middle where it's like oh this is also a really cool bag and I actually do need a bag I don't know it's like a little it's like yeah that checks out like I love reading romance comics and I like that visual style I don't know just I think stuff for guys is not very good to speak broadly in a visual sense I mean like I watch pro wrestling but it's not visually appealing it looks ridiculous you know movies for guys comics for guys anything for guys is probably visually unappealing so I was just like wow good jobs of conscious you nailed it on that one but anyway the older lady who ran the place just walked by and it's like oh yeah the hood the hood for no one knows me and I don't know anyone but in my own weird way I feel like yeah I'm getting used to this hood I like it so maybe that's what I'll do today I don't need to walk real fire I'll just go to the river maybe because I grew up on a river too but I just like that river who needs to go somewhere else I don't need to go find another thing yesterday's adventure to Tokyo Bay was just so lame and then it's like oh yeah but I've got the river right here I had the the real adventure in front of me all along anyway I'm right in front of daily amazaki so I'm gonna stop talking to myself I'm gonna go get some curry bread and stuff oh yeah and I got to break the 50 whoops whoops I guess I'm just gonna have to buy way too much shit because again and nobody cares no one thinks the 50 is a lot in this country but to me I'm like oh if I'm gonna break the bill you know I should really make it worthwhile so I don't I don't want to empty their cash register I don't want to take all their change all this stuff is mildly true in Canada not here but fuck it I'm gonna buy I'm gonna buy everything in the world how about that so I got a curry bread and they have a lot of french toast stuff there so I'm like let me try one of these french toast pieces it wasn't amazing kind of a lot of bread in the french toast but I got a little the little salty butter bun thing that's super delicious and then it's like I right I'll get a coffee from the little hot coffee section and then I'm still trying to buy everything in the world so I'm like I don't know I'm get one of these vitamin C drinks I guess at this point I'm like can't really hold more stuff my hands are full of stuff and it still only came to seven dollars I'm like okay so I didn't really you know take a big chunk out of the 50 but I did my best I just can't spend a lot of money it's impossible yeah that brought back some memories of my coffee shop days where you'd start the day with just so much money in the till it's like 260 some dollars maybe in various coins and such and such and then all day long everybody you know occasionally someone would pay in coins if they're buying just one coffee but it's just 20s just 20s just 20s just 20s and it was weird 20:00 because eventually you just run out of like change to give back to people we had two different cash registers he's like be making change from one register to the other and all this shit but that was mid-2000s my next coffee shop job 10 years after that it was a mainly just cards already and now with covid especially super cards super card of honor but yeah I walked past the your cat shop and then it just started looking a little more closely at the other stores and like there's a there's a store with traditional Japanese sweets mochi and stuff and then there was one that was like a cafe that specialized in honey they had some kind of weird pun what was it now I don't know something about be friendship I don't even think it was upon I think it was just be friendship on their side I don't know anyway I was thinking to be cool because there's a lot of you know day in the life type videos or here's how this store works type videos I guess not a lot actually it's almost all just palo from Tokyo but he does such a good job just really awesome of just getting in behind the scenes of Japanese businesses and little stores and stuff and I was thinking how cool would be to do that for just a neighborhood what if you just picked say this neighborhood and just like did a series of videos chronicling every single shop that'd be fucking cool definitely something to be said for just the neighborhood there's this video game series called yakuza I think they changed the name recently to like a dragon because obviously the name yakuza references the yakuza the Japanese mafia but there's this one neighborhood kabukicho which I've got to go to eventually oh there's some ladies in yukata's man I mean I guess it makes sense if you're in the fucking neighborhood with the cool shop you're gonna see a lot more people dressed traditionally but the whole game takes place not only the game but like a series of games takes place almost entirely in this one neighborhood and it's based on this neighborhood called kabukicho which I do have to go to at some point it's probably not that far from here now that I've realized everything is fucking closer than I think it is but it's a really neat concept where you just really drill down on this one neighborhood but it's the opposite of slice of life it's like wacky over the top crazy shit then there's an older game by the same company by Sega called Shenmue that I never played but it's like the super slow version of that it's this neighborhood called doboita I think I should be able to get there when I go to Yokohama should be right by there but you know I never actually played the game I've just seen a lot about it over the years so it might not be especially meaningful to me to go to the real place but I'm still gonna do it just be kind of cool the game set in the 80s as well but it's also just a thing where you just walk around and really get to know the neighborhood and you just soak in that one specific area at least in the first Shenmue but that neighborhood feeling is definitely not something you uh you get so much in North America here's another everyone in it is dressed very traditionally I'm not sure what they sell there's sake in there but there's also I don't know just like stuff I can't identify I don't know what these objects are but there's definitely like handkerchief looking stuff like weird I don't know why even bother I don't know what I'm talking about I don't know what I'm looking at but you know like there was the the mom and pop shop I went to the other day just all this little cool stuff I guess the one place that kind of had this feeling was uh if you go to certain parts of Manhattan you do get that vibe a bit of a cool little neighborhood but it's cool it's just a cool vibe it's actually kind of appropriate that the second I said it's a cool vibe and you hear the loud motorcycles rum rum because this also feels very much like how in Yakkoza there's very distinct borders to the neighborhood once you get to the major streets the game is just like now you're not crossing that street take a gander at all the cars but that's as far as this game is going we're not going over there and yeah that feels this way here as well where this street this is the bigger street and it's like all right now there's traffic now there's noise once you cross this street you're leaving the zone you're outside of the neighborhood but I got to leave the zone I got to pass through because I got to get to the river man sitting is the new smoke in my dogs I figured the wind might make it a little cold down by down by the river because it's just that's the feelings in the air a little bit this is not one of 25:00 those like just sweat your dick off days like it's been lately so there's this nice park on the way to the river with quite a few people there today just kind of looking at leaves looking at the fall leaves which are still like weirdly you know again like in Canada it's just like whoops everything's dead we're here it's still pretty gentle a pretty gentle smattering of fall colors but it is nice oh here we go entrance to the river so I sat there yeah my prediction was right it's pretty windy here on the old Samida today but man just sitting on that little bench I noticed after a while that I was kind of hunched but it was like how am I supposed to sit here without having terrible posture and hunching over I don't know it's really very hard to hold yourself rigid the whole time and then when I did finally get up and start walking my dang knee hurts not from walking but from sitting it's like man sitting is rough so weird I mean obviously I've been complaining about my shoulders and stuff walking has its own issues but sitting is just like woo I'm surprised that sitting there for an hour and whatever an hour and some kind of messed me up so fast and knee feels really bad well it's kind of nice down here though it is sort of windy but there's more direct sunlight down here it's three o'clock see I got at least another hour and a half of pretty decent daytime before it starts getting a little suspect out here I think I'm just gonna walk down the river and just see what happens I definitely want to dick around long enough that when I come back the lights are on and I noticed too I don't know it's just weird where I was like I really should be careful with my laundry since I've just got it crammed in my bag and I just got my one little bunk it's a little harder to keep inventory of my stuff and it's like oh darn only one more pair of socks I'm not sure how that happened one pair of socks and then just one stray sock like what the heck how did I use one sock I have no fucking idea what happened there thinking back I'm like no definitely I definitely did not use any socks as toilet paper in the recent past I just don't know but it's like oh geez maybe I got to do laundry tomorrow I only got one more pair of socks but again I just I don't know why but I'm not out of shirts yet anyway I think my plan now is to try to find a 7-11 that has the delicious ginger soy mackerel and buy a pair of socks from there because I realize I don't have to do laundry tomorrow if I got the other pieces of the wardrobe which is just underwear and shirt yeah and if I just buy a pair of socks then I got at least one extra day what I should really do is I should try to hit the perfect equilibrium why don't I just have the same number of socks underwear and shirts like wouldn't that make sense so it's very easy to bring socks into equilibrium but shirts for some reason underwear is what I have the most of so maybe that's a thing I should be looking for I got to figure out how many shirts short I am and then that would give me something to look for what I'm out and about is I could buy some shirts now I guess there is a limit to how many shirts I can buy because I only have so much space but surely if I buy another like couple shirts or whatever surely I can figure out a way I mean worst case scenario on travel days I could just wear I'm already wearing two pairs of pants on those days I could wear two shirts I don't know whatever it has really is I mean I'm already missing Fukuoka a little bit of like I do kind of miss just hiking into the woods and heading up a mountain I mean you can't really beat that but as far as the city side of Japan goes this is really all I want I'm walking down a beautiful river now that I'm here too by the way yeah this is much smaller than the St John River the St John River is a monster thing is fucking gigantic the river I grew up on But I'm walking down the nice river, and my future plans involve 7-Eleven, where I can get a delicious macarole dish, some kind of cool cheesecake-based dessert, get a coffee, and buy a pair of socks. Like, what else could a man want? What else could a person need in this life? And I am starting to get more comfortable at the Airbnb, especially, you know, if I do just hold on until people are asleep. I really don't think I'm waking them up. People do tend to clump around quite a bit, but I don't 30:00 know, it's one of those things I haven't thought about in a long time, but people did use to comment when I was younger about me sneaking up on them and stuff, you know. Like, I just don't like clumping around the house. Or, I mean, I grew up in a gigantic, old, 100-year-old house, like a big three-story house, so there'd be so much like, hey, Keith! Hey, here's what I've had about whatever's going on, and I would never yell back. Never! I would always just go walk to where the other person was and be like, what's up now? What does this you need? No one ever noticed, though. No one ever took my took my lead. But yeah, even though I kind of wish I was on the bottom bunk because it's much easier to slip out the bottom bunk without rattling stuff, as it is since I'm on the top, I do have to sneakily sneak out, delicately climb down the ladder without waking people up. But I think I can do it. I think I'm pretty good at it. Because the idea that I'd be responsible for waking people up makes me feel very bad. And if it happened once, that'd be one thing. But if I gorge myself on coffee, it's going to happen like three times. And that really is unacceptable, unneverly behavior.

But I can certainly get one more coffee in me. Oh, this is so pretty. I love this part. Like, this is what happened the other day, how I found the cool spot. Sukushima, I think the station was called, but the cool spot where you can see both towers is because this part as you're walking down the Samida and it splits. There's this island in the middle, splits off one way and splits off the other. And it's just fucking gorgeous, dude. It's so fucking awesome looking. I tested those codes, by the way. The little weird code that Google Maps gives you and the coordinates. And yeah, in either case, you just type them in. You just type them into the search part of the map and bingity bam, ding, dang, dune. There you are. There's the spot where you can see both the towers. Of course, if I'm down here by the side of the water, this is obviously the nicer walk. But there's no 7-11s down here. I'm going to have to venture back up there. But not yet. For now, I'm just going to keep walking. Instead of heading over to that cool little island, I'm going to stay on this side and see what happens because yeah, that walk to Tokyo Bay direct was fairly intense amount of traffic. I don't wonder how far you could walk along the edge of the river. Oh, it seems like not actually that much further. It looks like you do have to kind of bail out and hop over to one of the little islands. And then yeah, it turns into all little islands and the team labs and whatever, whatever. But still, if you were going to walk indisputably a better idea than just taking the major trucking route straight down as I tried to do.

Well, it looks like the other day when I came over here to this little Tsukishima little island, it was not a coincidence because it turns out that the shoreline gets very inaccessible on the other side of the Samida. Some kind of big, you know, industrial concern of one kind or another. So you kind of have to come over here. So I thought let's just explore the next island over. And I think if I go two islands over, I believe that's where the Tokyo team labs thing is, which is like some kind of big, you know, visual arts thing. You know, you go see and it's like crazy lights and it's apparently really cool. But if I remember right, I think there's like a part where you got to roll up your pant legs and walk through water and they reflect stuff. As it gets cold, that doesn't really feel like the kind of thing I want to do. And just in general, it's like the kind of thing that is like, if I was here with somebody, it's just like a touristy thing to do for an afternoon. Yeah, maybe. Why not? But by myself, I don't know. I don't think so. It feels kind of weird. And this is cool. So I'm just going across the bridge and now it's coming down onto the other island. And immediately I can see in the distance, not in the distance, it's like right there. Two more bridges heading over, possibly back to the kind of mainland part that I started on. Or maybe that's yet another thing. I don't know. But this is just such a weird neat part of Tokyo. I wasn't really aware of this at all till I came here. Just these, just all these little islands that are just super packed with apartment buildings and businesses and stuff.

And just all these little bridges between them is just neat. But anyway, I tried to cut a shortcut over to this bridge. All right, I'm going to stop there. It's just too loud. What do you think you're doing?

Man, the delicious ginger mackerel, it's 7-Eleven, it's kind of messing me up because on this other little island, which is a little more industrially, not as nice as Sukushima. But whatever, they're both just islands covered in streets. But I'm passing a family mart. I see that there's a lot of things down there, but it's like, I can't. I can't go to you guys, bros. I need to do 7-Eleven now. You know, where you know, I was kind of juggling all the different convenience stores, but it's no clear winner. I always trended a little towards 7-Eleven, but I didn't really care where I went. But yeah, just with that one, that one item that just came out of nowhere, 7-Eleven is now ludicrously in the lead. I love that thing so much. I'm imagining eating it right now. But anyway, yeah, I thought I'm doing all this island hopping. I was like, out, you know, I'll just do a little shortcut. If the bridge is over there, there's this nice park little little green line on the map along the edge of the water. So I can walk along the edge and get to the bridge and it'll be all good. Of course, it didn't work. Shortcuts never work. There's no such thing as a shortcut in Japan. Or if there are, they're hyper-specific. What's the word? For like a boutique thing. There are tisinal. You know, you've got to find the specific shortcut for this specific place. In general, it's not going to happen. So of course, this didn't happen. It was a nice walk. It was very pretty, but it just, you know, it's just a dead end after dead end, loop around here, loop around here, loop around here. When I got back to the main street, I was two blocks away from where I started. And I'm like, what the heck? How's that even possible? That's friggin' weird. I just went nowhere. But while I was going nowhere, there was one point where there were these kids at the bottom of these steps where the two older kids had scooters and they weren't having too hard of a time. But the littlest kid had a normal bicycle. And these were just steps that didn't have any, like, little ramp for your bike, which they often have here, but not at just some random little seaside park. And this poor little kid was just trying so hard to get this bike up. It was never going to happen. So one of the older kids put her scooter down and went down to help. And they were both just, just getting nowhere. So that's where my mighty random guy wandering around somewhere where he's not supposed to be powers came in to. Came to the fore where I was like, hey, do you need some help? Let me just grab that. I just picked it up, dum, dum, dum, walked it up the stairs and they all just said, thank you. So I was like, no problem. No problem. My littlest hobo journey, my quest for the day is done. My detour to nowhere helped some kids get a bike up some stairs. Not the most helpful thing I've ever done in my life, but probably in the mid. I'm not that helpful of a person. I don't know how many people I've really helped in the world. So that's solidly in the middle of things that I've done that were useful to somebody. You know, one thing I see all the time too, just on like pictures and YouTube and stuff, might seem kind of weird to walk to this team lab's place when I really don't have any intention of even going in. But I keep seeing a giant Gundam pop up everywhere, big Gundam statue. And I feel like it's near there. That is the vague memory that I have. I've never watched Gundam, but you know, I'm familiar with the concept of a giant robot. Like most things, I guess it falls into that middle zone of like, well, I don't think I would like go out of my way to go there. I'm not gonna chart a course on the trains to get to this thing. But if it's right by where I already am and I'm just walking around, I mean, I don't not want to see it. So let's see in the long lineage of making up quests for myself. Let's see how the quest for the giant Gundam goes. Alongside associated mini quest, we find a 7-11 with Swaginger Mackerel. And in fact, the even smaller quest from there, because I figured I would just get a drink at that point. But it's really taken some time to find a 7-11.

So I was like, ah, fuck it. You know, if I got one more coffee in me in the day, I think it's safe while the sun is still up. It's a good rule of thumb. If I do want to dehydrate a little so I don't pee all night, just stop drinking stuff once the sun goes down. So the sun's not quite down yet. 40:00 But I haven't found a single drink machine. What the hell's going on here? That's a truly bizarre experience. The only other time I remember that happening is the neighborhood. I mean, I probably skirted around it in Ginza. I think it is around there somewhere. But when I walked around the outside of the Imperial Palace in 2019, I haven't been back there this time. But I noticed that it's like this fancy business neighborhood I ended up in that did not have drinks machines. It felt kind of European all of a sudden or like a western city. I think that's the vibe they were going for. And in order to attain that vibe, you can't have drink machines everywhere. So for some reason, I mean, that one kind of made sense right by Tokyo Station and stuff. But for some reason, this little island, why? I'm like up on a bridge now. I'm looking down at a ball field and a pretty long stretch of seaside park. I don't know, maybe parks like that don't have drink machines. I guess I haven't really been paying attention to that. Maybe that's not so weird. And I did walk right past a couple family martes and allossins that I could have gone into. It's my own fault. But it's just weird as all. It's like normally it's like that Simpsons joke where the hot dog vendor follows Homer around because he always is willing to buy a hot dog even at like a funeral. You just expect that you just put your hand out, fumble around blindly with money in your hand and you'll probably accidentally vendor yourself a fucking drink. But right now nothing, man, this is really nice. The view from this bridge is really cool even though part of it is just a big construction crane gangbang. The traffic is very intermittent. It's actually really quiet right now even though this is like a super mega millions of fucking lanes bridge. Maybe that's why it's quiet because there's so many lanes they can diffuse the traffic. Where exactly the frig Emma? Let's see. So I'm on the Harumi Ohashi Bridge leaving Harumi and heading to Toyosu where Team Lab Planets is. It's kind of a pretty walk. I don't hate this. So I guess my previous advice if don't walk the Tokyo Bay, that's true. That stands true. But if you take the west early route a little bit west and weave your way through these islands, then it ain't so bad. It's actually kind of nice. Hey, there's the Skytree. Behind me. And there's a nice little above ground train going by because I'm not quite sure how I'm going to escape from this particular adventure but I could just hop on the train again.