#67 Exploring Kabukicho, Tokyo

Transcript

On my way to the star-vending machine to get, I've really become a fan of these hundred-yenne fucking brown sugar lattes in the little can, the little warm can. It's a nice beautiful clear day, a little chill in the air, just teetering between being nice and being cold. So that means it'll be nice for today and tonight it'll be cold.

Man, this machine, it's always further than I think it is. And then I'm like, I didn't, I didn't walk past it, right? I couldn't possibly walk past it. And then whenever I think that, it's always about to appear. So I predict it's about to appear.

Uh-huh, there it is. I don't think I've ever described this machine. It's yellow, so it stands out a lot, and it's got like a dog who kind of looks like a, like a Hannah Barbera cartoon dog, but if he was anime style, kind of. And it just says a hundred-yenne with like a lightning bolt, flash, not lightning bolt. I guess it's just a flash of surprise type logo. And then it says one coin, exclamation point, question mark, and it's like, I know, right? I know. So good.

Now that I'm here, I feel like I should get to, but that's just, that's just ridiculous. That's, that's just gluttonous behavior.

Yes, please. Oh, it's so warm. Oh god, it's so warm. I've never cracked it like immediately. I usually like let it warm up my hands for a bit. But let's bust this bad boy open post-hace and burn myself. Like how, how hot are these things on the inside when you first get them?

No, it's perfect. She's just trying to talk into the latte. It's perfect on the inside. It's just the can. God, that can is so hot. What the shit?

So it's the 23rd today, almost Christmas. And I just was like, what do I do with myself?

It's just surprising how, how tough it is to kind of pick a target in the city.

I mean, I'm only going to be in this location a little bit longer, the 26th I'm leaving. So it's just Christmas and then I'm out of here. But yeah, being by nature like in West Tokyo or in Fukuoka, it's just never a question. It's so easy, especially I guess because of the meandering style of traveling that I do. Since I'm not, you know, going to the places necessarily and going to specific stuff, I'm just kind of wandering around. So when there's a big park or a big mountain, especially just woods and nature and stuff, perfect. You're wandering around, you're doing it, you're just, you're there. You know, it's like fate that don't believe. You're just automatically having, having a day.

Where it's not quite the same when you're in the center of Tokyo because it's a cool city and it's nice to wander around and everything, but not like for two fucking weeks. You know, it's just kind of city. It's just more city, city after city after city after city. And yeah, I did one more gander of just like, I don't know, stuff to see in Tokyo. Specifically, I was like anything nature-y, maybe. And not really. Like, there's a mountain out west that is more accessible than the one I went to the other day, but still not exactly close. Still the two hour track, like it's still something that I'll do when I get to my Airbnb that's out west. There was like a nature ravine near Senganjaya. And I was like, oh yeah, how did I miss that? I had heard that. I looked it up before I went there, but I figured out how I missed it is because it's closed right now. I actually did walk by it. I walked over it and I looked down and I'm like, what's going on down there? But it was like, you know, pylons and tape. And the Google reviews just say that it's closed, but no one quite knows why. But apparently it's also not exactly huge. It's like, you know, a kilometer, I guess, of like pretty rough nature-y type shit going on, if it were open.

Yeah, I mean, just to put it bluntly, I just don't know what to do with myself today, or I didn't. But then I realized like, okay, I did have my vague Christmas plan was to go to Ikabukuro and do the loop. Ikabukuro to Oji station to Nakahitabashi. Because that's just one of my favorite 5:00 parts of Tokyo. Walking up the Shikouji River, I love it. I was like, if I'm going to give myself a Christmas present that doesn't involve going to West Tokyo and hiking up a mountain, that's the one. But since I'm leaving my Airbnb on the 26th, then the 25th actual Christmas day, I believe it's going to be laundry day. I've got to do laundry one more time before I go. But that's fine. I like laundry days, nice chill laundry days. And apparently Christmas, not that I'm partaking in any of the Christmas stuff that's going on around here, or that it even matters. I mean, obviously in North America, we're just very surface level and commercial about Christmas. So it's even more so in Japan. And whatever stuff they do do, I heard it's basically that Christmas Eve is the big day. That's the day you line up a KFC or whatever. Because I guess I've never brought that up. It's a fairly famous thing now. But that KFC is sort of like Turkey. And since Turkey's kind of a Christmas meal, and the kernel kind of looks like Santa, KFC managed to do this whole thing where they convinced everybody that this is what you do on Christmas. You eat KFC. And it really worked. Apparently it's really hard to get KFC on Christmas. So you got to pre-order it. And then, you know, we're us in the West, we're like, okay, I can see how those dots got connected. But we definitely don't give a shit about KFC for Christmas. If anything, that's like weird. That's like, it's like blasphemy. Even though all we do is blaspheme against Christmas with our commercial ways. Why not eat KFC? But anyway, Christmas Eve is the day. And then apparently Christmas Day, you can expect to see people literally tearing down Christmas decorations. They don't even give it one more day. And like, it's over. So yeah, I got no big Christmas plans. Doing laundry on Christmas is fine. So I won't be going to UK Booker on Christmas. I could go tomorrow on Christmas Eve. Or I could just go today. What the hell am I waiting for? Like, if I don't know what I'm doing with myself today. And I really just can't find any more targets in Central Tokyo to go see. It's surprising how fast I kind of used up the landmarks and the stuff in the major places. And if I'm just going to walk around at random, you can book a road to OG to Naka Itabashi. That's the key, dude. That's the shit. I love that walk. So I'm going to do that. And then as for tomorrow, who knows? Maybe I'll do it again. The fuck knows. Who cares? Whatever. Just really just waiting until I can get back out West and get back into the woods and get back onto the mountains. This has been nice. This has been fun. But I have been here a little too long. The full Japan experience, I think, is really to have the mix, you know, the parts that are partially city and partially countryside, which as far as I can tell is pretty much everywhere. It's pretty much every single place in Japan except smack dab in the center of Tokyo. This is the only place where the cityness just never stops.

But yeah, Christmas was kind of my vague target because I wasn't sure what I was doing initially. You know, I thought I would just meander around Canada for a bit before I came to Japan. But then Canada was too expensive. All the Airbnb prices were insane. So instead, I was like, all right, I guess I'll stay in my hometown and then go to Japan. But either way, it was just like, basically, I just want to be in Tokyo on Christmas. And in my perfect vision, I was like, you know, maybe it'll even snow. Imagine just walking around Shibuya, Shinjuku, while it's snowing. Beautiful. But I mean, if it snows, I'll be completely shocked. It's like even nicer than I thought it was. It's like getting warmer. It would take an act of God to make it snow. But that's okay. I didn't come here for snow. Could have gone up north for snow.

Just wanted to be here because it's like that thing where either if you're home for Christmas, that's great. But if you're just in like other big cities like whenever I'm in Toronto or Vancouver, all my friends who live near there, they go home for Christmas. And I'm just wandering around by myself. And it's always like kind of like blah. Where I just knew like, yeah, I won't feel like that in Tokyo. I'll just be glad I'm in Japan. And I will. Because I mean, I honestly don't really care that much about Christmas. It's just the whole environment of Christmas is so Christmasy all the time. It makes you care about Christmas, whether you want to or not.

So I did not envision doing laundry. But now that I'm here, I'm like, yeah, that's that's fine. That sounds fine to me. Laundry day Christmas. But yeah, since I'm going to UK 10:00 Booker Road, that should be an easy trip from here. Just got to get to any of the big major J-R stations. I guess Shinjuku is the easiest one to get to from here. And then there's just the loop. There's the J-R loop that goes around the city. And one of the stops is Yuki Booker Road. So that also means I should be able to exit from wherever, just whatever, whatever random station I get on it. It should be all good. So why not go to Dalyamazaki and get some curry bread and stuff? First, hang out in this neighborhood a little bit, then hop on a train.

I mean, why was I thinking I would buy two brown sugar lattes? I'm not even done the first one. I would have to like literally just guzzle it down. That'd be insane. A big is it, these little cans. You know, it's like this sort of standard sized can. Maybe this one's slightly taller than normal. I cannot find the exact size, but you know, this is a normal sized can in Japan. Like I said, maybe even a little taller than normal. But in North America, this is what we would consider a very small can. It's about the size, I guess, of a red bolt can. But yet, it's taken me this long to drink it, and it's still not even gone. I think it's kind of like, it's not necessarily like that I am just drinking slow. I think I drink kind of based on percentage of drink. Like if this was a big can, I think each of my gulps would just be bigger. I don't know, whatever, fascinating, right? Okay, I'm going to go get some curry bread.

You know, once I got out and got moving around, I'm like, ah, this is delightful. I guess it's just that when you first get to Japan, it's like, hey, cool, I'll just go wherever, and it's all great. I guess just because I've been here for like two months now, it feels like I should be doing a thing or I should be seeing something specific or I don't know whatever. It was just choosing the target, I guess, was throwing me off. Like, what's the target? I don't know what targets are left. And then it's like, hey, I could book a row, whatever. I'm just overthinking it. Definitely, I was overthinking it, because once you're out and about, it's like, yeah, who even cares? Who cares where I'm going? It's just fun to be out here and to be going somewhere and just to be walking around Japan. I fuck a target. Who needs a target? Well, I mean, I guess you need a target. But yeah, just generally, if you book a row, that'll do. However, holy shit, shibuya station. This place sucks. Shit. I'm remembering now how I got lost here once that I couldn't even find an exit. Just to get from whatever random train I was on to the JR loop, I got turned around three times on the way here. You think following an arrow wouldn't be that hard. I haven't had anybody step on my heels till now. Till today, it's happened twice in this station. It's just so packed. It's just so packed full of people. It's just terrible. I hate this. And now just trying to get on these trains. I'm just going to move. These trains are very long, so I'm just walking way to the end of the platform. And it seems that as I get further and further, it's getting less and less. A train just left. So now if I go get into position for the next one, I think I can get on and it won't be so awful. What the hell is it today? Is it Saturday?

I thought it was Saturday, but let me make sure it's not Friday. Yeah, it's Saturday, so I mean, presumably it's busy as hell every day. But the weekend don't help, that's for sure. That's for God damn sure.

Sweet fuck, man. I don't know that I've, I guess I've run into some crowds while I've been here, but I don't think it's been like that on this trip where it's just the train is just completely packed full of people. And then getting off the train is just this sea, just a fucking flood of people. So like you can't even really see like, is that where the turn styles are to exit? I just being enveloped by people, so I can't see them. It's like, what the fuck? But I had an idea all of a sudden, so I get on this J.R. train and it's just packed as fuck. So I was just listening to music and reading comics on my phone, like, take me away. Take me away from here. It's quite a few stops to Ikibukuro, so I don't need to pay attention for a while, let's just let it go. But then at one point, as I was glancing up at next station, Shinjuku came up and I've never really been a big 15:00 fan of Shinjuku, but I haven't really been there a ton. You know, it's just crowded and fancy. I don't know. I only really remember one day back when I was visiting in 2019 that I really gave the honest try of just, let's walk around Shinjuku. And at some point, I just bailed out because I was just kind of walking around, not really sure what I was doing there. There did seem to be a distinct lack of washrooms, you know. So in love with the fact that Japan is full of bathrooms and that neighborhood seemed to be way less, I think I actually went to a subway station just to pee. And I was like, yeah, you know what, let's just get the hell out of here. However, seeing that little next station is Shinjuku sign, I was like, yeah, you know, maybe I should give it one more go. Maybe I'll go to Ikibukuro first and then come back here at night. Walking around at night will probably be nice. It'll be pretty, you know. There's like the neighborhood where there's tons of weird little bars in the back streets and stuff. It's like, oh, maybe that.

It's a lot less busy now. By the way, all I had to do was go around the corner and it's not so bad. It's just the area right around the stations and at the stations. Holy fuck. But anyway, as the train was pulling away from Shinjuku, suddenly it's like a little lightning bolt hit me. Right in the top of the head and I was like, oh, right. Kabuki-cho. The neighborhood from the Yakuza games. So this series of games, it's been out forever for many, many, many years. She's probably 20 years now. There's like a zillion of these games. And I was always aware of them, but I hadn't played any of them. Until I was staying at my cousin's place during COVID lockdowns and he had the remake of the first game. Yakuza Kawami, it's called. And these games, especially the early ones, they all take place in this one neighborhood. And it's like kind of a cool thing that it's this one enclosed neighborhood where you rarely go outside of it for certain missions, but mostly just in this one place. So you get to know it. Like when people tell you to go somewhere, you're like, oh, yeah, I know how to get there. You go here, you turn here, you go blah, blah, blah. And they're not short games. You play them forever, but you're just walking around this one neighborhood. And it's just a cool thing. And almost all the early games from what I understand all took place in this one area. And it's not an exact replica. It's not going to quite be like the your name stares where it's like, oh, yeah, this is the place. I'm there already.

This is more of a vague recreation of this neighborhood from what I understand. And I'd never been here before, but when I played the game, it did make me think a lot of Westy Kebukuro feels very similar. I think, you know, any of these kind of bars and bachinko and semi red light district type areas probably all have a similar feel. But I was like, oh, yeah, I meant to go there because I don't know. Yeah, because I mean, I can only speak about that first game. And it's weird. There's a lot of excellent stuff about it. Just the random storylines that happened with all the different characters are really delightful. The actual game mechanics, it's hard to say, but then again, it's also a really old game. And I played the remake. So it's partially old and partially new. And it's just a big mishmash. It's kind of one of these games. It's like not worse criticizing. Because who cares? It's a big fucking mess of weird shit. It's better just to...

It's better just to take the good parts and enjoy them and not worry too much about the bad parts. And I was like, yeah, you know, I should fucking go to Kebukicho. I should go walk around there because I played that game for like fucking 80 hours or something. If it's even roughly the same, maybe it'll be like, I'm in a video game. Maybe I'll know the neighborhood. Maybe I'll know where to go. But since I'm not like the you just yak was a fan, I only played that one game. It slipped my mind. I forgot all about this until just now. I'm like, oh shit, I'm right there. Fuck it then. So I got off at the next station. And Kebukicho conveniently is right between these two stations. So I don't know, here I am. And I mean, the way the yak was the games are set up. It's this one neighborhood. And then when you get to the busy streets on the borders, the game stops and won't let you cross the busy streets. So I was just walking down one of the busy streets and walk by a place with like, hey, there's ladies in here, you can get a massage. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's definitely, that's the feeling. And now I'm off the major street because it's you tell obviously because it's suddenly quiet. And there's like a park here. Yeah, I don't know, it's interesting. It's like... I guess I'll have to walk around more. I don't know if I'm there yet. But the vibe of the neighborhood in general definitely seems similar.

And this is definitely going to be a daytime and nighttime deal. So it's only 230 in the afternoon right now. So this is the daytime version. If it's anything like the game, it's not a very big neighborhood. So I'll probably do a quick little pass through here. I guess there's like, there's a tall-ass building in front of me. There's certain parts that definitely stand out a lot. There's like a square in front of some big buildings. There's some distinct areas that for sure I bet are the same as in real life.

Although I guess you know, if things hold true to normal. Since Eki Bukuro is like a smaller, awesomer version of everything, maybe the Eki Bukuro West area even will be like better than here. Like a smaller but just kind of cooler feeling version of this.

But anyway, I'm going to take a little walk through here and I probably won't hang around here long enough for it to get dark. It's going to take forever. I still might bail out from here after I walk around. Go do the Eki Bukuro plan and then I can swing by here on the way back and see what it's like at night. Because yeah, I don't think this is the neighborhood I need to be hanging out in like all day and all night. Because I'm just not the drinking and horror and the patinco guy. I'm just the walk around do nothing guy. Not that that's like all this neighborhood. I mean every neighborhood is like a mix of all kinds of stuff in Japan. You can just come here to fucking eat ramen, whatever. It's not so so seedy. But whenever you do hear stories about like people who get like they'll draw tourists into a bar. Not Japanese people. These will be like people from I don't know like Africa apparently is a big one. They'll have these hosts outside that talk you in to come into their bar and then they'll like drug you and steal your shit. It's like shocking stories for Japan. It's like what the fuck but generally I guess it's not. I mean there are Japanese people involved but I don't think they're not generally the ring leaders of this type of thing. And it's still rare. I mean it's not like that just happening all the time. It's just a normal neighborhood. It's just people walking around and whatever. But from what I've heard if that is going to happen to you in the unlikely event, this is where it's going to happen. The Bukitou Tower. That sounds like something big and important. I think I'm pretty immune to random schemes and stuff like that because I'm not looking to go to bars and not looking to hang out. I'm not looking to talk to people. I'm not looking to do anything. I'm just looking to put headphones in and listen to a fucking podcast or some music while I walk around.

That's my plan to walk around. Okay, so this tower, if I pass through here, this area on the other side is looking familiar by the Toho Cinema.

There's a little information booth. Pardon me. Where's the video game? Point me to direct me to the video game, please. I wish to be in a video game world. Can you help me with that?

Oh yeah, there's no fucking question. I've done a lot of fucking missions right here, dude.

Yeah, I think just the square is the best way to describe it. If you played Yakuza Kawami, probably a bunch of other Yakuza games that you probably know what I'm talking about.

And yeah, like I said, it's like, despite the fact that it sounds like a fucking underground rave, it's like a sunny day, 230 in the afternoon. There's two people dancing. Everyone else is just watching this DJ.

Yeah, I feel like maybe this would be cooler at night. Maybe it will be. Or maybe people will just stand awkwardly any time of day or night. But they are not getting down with this. They're just standing and watching.

Oh, man. Yeah, this is a weird feeling. So there's like all these little restaurants you can go to. I don't know. It's just like you're just filling up menus for the sake of filling them up. But it's like, hey, go to all the restaurants and eat all the dishes. And think this place right up ahead of me. It's like, oh yeah, I've been there. I ate all their dishes. Just like get all the check marks on my menu. This is pretty fucking cool. I can't believe I forgot about this. That weird. I'm like racking my brain for like, what am I going to do? And I forgot all about this. 25:00 Oh, man, that's just so weird. That one restaurant really looks like that. What the heck?

Yeah, and it really is a small neighborhood. Jesus, it might be smaller in real life. Maybe I'll keep walking around and we'll see. Because yeah, I'm like, I think this is where Kira used your character's name. And there's like a bar that he works at. And it's like right down this street. But I'm already, it looks like I'm already at the border of where the neighborhood ends. Up here's where the guy stands. It gives you all your like unlockable shit. You talk to him to unlock stuff. The game's a bit bigger for sure. They like squeezed an extra block in here. I think it's just that there'd be more space to run around and beat people up and have fight scenes.

And the subway station is you turn the corner and the weird drugstores. Man, like it's not, it's not even close to one to one. But the vibe and the feeling and like the basic geography is so close and so accurate. This is fucking cool, man. Oh, yeah, this Don Quixote. I don't know what it's called in Yakuza, but I've been in that store for sure. This is fucked up, man. What the fuck? This is weird as hell.

I guess this kind of happened because I lived in New York when Grand Theft Auto 4 came out. The game does not hold up by the way, man. What a ponderous pain in the butt that game is to play. But basically how GTA 4 works and probably 5 as well have never been to the West Coast. The whole area isn't accurate, but just bits and pieces are. You know, you'll get to a corner where you're like, oh, there's that museum I've been there. Or the, uh, the Unisphere was near my place in Flushing and that was in GTA. Or just like bridges and different things like you get to corners and Manhattan and you're like, wow, for this like two blocks. I'm inside Grand Theft Auto and then it would disappear. So it's similar with the Yakuza thing except it's just this one place. Yeah, it's way smaller in real life because yeah, here's this. The big tower where at the end of the game spoiler alert, not that it matters. But for the first Yakuza, there's like an explosion that happens at the top of this building and money rains down on everybody in a holiday miracle.

Man, yeah, this would definitely be one of those cases where if I didn't remember this and come here directly. If I had just been walking around, it would have been another one of those cases where it might have taken a second to sink in because there's a lot of other neighborhoods that have a lot of this same feel. But I'm sure it would have clicked or I'm like, wait a minute though, this is just a little too close, this is a little too accurate. You know what, let's test it out then. So I've been on the north and west sides. So let's just keep walking and let's use the game as my navigation. So based on the game, if I go to the east and then maybe up to the north a bit, there should be like an area with a bunch of little back alleys that has different little restaurants and shit in it. And a park. See if I can find the park. The park's pretty famous, they let you, it's like these underground surveillance hobos that are secretly watching the neighborhood and they let you into secret fight clubs and stuff. Presumably that's not real, but who knows, maybe I'll join a secret fight club today. Yeah, here it is dude, here's the little back streets. Fuck my balls, this is cool, man, I can't, man, I'm so glad, imagine if I'd forgotten, because I only have a little bit of time left in central Tokyo before I go out to the fucking western bitty again, I would have been up on a mountain somewhere hours away. And then I would have gone like, oh, idiot, you forgot to go to Kabukucho, you stupid fuck. Now you got to take a three hour train ride back just to go here. I'm very glad I did this while I was here. Dude.

Yeah, again, everything's smaller in real life, it's not, there's not as many weird little back alleys and stuff. It's interesting, because even as a game, that's one of the things that's strange about that game, is that on first blush, you're like, wow, for a video game, this show is small, but then you realize how cool it is to just sort of tread over the same places over and over and how, it's interesting how much they can get out of it. But, though it's small for a video game, they actually stretched it out quite a bit compared to the real place. 30:00 These games, by the way, if you're looking for them, for branding purposes, they were called Yakuza for years, but I think the problem with that is the Yakuza, the real life, you know, Japanese Mafia. I guess let it slide for a while, and maybe they never cared, maybe it's just an image thing, eventually Sega, who makes the game, was like, what are we doing with this? So they changed the name to like a dragon. Okay, I'll go up to the park after, first turn the corner, she's like, oh, here's where all the hostess clubs are, and yet they sure are today's. And just tons of restaurants and stuff. And still there's this like a nice old lady just went by me on her bicycle. That's one thing that's so neat about Japan, everything is so mixed together. There is no like separate neighborhood, or like, oh, that's the bad part of town, that's all by itself. It's still all just mixed in with everything, there's still just all kinds of people doing all kinds of stuff. I saw over on the edge when I first came in. The classic, just the windows with a laundry hanging out of them. I haven't seen that once you get more into Kabukicho, I don't think there's just a bunch of regular apartments in here. But all on the edges there are.

Oh, it's like a Pacinco place, it's like what the fuck is that? It's got all these like big statues, not statues, like, I don't know, mannequin things moving around.

And there's just a normal old UFO catcher thing. I guess there was that too in the game, there's all these, I didn't finish every mission because some of them were so annoying. Just doing all these dumb fucking claw games and stuff, playing games with the local kids. I don't see any of the local kids here, but in the game there were some. Yeah, so I'm just kind of snaking my way around. I don't know if I just saw that for sure, but it was like a long hair Japanese guy, which you know, that's a little rare, you don't see a ton of them. And he's walking with a black dude, and they did kind of the little like, hey, slap my hand, but I'm pretty sure the black dude put something in his palm. Did I just witness an illicit exchange? Could have been my imagination, I don't know. They're real serious about drugs in Japan, like, even just like marijuana, you get, like, deported. Don't do drugs, kids. And there's a tidal station across the street. I should go there after. That wasn't in the game, but in the game you couldn't cross the street. Now I can cross the street. It's real life, I can cross the street.

Yeah, snaked around back to the Don Quixote.

Man, it's one thing that is like really rare in Japan is cleavage, like crazy rare. Even if you're in like a neighborhood where there's like love hotels everywhere, and like, babes hanging around on corners to, you know, be picked up. I'll put it that way, I guess. It's always, it's like the coded language around here. The coded uniform is just short skirts and tall boots. I only ever saw one time. This is like an odd thing to bring up, but it's just that it's so unusual and it's so rare. When I was at Westy Kibukuro and it's kind of like, CD area.

I saw one lady, one time, who was wearing like a low cut top and had like visible cleavage. And she was on her way into an apartment building. She was outside for like a second. And I mean of all the probably literally hundreds of thousands of people I've walked past in Japan. That was literally the only time I remember ever seeing cleavage. You just don't, it just doesn't happen here. Partially maybe it's just that there's not a lot of women that have huge tits, but they're still plenty. I still see like Japanese guys that are as tall as me, you know. Things trend towards skinny and short, but not everybody. It's definitely a style choice. More than it is just that people don't have cleavage, you know. They could, they could have it. And they just don't, they just will not do it. I don't know, it's just interesting.

Like in your day to day life, it's not that weird. If that's just not what you do, if it's just not socially acceptable. Then yeah, don't do it, you know. Why make your, why make things more awkward for yourself when everyone around you is going to just feel weird about it. But if you're in Kabuki show of all the places, if there's ever a place. But nope, not here either, just like nope, not going to do it. Just short skirts everywhere. Just skirts to show that hey, hey. In this area, there are a lot of towns and establishments that overcharge customers.

Following a safety, you're aware of towns and is not going along with them. You will be relieved of it.

In addition, please make sure to check the information of the internet.

So yeah, that was just a loud speaker message. Beware of towns. Do not accept their offers. Check on the internet before you go to adult establishments. I mean, yeah, so I guess it was enough of a problem that now they're just like broadcasting. Hey, hey, dummy, hey stupid foreigner. Don't just follow somebody because they say to follow them. I mean, I know you're in Japan, the beautiful land where everything's fine and crime is low and nothing bad's going to happen to you. But we can't sanitize the entire country. This one neighborhood is kind of fucked up, so use your common sense. If I hadn't heard those stories already, if I didn't know that about this neighborhood, can you imagine hearing that over the loudspeaker? You'd be like, what is going on here? What have I just walked into?

Anyway, once I'm done wandering around, I'm just kind of snake in my way through the southeastern corner. So yeah, there's the big park in the northeast, but there was this smaller park right in the middle that a surprising amount of stuff happened at in the game. I wonder if that's real. It doesn't feel like there would even be room for a park anywhere in this neighborhood. But I'm going to try to find those two. Surely the big park's real.

Oh yeah, friendly reminder that it's Christmas time.

And it's weird to just bring up random stuff because it's just audio, kind of what's the point? But there's this parking lot that's walled around the parking lot on the corner with one opening in the front for cars. It's like, again, one of these places as soon as you see it, it's like, oh, there's that place. It's so neat to wear just because of it being a video game. It's not just walking around. It's not even the same as just seeing a place in a movie or an anime or whatever. It's like, I've been in that parking lot to talk to some guy, to do some stupid mission. It's like an extra. It extra makes it feel like I recognize this place. So yeah, if I walk up here around the side of the parking lot and hang a right, if there's not a park there, I'll be disappointed. Surely there's a park there. I'm putting my money on the parks there.

Because then there's some stuff too. There's this little place like east of here that had like a batting cage and stuff. I feel like that might be. I don't know that that would fit here. It's possible, but I think that was just so they could put many games in the game, you know. I don't expect that to be here.

This little alleyway too. There's no telephone booths at all here. But also the acoustic games, you know. They're from some time back, those early ones. So maybe there were telephone booths here at the time. And they're just not here anymore, but yeah, this alleyway. I remember this alleyway seemed a little vacant in the game. It was like not that much going on here.

But there was a telephone booth where you could save your game. Is that how it worked? It's been a while, I'm pretty sure. There's definitely a taxi you could take here. Because despite how small the map is, you could still taxi around. And then I think you had to use the taxi for one of the rare times when you'll leave the neighborhood. But yeah, the taxi was down here. Oh sure. Man, imagine how put upon you must feel. Say you're a nice Nigerian guy and you're running a bar in Kabukucho. And you've convinced some Japanese women to beat touts or just dudes. 40:00 I don't know who actually, I don't know who the touts are. They try to fucking talk people into stuff. But you have a nice family business of drugging people and stealing their credit cards and running up bills. You know, you're just trying to make a living. You're just trying to get by. And they're literally broadcasting through a loudspeaker. Hey, these motherfuckers are trying to drug you and take your money. You must be like, dude, come on.

Oh man, I think I spoke too soon. Listen to this.

It's not in the same location, but that's a fucking bad engage, my friend. God damn, dude.

Yeah, because this is a cool game, but I respect it even more now. This is ludicrous. Come on, man. How, how is it, is this even the places that I was like, oh, those aren't going to be there. And they're there.

Yeah, so the bad end cages are nearer where the park was in the game. And where I believe the park was is a parking lot. So, yeah, maybe it's not here. But dude, I'll take it. I mean, that's an easy trade-off. Oh, that one thing maybe isn't actually here. But the other thing that I never expected to actually be here is here. How great is that, too, by the way? I mean, that's just to pay it all over, right? It's like, yeah, this is the neighborhood that's famous for the bars, and the love hotels, and the love that goes on, inset hotels. But maybe you just want to go to a bad engage, man. Maybe you just want to have a little fun. There's also a store that had little like mini RC race cars and stuff. But I don't even think that was in the original game. I'm pretty sure that was one of the things they added into the remake. So, that's definitely not here. There's no way there's a store here that sells RC cars. But man, I don't know. Pretty fucking rad, dude.

And yeah, even with that, geez, I've only been here half an hour. It's still several hours till it gets dark. I definitely got to come back when it's dark. Because that's another big part of the game, too, is what time of day it is. You get different missions and talk to different people based on the time of day. So, I'm going to come back when it's dark. I got my daytime eye fold, but man, I'm impressed, dude. That's fucking, that was really cool.

And it made me doubly happy that I played that game, you know? I mean, I was kind of curious about those games. But it is one of those things where it's like there's a lot of good stuff about the game. And then there's a lot of stuff that is like, geez, this is kind of dragging on. But it was kind of neat to play in general, and it was like a nice taste of Japan while I was stuck in Canada. I was like, oh, yeah, you're just in a little neighborhood. And you just go to the convenience store and you buy shit and whatever. And it has funny storylines and little shit happening and you fight people. But yeah, paid off tenfold now to come to the real place. Fucking neat. It's just goddamn neat, dude. I don't know how else to describe it. Just fucking neat. If you got a trip to Japan, a trip to Tokyo, coming in the future, and you got easy access to one of the old yakras at games, just play it for like, you know, you don't want to play the whole thing. Play it for like 10 hours. You know, just play it enough that you really know that neighborhood. Just so then you can come to this neighborhood. And it'll blow your fucking mind. It's fucking really cool, feeling.

I just stopped in a fucking Pachinko parlour, just because I'm like, why not? I haven't been in one yet, this whole journey. And two things, two handy things. One thing is, like I was saying before, the whole neighborhood in general of Shinjuku. Very hard to find washrooms right here for whatever reason. It's very unlike in Tokyo, to be that way. But I went in and I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm just walking around for no reason in the Pachinko place. But it's like, oh, of course they have washrooms. They don't want you to ever leave. So it's a good, that's a good pro tip if you need to pee. Stop in the Pachinko place. But they also have signs all over this for a new Evangelion Pachinko machine. And that brought back a memory of like, oh, yeah, I remember one of the guys on the Trash Taste podcast, Joey the Anime Man mentioning that, Evangelion is one of the highest grossing anime franchises of all time. But not because of the show, and not because of all the movies, 45:00 because of the Pachinko machines. It's like, said but true. It's like what happened to the video game company Konami. They're like, yeah, why bother making video games? We can just make Pachinko machines and whatever. It's like, man, that's disappointing. Because Pachinko is just, it's no more mindless than the gambling machines we have in North America. It's all fucking stupid. But it's no less stupid. That's for sure. And yeah, when I was in there, I walked by the row of the brand new Evangelion machines and they were all being used, every single one. However, the picture is cool because it's Ray Ionami, the blue-haired girl from Evangelion. But with long hair, she looks really rad. I've never seen of all the millions of interpretations of Evangelion through the years. I've never seen her with long hair before. It looks good, my bro. And Evangelion as with many things. Great in the memory. I respect it in its place in anime history and a lot of the cool stuff that it did. So long as I never need to watch it again. Just dude, that shit doesn't make any fucking sense. So amazing at the time though.