#68 Christmas Eve in Tokyo

Transcript

So it's Christmas Eve today. I stayed in the neighborhood, stayed in the hood. I met this park that apparently is extremely bird-filled, but with the cool archway, the view of the sky tree, I'm just walking toward the sky tree now. I thought what I might do today is so warm earlier. It's just so warm all day that I just sat on a park bench with my laptop and just like, ah, the beautiful warmth. But the sun's going down now. It gets cold fast. I was thinking I might just go over to the Tsukishima Island where I found that cool spot where you can see the sky tree and the Tokyo Tower at the same time. And since the sun's going down, nice excuse to go walk over there because it's just a nice walk, a nice walk across the bridge, across the Samida. And then I'll just be in the vicinity of the Samida. Actually, you know what? Maybe I'll go up to Sensoji Temple because it looks so cool once all the lights are on. So yeah, just walk up the Samida, go to the temple. That sounds good. Just go somewhere with pretty lights. That sounds Christmasy. It's kind of nice to just be, ah, just in a society where no one really cares about Christmas. Like there are Christmas lights and stuff all over the place and Christmas jingles playing and stuff. But yeah, nobody really, not that we care a ton in North America, but they care way less here. And it's kind of nice because I was thinking, like, I think what the problem is with the holidays, why you get like seasonal depression and like people I've such a hard time around the holidays, I was thinking about it in terms of just the way that I do traveling in general, that I don't necessarily like to go to a thing. Like go to the big thing and pay for entry to the thing and see the big famous thing that you're supposed to see. And you know, and then that's supposed to be the point of your day because I just feel like it puts so much pressure on, on that moment. If like, okay, now you're here, now you did the thing, you came here to do. Make it important now. Now you got to care. And I never hate that feeling, as I don't feel that way. Putting that kind of pressure on a situation is just like, ah, you're just making it not fun. You're ruining it. You're ruining it.

It's trying to find a hot matchellate at 7-11. That was just that. And they didn't have one. There is a hot green tea dealy in this machine that I'm trying to figure it out. Is it, is it a matchellate or just a matcha tea? Because the matchellate helps a lot. The, uh, the milk does a nice job of cutting the harshness of the matcha. But whatever, I can't tell, but I'm going to buy it.

All right, we got the little can. If I did guess, I feel like the matchellate has usually come in plastic cans. This one's in the, the tin or the can can. Let's see.

Yeah, it's the straight up matcha tea, but it's not that bitter, actually. It's pretty good. Sometimes I guess I'm just thinking of the, as much as I love tullies, it's like tullies is too high quality for its own good, because I got like the matcha tullies thing. And it's like, whoa, that's like pure freaking matcha. This one's not so bad. And, uh, the nice warm can. Forget drinking it. I'm just going to hold it in my hands for now. Nice hand warmer. But yeah, I guess another way to describe it could just be guilt, guilt based. Definitely got some guilt complexes in my brain. Like, I hate being put in that position of needing to think that something's important or needing to care about something, because my brain's just not wired that way. I don't. I just don't really care. It doesn't matter what it is. It's not that important. It's not that epic. It's not that big of a deal. So just like the experiences of the day diffuse around you. The day can be good. The overall thing can be good. Any one little specific thing, be it a place, be it a person, be it a, I don't know if it's a fucking TV show or whatever. I hate, I hate just so that putting that pressure on it. I'm like, you have to acknowledge that this is good. No, I don't. It's not good. Fuck you. So that's my Christmas spirit.

Or like in the sense of traveling instead of picking a little thing and trying to pretend that that's important, you can just let the thing that you're doing be the thing that's 5:00 important. You know, right now I'm just walking up these steps in this park toward this bridge. You can see the sky tree in the distance. This is not important. This is not special. No one cares about this. It's just a normal park where people are walking around jogging, playing with their kids, whatever. But it's awesome because it's awesome because it just is awesome. And it's just awesome because I'm here because I'm doing it. It doesn't need to be a special thing. It's just the thing I'm doing can be special. No one I'm saying? Anyway, that's how I feel about Christmas. This one day. You really got to focus on this one day. I'll go hang out with your family. Make sure everybody's having a good time. Make sure you got gifts and things. I don't know. It's just so much weird pressure and stress on this one day that doesn't fucking matter. It's not about anything. You know, if we still believed in Jesus and stuff, you know, hey, that'd be one thing. But nobody does. That's not what it's about. It's about nothing. It's just about putting a lot of weird pressure on one day that's no different from the day before and no different from the day after. Fuck Christmas. So yes, nice to be in a place where nobody really gives two shits about fucking Christmas. Even as a kid, I'm not sure how much I liked Christmas. I liked it on a selfish level when I was getting stuff I wanted, you know, like video games, really just video games. It's like, all right, cool. Load me up with some more video games. But even that, even that I felt guilty about other stuff. Any other gifts that I got like, oh, here's one of these like hockey tables you put in your den that, you know, you like pull the little knobs and twist them and play hockey. I guess it's usually like soccer outside of Canada. But I'm like, I didn't, I don't want this. I didn't ask for this. How much was this? Now you expect me to play with this? You expect me to care about this? God damn it. You know, it's like pressure. Getting gifts is pressure. It's like, ah, you know, I remember that distinctly as a kid. It's just like, why, who was this for? Who asked for this? When in reality, I didn't realize at the time my parents were pretty loaded, made no fucking difference. But I felt guilty. It's like, I shouldn't spend money on this thing. Fuck this thing. I'm just going to go play video games. I don't care about this. But you can't say that. That makes you a terrible person. So yeah, just the whole thing. What a load. What an annoying fucking load. So yeah, I don't miss Christmas. That's for sure. But because of that very notion of this one day, having to make this one day be important. You can't fuck up on this one day. Oh geez, imagine if you were all by yourself on this day. How sad that would be. What a big Christmas loser you would be if that happened. You know, it's just like, fuck off. I don't know. I don't know how this whole thing fucking came to be. Like, why is Christmas such a fucking thing? And then if you do buy stuff, I established many years ago. I'm not buying anyone anything. And you can buy me stuff if you want. But all my fucking possessions fit in a book bag. So anything you buy me is staying with you. I ain't taking it. Not carrying your garbage around for you. I'm not buying you nothing. You don't buy me nothing. And you'd be surprised to have fast people fucking fall into line with that plan if you just be an asshole about it. But yeah, geez, if you're also like putting yourself into debt to buy people little guilt bombs for Christmas, fuck, I really hate the whole thing. The more I talk about it, it's fucking terrible. What a shit holiday. Too much stress, too much pressure for no fucking reason.

Fuck all that. But yeah, because of all of these swirling negative feelings, I was just thinking of, you know, I knew I was going to travel around this time of year and inevitably Christmas was going to happen. And I was just thinking of the other times that I've been in Vancouver or in Toronto during Christmas. Just kind of hanging out by myself or whatever. And don't do it much on Christmas. And I don't care. But it's just that lingering feeling of like, even, even, but it's just that lingering feeling. Yeah, it's fucking bells are fucking up. There's the Christmas bells. The random 430 bell. Let's see, what time, what time do these bells ring in this constant random? Yeah, it is 430 for this one, 429.

But yeah, that was one of my little guiding points of traveling. It's like, all right, I'm inevitably going to be traveling during Christmas. Let's try to make it so that I'll be in Japan. And I think my original plan was kind of to arrive more like closer to now to spend more time in Canada, dicking around before I got to Japan. And then my dicking around time got cut down because the Airbnb prices in Canada were a fright. So instead Christmas is now, I still got like a month.

Yeah, I got a month to go. Two-thirds of the way through is the Christmas time.

And I just knew being in Japan would not feel bad. I mean, I guess I'm clearly still in a bit of a Christmas grump. But it's only because I'm talking about Christmas. The rest of the today has been fine. I just need to stop talking about this and everything will be fine. But I just feel like, again, Christmas, it's like this horrible fucking black hole. I can't do a fucking podcast on Christmas even. Not talk about Christmas, you know? Like it just envelops everything.

And I'm not really sure what the upside is supposed to be. You really got to search hard for that bad boy. Oh, you can hang out and spend time with your family. Well, maybe just hang out with your family more regularly. And then it won't be such a big fucking deal whether you do it on Christmas or not. How about that? So yeah, in my mind, I envisioned just being like, you know, Shibuya, maybe somewhere very central. Tokyo with a light snow. And I was like, cool. I don't know if I'll actually be there specifically. I don't know if it'll actually snow, but that's just kind of the division in my brain. And now that we're here, I am not too far from Shibuya.

And if I do go to Sensoji, I think that that certainly counts as a central Tokyo, close enough, kind of better than just the buildings. Instead, I get the big, the big cool temple. Certainly no snow, no chance, no chance in hell. But the plan basically worked. And the plan turned out okay, because yeah, I just feel like if I had been in Montreal or I had been in Vancouver or I had been, I don't know anywhere really. Just the Christmas Grumps were gonna come fucking bite me in the ass.

Christmas. What a fucking pain in the fucking dick.

It just seems like a great opportunity to feel shame and embarrassment that you're just out by yourself doing your own thing on this one dumb day. So anyway, tomorrow I guess is actual Christmas. But from what I've heard, they especially don't care about actual Christmas. I think Christmas too, it's like the way it's kind of marketed in Japan is obviously there's the KFC connection that you just are supposed to eat KFC on Christmas. But also it's kind of like for for couples. I think it's another reason why people don't really care about Christmas around these parts. Because the average citizen is like whatever. It's just a day to go on a date with somebody. It's like another Valentine's Day or whatever. And I heard an anecdote about a second Tokyo lens. The guy Norm from Canada does YouTube videos. He said his first Christmas in Japan was a bit of a shock because he didn't realize Christmas Eve was the day. So Christmas Day, he heard a bunch of like construction sounds outside his window. And he looked out and they were like immediately tearing down all the Christmas stuff on Christmas morning. And they're just like fuck it. We're done. Tear it down. What's next? Got some new year's ship. Put it up here.

So yeah, I think tomorrow I'm probably you know because again I was trying to figure out what gift would I give myself? What do I want to do on Christmas? So I think I'm probably going to go do my little walk around Ikebukuro that I was going to do last episode. But then I got distracted by Kabukicho. And I walked around there instead. Which was pretty cool. Yeah, that's my plan for tomorrow. But if today doesn't feel very Christmasy I think actual Christmas will not feel it at all. But another little anecdote I heard about Christmas time in Japan that I thought this one was pretty good. The way I've been finding all these like all the coins at all the little Buddhist temples. You know that's just the thing you commonly do here. You just leave coins as like an offering on the statues and stuff or around them. So apparently this one person I don't know this was just some rando from the internet. But they saw a Christmas nativity scene set up somewhere in Japan. Which is pretty common in North America. You know little baby Jesus in the manger, 15:00 the virgin Mary, it's the three wise men. You see that shit all the time in North America. But it's pretty uncommon in Japan. And the dude went over to look at it. And little baby Jesus was covered in coins. Not as like a disrespect thing. They just thought that's what you're supposed to do. Like if that was a little Buddha in there we would leave coin offerings. So they were just dumping coins on little baby Jesus's fucking stupid baby face. I thought that was pretty funny. But that's that's a good example of the level. That's the level of Chris Giannady Christmas miss going on around here. Man actually while we're speaking about depressing Christmas shit I remember back when I was at Barista in Vancouver I had to go work on Christmas one day. I worked a few Christmas's in my time because again what do I care? I'm like yeah if I get if I can take the bullet for somebody so they can go do their Christmas stuff I don't care. I'll work Christmas. But I remember I was on my way to downtown Vancouver and there was a homeless guy asleep on the subway and just you know again Christmas Christmas just get you feeling extra bad about all this stuff. So I just remember I talked to like a $20 bill not where somebody else could see it and take it but where hopefully when they dude woke up he found it. Just tucked a little 20 in there. But yeah just the depressingness of Christmas it's like I don't even I mean I guess I guess when does the person ever feel great about helping a homeless person you know you don't feel bad about it about helping a homeless person I mean it's just it's such a drop in the bucket it's like does it even matter you know it's such a surface level gesture but maybe it'll make their sucky life feel a little less sucky for half a fucking I don't know it's gonna stay half a day as if $20 will do that for half a day for 20 minutes whatever so But yesterday as I was coming home from Kabukicho, I was going to go walk to the subway, and then I saw that if I went a little further, there's this wrestling group called Choco-Pro, Gato-Move Choco-Pro. It's just a little indie wrestling thing that it's like really weird. They just do wrestling in like a room with some mats on the floor. It's like boutique, weird wrestling. But I was like, oh yeah, I had marked that on my map earlier. I never did figure out when they record shows and stuff, but you can just kind of go stand around and watch them do these shows. They're all on YouTube if you search for Choco-Pro, like Chocolat Bar, Choco-Pro. So I walked over there just to see the location, and it's like, oh yeah, cool. Well, I guess that's where it is. There's some people training inside, and I'm just like neat. Even if I didn't see like one of their actual shows, I saw the place. That's kind of cool. But then that led me to go into a subway I had never taken before. And in there was a homeless guy. In one of the tunnels just laying out a blanket and getting ready to fucking tuck in, and the homeless problem is definitely fairly invisible in Japan. That is the first homeless guy that I've seen that I could say for sure is homeless. I remember in one of the YouTuber Roger Swan, one of his old videos, he talked about homeless people down by the bank of the river, which now that I think about it, I believe he was referring to the Arakawa, because once I saw it, I'm like, yeah, I think that looks like the same river. Or it could have been parts of the Tama, actually also, anyway, whatever, that there's like shacks hidden down by the river with people living in them. And you just wouldn't realize it first. So anyway, yeah, this is the first like homeless guy that I just stumbled upon, like, whoa, did not expect to see that. And I think all the time about how would I deal with being homeless? I mean, ever since I was a teenager, that always runs through my mind, because I always think like if I didn't have the security system that I had, if I didn't have a family with money, I'm not saying I would be homeless, but I am saying I would not have a normal job. I just can't do it. I literally can't. I cannot deal with the rigidity of the schedule. Something else would have to happen. And who knows that other thing could be being homeless. I could see it. I probably wouldn't be a life or homeless person, but I could see being one of those people that is homeless stretches of time. And also, I was thinking about how, or not thinking, this is just something that's just in my brain, that money really doesn't feel real to me on these trips. I mean, not only just because I'm spending the inheritance money from my poor deceased father. So I didn't earn it. I didn't work for it. So I mean, it's abstract in that sense. But even more so, because when I go to 20:00 the ATM at the 7-Eleven and take out whatever, $300, and it's just these bills that aren't Canadian bills, you know, and then I put a bunch of it on a sweet card, and then it's just this little card with a little penguin on it. And I usually just use the penguin card, and then once in a while I have to use a bill for something. But just none of it feels at all real. I'm just waving my little magical card and things, and they give me fucking tiny cheesecakes and fucking lattes and shit. It feels very divorced from money. And I mean, money as a concept is pretty divorced from reality anyway. You know, it's like, oh, this specific type of bill doesn't even look like the kind that I'm used to. But even that stuff, it's still all just, it's all very up in the air. It's all very, it's certainly not the same as like, you go till a field and then you go trade your radishes for some fucking flower or whatever, you know. None of it is all, none of it's connected to anything really. And I feel like I'm especially out at the loop where it really feels disconnected. Anyway, I gave this guy a hundred bucks because it doesn't feel like a hundred bucks to me. It feels like nothing. And in fact, I guess even just last summer there was a guy in my hometown who was just like standing in the middle of like where there's a big highway crossing, but you can stand on the median in the middle. And he was like when people stopped at a light, he would go panhandle or whatever. And as I was walking by, I just he had his like book bag there. I like slipped to 50 in his book bag. Because yeah, I don't know, the days of fucking putting your hand out and asking for change. It's like, none of this is going to do anything anyway, you know, obviously it's just just an ointment for surface level fixing. It's not at all addressing the issue, but a couple bucks is not enough. 20 bucks is not enough. 20 bucks nowadays is like two sandwiches, you know, it's like fucking ridiculous. So even I guess like a hundred isn't even that big of a jump. Like what's the guy going to really get with a hundred? I guess he can go to a convenience. I don't know, maybe he'll just buy some booze with it or something, get some ramen, whatever. It's going to go fast, but again, maybe it made that night a little better, you know, by tomorrow, by this morning, I guess, you know, it's like, oh well, everything's back to here. I'm waking up in the subway tunnel. Everything's back to to shit again, but but at least that night could be a little better. And then of course, because I can never understand anything that's happening around me, I don't know what he said. He definitely asked a question, you know, I'm sure it's just like, what the hell is all this about? I'm pretty sure you're supposed to just ignore me and walk by. So I just do to the time of year. I mean, this certainly had nothing to do with Christmas. I was certainly not feeling the Christmas spirit even a little, but I felt like at least it's a good, what else can I say to explain? So I just said Merry Christmas.

But yeah, definitely unusual. Now that I'm thinking about it, I guess I have seen some people with, you know, like wheelie carts with stuff strapped to it, you know, that it's like, I guess like the North American equivalent are like the people that have a shopping cart full of all their stuff. In Japan, everything's smaller in Japan, even the homeless guys with their bindles are smaller. I guess I have seen some that I think about it, but it's pretty rare. And that guy was the only guy that it was right on front street where he was just like, hey, guess what? Guess what? I'm a homeless guy and I'm sleeping here.

But anyway, Merry Christmas to you guys, sleeping in the subway tunnel.

The sun is basically down now, so I guess I'm going to go take a little walk, take a little walk up the fucking river and go to the temple, soak it all in. Man, Christmas fucking, fuck Christmas dude, Christmas fucking sucks.