#8 My first day back in Japan

Transcript

I made it. I'm just walking down some random street. I've got an eventual goal for today, but no big hurry.

Now my mission is to never go home until I absolutely have to, which is kind of my plan in general of traveling. You know, I want to be out in the city. I don't want to go to the Airbnb for much more than just sleeping probably. That's extra important now, but I guess we'll get into it. The weather here isn't same, so my flight got delayed going into end-leaving Calgary because of the terrible weather. It was minus 12 degrees Celsius, which is way below freezing. We're snow everywhere. And my friend Joel, who's from there, said that's pretty common. They pretty much always had to wear winter coats during Halloween, where here in Tokyo, it's over 20 degrees. You know, I'm kind of prepped for the winter. I'm going to be here till January.

So I got a lot of layers, but this is like summer. This is better than summer. I mean, when I was here, it was way too hot. Man, so I'm just walking down these little narrow back streets and I just turned the corner and saw shrine gate going somewhere. I don't know, as I'll just go there.

But yeah, it just feels like Japan. Like this feeling that I wouldn't have thought to articulate till I came back. You know, I didn't remember till I came back. I'm going to say it smells like Japan, but it's not a smell. If there is a smell, it's really subtle. I think it might just be the type of humidity they have here. It just feels the same as when I was here before.

Yeah, I'm not sure what this is, just a random shrine in a playground and people bowing and yeah, I don't know if I should be here. It seems weird. I thought maybe it was the cemetery at first, but it does not appear to be, but anyway, if I'm going to be Yammer to myself, I should probably not do it there. But even that, that's just there. That's so cool. I just love it.

On the most surface, shallow, base level. I just love walking around Japan. It's so cool. I was thinking that maybe I'll get into this first before I get into all the travel journeys, because there's some big ups and big downs. But I guess I always kind of thought I would like Japan because of just playing video games as a kid and then especially getting into manga and anime. And I sort of fell out of anime in the 80s and 90s. That was the style that I I was into when I was a kid. But I stuck with manga a lot. I still to this day read lots of Japanese comics. And I never realized how much of it sunk in. And when you read comics about like kids growing up in the 80s in Japan. And they just had like a different slant on the same kind of upbringing we had, the same video games, the same toys, not entirely, but you know, there's a lot across over. And it's just so interesting to feel that. Because it's such radically different places. This feels so incredibly different from North America. And culturally, it's super different too. Like I don't think I would want to live here. I don't think I would fit into Japanese society. I'm very much not wired that way. I'm like an annoying individualist. Am I doing me some good to bow down to the crowd a little more, probably be a happier person? But we still have the same nostalgia, the same upbringing, the same childhood. It's weird. But then even beyond that. And again, I'm going to restate. This is super shallow. There's no legitimacy to the things I'm saying. No research, no actual. It might not even be true.

It's just the feeling I get. But I started rereading the manga, Mizonakoku, by Remiko Takahashi. Because of Rutsu Yatsura and Rem no one half were two of the first manga I ever read. Two of my early faves. But Mizonakoku is my favorite one. And it's this like slow-burn domestic romance comic. Where it takes literally years for these characters who live together in the same apartment building. Apartment building is barely even that. It's like you get to learn what really cheap accommodations in the 1980s were like in Japan.

Man, I just crossed some railroad tracks. And I'm on this little tiny road that can barely fit one tiny car. Comes another. How does the big truck hold this one go by?

All these like kind of weathered houses, power lines. I guess there's a lot of power lines in this area. But not totally excessive. Last night I noticed by the place I'm staying. So many power lines, it crazy. And in the distance, taller buildings. And it's just perfect blue sky, perfect weather. Man, I picked a good time to come. I was afraid it would just be kind of overcast the whole time I'm here. And I'm sure that's coming. But for now, it is perfect. Man, and now there's like one little road that's like twisting over to the right. And then it splits off and I'm going up the hill to the left. Both of these are just little one lane things. And I just love, man, I mean, I love I love hills. I don't know why I just love it. I love the ups and downs. It just makes an environment so much more interesting. Whether it's the great big mountains like in Vancouver or just like here where it's just little mountains everywhere. I mean, going back to video games, again, this is going to be the most shallow podcast of all time. It's like a video game level, which I guess isn't surprising, right? I mean, especially back in the 80s, all the good video games are from Japan. I just feel like I'm walking through that stuff. Man, this is great too. I mean, this is definitely what this podcast is going to be about is, you know, I'll accidentally see some stuff. I accidentally ended up at Shibuya Crossing last night. I'll get into that. How do you accidentally end up at the biggest pedestrian crossing in the world? But I just stumbled right into it. But this is really what I like. It's just just random places. Just walking around the random neighborhoods. And there's a busier street coming up, although maybe I'll go there. So I can, it's the trade-off, is that you get the sound of the traffic. But I can talk a little louder. I feel so self-conscious. I got to really keep it quiet while I'm in these little residential neighborhoods.

I gotta get some water too. There's been a ton of vending machines, but I've only got 10,000 yen bills. I remember these little things all like taking this week a card, but I guess they don't. I guess that's only like more major ones at stations and stuff. Oh yeah, boy, I was saying about Maisonakoku. So yeah, it's just this ramshackle building that, you know, it's basically just rooms. But that was a normal boarding house in the 80s and before. And it takes years for these characters as romance to develop. But that's like night and day. It gets so much busier all of a sudden. Although there's the 7-11 across the street and a loss in the corner. I'm in Japan, all right. But not quite yet. I don't want to go into the busy street while I'm in the middle of talking about this low-burn romance of Maisonakoku. It takes years for these characters to get together. And reading it again now that I, all these years later, it's, if anything, it's better than I remember. I don't necessarily recommend the Maisonakoku anime because it's like 80s style to a false. It's kind of, it feels silly. It's kind of, but the manga is gorgeous, beautiful.

And very unique. I've never, I can't, like I even, I've went search in like, are there any other stories like this? Not just manga, but any. And other people were asking that too, and no one could really come up with one of just like, it's about people in their 20s. And it's just this romance that takes place over years and years and years. But when I say romance, so little romantic happens because it's like, it's about courtly manners, you know? It's like what I understand in Jane Austin book to be like. But I feel like it just, I understand it on a surface level. Obviously, I don't actually understand all the intricacies of Japanese society. And like I said, I wouldn't, I would never even attempt to become part of that system. I do feel like if you didn't grow up as it, you're fighting a serious uphill battle. But just in general, being a kind of inwardly focused, you know, hopefully empathetic, you know, right early ass fuck who just tries to empathize with situations and with people. You just feel that coming off of it so strongly, and it's there another Japanese media too, to a smaller degree. But that whole thing of just like, hey, don't step on my toes, you know? The social mores are different from a North American nerd, but that we have them, you know? That there's that feeling of like everybody's stepping on your toes and stepping over boundaries that they don't see. And in North America, it's just unspoken because people don't know about it. They're unaware of it. Or in Japan, it's unspoken, but everyone knows about it.

Everyone's aware of it. All right, I'm going to take a little break. I'm going to get some water, 10:00 at the very least. All right, and my random wanderings, my one kind of goal is I'm vaguely trying to get to a library so I can charge my laptop. I used up all the battery on the plane. And the least of the problems at my Airbnb is that there's no three pronged plugs anywhere.

It's all too pronged. It's nice that Japan runs on the same power system as North America. Like when I was in Amsterdam, I had to get an adapter. Here you don't need to, but yeah, no plugs for the old laptop. But I'll get into that. That's again, like I said, that's the least of the issues in this fucking place. But it looks like there's a little park near this library. So maybe I'll hit there. Check out the 7-Eleven Hall. Is it there's not enough like videos on YouTube right of just people going to 7-Eleven and stuff? I'm up in the ante. You don't even get to see it. I'm just going to talk about it. But yeah, I don't know. What is the deal before? I mean, like having this this phone I'm using, again, I just use it for Wi-Fi. It doesn't have a data plan or anything. It's a Pixel 2, so it's a 2018 or so. It's a little bit old, but it's like an actual decent smartphone. And just having the little map and the little GPS and the little blue dot of where I am, it's just crazy to think I didn't have that last time. I was just wandering blindsly all the time. Except I guess whatever my cheap, I had like a 7-Eleven phone. It was just shit. But I would get Wi-Fi from convenience stores and stuff and figure out where I was.

I don't know. I feel like it must have had the blue dot technology, but I just remember it was so bad that it never worked. So I just didn't use it. Where this one is pretty remarkable.

I just got it. It's not even refurbished. It was a display model. It was just sitting in a store until the Google image, the G, slightly burned into the screen. So I got this crazy at the time, like $900 phone for like $60 Canadian and saying, I was thinking to the exchange rate, you know, people used to say that the American and Japanese conversion was about one to one, one penny for one yen to make rough estimates, but that's really not accurate anymore. The American dollars worth a lot more. And not the Canadian one. When I got 30,000 yen out of the machine at the airport, it cost me $290 something Canadian. It's almost exactly one to one. So I think when I do prices, instead of trying to figure out the yen, because you're basically just expressing it in pennies, it's always this is a thousand yen. This was 15,000 yen.

It never quite works for my brain. So I'm just going to say it in the Canadian amount. So for example, I was just trying to figure out what to do now with money. I've been a moneyless person for years in COVID times back in Canada.

I might have like a $20 bill in my wallet just in case, but eventually it stopped even doing that. So I was like, what am I going to do with this money? So at the very least with the bills, I also noticed I've got a bandaid in my wallet where the bills used to go. And I'm like, oh, that was what, what foresight? Good thinking, Keith. In case you get a blister or something. So I put the bandaid in between the tens, and then I've got a $100 bill and a $50. Again, I'm speaking in Canadian terms, really, a $10,000 yen, a $5,000 yen, and then the $1000 yen. I won't say $1 bill, I guess. That's incredibly wrong.

But I'll just say it as, you know, I got a $100, I got a $50, I got some tens. But then I was like, what am I going to do with these coins? I have a little thing for coins in my wallet, but it's not good for it. It sort of slide out. So at least if it's a $50,000 or $100,000 or $500, you know, I'll pay attention to those, the smaller ones, especially the one, the one's insane. But even smaller than that, this is coming back to me now. It's like your job when you buy stuff is to try to give the right change just so it doesn't accumulate. I mean, the one yen coins, they're going to accumulate. I don't know, I'm just going to end up leaving the country with 300 of these fucking things. It's just what's going to happen. I think I might actually, maybe I should buy like a coin purse or something. I honestly don't know what to do with these coins. 15:00 Also, man, this particular road I'm on, oh, I just, it just passed the sign. I should have written it down, but wait, I've got the phone. Just so I can at least say where I really am. It's relatively close to Shibuya. That's why I got this place. So I could have an easy time finding my first Airbnb.

Because it would be by a major place. San Gengaya is what this neighborhood is called. And there's like a lot of bicycles on this main street. And I'm not sure the etiquette. I can't quite figure it out. There's a bike lane on some of the street. Generally, though, they're on the sidewalk and I can't figure out the left or the right. At first, I was walking on the right, but that seemed wrong.

And I was like, well, they don't drive on the right here. So maybe it's the left.

But it seems pretty random unless I'm just really not picking up something here. Everybody just seems to be doing whatever, which there's not that much bike traffic. So it's not a big deal. It kind of reminds me of like when I was a kid in the 80s. Just bike on the sidewalk. There were no laws. Lawless. Just don't smash into somebody. I just got to be mindful. It's not like I Amsterdam or something where if you don't understand the bike rules, you're about to die. Oh, I see. For this neighborhood, at least, there's signs on the ground that say walk on the left, ride bike on the right. Although that's only because I'm walking in this direction. Obviously, if I was going the other way, it would be reversed. So again, yeah, I guess I was right. There was no left or right. It was depending on which way I was going because I've gone both ways on this street. So maybe that's a pro tip. Look at the ground. There might be signs telling you what to do. Which is one thing I like, again, with my just vague generalizations about Japan and not actually understanding anything. Is that they do have a lot of stuff delineated. Once you know how the rules work, it's pretty easy to navigate. Which makes it a lot more comfortable to come here as a visitor who doesn't understand anything. Because I'm really, I know a tiny little bit of Japanese terminology from again, just from anime and manga video games. Not enough to communicate with anybody. Like when I was just at that 7-11, I did not understand a damn word that guy was saying. But, you know, you can just tell by context clues, I presumed he was asking about the bag. I don't know how I figured. I mean, what else would he be asking about, I guess? I just, you know, because I had a bag on my back. It's just nodded like, yep, it's all good. I'm good. And he said daijobu, which I do know that word because there's a song from the anime child's toy. So I know that too. Kodomo no omotya. So I know the words child's toy and the song is called daijobu, which means, are you okay? So in this case, he was obviously asking you okay without a bag. And that's definitely a difference from before the pre-COVID world. Everybody was giving me bags, whether or one of them or not. It was like awkward to not have one. Because then they had to put stickers on all this stuff to show that I bought it. So that's kind of nice in a way. So I don't just build up a bunch of bags. He's even just there. Some guy when he was walking back kind of gave me a little look of like, what's this guy doing? Why is he holding this thing? But I guess it's like when people just get used to vlogging. I mean, that's a lot more intrusive and a lot more, you know, having the camera with the selfie stick and everything. But again, they get used to it. This is way more subtle than that. I'm just holding a little stick with a fuzzy thing on the top.

But you do just get used to it. It's just like, yeah, I mean, you know, sure, it's a little weird, but I mean, it's less weird here. On a major street I'm walking up past a McDonald's now. It's weirder, I guess, before when I was in those little tiny quiet residential neighborhoods. It just has a little smoking triangle. Just a tiny little triangle. These have like much larger, even though I was only here four or five years ago, much larger smoking areas. That one is small. They are making it clear. Smoking is getting stamped out around here. Alright, let's find that little park. Get somewhere. A little more quiet.

Man, I can't believe how complicated that was. I think I already, in my first full day here, technically, I got here yesterday. But I think I already learned a lesson about my precious little map. It's probably better if I just don't use it, except in a very general sense. Because all I did was send me on a wild goose chase to a thing that I otherwise wouldn't have known about and gave me the mistaken idea that I could get there. This man that sent me down some totally weird twisting side streets.

So complicated and circuitous. But that also reminded me like, oh yeah, I mean that's what I like about this place. I like being lost. I like that feeling of not knowing where I am. I remember when I first moved to Vancouver and just like having no idea, just wandering. It's like, I don't even know what the heck's happening. I remember that day in particular. I finally just got on a bus and let it take me to a hub so I could get situated from there. And then after that when I moved to Toronto, I didn't get as lost in Toronto. It's pretty much a grid. But I did still get lost some. And I remember kind of as that came to an end, I was like, oh yeah. At the point where I can't really get lost in Toronto anymore, that's a shame. Where here you can't not get lost. Grids barely exist. Here in the center or when I was out by Akigawa or in Fukuoka just anywhere.

It's just not how they designed stuff. And that was a perfect example. Man, it took me so long to like slowly circle around and figure out how to get to this place. And then it really wasn't a park anyway. It was more again, more of a, you know, shrines and statues. And it was all walled off and it was very quiet. No one was there. And it just really did not seem like that's where I should go to pull out all my 7-11 crap and start yammering about it. In fact, I don't know where I should go. Pull out my 7-11 crap and start yammering about it. In North America, I would just eat as I walk around by, you know. That's a little less what you do around here. In fact, you just don't. You just don't do that. And I think beyond a coin purse, I might have to get a little bag just for my garbage too. I realized my back pocket is still full of all of my wrappers for just cough drops I was eating on the plane to keep my ears from popping or to make my ears pop or whatever. And I don't know how I'm going to get rid of even just that stuff that's in my back pocket. There used to be a lot more outdoor garbage is outside of convenience stores, but I haven't seen any. I just saw, I haven't seen a couple of like bottled places you can dump your bottles at the places where you buy bottle drinks. I wonder if that's a COVID thing or if it's just coincidence that I just haven't run into any. But yeah, I think a little coin purse and just a little wrapper bag would be very handy.

I can hear that crow really loudly but above me is just a just a tangle of our lines. I don't even know where it is.

Man, the traffic too on these little streets that reminds me a lot of Kensington Market in Toronto which is just a tiny little, you know, it's only a few blocks square if even. But it's like this ancient part of Toronto that has different fire codes and stuff so it does feel pretty different. And there's a lot of pedestrians but you are allowed to drive through there technically for, you know, deliveries and stuff for the businesses. But it always seems weird. It's like why are cars even allowed here at all because it's just, it's an awkward and man central Tokyo sort of feels just like a gigantic less square, less grid based Kensington Market that just never ends and just goes and goes and goes.

Jesus, now I'm starting to think this is following me. Does it know something I don't? Am I going to die? Here's some random stairs. I'm going to go with these. So yeah, I'm just going to wander. I'm just going to wander and something will happen. Something will happen eventually.

Actually, maybe I'll head back to that, I'm going to head back to that library because there's no other libraries listed anywhere near here. And I have a feeling if I wander away from there, I won't be back today. So I just want to at least scope it out even if I don't fully charge my computer today. But I just drank this little coffee I got from 7-Eleven. Let me just yammer about that. I think this episode is just going to be about this. This is all I really want to talk about is just random stuff that's happened into me in Japan. I got a bunch of stories about traveling here because it was like 50-50. The actual travel was awesome. And then arriving was a shit show. But I can yammer about that next time. Now that I'm here, I just want to talk about stupid crap. So yeah, 7-Eleven. It's one of those things that I mostly forgot about, but I did once in a while come back to me during COVID lockdown. I'm like, oh yeah, remember those? Is my favorite coffee to get there? Is just this little coffee that comes in a little plastic cup with a little plastic thing on top. I guess you could peel off, but you're supposed to just poke it with a straw like a Capri Sun. 25:00 And it's kind of hard out of the machines to get coffee that doesn't have sugar in it. Like the one I grabbed last night just to fuel me to my Airbnb. Very sugary. It was like, if you ever ate the cereal sugar crisp and then you just drank the milk that's left afterward, that's exactly what it tasted like. It's very hard to get. I'm sweet and coffee out of the machines. So 7-Eleven had these little coffees, little lattes that there's the sweet one which I never tried, and there's the blue labeled one. That is what I had to get today because it's all I could find. It was okay, at least it didn't have sugar, but it was just coffee and cream. But my favorite one had a green top. And it was like the dark one, the bitter one. It tasted so goddamn good. And they had a bunch of the other two, but they didn't have that one. And I was like, oh, I hope they still make that. I hope that's not just gone. And in fact, since I'm in the land of Plenty, there's a 7-Eleven right in front of me. Why don't I just go in and see? Let me just see if they have a green labeled one.

Not looking good. They also didn't have it. So instead, what I got is still a valuable learning experience. They had a cocoa one. So I'm like, okay, I'll try that. But I think it was actually just cocoa. It wasn't like coffee at all. But I drank it while I was in there, so I could throw it away. Got rid of those off-drop wrappers while I was at it. But it looks like with coins, another COVID type measure, you can just feed the coins into a machine. You don't have to give it to the person. I guess that's how the money came out too. All the coins and change came out of a machine instead of being handed over. So that's pretty handy.

Man, I don't realize most of the time how noisy it is. A lot of construction in this neighborhood. Because I tend to keep my, my little like, your bud headphones in, even when I'm just walking around. At least that's a better sound than constructed. Yeah, I tend to leave them in as just kind of little surrogate earplugs.

Because they're a little bit like your plugs. They just dull the world a little because I've just really sensitive ears. Sometimes I'll put on a podcast so that extra dulls what's going on around me. I don't really listen to music when I'm walking in a place like Japan, because I'm just being careful that I'm not messing something up. And this neighborhood really is just so many bicycles.

But then I flip on the recorder and it's the reverse. Instead of the headphones blocking out noise a little bit. Suddenly they amplify it because I can hear, you know, I just listen back to the recording while it's going to make sure it's all working okay. So I get an amplified idea of what sound is going on. It's like, oh jeez, cities are loud man, even relatively quiet ones like this. Even this though, like right now I'm not on one of the more major streets. This is a semi major one. And I mean compared to Montreal, right? Like I like Montreal too. I think Montreal is quite traffic calm. But listening back to some of those episodes, I'm like, man, that's loud as hell. All you can hear is cars.

At least around here, like the scooter that just drove off. Perfect example. You get bursts of noise, but it's not generally continuous. But anyway, whatever that library thing was, I don't know what they were talking about. And is there anything remotely close to a library? There was kind of a big building with some banking stuff and some kind of theater group or something.

Here's a little walking path. Le bicyclettes sont un tel d'y, no bikes. There's a bike, but that's fine still. Very few bikes. So I'm going to walk down this thing because yeah, what they did have in that building. God bless Japan. Public washroom. It's my favorite thing in the world. I literally today I did my favorite thing in the world. I woke up, I wandered randomly around some cool neighborhood. I drank excessive amounts of coffee and then I found easy access to a public washroom and I peed. I've done it and did it all. It's all I want to do.

And a couple other white guys speaking the English came into that bathroom and just for a second. I wanted to be like, hey, whoa, what's up? But only because I just got here. That's all that I still think it's novel to see a tourist, but it won't be soon. They're everywhere. They're all over the place.

They don't care about me. I ain't special. And particularly in a washroom. It's not the place to make friends. It's a place to just pay attention to your own dick.

But what I realized, the reason I ended up at this somewhat dubious Airbnb somewhat, it's just fucking terrible. But I'll talk about it next episode. It is because on the map, I was like, hey, look at that. It's only an hour's walk from here to Yoyogi Park, one of the first big landmarks I ever figured out how to get to in Japan. And I remember right by Yoyogi Park is a big three floor Starbucks. So I was thinking both things, like I'm not really close, but I'm like, why don't I just meander that way? Get up to Yoyogi Park. I can finally eat this stuff that is burning a hole in my book bag. And then maybe, maybe I'll hit up the three story Starbucks. See if they have a place to plug in a laptop. They might. I remember it being for how busy that neighborhood is. I remember it being pretty quiet in there, but I might have just got lucky. Because then, right after I had that plan, I walked by another big three story Starbucks. And it's real busy.

And I'm still feeling a little intimidated, you know. I'm brand new. I just got here. It's surprising how much stuff I'm not remembering.

Here's a nice little public pond. I wonder, I did try. Google Translate is also a thing I didn't have last time. I tried it on the directory at that building to make sure there wasn't a library. I did not seem to be. Let me try it on this sign. I found this to be a dubious quality so far, but let's see. Everyone who uses green roads, the green road has a management agreement with residents and districts, cooperates and cleans up. We'll protect the following so anyone can use it comfortably. Let's all be clean. Let's make green flowers and trees.

Death, empty pins and empty can. Let's throw away. And there's probably cans and stuff I think is what they mean.

Maybe. Car and motorcycles prohibited. Bicycles should drop their speed, dogs. Bring your owner. That's funny and do not bother others. Please give me your father.

Some of the fluff may be unexpected by a glass piece or a stone cad. If your child goes in the water, please give a guidance. Just be careful in this pond because there could be glass and stuff in there. But I mean, that's a good example. I guess. Over here is way better. There's a little sign that's got a little cartoon feet that are very sad because a piece of glass is stuck in them. I wonder if that's close enough that I can take a picture of it. But yeah, that's what I tend to find here is that, you know, it's clear, you know, all that stuff is obvious, right? You know, it's obvious what that sign means and it's all stuff that everybody should already know. This is a public cool thing. Please be cool with it. But then failing that, cartoons benefit this on my Instagram, novel pod on Instagram, by the way.

Jesus, I feel like that's that same bird. I feel like it's waiting for my corpse. But yeah, there's a lot of the little cartoons, too, of a sticky feet. Or, hey, please don't stand a foot back from the urinal gentleman. Here's another one. Dogs, a nice dog on a leash with water and do not groom your pet in public and do not let it poop. Good advice. Here's another cartoon. Watch out for cyclists. So cyclists almost hitting a small child. So yeah, I mean, even though everything is pretty obvious to begin with, the cartoons really make it extra obvious. That's just one of those things, too, again. I keep restating this, but I think it's important to mention that my whole, like, I know what I am. I'm a shallow, shallow tourist, a shallow traveler. I like Japan on a shallow level. I know my place. But on that shallow level, oh, geez, this pond, it's like a stream that goes all the way.

That's actually really pretty.

Yeah, it's going to say more generally for anyone who's curious. Even though this specific neighborhood is Sengenjaya, more largely, this is Setagaya City.

Next to Shibuya. Or anyone trying to find it, wait a minute, what is this? 35:00 I know I just said I should just wander and let the wandering take me, but setagaya park. That's a lot closer than Yuyogi. And it's got a little tree icon. That's got to be good. And this that I met right now, this is perfect. This is exactly kind of, I mean, when I would think about coming back to Japan a lot of it, I guess because what I did while I was at home was I would just daydream about traveling and just think, so obviously I could only think about the places that I'd been. So my thinking was I should just go back to all the places that I've been. I was going to get all the same Airbnb's and go to all the same places and I couldn't because they weren't available. But I am still doing the same basic route. Tokyo, Fukuoka, outskirts of Tokyo.

But different little places and like, yeah, this is perfect. Man, this is so nice. This little walking trail with this nice, like little man-made stream that goes along it.

There's one of these by Ikebukuro too, but it doesn't have the stream.

But yeah, nice. Add this to the itinerary. I mean, I knew deep down that it would be better to go to new places because it's never as good going back to places, you know. Going back to your old neighborhoods and stuff. It always seems like it's going to be a little more moving than it is. I'm still going to do a bunch of that. But finding new stuff is, it is the best. I just wish it was easier to remember. I said a guy a city is easy to remember, but I keep having to look it up. Sengenjaya. That one does not stick in my brain. Well, whatever. I'll be able to find it again. It's right by Shibuya.

Oh, I was just thinking that this little walking path might be a better place to just stop and chill. Because I'm still a little ways from set a guy apart. I got across a pretty major street to get there. And just as I was thinking that, I saw some benches, so as long as I'm not obnoxiously loud.

And I take all my garbage with me. I think this is an okay place to eat this 7-11 stuff that, you know, probably shouldn't be in my bag for too long. God, this weather is perfect. Imagine the perfect day. I'm not sure what 2021 degrees Celsius is in Fahrenheit, but just imagine perfect. Imagine perfect weather. But yeah, if anything, it's just a little bit too warm. It's a little too warm. It's enough to make you sweat. But basically perfect. And there's a breeze and it's a blue sky, but there are clouds in it too. But like the pretty Simpsons clouds, this is fucking perfect. This is like literally perfect weather. This is the best. I really thought by the time I got here, especially with a Montreal being overcast the whole time in Calgary being a literal below zero snow storm place. I mean, obviously that's Canada. But I didn't expect it to be this good. I thought I would already, you know, I kind of thought coming here in the fall. But it might, you know, a slight, am I going to regret this a little? Is it going to be just graying overcast every day? And like I said, maybe that's coming. But I think that'll be fine. You know, it's probably still better than the height of summer and everything.

And the horrible humidity. But geez, even if this only lasts today, this is so good. I cannot believe how good this is. This is as good as any of the days that I was ever here before. It's okay. Let's see what I got. I got some kind of chips. Just because mostly I got extra stuff because I was breaking 100. You know, I felt like I should buy a little more than I might normally because I was breaking such a big bill. And chips are a little weird in Japan because they're not bad, but they're not amazing. There's something weird about them. Like I'm sure my friend Brad will come up many times on this podcast because he's the whole reason I came to visit Japan. And he's the only person I knew when I was here before. But he's big into chips. He knows this potato chips. And he said it was like the only thing he was a little disappointed by when you go into the convene. You know, you go in and just everything in the convenience stores, the greatest thing ever. You know, people who have been to Japan are live here. They're like, oh, it's overrated. But trust me, it's not overrated. If you've just visited, you've just come here occasionally. It's the best. I mean, I'm sure I'll branch out a little. Like I was saying before about how when you know the rules to stuff. The only restaurant I know the rules to is Coco Ichibon, the curry place, because I went with Brad. And now I went there by myself a couple of times because I knew how it worked. 40:00 I knew how to order. I knew all the processes and you order the heat and the amount of rice and how everything goes. They have English menus, but I could order even with the Japanese one. I could order with nobody being able to speak to me. Which is cool. But in general, I feel a bit apprehensive about that because when you bump into someone and there's a lot of people in Tokyo that really don't speak English, you just get completely stonewalled. It's like absolute. It's over. You can't talk to them. And it's very uncomfortable and I don't like it and it's my fault. I'm the one who hasn't learned any Japanese and is not trying to learn any Japanese. So I don't get to interact with people. It's just not how it is. That's fine. I'll just go to the convenience all the time. But since I was buying extra stuff, I got some chips just to try. Because I don't know what these are. Well, again, hold on. Hold on. Let's give it another try. We got the Google Translate. That's one thing, man. I was having a hard time with the fingerprint sensor on my two phones. I was like, did something happen from flying? Is it because I'm dehydrated? Did my fingerprints shrivel? Finally, one of the phones brought up a little message that said, sensor is dirty. And I was like, oh, my sensor is just filthy. That's why. Yeah, that seemed to fix it. But yeah, this, it's like a breaded fried chicken with some sauce on it. And I just noticed now red peppers. So that could be good. It looks good. But I think I'm going to save those for later because they can obviously stay. But let's try. The translate. What do you got for me?

Kokea strong. Let me flatten the bag a bit.

I'm afraid not. Yeah, I find this thing, I mean, it's still amazing. This is amazing technology. I'm not, I mean, the fact that it can read, that I could read anything is amazing. But I have a feeling it's one of these things that I'll probably just give up pretty quickly because it so often doesn't work. And again, what do I care? What do I need to know? It's got breaded fried chicken, some sauce, and red peppers. So yeah, I'll save you the, this is already a weird podcast anyway where I'm just talking about stuff in Japan. But I'll save you the, let me try to Google translate. Oh, it didn't work. Let's just give up on that right now. If something does work, I'll let you know.

But then I just got some onigiri, which I did. I kind of learned how to make slightly decent onigiri at home. It's like the one thing I could kind of make. I got spicy polychro and tuna mayo. And yeah, these probably shouldn't be in my book bag all day in this weather.

So I'm going to eat these right now. And then normally that would have been enough. But I also got a chicken cutlet with sauce, which is just breaded chicken cutlet in bread, you know, sandwich.

And they always cut the crust off, which is a shame. I like crust, but you know, I would ever.

So I guess I didn't really get that much stuff. Oh yeah, here we go. They had some crunky in there and crunkies what I would always give before I went mountain hiking in Fukuoka. Some water and some crunky. It's just chocolate, you know, little chocolate things, little chocolate ball type things. But they only had one kind of crunky there and it was just kind of normal, plain old, normal crunky. Maybe it had like rice in it. I don't know whatever it was, I was like, and that's that I got magey strawberry. Very chocolate, but yeah, I'll save that too. Again, as just this was basically as much as I could hold in my arms, as well as the coffee and some water. So I don't know how much this came to, but got a nice whack of change back so I don't have just hundreds anymore.

Anyway, I'm not going to record the process of eating this stuff because it's one of my things with having sensitive hearing. I don't think I have full on mesophonia, but I don't especially like the sound of people eating. It's got engrossed. So just imagine that I'm eating it and that it's delicious and that I'm stashing my garbage somewhere, which I am probably just in my back pocket for now while I desperately look for a home for it. Yeah, I guess since I'm not going to any particular parks now, I can just go back to wandering. So maybe that'll just be today's thing. If I can find somewhere to plug in my laptop, that's cool, but if not whatever, I'll just wait till tomorrow who cares. I think today's mission is just to try to find a store where I can buy some little bags, some kind of little dollar store, maybe Dunkiota or something, buy some bags. For now, I'm on a eat stuff.