The Crazy Adventures in Japan (up date)

If you are reading this blog entry, I want to say thanks for reading and would like to congratulate you for putting up with so much crap I am writing. Anyway, here is something kind of funny that happened to me a few nights ago. After being tired of paying about $50 dollars, I moved to a cheaper place. There I met a woman who we will call Mrs. G for now. I arrived to the new place after a long intense search for the address because this house is really outside Tokyo. Anyway, I got there and she was going out to the Indian Embassy. However, the house only has two key and she was taking one. I was really hungry and insisted I kept the key to go eat. She did not want to give up the key and so I suggested to come along if she didn't mind. She agreed and said that she was going to meet a friend in Shinjuku. So we got on our way, we talked for a while and she gave me a good insight of her life. As we were talking, she said that she had forgotten to check where to get off for the Embassy and so we made a pit stop at a coffee shop. This Coffee Shop was like Nordstroms x 20 in luxury and price. Anyway...She told me that it would be useless for me to pay and go all the way to the Indian embassy and that she was going to meet her friend here at this exact place. She asked me to wait there and wait for her friend. I didn't have to spend money to go with her. I waited and browse the internet and after an hour a japanese woman kicked me out of the station and was told to sit elsewhere. However, soon after that, both Mrs. G and her friend come by. We talked for a while and then headed out to a bar. It was a gay bar. I did not mind because I payed $10 for all you can drink wine for two hours. In those two hours my friend Mrs. G got so drunk and got us in more trouble than I have gotten in my whole trip thus far.....to be continued

So Mrs. G was completely wasted and then tried to go dancing on the stripping pole at the bar. Howevers, there were some drinks on the little stage and she spilt them. A couple of american girls got mad because those were their drinks and wanted to her to pay for them. The girls came up to me and asked me to take care of my girlfriend. To this I replied that she was not my girlfriend and that I had barely met them. They then told me to just ditch them, but I explained that I had come with them and being so new in Tokyo I did not know where to go. They calmed down after I explained my situation, they became more friendly and did not bother me anymore. In the meatime, Mrs. G was having the time of her life trying to pick on someone. She got really anoying and we decided to leave the bar. Soon after we left, she fell to the grownd and began vomiting. I was really embarrassed because everyone was staring as she just laid ther in the foor. A little later, we called a taxi cab and loaded her into it. However to my good luck she began to vomit and we did not have anything to put on the Taxi sit. So what do I do? I took off my polo shirt so that the she does not make matters worst with the taxi driver. We then arrived to Mrs. G's friend's house and slept there. The next morning when we were due to return to our hostel, we found out that she had lost her hand bag with both her money for the ticket and her passprot with the Indian visa in it. We looked for it for a really long time and did not find it. It was a true nightmare. After looking for it for a while...she phoned the house where we were staying and made arrangements with other travellers to meet at 1pm because she had the only key to the house. We somehow manage to arrive later than expected and the guys at the house who had been waiting for a long time were also mad with her because she did not keep her world. Anyway to make the story shorter, this women has been by far the most complicated person I have ever dealt in my life. She told me a little about her and told me that she did not understand why nobody liked her. At first, I did not know what to think because I had barely met her. However, she really made mad because she never thanked her friend for paying for the cab, for taking her into her house(with a stranger), for wasting her evening. She pissed me off also because she did not say thinks for puking on my shirt and because later she dare to suggest that I could have been the person who stold her money. Now that I am far far away for this person...i would sugges to keep as far away as possible for she will make your life a living hell.

The Tokyo Rumble!!

I have been in Tokyo about 4 days and have been shocked with the Japanese society quite a bit. I have never seen a large city such as Tokyo without the usual homeless population. I constantly wonder...where have this people gone. This curiosity my get me in a little of trouble, but I have decided to start asking where are the homeless people and what happens of them. I am really sure that there are homeless, but I do not see them. All I have seen in Tokyo and most of the train lines is the typical Japanese that we all imagine. The highly fashionable, clumsy, shy Japanese girls and the un-kept Japanese men. On the surface Japan seems great, but is it really? I have also found that Tokyo has one of the largest and most active Red Light districts of the world. I read in a book that the sex industry brings about 2.3 trillion Yen...now that is a lot of money. From my personal inferences, it is not hard to imagine why the Japanese sex industry is so active here. Life in Tokyo is extremely expensive this means that children from a household will live with their parents until their marriage. Japan also has one of the lowest if not the lowest birth rates in the world. Japanese men are pushed to the limit to make something out of themselves in this ever shrinking job market. So why do I mention this facts and mention the sex industry? I do it just to perhaps acknowledge that there is some kind of repression(internalization) that may translate into a sexual one. I am not trying to infer that that is the cause of the robust sex industry, but that there may be some connection. So...do I think Japan is beautiful? Yes. However, we the tourist and the people who come to Japan for a while only see the surface of a complex society with problems like the rest of the world. Now if I compare the lifestyle of a Japanese child with that of a child in Mexico. You may think that this is an apples and oranges comparison, but if you look at it closer. What would you rather be a child who has little but has time to play in the dirt or a child who has a lot(by this I mean both social and economical pressure like the Japanse) ?

Konnichiwa( hello) from Japan!!

Here I am sitting in Tokyo, one of richest cities of the world. The place where people study, work, and spend like crazy. That is right....one can spend a few thousand dolars in just minutes and not know where they went. Here is a small budget for the arrival to Tokyo on a morning to Narita Airport. Firtst, you get there and spend $10 dollars for a train ticket from the airport to anywhere in Tokyo...then another $10 dollars for a small breakfast, then another $10 dollars to get to your hotel, then another $10 dollars for lunch, then $15 for dinner plus a beer. Now you are set to check into the hostel and that will cost you a good $60dollars just for the night so this comes to a whopping $115 dollars for a basic day. This is so basic that it hurts my brains that I have to do this for about 30 days. I really need to cut down on the spending or just stay home and not come out-that is impossible however. You always meet some traveler who invites you to go this place or that pace. Anyway..that is just the spending and that is not the hardest part about being in Japan. What I have found to be really difficult is the actual atmophere here in Japan. To begin with somethign simple, you cannot stare into peoples eyes because it is not common to do so. You barely see people smiling and never, ever, ever do you see people hugging or kissing at all. I find this somewhat depressing since I am more affectionate. I am not trying to say that my way is better all I am trying to express is my shock to it. I once again feel very foreing because the language barrier is quite big. I am lucky to have taken some Japanese lessons in high schoo, else I don`t know what I would have done.　Anyway, back to life style. I find the Japanese lifestyle very interesting. Contrary to Latin american culture where individuals go out to the streets to merely socialice, Japanese individuals seem to take off to the streets to escape the reality of the small world that surrounds them. i.e their samall appartmets. Staying at home may feel crowded and thus people go out to the large oppen spaces in the city or take off to the tall building where space is ample. Life here is both interesting and challenging, I have not completely been able to engage in a conversation with any japanese people and my learning here will be merely my interpretation of what I think they are doing. I will not be able to really ask why they do things, but even if I did speak the language, I am not sure they would want toanswer. Anyway....here it goes nothing I am really tired to write this and soon a couple of Indian friends will be comming to join me so I better stop the rumbble. I am sure the next entry will be a bit more complete. Now, all I can do is try to adjust to the system and try to go with it.