I'm telling you, this is Las Vegas (TIM, TOKYO, FEBRUARY 2007)

Well, I was immediately dissapointed when the toilets at the Tokyo airport wouldn't answer my questions, but the trip wasn't half bad, as rushed as it was.

Gord and I somehow managed to visit about seven or eight of the 10 worthwhile areas in the downtown core. That said, anything I say about Japan or the Japanese below is completely focused on the over-crowded but still somehow spacious downtown area of Tokyo. (We visited Tokyo, yes, but really we just saw the Manhattan part of it, where 12 million of the larger 32 million live.)

MY 12 READERS, PLEASE ENJOY!!!!

I'm telling you man, Las Vegas. It turns out my hotel was the biggest in Tokyo, consisting of multiple buildings with escalators and people movers going everywhere... Get it? Like Las Vegas.

This is Tim almost crying. It only rained for a few minutes on two occassions, but still. I'm Canadian, so I braved it without a coat to save on weight when it wasn't raining. And yes, people looked at me like I was white or something.

(SIDE NOTE: White people don't give each other the same courtesies in Tokyo as in Seoul. When us brothers come across each other in Korea, we usually nod and smile. In Tokyo, all the white people just looked at me like I was white or something... I suppose they're a higher breed of white people than the slackers here in Seoul.)


Does this building look like a robot or do I have stereotypical ideas about what Tokyo is all about?

Come on, those are eyes!


The most expensive bowl of Mr. Noodles I've ever had.

And Holy Jesus is Tokyo expensive. Seoul is expensive, but Jesus Jesus Jesus. We were charged extra for everything in the hotel from the TV to the swimming pool, and just about everything else, from Coca Cola to souvenirs, seemed to be at least 20%-30% worse than Korea.

(Or, I can't calculate the exchange in my head properly. We report, you decide.)


Simon (the only person reading this who cares about food), I'm going on the record:

Japanese people make better food than Koreans, thus, Japanese people are better than Korean people. I'm siding with the Japanese in the next war.

I'm not sure if it's the more money thing or the fact that nothing is spicy in Japan, which is super amazing spectacular, but it's true. The only meal I had this past weekend that disgusted me had the "Chinese" label, much the same as in Vietnam, so I can't wait to get home to Canada and eat some real Chinese food.

Also, just because a piece of uncooked shrimp sushi costs $4 doesn't mean that it's better than the $2 piece of cooked shrimp sushi. I learned this the hard and expensive way. And as a general rule, I always avoid a piece of sushi that looks like raw beef (tuna?) and I always, always, always avoid eating fish eggs that are bigger than that dotted ice cream stuff. Yucky.


So they don't have talking toilets at the airport, and worse, the most impressive technological invention I encountered was the space under restaurant seats for your Canadian winter coats and Anime museum souvenirs. Gord and I discussed this for at least three or four minutes. We're very simple folk from Canada, you see. We're new to all these bells and whistles.


No, I take all that dissapointed toilet stuff back! At some food courts, you order food by paying for your item at a vending machine!

Have you ever pumped $10 into a vending machine? It's fun.

Unfortunately, you only get a ticket for the food court. It's not really like the movies, but those sneaky Japanese had me going for a second.


Look closely. I did.

Don't you think the biggest city in the world could do better for the male lead in Chicago than the old guy from the Backstreet Boys? Yucky.


So it isn't New York, where I've never been, but the skyscrapers are wholesale here, too. Compared with Seoul, the buildings were much larger and actually seemed to have some architectural diversity. Said again, they weren't skinny towers in dying shades of grey tinged with neon at night. This appears to be an area lined with older skyscrapers from the booming 1980's, though I'm not an expert, not even an amateur, so you should have stopped reading after the words "architectural diversity" in the first place.

Nonetheless, Tokyo is a much nicer city than Seoul. Much, much, much nicer in almost every way imaginable. It's cleaner, they actually have manners, there aren't as many drunken old dudes, they have a lot of style, their buildings are more beautiful, their women are more beautiful, their subways are cooler (and cleaner), their food is better, they have Wendy's, they have a lot more parks...

Gord wouldn't shut up about this, and I wasn't stopping him. And he's Korean.
Oh, and look closely again to see one of the beautiful Western-Civ entrances to Tokyo station.


Biggest city in the world, huh. Wouldn't you expect to see a few cars? I'm aware that we were there for a long weekend holiday, but still, the subways were topped to the rim, so what gives? Gord and I spent a lot of time jaywalking just so we could laugh about it later, and this is an eight-lane road.

OH YEAH, I almost forgot. They drive on the other side of the road here. This also made me giddy for about half the bus trip into the city from the airport. I've never been in one of these wonky British weirdo cities... (Wait, British, what did I just say?)


Ahh, the magical fairyland of the Imperial Palace, where you can look, but not touch. Everything is closed except for two days of the year, and no, we weren't there for either of them. Anyways. The grounds were nice and all the men guarding the enormous gates looked like they might be fun to talk to, if only we spoke the same language.

(SIDE NOTE: This is pure Tim ignorance. Everyone related to tourism in Japan spoke very passable English. This is just another area where Tokyo is superior to Korea. There were bag carriers that answered our questions almost fluently.)


Hey look, another reason Tokyo is better than your city. All the major rail lines are actually rail lines, not ugly subways. Everywhere we went, the trip was fun because you could always look at something other than the Japanese people staring at you.


This is me turning up my nose at the pompousity of Americans. Who else would build a city like Las Vegas with enormous useless saws like this for the amusement of simple folk, drinking their Coke, eating their Doritos and watching their Fox News. I mean, seriously, people are starving in rural India and African children have metre-long Guinea worms coursing through them and trying to escape, and here are the Americans and their Las Vegas monstrosities that probably have some metaphorical significance to about three bureaucratic city planners and seven art school lackeys...

Wait, Tokyo, What?

Oh crap, I forgot I was talking about Tokyo. You see, it's just that it all looks the same as Las Vegas over here. Get it? Forget what I just said.


If you think I'm being an idiot with the Las Vegas comparisons, observe the above picture.

#1 The Statue of Liberty, about the same size as the recreation in Las Vegas.

#2 Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge, which is clearly a blue miniature version of a certain suspension bridge from San Francisco.

#3 In the background, Tokyo Tower, which slightly resembles another famous tower that has a recreation of its own in Las Vegas.

Hmm, I wonder where Tim gets this crap.


SHIBUYA!!!!

This is the Tokyo of the movies. Well, the more modern movies, not that Tom Cruise one.

Above is the busiest intersection in the world, where every two and a half minutes there are people from sidewalks on four converging streets and a major train station walking in any direction they please.

Beyond these lights are old neighbourhoods filled with Love Hotels, where cheaters and creeps and couples avoiding their parents go to spend a few hours... Observe the rates...

(Hehe, it's named after my cousin Claire. Hehe.)

4,720 Yen = $45 Canadian

That's actually kind of reasonable, now that I think about it.

And no, I'm not posting one of the funny pictures of Gord and I in front of any seedy establishments. Jokes about such things will be censored, too. You jerks.

Apparently, the man behind the counter inside these places can't even see you. They can't tell if you're going in with your wife, your girlfriend, your dog, your eight-year-old niece...

As the saying goes: What happens in Vegas, stays in... OK, I'll stop.


Now for some stuff I was dissapointed to see so little of. Campy crap. As I said before, the English in Tokyo is almost perfect, so there weren't any funny t-shirts to buy. And as for the good stuff I did find, I'm saving it for the people who are still talking to me in four months.

SEE YOU IN FOUR MONTHS!!!!! I CAN'T WAIT TO COME HOME!!!!!! BEING AT THE AIRPORT IS SO DEPRESSING NOW BECAUSE I WANT TO BARNSTORM THE FLIGHTS FOR TORONTO!!!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

(How do you like that for a blog post, too. 1500 words and 18 pictures. Go Tim Go.)