Gate to R’lyeh

I cleaned my room for the first time in awhile today, and I’m not talking about any half-assed cleaning effort either. This was the kind of cleaning you do not so much to maintain the space you’re in as to make yourself feel like a better person. “My space is clean and so therefore am I.” That sort of thing. It took the better part of six hours to finish the whole project, and my nose and throat burn from the overuse of chemicals. I’m not exactly sure what I was using, as I can’t read all of what the bottle said, but I’m fairly sure it was some sort of all-purpose cleaner. Can’t have been too dangerous, as I spent at least an hour with it in a room the size of a broom closet (bathroom). Easily the worst part of the whole experience was cleaning out the shower drain, which hadn’t happened since I moved in. I won’t, or rather can’t, go into much detail as to what I saw in there but it’s something similar to what I imagine Hell is like. It took all the force of will I could muster not to run from that room gibbering like a lunatic and in the end I don’t think I’ve left the experience unscathed. A piece of myself was lost forever. Anyway, I bought some shelves to help with the mess, and they really make the place look much more organized. Cleaning out after such a long period of time leads to some interesting contemplative questions, such as; “Why do I own this? What purpose could this thing ever have served for me, and why did I bother to save it?” It’s a process that starts out with you checking every little thing and setting aside a pile to save, and ends with you upturning drawers into a garbage bin. Eventually the sentiment becomes “Everything must go! Begin the purge!” and I’m sure I’ll have thrown my passport or something of equal importance away in the process. For now at least, I feel better being in a clean space.

Spider King

Been about a month since this all happened, and three weeks since I got the first part out, so sorry for the delay. I wrote this part several times before I got it the way I wanted it, but here it is, finally.
Anyway, getting back to what I did with my vacation. After our day at Matsushima, our plan had been to go south and meet up with a friend of my roommate and stay at his place for a couple days, maybe over New Year’s. That plan didn’t end up working out though, as my roommate wasn’t able to get in contact with his friend. That was the night we spent in the city whose name I can’t remember. Since our original plan had been to stay with a friend of his, neither of us had a significant amount of money, and seeing as how that was the case we took the most logical step and decided to go to one of the most expensive cities in the world, Tokyo. Tokyo is about a four hour train ride from where we had been staying, so we got up at around nine and caught a train. We got to Tokyo at around noon, and got some lunch at a ramen place while we tried to sort out what to do with the next couple of days. My roommate is a big fan of anime, manga, and the associated culture, so he wanted to go to Akihabara, also known Akihabara Denki Gai (electric town), which is essentially a 24-hour electronics and games convention that has spilled into the streets. Anything that runs on batteries can be bought here, as well as things you were pretty sure didn’t exist. If you ever go there and are a fan of electronics you will find mountains of things you want to buy, but you will not be able to afford any of them. We wandered around for about four hours before catching a train to Shinjuku, which might be the most painfully expensive place I have ever been in my life. We were there for three hours and I never once saw something that I could have paid for with the measly 20,000 yen ($200ish) I had on me. Everything there is expensive, the food, the lodging, the stuff you thought was garbage blowing by until you saw the price tag, everything. We left after we realized that we were much too poor to partake in any of the wonders that particular part of town had to offer. At this point it was getting to be a bit late, so we decided to head to Shibuya, which is supposed to have a great night life. And it does. The only problem I have with it is that it felt suspiciously like St. Cloud on a Thursday night, meaning lots of extremely loud and extremely drunk white guys in baseball caps. We didn’t stay too long, as we had both been walking for almost ten hours straight at that point and were getting tired.
My roommate is a big fan of Japanese animation (anime) and manga (basically the same thing in book form). The term typically used by the Japanese to refer to this subculture is otaku. What that word means by itself I have no idea, but the most common usage is in reference to anime, manga, and the people that are involved in the industries, be it in the production or the consumption of it. As it happens, the two days (two and a half really) that we were in Tokyo coincided with the world’s largest anime and manga convention. On New Year’s Eve day, the day after we arrived in Tokyo and spent the day wandering around the different towns and cities that make up Tokyo, we got up at nine in the morning so we could go to the anime and manga convention, which was open from nine to four. Getting around Tokyo is more convenient than I had expected it to be, the trains go everywhere and are not as crowded as I had expected them to be. Tokyo feels sort of like a more crowded Minneapolis scaled up by a factor of 50 or so. Getting to the place where the convention was being held took about half an hour from where we had stayed the night before, and once we were there it was clear that we were in the right place. Apart from the massive amount of people that were milling around the area, there were posters for various animation companies all over the place, stalls selling merchandise that weren’t even in the convention center itself (presumably because they ran out of space inside), and people in costume all over the place. I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of a crowd that size. Just a quick frame of reference for anyone who thinks I might be exaggerating. If you were to take the entire population of Minneapolis, that is, Minneapolis metro area, and the first ring of suburbs, and had them attend this convention over the course of the three days (seven hours each day) you still would be short of the number that attended this year. That’s a lot of people.
I think that Tokyo in general and events like these in particular, are good examples of how zealously the Japanese have embraced the American style of capitalism. I’m not making any commentary on whether that’s a good or bad thing, I’m just saying that if I had wanted to buy the shoes off of the feet of the vendors there they probably would have done it without a second thought. That sounds mean, but the fact is the competition to sell things at a convention like this is brutal, even with the incredible number of patrons. Though I have never attended an anime convention in the US, I know some people that have, and so I have a somewhat vague understanding of how they work there. Companies, mostly the US distributers have stalls, as well as some independent parties, that sell merchandise, and it is generally an opportunity for the fans of the medium to get together and talk about it. Here, it’s quite a bit different. There were five different rooms that the convention occupied, and each one was the size of an aircraft hanger. Of those five, one and a half were dedicated to animation companies and distributers. The rest, three and a half hangers worth of space, was taken up by folding tables where the general public (at least the general public that had bothered to rent space) were able to try to sell their art, parodies, and original works. Imagine if the Uptown Art Fair took up every available space in Uptown, not just the mall. I think the reason for this difference is that, though anime and manga are popular in the US, they are not an industry, by which I mean next to none of what is watched and read in the US is produced there. It’s all imported from Japan, and so there’s really no chance for original artists in the US to break into the medium. Here though it’s different. Anime and manga are huge industries, with, as illustrated by the number of people that attended this convention, millions of fans. People are constantly trying to get noticed and to get their work out there so someone might think it’s good enough to warrant serialization or at least another look at the artist/writer. As such, conventions like this offer an opportunity to get noticed, and the competition is rough.
We stayed until closing, and though nothing really eventful happened, I had a lot of fun. Just being there and seeing how powerful the medium is and how seriously a lot of people here take it was cool, and I gained a new perspective on the whole thing. Leaving was not as easy as getting in had been, but as is a testament to the efficiency of the Japanese system, everything was packed up and moved out in the same amount of time it took me to get out of the building, so about half an hour. By the time we were on the train back into the part of town we had been staying in, it was about five in the afternoon, and the areas that were going to have New Year’s celebrations were starting to gear up for the festivities. Since we were in Tokyo I wanted to see at least one major tourist attraction while we were there, so we headed towards Tokyo Tower, a large television tower built in the style of the Eiffel Tower, though Tokyo Tower is bigger and is painted red and white. We got to the Tower at about six, and on our way in we stopped at a temple that was getting ready for New Year’s celebrations. We decided to go to the tower and then stay at the temple to ring in the New Year.
Tokyo Tower itself is really something. You don’t really have an idea of the scale of buildings like that until you are right under the foundations, looking up at it. I’ve heard it doesn’t look great during the day, and I suppose that might be true given the color scheme, but at night the whole thing is lit up with orange lights, and it’s like a giant beacon in the middle of the city. It’s really quite amazing, though the experience was slightly dampened by the throngs of people filtering in and out. We went up the Tower at around seven or eight, and spent about half an hour on the first observation deck before moving up to the second, which is 250 meters above ground, and offers a spectacular few of the surrounding city. During the day the few would have been great, but at night, with the whole city lit up (it is Tokyo after all) the view is breathtaking. You can see nothing but city in every direction, and I remember thinking about how much effort must have been put into making this city, and maintaining it. It’s strange, but being in a place like Tokyo Tower, hours from midnight on New Year’s Eve, I found myself wondering a lot about the people that were up there with me. Mostly I was curious what led each of these people to be there, at that time. I think that comes with it being a holiday. If it had been a regular day I probably wouldn’t have thought about it, but as it was I think the experience was something akin to eating Christmas dinner at Applebee’s and wondering about the other patrons. “Who are these people?” “Why are they here now?” That sort of thing. Anyway it wasn’t anything I cared enough about to actually bother anyone with, so I kept my thoughts to myself. After about an hour at the top of the tower we went back down, and spent 20 minutes milling around outside the gift shop trying to think of what to do with the next few hours. My roommate decided to find someplace to go take a bath (they have public bathes in Tokyo) and I would go wait for him at the temple.
I got to the temple at about nine and just wandered around for awhile, watching the food stands get set up and trying to find something interesting to do. My interesting thing appeared in the form of a line that I found myself waiting in for reasons I’m not sure of. I didn’t know what it was for, and I have no real love for standing in lines so I’m not quite sure what led me to stand in that line but stand in line I did. It was one of those lines that you most often find in amusement parks, the kind that are about six people wide and longer than seems reasonably possible. I don’t know who was in charge of directing the line, but whoever they were seemed to have found the perfect way to wrap it around corners in such a way that made it appear as though it was over before tacking on another hundred yards or so. I remember wondering how they tricked all these people into standing in this line when it was clear that at least half of them didn’t even know what the line was for, but I didn’t think too hard as I was one of those people. I was in line for around 45 minutes (the line was perhaps the longest I have ever been in but it moved fast) and I’m still not sure exactly what it was for, except that I received a slip of paper in the shape of a house. I spent the next two hours eating from the various food stands that were scattered around the temple grounds, watching elderly men pound rice in giant mortars, and drinking the free sake that was being handed out (the sweet kind, think cream of wheat with the perfect amount of milk and honey). I was also treated to one of the more amusing sites of my trip, that being Shinto monks in full traditional garb shouting at each other through walkie-talkies. I met up with my roommate about half an hour before midnight, and we went to the main courtyard, which was packed. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a thicker, crowd. I literally could not move from where I was standing. At about 10 minutes to midnight the lights on Tokyo Tower (visible towering above the main structure of the temple) went out and a light show began playing over the tower. Balloons had been handed out, and at the final toll, as the tower lit up with 2010 in the background, everyone released their balloons. As they rose, groups from other locations became visible. There were tens of thousands of balloons in the air, and it looked amazing.
For the most part, we were done after that. We prayed in the temple, got fortunes (my roommate tells me mine was the best possible result) and went looking for a place to stay. My roommate wanted to check out another place, but I was pretty much out of money, so I decided to head back to Akita on New Year’s Day, a train trip that lasted 16 hours (I’ll get into that another time).