NetSquare . Meiji Jingu Temple . Shibuya . Conveyor Sushi . Kill Bill 2 . Walk home

...

Jamie and I walked from Omotesando-doori to Shibya, retracing the steps that Quoc and Anthony and I had taken a couple years past. I passed by the [Lavazza] coffee shop on a corner on Omotesando, located on the same corner as the [Condomania] store... this was the same place that we had stopped 2 years past to get an iced coffee and sit on the sidewalk to people-watch. I didn't realize then what a conisseur brand of coffee it was at the time. We walked along the street and passed by the [Berlitz] language center again... it had developed into a full cafe in the front, with more sophisticated-looking equipment in the back. I felt a little strange to be seeing these changes; to me, the stores had changed all of a sudden, and I felt that time was passing by rapidly. It wouldn't be too long before the places I knew changed to the point of unrecognizability. It is not the mere passage of time which causes such profound feelings, but change... either exterior or within ourselves.

We reach Shibuya, and we duck into a building on a whim to see its contents... I'm not sure why we entered. We walk up and down the stairwell and on one section is a movie theater. Maybe that's why we came in... to check out the movies that are playing. We leave after a little while, and enter a network of little streets... the remnants of old Tokyo. After emerging from Center Gai, I'm pleased to show Jamie the area in front of Shibuya station that gained notoriety in Sophia Coppola's [Lost in Translation]. Some people I know thought that the movie was a bit boring... I'm guessing that perhaps they've had the fortune of never experiencing the sense of isolation or inability to feel as if you fully belong. The movie reminded me of that old familiar feeling... and the intense hope when you meet someone whom you can share your loneliness with, and potentially cure yourselves of that malady. But in the end, love might end up the same way... I would even venture to say that the stronger the love, the more vulnerable one is to an intensely lonely ending. The higher you get, the harder you fall.

We wander back into the small streets and into an arcade, but we are amused more by city sight-seeing than electronic games at this point. Outside the arcade, a line has formed into a sushi restaurant. We are getting hungry so we check it out. It's a conveyor-belt sushi place. Due to the cheap prices, this place is in high demand. It's about 150¥ per plate of 2 pieces of nigiri sushi, so it's kind of a bargain for nigiri... hence the long line. Jamie and I decide to try the place... after all, if it's so popular among the locals, it's probably pretty good, right? ...for the price, anyway. A white guy is standing in line reading a book... The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Jamie smiles and tells him that she's read it before. He says something friendly in return.

We get inside the store and there's another line inside. Just as we get in, the person at the door blabbers something to me about the rules. After some repetition, I find out that each person must eat 7 plates in 20 minutes. That's 14 pieces of nigiri sushi. I think about it for a second... both Jamie and I are slow eaters who can't really eat alot in one sitting... but what the hell, it's worth stuffing oneself for the experience of eating conveyor belt sushi in Japan! Besides, I don't think I really knew the rules solid, and I didn't want to hold up the line asking questions to the doorway person, so we just let ourselves be shuttled in like submissive sheep. We sit down on a bench along the wall, and quickly slide towards the front of the line, where another waiter is showing the people first in line to available seats at the bar. The bar surrounds the 3 or 4 sushi chefs in the middle.

When we get seated at the bar, we try a few different things... the standard stuff like the tuna, the eel, the yellowtail... after about the 5th dish I got a little adventurous and looked at some of the other plates sliding by. One colorful plate caught my eye, it was a wad of rice surrounded by a roll of seaweed, topped with some yellow-looking pasty stuff with green onion. I'm not sure what it was, and it looked reasonably tasty, so I grabbed a plate and sniffed it. It doesn't smell too great, in fact it was a bit rancid, and I felt strongly tempted to sneak it back onto the conveyor belt... but there has to be some hidden rule along the lines of "you sniff it, you eat it". So, I am stuck. The pasty stuff was a little stringy and sticky, and a bad thought emerged in the back of my mind.

To my horror, after putting it in my mouth, my fears were confirmed... it was natto, or fermented soybeans. That stuff is disgustingly gross... it smells like a combination of feet and vomit, and has the consistency of Hollywood alien saliva. The taste reminds me of something rotten, like meat that has been left on the counter for 2 weeks. I spit it out onto a corner of the plate and wash it down with plenty of green tea... gotta get that taste out of my mouth! The second piece is still there, and I try to get Jamie to eat it... but she never falls for it. My friend Hansel told me about an SNL skit where the actors eat or smell something horrible, exclaim how bad smelling or bad tasting it is, and tell their neighbors "Golly this is so bad, you've gotta try it and see how bad it is!" I wonder why there is a strong inclination to share disgusting things with other people so that you can all agree about how awful they are. Anyway, sorry, natto fans, but I think that stuff is vomit-o-genic.

After dinner, we walk around Shibuya a bit more, and on a whim I suggest we see a movie. We see [Kill Bill 2] and I'm astonished at how expensive it was... 1800¥ (~$18)! Anyway, we decide to see it anyway and buy the tickets and ride up the elevator of the building to the theater floor. On the way the elevator stops on a floor to reveal a cafe that looks in all the world like it's situated in India. When we reach our floor, we decide to head upstairs to a balcony level. The Japanese movie-goers all had their shoes off and bare feet perched onto the balcony edge. I'm not a big fan of bare feet myself. Anyway, we sit through the movie, a forgettable flick which unsuccessfully tried to elevate itself through self-absorbed, overdone dialogue. Maybe it was me, but I found the comic / katana / samurai theme old and tired. As the credits are rolling, we realize that no one is moving to leave... and we both felt compelled to stay in our seats too, that it'd be too rude to leave without reading each and every line, and contemplate who the key grips and gaffers are, and so on, appreciating the varied roles in making the movie come together.

We finally leave, and I suggest we walk back to the hotel, having done it before. But, this time my usual trusty sense of direction takes us 180 degrees from where we're supposed to go... I didn't realize that Center Gai was outside of the Yamanote loop, and as things become less familiar we ventured away from the popular area. We did see an interesting love hotel sign... Hotel Casanova, which charged by the hour. I loved the appropriateness of the name. Somewhere along the way, I realized we were going the wrong direction, and decided to turn backwards. At this point, Jamie must have poked fun at me with immense enjoyment, as she does whenever I am wrong. She only does this because I am usually right when it comes to general directions, and am usually very eager to point it out to her... only because her direction sense is pretty awful in comparison.

We had been walking all day and our feet were aching, but we stubbornly kept at it. We passed by some pretty quiet neighborhoods, and Jamie was surprised to see females walking alone in dimly lit areas at night in Tokyo. We got closer to our destination... I could tell via the Tokyo Tower. We saw an ice cream shop and headed in for a quick snack, and continued along our way. It took us over an hour to an hour and a half to walk back, and we were so tired. But I knew that despite our fatigue, Khanh and Quoc were still doggedly working the clubs, and they'd probably be more tired tomorrow when we got up early to head to the Kansai area.