Day 13

06 January 2006

Today I ate at the famous Denny’s…the one that I remember seeing the second time I came here to Japan as a child, in 1996. I had a “Denny’s Breakfast” Yum! Other than the portions, it was a rather “normal” American breakfast—though the eggs tasted better here!

Afterwards, Secchan and Miyuki dropped me off at Zushi-eki (Zushi Station) so that I could catch a train into Tokyo to meet up with Allison, Mayumi and other SUA alumni. I first met up with Allison, we walked around Shinjuku, which is a rather stereotypical area of Tokyo. Many, many people, and many, many commuters. She was “gaijin” number 13 I saw while waiting for her at the Higashi-guchi (East Gate) of the station. By the way, Shinjuku station is huge—there’s a South Gate, a New South Gate, a Southeast Gate, a Central East Gate, an East Gate, a West Gate and a Central West Gate. There’s also several gates within the station that are basically connections to other train systems or subway networks. I’m tired just thinking of it. A lot of people running around and a lot of exits and entrances; it’s amazing that people can find each other there.

So, we walked around Shinjuku and chose to eat at a Mister Donut. That was good food! A bit expensive for two donuts and coffee, but it was oishii. After walking around some more, we got back to Shinjuku East gate and sat down for some coffee and tea at where else but Starbucks, while we waited for Mayumi.

Mayumi came and we went to Shibuya. Shibuya is stereotypical Tokyo, but with a lot of gaijin (foreigners). It’s Times Square meets Japan. Advertisements are everywhere, cars and busses running along the streets and taxis flying in every which direction, every so often punctuated with crossing masses of pedestrians and the tone of the crosswalk. It’s exciting and all, but I like window shopping in Ginza better.

So we had oyako-don in Shibuya followed by some window shopping at HMV and Zara, when Mayumi remembered that Kimiko Sato worked at a Tokyu Department Store in Shibuya. Unfortunately for us, there’s several Tokyu Department Stores within a 10- or 15-minute walk from Shibuya-eki. At first, we went to the wrong Tokyu, but it was fine, we found the right one to go to. Kimiko looks very sutekii working at the Givenchy registers. Givenchy is too expensive: there were racks of fur coats “on sale” for 70.000 yen—about $600. Kimiko also told some people that she rang up one customer for 2.000.000 yen ($16.000) and the customer paid it all in cash. That’s amazing…but then again, she works in Givenchy.

After leaving Shibuya, we left for Nakano, where we planned on having dinner at a yakitori place with other SUA alumni. We went to Nakano (Chuo-Rapid) and found a Salzeria to sit down at. Mayumi had a 3-course-meal snack and I had a bit of garlic toast. Yum. Salzeria is apparently a chain of Italian “ristoranti” in the Tokyo area. “Cool Beans!”

Dinner time comes: Tsuneko ENDO, Mayumi ASAKO, Allison REED, Rumiko YAMAUCHI, Yukio NAKAJIMA (mr. neato), Yumi TANAKA, Naomi YAMAMOTO, and I, all have yakitori. Yuta YANAGISAWA, Suh Jin PARK, and “Kacchan” KAWADA are supposed to be there, but can’t make it, one way or another, very sadly. I wanted to see Spark most of all, but that’s fine, we’ll meet somewhere else, some time else, I hope. Everyone seems fine, we spend time reminiscing about SUA times and about how everyone is doing wherever they’re at. Yukio speaks barely a word while we’re eating dinner (*) but we speak after eating dinner, seems like he’s not doing much right now, thus the name “mr neato,” he’s just working for Mr Chocolate and living at home with family (Nishi-Oi-eki, Yokosuka/Shonan-Shinjuku Lines). Seems like he’s still got some figuring out what to do with himself.

I had a good time, but I worried a bit about when I could get home, I left at around 11pm from the MacDonalds in Nakano, arrive in Shinagawa for the last train for Kurihama—all the while running from Platform 1/2—Yamanote-sen to Platform 12/13—Yokosuka-sen which was fun, with all the Japanese sarariman running with me from platform to platform. Omoshiroii. There were still 2 more Zushi-yuki trains, but I needed to get to Higashi-zushi, so I arrived at home late, at 00h35.

It was a full day.