New Year's Eve 2006

We left our hotel in Shin Nihonbashi by 10am (exactly at checkout time) and Yuka was able to book our next hotel with her crazy-ass hi-tech cell phone. We found a place right near where we wanted to do the countdown, it only cost us $50 each, and it was on New Year's Motherfucking Eve. We were jazzed.

We again went to our hotel early to drop off our bags and then we went to Asakusa. It was probably my favorite part of Tokyo. There was a temple there, and a long approach filled with merchant's stalls. The stuff they were selling was more or less the same in each location, but there were some cool things to make the area more than just a tourist trap. We got a cup of sweetened sake to split and Yuka insisted on trying some fried green-tea rice cake. I bought a dope headband that looks like something out of the Karate Kid (its white with a red sun in the middle, and it says Kamikaze in bold, black kanji. I love it).

(side note: I wanted to stop at the Vietnamese embassy while we were in Tokyo to get my Visa, but as it was New Year's that was a pretty ridiculous expectation)

After Asakusa, we headed for Shibuya. Naturally, we grabbed beers for the long-ass subway ride across town. Shibuya is where that famous crossing is, the one used in Lost in Translation and tons of other advertisements for Tokyo. It was pretty crazy I guess. Just a bunch of people on their way somewhere else. There's this statue of a dog right near the crossing and a touching and probably bullshit story to go with it. Everyday (who knows how long ago) this man used to meet his dog at Shibuya and one day the guy died. The dog never figured it out and no one bothered to tell it, so it died waiting for him to return. Quite touching. You can see this monument to loyalty today, surrounded by tourists and homeless Japanese that masturbate publicly.

We walked off towards the next stop on the subway, Harajuku, and passed by a group of Japanese guys, dressed up like 1950's American greasers, dancing in a public park. It was probably one of the highlights of my trip. They looked cool man, and I'm not joking at all. There was a long line of tourists taking their picture and it made Yuka and I feel so lame to be a part of it. But we redeemed ourselves by actually getting our picture with them and (along with the picture of us with the Daibutsu at Kamakura) its my favorite shot from our trip.

We walked through Meiji-jingu on our way to Harajuku and found out that there was going to be a countdown there as well. Actually, my friend and coworker, Michelle from Florida, was there that night with friends of hers from back home. I'm going to head into Nagoya after I finish uploading my pictures and watch all of this year's ATHF with her, so I'll find out if it was fun or not.

After Harajuku we went to check into our hotel (we had only left our bags there earlier) and get some dinner before the countdown. We didn't manage to stop and eat so we got food from a convenience store and beer to wait in line with. When we got back to Zojoji there were less than 1,000 people there, so we were right on time. We ate standing and got our little slips of paper. At that time a friend of Yuka's, Mika, along with these two Nova teachers showed up. I knew one of them, a gay Irish guy, but it was the first time I met this girl. What a bitch. What an obnoxious, selfish, whiny, and control-freak of a bitch. Man. I'll elaborate later I suppose, but what a cunt. Seriously.

We ditched them to go watch some guys making traditional Japanese rice cakes. What made it traditional was that they were using giant wooden mallets to soften the rice dough. They kept picking big guys out of the crowd watching and making them participate, which was awesome. They picked this giant American guy next to me (I felt like the last kid picked at dodgeball) and he embarassed himself and our country so badly that I wanted to shun him. These Japanese guys who looked over 50 looked tough swinging those mallets and thanks to their perfect form, made these impressive sounding WHACKS in the dough. This American guy apparently couldn't figure out the physics of swinging a giant wooden stick and made these little weak PIFF noises that made everyone around him get quiet and check out why he was fucking up. They stopped him after a few swings and he thanked everyone around him like he was the star of the show or something. I could totally sense what everyone was thinking because I was thinking the same thing: that guy was a giant pussy.

Some Japanese guy saw me after that and we made brief eye contact. I stopped smiling when I saw him and tried to look off into the distance in order to become invisible. After seeing that foreign guy being quietly judged I didn't want to suffer a similar fate. He walked over to me and grabbed my arm, saying in English: 'Challenge! Challenge!' and I couldn't refuse. The crowd of like 50 people around me were checking me out to see if all foreign guys were such damned pussies, but I didn't let myself down. I KILLED that damn rice dough. I was trying like a motherfucker to put everything I had into swinging that mallet. Yuka got some pictures but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see them. The older Japanese guys in kimono smiled a little bit and nodded their heads approvingly.

We met up with that bitch and Yuka's friend Mika a little while later for the countdown. We waited in line a second time to get balloons and then thought long and hard about what to wish for. Long story short: my slip of paper containing my wish fell off of my balloon before it got airborn and I didn't find it until a few minutes after midnight. So God got my balloon but no wish. We counted down with this giant crowd and right at midnight the year on the Tokyo Tower changed and it was a lot of fun.

I don't have a lot of time left at this cafe so I'll update again later.

Miss you all.