“A Night in Ikebukuro” - my Japan Blog Matsuri entry

On August 16, 2008 in JapanBlogMatsuri, fun

Here is my entry for the Japan Blog Matsuri

I don’t usually blog about my personal experiences in japan so this is kind of new for me. The good thing about that is I can put all my effort and creative release into this one post. And if it is really good then I can retire from personal blogging, as the champion, at the top of my game. And, more likely, if it is really bad, well I can use the excuse that I never should have been blogging about my personal experiences in Japan in the first place. Lucky me!

Being forced at knife-point by the rest of the J-blogosphere to write something good about Tokyo, I am reminded of the words of the president of Jouchi University (my old uni). They were words we foreign students heard on one of our first days in Japan.
“If you visit Japan for a week or two you could write a novel; Understanding Japan. If you visit for a month or so, maybe a short book, spend six months and you could write a good essay. After a year a page; a few years and you’ll have a paragraph. And if you stay here in Japan for as long as I you’ll be lucky to get out a complete sentence.”

By that theory I should be somewhere between a paragraph and a sentence (which is why I am stalling with this long introduction )

So, impressions of the beauty, mystery, ugliness, and charm that is Tokyo…

When I sat down to write this I thought up a little list of interesting stories I could tell about my early experiences in Tokyo.
Should I tell them my “Going to the temple to pee” story about mixing up the words ‘otera’ (temple) and ‘oteari’ (washroom)?
Or maybe the story about how my Japanese friends persuaded me to dress up in my dinosaur suit for the dorm end-of-the-year party and drunken Japanese businessmen pointed at me on the street and said “Gojilla, Gojilla!”
Maybe the night I slept in an internet cafe. Or the time I ran into a taxi with my bicycle (yes, I ran into him…)
Or maybe visiting the homeless in Yoyogi park with donations and seeing their blue tarp villages.
Breakdancing in Shibuya hachiko; watching yakuza harass street performers; joining karaoke parties with random Japanese people; my first and last fish sausage; going to baseball games at the Dome.

I’ve never really told these stories before, so this is kind of fun.

I think the story I’ll stick with though is one I like to call “A night in Ikebukuro.”

When I was in college I had a Japanese teacher who wasn’t Japanese. Mr. Collazo. He had a big impact on me. He had studied Japanese at university, went on exchange, and then returned as a JET teacher. It was in his class that I firmly made up my mind to go to Japan; if he could, I could. One of the stories he told us about Japan stuck with me. He said that one day he missed the saishu densha (last train) and had to sleep in a park. We were a little shocked. Sleeping outside in a big city (or any city) is not normally a good idea, to say the least.

Little did I know that I was soon to follow in Collazo sensei’s footsteps in this case too. I had been in Tokyo for a few months at least now. I had my gaikokujin card, was deep into my school work, was living in the school dorm, and was beginning to feel like a pro navigating the intricate threads of the train/subway system. You know, the one that looks like someone took a bowl of multi-coloured spaghetti and threw it on a map of Tokyo. I had even just gone on my own to set up a Japanese bank account with Tokyo-Mitsubishi and received my shiny new bank card. My card says Tokyo and Mitsubishi on it, so you know it has to be good. Oh yes, I was a proud man. Nothing could stop me now.
Feeling confident, I decided to get a little more adventurous. So I started taking little trips alone off to this and that part of town, seeing the sites, and jumping into language situations without the comfort of a group of foreigners.

That’s when it happened.
It was a Friday night. I took the Yamanote line up to Ikebukuro. I hadn’t stopped there yet and I wanted to give it a look. I didn’t have any cash with me but it didn’t matter, I had my trusty Tokyo-Mitsubishi bank card. Proud of myself I wandered around Ikebukuro and stopped to watch a street performer clown/hip-hop dancer who made balloon animals as he did the moonwalk! Interesting…
Tokyo’s layout is best described by Dave Barry (a humour writer) in his book Dave Barry Does Japan. I can’t find the original quote (even on Google Books) so I’ll just give my version.
“The Tokyo cityscape has no order or planning. So a typical street might look like this: a factory, next to a school, next to a cemetery, next to an office building, next to a shrine, next to a McDonalds.”
So, down the street from the hip-hip clown was a rock band (their look was a lot better than their sound so I took a picture), next to that a palm reader, a guy selling gyros, and a ramen cart. “I could eat some ramen. Better pop into the convenience store next to it and take some money from my trusty Tokyo Mitsubishi card (so proud).”

Of course I have to use the ATM machine prompts in Japanese (I don’t like the English language menu, it talks to me in English, I want Japanese). I put in my card and start punching. A long paragraph in Japanese appears.
When you are hungry and all of your money is on your bank card the last thing you want to see is a paragraph.

I try to read what it says but the frustration clouds my little Kanji skills. I understand enough though to know I won’t be taking any money out of this machine tonight.
I leave the convenience store and go 50 feet to the convenience store next to it. Different machine, different luck right? Wrong.
This time out of desperation I am more patient with the paragraph. What is going on?! now I understand that the card doesn’t work after 19:00 (7pm) on weekends… What?!! Well, no ramen for me.

So I head back to the train station ready to get as far from Ikebukuro as possible. I can just feel the mattress of my tiny dorm room bed. I get closer to the station. Fresh, soft sheets. I get to the ticket machine and look at my wallet. 70 yen. Shimatta!

That’s when it hit me, I have no money, no way to go home until the ATM works again tomorrow morning… My dorm room bed will be lonely tonight.

I make one more go at a couple of combini (convenience store) ATMs, and a mad search for a Citibank, before settling into a quiet desperation. Desperate Gaijin.. could be a good name for a bad TV show.

“Well, if I’m stuck here might as well enjoy it,” I think. So I wandered around, drooling over the street food stands selling ramen, takoyaki (octopus balls), and other goodies.

I strolled over to a large open square (it prolly has a name but I can’t remember) and watched the last train leave. If I’d been naughty I could have “gaijin card-ed” my way onto that train (pushed through the ticket gate without a ticket and feigned ignorance on the count of my foreignness)
“Oh, well…” I settled down onto a slab of concrete in the square, the oddly comforting smoggy starless sky above me. For awhile I watched some people playing football on the concrete of the square. Ikebukuro wasn’t going to sleep tonight but I sure was. there were still people roaming about the square well past 3 am when I fell into a awkward, short and uneasy sleep; sweet dreams of being mugged or drugged.
Not a few others were sleeping out on the square also and I had to wonder what their stories were. Last train missers? Run aways? Homeless? Many were young and well dressed, but so probably are the ones who live in internet cafes. It was my first glimpse of Tokyo’s disguised homelessness.

After a few hours of “sleep’ I woke up and staggered around half-awake until my card (worst bank card ever) started working again in the ATM at about 7AM. Money in hand, I grabbed some food and coffee at the conbini and headed straight for the train. Dreams of my comfy bed. Oh, what a city, what a night.

-Tori Johnson (a.k.a the Chemist)

Comments (7)