Out in Tokyo
Some odd things about Tokyo.
During the week everybody wears a white button-up long-sleeve shirt and black pants. It was kind of the uniform I guess. No slightly textured white shirts or black pants with slight gray lines in them or any variation at all. Stark plain white long-sleeve shirts, black pants, black dress shoes. School girls wore black skirts instead of pants. But pretty much everyone else was wearing the exact same thing. I was walking around in shorts and a t-shirt and sweating profusely from the heat and humidity. No one else seemed to be sweating besides me even though many of them had several layers on. It was kind of embarrassing how much I was sweating. Not sure how they managed to not sweat. I was also the only person I saw besides one teenager that was wearing shorts above the knee. I saw a few wearing some high-waters or cool-otts, but no shorts. I didn't worry about it because being one of about 5 white guys that I saw, I'm sure I stuck out anyway. I think I saw about 3 black people the whole time I was in Tokyo too. Not the most ethnically diverse people. On the weekend though I did see more shorts come out. On Saturday I saw men my age wearing shorts above the knee so I felt a bit more comfortable.
The gay scene in Tokyo is interesting. Tokyo supposedly has the highest concentration of gay bars anywhere. That's mostly because they are all located in what is about 2 city blocks, with a bunch of little pedestrian streets in the middle of the blocks. The buildings are all 7-10 stories tall and there's bars all the way up. So I guess there's like 200 bars easily, which is quite possibly more gay bars than San Francisco has. But, next to none of them are big enough for a dance floor and most are a bar and a sofa or two. Since most of the bars are so small they're also fairly intimate, like a guy serving drinks in his living room, and probably not someplace you're going to go by yourself if you don't speak any Japanese. It was also surprisingly incognito during the day. I walked through the neighborhood by day and wasn't really sure I was in the right place. Nothing particularly gay jumped out at me, no pride flags on the street lights. But when I went back at night a transformation had taken place. There were tons of guys on the streets with a smattering of drag queens. All of the stores that seems somewhat closed before had turned into gay porn shops, bars, strip clubs and "host bars" where you can pay some hotty to hang out with you I guess.
I ended up at Arty Farty both nights, which is their equivalent of San Francisco's Badlands, uber-cheesy gay diva music on repeat and the highest concentration of foreigners I saw while in Tokyo. I could speak to most people in English again. The people that I talked to that lived in Tokyo all said the same thing, it gets old quickly cause there's really only one place to go, Arty Farty, and it's pretty much the same thing every night. The chances of meeting someone new were pretty slim and rest almost solely with the few foreigners. Same music, same people with a smattering of visitors that won't be there tomorrow. I met this guy named "E", which was short for something I couldn't pronounce. He spoke perfect English and liked to meet all the foreigners to break up the monotony. He took me to a few other bars. It was nice to get a broader perspective and chat with the other foreigners he had collected.
The trains in Tokyo all stop at about midnight and then start up again at about 5am, so all the bars stay open until at least 5am. I didn't manage to get to bed before 5am either night I was out in Tokyo, even though my hotel was just down the street. It's easy to loose track of time and it was a few hours behind Bangkok so my schedule was later anyway. I kinda need the bars to close earlier, the same thing happens to me when I go to Chicago, I end up way too drunk and watching the sun come up. The second night we ended up at a Karaoke bar at like 4am. Aside from being smaller it was pretty much the same thing as it is in the US. The song selection is always the cheesiest songs by any given artist, none of the songs was I much interested in hearing, much less singing.
Most of my time I spent just wandering around looking at everything. I found a nice shopping area that had stuff I would actually buy. The prices were fairly comparable to San Francisco, but most of it I can get stuff I like better in San Francisco for just a bit cheaper. I went to a few used clothing stores that were pretty much the same thing exactly as in San Francisco, but all the clothes I liked actually came from the states. A few of the tags where from JC Penny's and Sears. I found a t-shirt I liked but it was like 2 sizes too small. Some pants that were kinda cool but they were $100, 50% off. I wasn't sure if the 50% had already been taken off or if it was really $50, and trying to get an answer to that question seemed like more trouble than I wanted to deal with at the time.
Soba noodles from 7/11 and chicken sandwiches from Mc Donald's became a staple because they were the few things I could get reliably without speaking Japanese. Once I accidentally got what I'm assuming was a shrimp-burger from Mc Donald's because the picture looked like the chicken sandwich. It was ok even though I don't eat shrimp. If you didn't look at it, it tasted the same as the chicken or the fish sandwich anyway. They all taste the same at Mc Donald's. I do wish the 7/11's here had soba noodles though.
I'm really glad I went to Tokyo. It wasn't as expensive as I was worried it might be and it was really interesting because it's so different than any other place I've been. Lot's of really interesting modern architecture too. I think I would try to stop over there again on my next trip to Asia. I might try to learn the Katakana alphabet though before I went back again. And learn the numbers and what I would need to buy food in a restaurant. I already know a lot of the names for food since I eat it here in San Francisco fairly often. Just need to complete it with whole transaction-handling bits.
I made a movie of the video I took while wandering around Tokyo. You may need to upgrade your Quicktime to see it.