Yokohama - November 26th

After going to Nintendo World in Chiba with Hans, Jon and Katy, we headed back towards Tokyo. I had gotten a message from Sheryl, who was hanging out in Shibuya with some friends. Katy was anti-social (or just tired; this is all from memory so I'm taking poetic license damnit), so she headed home at that point. We met up with Sheryl and a fairly large group of Yokohama students at the El Torito in Shibuya (yes, apparently there's more than one). Having recently splurged on conbini junk food, I turned my attention to their free chips and salsa. Everyone else ordered and enjoyed mediocre Mexican food, as I occasionally craned my neck around the pillar by our table to watch some action flick on a projection screen. On the way out, a majority of the group went home, and some other people wandered off to entertain themselves. Myself, Sheryl, Hans, Jon and a Korean-Russian fellow named Sasha went to the Shibuya Hub for a nightcap. We met up with one of Sasha's friends from St. Petersburg, who turned out to be pretty funny.

As we left the bar, the last train to Yokohama was fast approaching. Sasha and his friend were going to go shoot pool for an all-nighter, and Hans and Jon were going home. Sheryl was heading back to Yokohama on her own, and asked if I wanted to come along. I hadn't been to Yokohama this year so far, so I tagged along. The dorms are actually pretty nice, but also pretty far away from the school. I watched Simpsons episodes with Sheryl and fell asleep on the floor.

The next morning, Sheryl and Davina took me to nice tonkatsu place, and they told me about some of their crazy encounters in Japan. It seems that they're coming out of their experience here with many more wild stories than myself (ie creepy stalky Ramen guy, etc). We then went over to Motomachi to check out some expensive shops. 5000 yen for a box of See's Candies. Yikes.

We checked out the various shops to see just how much Japanese consumers were paying for trendy American products (answer: too much). I paused in front of a particularly eye-catching window display that included what seemed to be a lens for a spotlight. I took a bunch of photos before running to catch up with the girls. We ducked down an alley that led to a small shrine where some children were playing. turning down a road parallel to motomachi. There were a few shops and antique stores, and a parking garage that worked like a giant ferris wheel for cars. We finally turned off that road and walked up a long staircase for a better view of the suburban neighborhood we found ourselves in. Backtracking a bit, we walked up some more hills and found a closed public swimming pool where the water had turned green. Moving on, we happened upon a very nice park that overlooked a christian-style cemetary, filled with foreigners. As home to one of the larger foreign population of Japanese cities since Perry landed here more than a century ago, there have been quite a few white Christians who didn't quite appreciate the space-saving, bone-crunching cremation method the Japanese favored. Although several generations of a single family could take up less space than one casket, it just isn't the Christian way. Turning away from the cemetary, there are rows of late-victorian looking houses, one of which was commonly dubbed "gaijin house." I snapped a photo and moved on.

We got to a nice lookout that gave us a wide view of the bridge, port, and bay. The view was stunning, but I got distracted by some graffiti carved onto some nearby pillars. We hung out for a while longer and caught a bus back to the station, where we got snapped at by an older Japanese guy for standing idle too close to the ticket machines while I considered my options for getting back home. I eventually decided to tough it out on JR, and went through the turnstiles.

I asked a station attendant which platform I should wait at to go to Shinagawa, and followed his advice. I got on the train as advised, and settled down in an empty seat for the roughly 45 minute journey to Tokyo. About 40 minutes later, the train stopped at a station I had never heard of. A bit flustered, I walked to the door to read the overhead map of the train lines, but I couldn't find the name of the station anywhere along the line to Tokyo. It was after a minute or so that a kind gentleman got out of his seat to point out that I was looking at the wrong part of the map.

I'd like to say that I simply got on the train going the wrong direction, but I didn't. I followed the attendant's instructions and boarded the train at the platform headed for Shinagawa. And I ended up in Nishi-Kokubunji, adjacent to (but still far away from) Tokyo. There is no single line that goes from Sakuragicho to Nishi-Kokubunji, it was physically impossible for me to get there without transferring. I still to this day have no idea how I ended up there, but I was just glad that I finally knew where I was. Fortunately, the Chuo line runs right through Kokubunji, so I was able to jump on that and make my way home. What should've been a 45 minute ride took about two hours. Since it was all on JR, it didn't cost me anything extra, so I have no complaints; I'd just like to know what phantom train circumvents Tokyo without stopping more than twice and isn't market on the map.

Weirded out, I walked back home from the station, and encountered some more weird. There was a guy dressed kind of like a traditional Japanese courtier in a face mask, photographing an equally strangely-dressed woman, leaning against my neighbor's wall. I didn't know what to say or how to approach them to ask for a photo, so I shook it off and went inside, but as I headed upstairs, my host mom came in and beckoned me to come out front, for there were "some weird people" out there. It turns out that they were costume designers trying out ideas for a school festival. We wished them luck, and I ended getting a photo with them after all.