Me so crazy!

So I made it to Tokyo. Hurray. The first stop was customs. A bit of a surreal experience. There were 10-12 lines of people all waiting to be interrogated and searched. As I was watching I noticed that a lot of japanese men had "duty free" bags. I guess the gist of duty free is to get stuff on the cheap without paying import and other assorted taxes. The duty free bags are all see through so people can't hide stuff (which is stupid because they rummage through it anyway).

As I watched I noticed a common theme: Cigarettes and porn. Honestly, every man in line had to pull out their newly bought porn mag and have it inspected. The customs agent would have to cut open the "For your eyes only" cellophane and flip through the magazine looking for contraband. I'm sure they hate that part of the job. ;)

When it was my turn for interrogation, she pointed at a bunch of pictures and asked if I had any of the items in the pictures. One was of a Kalishnikov. Darn, I forgot mine at home. ;) Now that I think about it, one of the pictures was a cartoon Pokemon-esque nudey magazine. Must be some law in Japan where all deviancy needs to originate in the country.

The only thing that she was suspicious of was this residue all over my clothes. I think Evan must have snuck a potato chip into my suitcase and as you know, some shifting does occur during flight. I couldn't explain it so I just shrugged and threw up my hands. Thankfully she let me go. Thanks Evan for almost sending me to the interrogation room! :) What happens in the interrogation room *definitely* stays in the interrogation room.

Public officials here have the funniest outfits over here. The customs agent was wearing this *bright* sky blue uniform with a hat. She looked JUST like one of the flight attendants in the movie "Catch Me if You Can". Last night, there was a construction worker wearing a bright purple jumpsuit with really wide white reflective suspenders and a yellow helmet. The suspenders were lined with blinking red LEDs! It is the closest I have ever come to a real live Oompa Loompa. Back home construction workers are macho guys with big Caterpillar backhoes. In Japan, they wear purple jumpsuits and drive tiny purple backhoes (honest, the backhoe was purple). I tried to get a picture but at night, the camera didn't do the whole scene justice.

Pachinko is huge in Japan. I am familiar with this game because as a kid, one of our neighbors had an illegal Pachinko operation running in his basement. :) We were never "allowed" to touch them, but we did anyway! For those unfamiliar (and I still don't quite get it), Pachinko looks like a mix between a vertical pinball machine and "Plinko" from the Price is Right. When you win, it spits out little metal balls. Thousands of little metal balls in buckets. I can only imagine the mess it makes when someone drops a bucket of shiny metal balls. I don't know what each ball represents, 1 yen, 10 yen? I will find out more when Antonio picks me up today.

I ventured out into Akasaka last night, which I guess would be considered a neighborhood or district. Lots of night life, TONS of Pachinko parlors. Sushi bars every five feet (though the restaurants each sat a max. of 25 people). All in all it was very surreal. Nobody makes eye contact (another thing I need to ask Antonio about), and everybody is extremely drunk at 8:00pm. Harmless, but wasted.

I ordered my first Starbucks in Japan last night. Luckily, they know what a Mocha is, but I didn't throw my usual "Venti decaf non-fat no whip mocha" order at them. Their Venti is smaller than our Grande. I need to order two next time!

One last thought before I take a shower and put a towel over P1P2's green eyes: It is very homogenous here. VERY homogenous. If I were blond I would feel like a freak of nature. I think I fit in here because I have dark hair and look like Ash from Pokemon. :)

Until next time...