the tall blond guy goes to japan

Tubthumping in Shinjuku

Shinjuku

Shinjuku is a bizarre place about 30 minutes down the subway from my hotel. It's absolutely amazing. If you think Las Vegas is full of neon and people, then you haven't been to Shinjuku. There were so many people that they stopped being individual people and became waves of people, massing down the street like one big endless tsunami. Sort of a quantum physics light-as-a-particle-or-wave thing.

And the lights! There were neon signs everywhere! The biggest has to be this one for Epson,

Taken with a Sony digital camera.

If you can't tell by the picture, this sign crowns a 10-storey building, and itself is about 15 feet high. It changes colour, flashes, and animates itself. Absolutely stunning. There are other ones for floppy disks, beer, lottary, movies, banks and restaurants.

From the main street, we turned down what would be an alley in any North American town. In Tokyo, this was a pedestrian mall, roughly the width of a car. Unfortunately, no one bothered telling the cars that it was a pedestrian mall. Every so often, a car would move quickly through the crowds of people who would just calmly hop aside, into a restaurant or small shop.

Oh, and clubs. Lots and lots of clubs. That must be reggae-club central. We were approached by no fewer than 8 different people (all black and apparently from Jamaica) and given fliers for their clubs. I suppose my being a tall blond guy with two short Japanese girls might have had something to do with it.... The flyer-people are very aggressive, offering to take us to their clubs personally, offering discounts, free drinks and promising us all a "reeeaaallll good time!"

Our train home left in 30 minutes, so we didn't have time to take them up on their generous offers. Becides, we had bigger fish to fry.

They look like video game booths with a kind of white curtain behind where the player stands. At first, I thought they were just some kind of odd Japanese light-protection device for the game... but they turned out to be photo booths!

It's the tall blond guy with Pingu!

And this particular photo booth offered pictures with none other than Pingu! I had to do it. Having no idea how the thing worked (and being coached from outside the curtain), I knew I was screwing up the moment the buttons stopped flashing. It apparently took my picture as I was making a "which button do I have to press now" look. I guess my mother was right: my face did freeze that way.

Thirty seconds later, a sheet of 16 tiny pictures came out of the machine. Each picture fully peel-able and stickable! Little tiny stickers of Pingu and me! Cooooool!

On the way home in the subway, I saw my first real set of "the cool people". They just looked different. I labelled them instantly as "Shanghai Tang Fashion Victims". Shanghai Tang, in case you're unfamilliar with the current trends in fashion (ho ho ho), is a line of clothing based on old Chinese designs. It was the hottest thing a few months ago in Hong Kong. Thankfully, all that seems to have passed now. But here they were on the Tokyo subway. Fashion victims.