Day 44 (January 1, 2013)- When One Monkey Bends Another Monkey Over And Proceeds To Hump Him, Is It Called "Monkey-Style" Or "Doggie-Style"?

Not surprisingly, New Year's Day got off to a late start for us after our attempt the previous night to maximize our value at the all-you-can-drink festivities.  After we were all semi-conscious and presentable, we strolled on down the street to Denny's for some breakfast.  During our first few days in Tokyo we had been avoiding Denny's because, ironically the pictures of the food they had looked too exotic for us.  I never thought in my lifetime I would be avoiding a Denny's for fear of its cuisine being too much for my palate.  Alas, we dug up the courage and made our way inside.  I am happy to note that Denny's in Japan does sell lots of regular crappy diner-style food in addition to the tons of fish dishes that the Japanese people seem to live for.  The only real gripe I had with Denny's (and other establishments in Japan) is that they still allow smoking inside!  I find it odd that a country as advanced and seemingly "worldly" as Japan still allows people to smoke in restaurants.  It just didn't feel right, sitting around all these people who no doubt invented Nintendo, Toyota, and Hello Kitty to be smoking Marlboros while eating a stack of flapjacks.

Peter likes Japanese balls....in his mouth.

 

After our uber-Japanese American breakfast, we pondered what to do with the remainder of the day and decided to check out Mount Takao. It is basically like a poor man's Mount Fuji  but a lot closer to where we were staying.  Unfortunately, Kiel's jet lag coupled with his hangover were getting the better of him and he was unable to join us.  With that in mind, Peter, Colleen, my mom, and I headed over to the mountain to see what it was all about.  Seeing as how most of the literature we could find was only printed in Japanese, all we really knew was that there was a mountain, a cable car, a chair lift, some monkeys, and a temple.  What more could one ask for in life?  We also surmised that because there was a temple, it would probably be crazy busy there as Japanese people love to go to temples on New Year's Day. 

View looking out from Mount Takao.

 

Upon emerging from the subway station at the base of the mountain, it became quite clear to us that it appeared just about every person in Japan had decided to come here to ring in the New Year!  There were literally thousands of people everywhere, but fortunately the Japanese people are very orderly and polite so this does not create as much pandemonium as it does in other places (see: China).  Once we got our bearings, we got in line for the chair lift that would take us part way up the mountain.  Having ridden many a chair lifts in my time, this was the first one I can recall operating with no lap bar of any kind, and all I can say is "insurance claim waiting to happen".  In fact, if such a thing were operational in America, I have no doubt that people would be intentionally throwing themselves off of it in an attempt to sue the pants off the poor bastard who was running the thing.  Once we got to the top of the mountain we wandered around for a bit and just followed the massive herds of people.  Sadly, due to the insanely large crowds, we were unable to get anywhere near the actual temple, so we had to settle for wandering around and looking at a bunch of shit that we really had no idea what it was as all the signs were in some foreign language.  Probably Japanese.  At least we got some cool pictures though!  Our next stop on the Mount Takao tourist express was for us to visit the not-so-famous monkeys that they have on display.  Luckily for us, we rolled up right when the monkey-keeper(?) started his show.  Now if anyone knows anything more funny than watching a zookeeper babble on in Japanese while monkeys swarm him for  food I challenge you to tell me.  Oh, and to make it even better, while most of the monkeys were swarming the zookeeper, a couple of them decided that they were going to have at it doggie style off to the other side of the pen.  They would hump for three seconds, stop, then go at it again.  This continued for a solid ten minutes and definitely made me feel shameful about my bedroom exploits.  Although we all loved the monkey sex + feeding show, eventually we had had enough.  Due to a couple members of our party's fear of the safety-featureless chair lifts, we decided to take the cable car back down the mountain, which proved to be much more frightening in my opinion, as we had to be crammed into a small space one on top of the other and transported at a very slow speed down a mountain.

Colleen monkeying around. The sign reads, "If you're a dumb tourist make sure you pose beside this sign acting like a complete a-hole"!

 

Back at our hotel, we were all pretty exhausted from our day out and the jet lag was definitely starting to hit us.  We opted to go to an Italian restaurant not far from out hotel for dinner, cause, well that's what we do.  We eat Italian food in Japan because we're all a bunch of weak-stomached-poutine-eating white folk from Canada.  For the record, it was fucking delicious though!  That night I unfortunately lost the "sleeping on the floor" lottery (we only had two rooms, each with one small bed for the five of us).  As usual, I turned to my two favorite crutches: sleeping pills and Asahi beer. 

~Brentski~

Safest. Chair lift. Ever. Peter and Dawn scared shitless.

 

Day 43 (December 31,2012)- All-You-Can-Drink + Darts + No One Speaking English = Typical Moreau New Year's Eve

Luckily for me, I didn't lose the "sleeping on the floor" lottery the night before and was well rested for what would probably be my first and last New Year's Eve in Japan. Unlike North America, where Christmas is arguably or biggest/most celebrated holiday of the year, in Japan that honor is bestowed upon New Year's. It is traditionally a time where people get together with families and visit local temples. Fortunately, some Japanese people do like to get ignorantly drunk and make asses of themselves like we do on this side of the Pacific!

That day, Kiel and Peter decided to head into downtown Tokyo, while I chilled out with my Mom and Colleen. Our day mostly consisted of trying to find a place close to our hotel to ring in the New Year, as we weren't in the mood to lug our asses over an hour in each direction into the heart of the city. Factor in that we would all probably be finely tuned after the stroke of midnight and it's safe to assume that it would take us even longer to get back to the hotel. After perusing the lovely neighborhood of Hachioji with my girlfriend and mother for a few hours, I was able to safely draw a few conclusions:

· After visiting a pet store, I can see that Japanese people grossly overpay for pet dogs, which they in turn dress in ridiculous clothes. (Seems particularly odd since many of their nearby countries are reputed to have canine on their menus)

· All women like shoe shopping. Men do not.

· The five of us had to be the least exotic eaters in the history of travel. We subsisted almost our entire time in Japan on a diet of McDonald's, Burger King, Denny's, and Subway. Oh, and don't forget beer, wine and snacks from 7/11.

Later that evening we all met back up at the hotel and the five of us decided that we would hit up some club dive attached to our hotel called "Club Motown". The dude at the front desk of our hotel translated the sign out front for us and told us that they were having an "all-you-can-drink" from 8pm until midnight. Where do we sign up!?



The ladies getting dolled out for their night on the town.

After the ladies got all dolled up and the gentleman shampooed and conditioned their chest hair (okay, maybe just Peter), we headed over to Club Motown shortly after 8pm. When we got there, there were probably under 20 people and throughout the course of the night, this number maybeincreased by 10. Oh well, we were here now and that meant we each had to get our $40 worth! The initial translation barrier was tough, but once our waiter figured out what we were all drinking, the drinks started flowing at a nasty clip and it wouldn't have mattered if there were 25 or 2500 people there, we were going to get rowdy. Once we got a few drinks in to us, we got up some nerve and headed over to play some darts. Unfortunately, all the beer in the world wasn't going to make us good dart players, and we were quickly ridiculed by our Japanese counterparts. In fact, they took it upon themselves to go and find someone in the bar who could speak a little bit of English so that they could use this translator to tell us that we need to practice! Later on in the evening, the venue also rolled out some casino games, although because of Japanese gaming laws, you could not actually win money. Sure, you could lose all the money in the world to the house, but you were never going to win. I may be a degenerate gambler, but even by standards that was a bit ridiculous.

Since gambling and darts were now out of the equation, we settled on doing what we do best: drinking. As the night started to wear on, some people (see: Kiel and Dawn Moreau) were very well lubricated and started to get a little rambunctious. So when the bartenders started handing out party favors and champagne to the now growing crowd (almost 50 people!) a little before midnight, it seemed inevitable that they were going to start setting them off early and causing a ruckus. Oh well, at least we all made it to 2013!


The crew on New Year's Eve with our classic waiter.

Shortly after midnight we headed out into the night, although we put my mommy to bed first, as it appeared she had won the contest to party the hardest before midnight. Colleen, Peter, Kiel, and I ended up wandering the streets for a bit and couldn't really find anything worthy of catching our attention so we ended up packing it in shortly thereafter.

2013 was officially underway, and it was time to make the most of it...right after I sleep off this wicked hangover with two other grown men in 10 foot X 10 foot hotel room!

~Brentski~

Pretty much sums up the night.

Day 42 (December 30, 2012)- Memoirs Of A Hairy, Bearded, Six-Foot Geisha

At first I wasn't sure that we were all going to survive our first night in Tokyo, but luckily we managed to sleep through the night thanks to the wonders of alcohol coupled with extreme travel fatigue .  Despite the fact that I was forced to spoon with Peter (naturally I was little spoon) the four of us managed to get a decent enough sleep.  As my brother would not be arriving until later that evening, Colleen, Peter, my mother, and I decided to head into the heart of the city to take in some of the attractions on our own.  Sadly, we were staying about an hour outside of the main core of the city, as the hotel room prices were astronomically high as we were visiting over the week of New Year's which just so happens to be the biggest holiday of the year for the Japanese.  To stay in a hotel as far out as we were was costing over $130 a night for a room, while most of the available rooms in the heart of the city would cost at least four times as much.

As mentioned in my previous blog, the Japanese people are quite orderly and polite, although I definitely noticed that they have a penchant for passing out drunk on the subway.  On our way into the city we happened to be parked next to a young man with only one shoe on.  Our main source of entertainment over the course of our one hour commute into the city was watching this heavily intoxicated man slip in and out of consciousness while looking around for his shoe.  Eventually, he gave up and decided to exit the train with only one shoe on.  No one else seemed to pay the man any attention, so I can only assume that Japanese people are fully accepting of citizens who only wear one fifty percent of their footwear.

After our lengthy train ride into the city we were eager to get out and explore Tokyo's number one tourist destination: the famed Imperial Gardens.  There was just one problem: it was closed.  This would become a common theme for us throughout our trip in Japan, as many attractions are closed down over the holiday period.  Instead, we were forced to walk around the outside of the grounds in the pouring rain and take pictures with all of the other tourists who apparently didn't get the memo that the grounds were off limits for the week.

While our campaign to be tourists didn't get off to the hottest start, luckily for us we had a chance encounter with a Japanese National Tourist Organization office as we were trying to escape the constant rain outside.  After stumbling upon the office, we were invited in by some lovely ladies and the next thing the four of us knew we were being given the royal treatment.  We were all dressed up in kimonos, taught how to draw traditional Japanese calligraphy and given origami lessons.  I must say, nothing looks better than four of the whitest people on earth wearing kimonos over the Western clothes.  I must give kudos to the JNTO employees, as they were extremely helpful and patient with us and all of the activities were free!

With our new tote bags full of origami and calligraphy (they wouldn't let us take the kimonos with us) we stumbled back out into the cold and miserable Tokyo weather in search of our next destination: the Godzilla statue.  Using my trusty tourist map, I was determined to find this statue, although my travel mates did not seem as eager.  After a few twists and turns, we eventually located the statue, and much to my chagrin, it was not the fearsome Eiffel Tower sized piece of architecture I thought it would be.  In fact, most garden gnomes would have put it to shame.  Shit happens.  Snap a picture and move on.

Seeing as how my statue hunt in the rain was an epic fail, I took a step back and let the others decide where to go.  Peter instantly led us to the Sony Building, which can only be described as a shrine to well, all things Sony!  There seemed to be an endless number of floors all displaying and selling the latest gadgets and gizmos from Sony.  In fact, at one point I think Peter (major fucking techy nerd!) may have even obtained an erection while trying out some futuristic 3D television.  Once Peter got all of his sexual frustration out in the form of ogling electronics, we headed out for some window shopping in the famous Ginza district.  Sadly, Colleen and my mother could only dream of owning such things as Gucci and Prada.  Either that or we could just wait a week until we were in Thailand and buy the knock-offs for 1/100th of the price.  Instead of high end designer stuff we instead settled on purchasing some wares at the Hello Kitty Store.  Yes, there are numerous stores in Japan dedicated to Hello Kitty and they sell everything you could possibly imagine.  In true Japanese fashion our key purchase was a pair of chop sticks that I'm sure will never get used!

Back at the hotel that night, the four of us proceeded to guess how long it would take Kiel to find the hotel, as he would be arriving from Toronto on his own that day to meet us.  Given that it had taken us almost four hours the day before, my money was on him taking longer than that.  Well, the Boy Wonder eventually strolled in around midnight (seven hours after he was supposed to have landed) although he claimed that he had flight delays.  In addition to this, he had been out partying the night before he left and had forgotten to get the name of the hotel off of us.  So he just made his way to the subway stop and started looking around.  Impressive,  so we'll just call it a tie in the "who took longer to find the hotel contest". 

Well, with our fifth wheel now here, there was only one thing left to determine...which of us poor saps was going to be sleeping on the floor that night! My guess was me. 

~Brentski~