Meeting old friends, an epic bicycle trip, and the results of the "corn sandwich" poll!

Today is more of a "life" update rather than a "look at the crazy things in Japan!" update, but I'll try my best to keep you all entertained.
Saturday was a mini "Kyoto get-together" - three of my friends from Ritsumeikan University all visited Tokyo, so we went out for dinner.













From left to right: Jason, Junko, and Johanna

Wow, that's a lot of J's... Jason was in Tokyo because he's a ninja and was here for weekend training, Junko wants to become an OL (office lady...I'm pretty sure she doesn't read this blog, so the joke is kind of wasted, but...), so she was up here for some job seminars, and Johanna is working as an English language teacher in Saitama, about an hour and a half outside of Tokyo.

We met up in Ikebukuro and went to an Izakaya for about two hours, which was a lot of fun. Izakaya are basically drinking halls + snacks that you can order to accompany your food. Me being me, I went hardcore and ordered 4 mugs of good, old-fashioned, Coca Cola, because that's how I roll. I think Jason ended up getting pretty drunk because he'd spent the day working out, so that was entertaining... Everyone exchanged work stories, laughed about the "old days," and generally had a good time. Oddly, the Izakaya were in a rush to kick us out at our appointed two hour mark, and Jason was like "I want to give you more money!! Why are you rushing us out!!?" Anyway, although I'm nowhere near an expert on Izakaya, I'm pretty sure they're something we don't have in America. They're not really bars, and often you can get a private room for your group. Usually they have "all you can drink" specials for an hour or two, so people can get pretty wild. When you hear about Japanese people going out to drink after work or whatever, they're usually talking about these places. If I'm totally wrong on this, I'm sure people won't hesitate to correct me, so check the comments section to find out what a "real" Izakaya is.

After we were finally forced out by the Izakaya staff, since it was still only 9, which was way too early, we decided to go try and find a coffee shop. For this, we relied on Junko, our native Tokyo-ite. She promptly succeeded in getting us lost and bringing us to three different coffee shops that were completely full and had no sitting room at all, but eventually we tracked down a nice little spot that was even kind enough to add whiskey to Jason's non-alcoholic drink... Funnily enough, my drink DID have alcohol in it, which I didn't realize when I ordered it, but again the staff was really nice and switched the drink for a non-alcoholic one at no charge. Jason was in charge of baby-sitting us international students during my year there, so he had some pretty funny (and shocking!) stories to tell about the crazy things that we idiot kids got up to during our stay over there.

Eventually it got late and we had to say goodbye. I had forgotten about my camera, so unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the Izakaya for all of you, but I managed to remember to get a picture of the group in the train station before we parted. Then, unfortunately, they managed to drag me into a picture as well, which you can see here:

















Sorry you all had to see that...

Now, as for the epic bicycle trip on Sunday!
I actually don't have a picture of the bike, but I'll post one at a later date...
I found a used bike on craigslist Tokyo for about $50, which is an awesome deal considering most used bikes go for $120+. The only drawback was that I had to go get it, and they lived an hour away...by train. According to google maps, the station was 40 or 50 kilometers away. I have no idea how many miles that is, but an hour by train sounds pretty far to me. Still, $50 is an great price, and it's not like I had anything better to do with my Sunday, so I figured it'd at least give me something to do, get me some exercise, and I'd have something to blog about! Yay!
Now, they lived in Kasukabe, which means nothing to any of you, but if you've seen the anime "Lucky Star," that's actually the train stop that the main characters live at. So I was kind of thinking "Oh cool, I can go to Kasukabe!" But, they were kind enough to meet me at Sengendai station instead...which was one station closer. Wow, thanks so much. I'll just go the other 10 stops on my own... I think I'd have almost rather just gone all the way to Kasukabe so I could at least take a picture of the station to satisfy the nerd in me. Instead, you get a picture of Sengendai station:













Really exciting, huh? Interestingly, although I didn't take any pictures of it, the suburbs outside of Tokyo look exactly like the suburbs outside of Kyoto. This is only really interesting because inside the city proper, they look completely different. There's a limit to how high buildings in Kyoto can be built, so as not to disturb the "historic feel" of the city, and McDonalds are all brown instead of red, since red is just too gaudy a color for a city so steeped in ancient traditions.

In any case, I started on my way, and only really knew that I had to follow the train line to get back. Unfortunately, I quickly hit a dead end. Fortunately, the lady behind me knew where she was going, so I just followed her. Although that did make me feel like a stalker...
In general though, it was pretty easy to figure out where I needed to go:

















How convenient! There was actually a main road about two minutes to my left, but I decided to play it safe and follow this path, since I knew that following this would bring me back to Tokyo, whereas the road might slightly veer off course without me knowing. The person I bought the bike from was kind enough to supply me with a map of Tokyo however, so I was able to check my position whenever I wasn't quite sure where I was.

Something that I've always found interesting about suburbs in Japan are these:













It's the middle of the winter, so this isn't a particularly thrilling picture, but scattered among houses you'll see these small mini-fields, often filled with rice, although occasionally they'll also grow the usual vegetable crops. As far as I can tell, these are not private gardens, and are in fact small farm fields, although I'm not sure about that. If anyone knows the truth behind these things, please feel free to inform everyone in the comments section!

Eventually, the path next to the train line disappeared and I had to join the main road, but it wasn't too hard to figure out where I needed to go. At one point, I came to a long road-side park/walking path:













This area continued on for quite a long stretch, and was a very nice change from just staring at stores and houses the entire time. Around now, I also noticed that there was another biker that was keeping pace with me, and eventually we started racing. Or "racing." I don't know if it became a competition for him (it sure seemed like it though), but it definitely became a competition for me, and we raced from stop light to stop light, trying to see who would ultimately finish first. We stayed more or less even until shortly after entering Tokyo proper, when he turned off sooner than I did...which was a bit sad! I didn't have anyone to keep me company anymore... The good side to racing him was that I definitely made faster time than I would have otherwise. The bad side was that I actually saw three or four really interesting things that I wanted to take pictures of for all of you, but couldn't because stopping would mean that my rival would get so far ahead of me that I'd never catch up! So, apologies again everyone!

Eventually I came to Ueno Park, which is (I believe) the largest and most famous park in Tokyo. It's really quite nice, and I wanted to walk around for a while, but there were people EVERYWHERE, and when I got off my bike, I was like "Oh my god I can't move." Riding a bike for three and a half hours straight will do that to you...













I did take a few pictures of the park entrance, however. In this picture, you can see a Japanese man staring at me thinking "What the hell is that crazy guy doing?" Now imagine that there are people like that every time I stop to take a random picture for all of you, and you'll have a good idea of what it's like to be me ^_^;
Actually, in this case, I think the reason I got that look was because everyone ELSE was taking a picture of this:













Cherry blossoms, or "sakura," are easily the most popular flower in Japan. As I understand it, sakura are often symbols of how transient and brief life is, and you hear about them a lot in Japanese literature (or alternatively, just go watch that scene from 'The Last Samurai'). In any case, sakura are hands down the most famous and popular flowers in Japan, and every year in the early spring people will get together and go flower viewing, or "Hanami." This entails going to a park with a bunch of friends, sitting under the sakura trees, drinking lots and lots of alcohol, and generally having a good old time. Once again, feel free to comment if you have more to add on the subject, since I confess I don't know much about sakura aside from the fact that there are tons of songs and anime characters named 'Sakura' and that if you ask any Japanese person what their favorite flower is, they will answer 'sakura' without hesitation.
So one last photo before moving on...













Eventually, I managed to get home - all told the trip took somewhere between four and five hours, so it was quite the epic journey, although I got very lucky. It was a beautiful day out, so I actually had a really nice time, and it's something that I wouldn't mind doing again, assuming I can find somewhere to bike to... Maybe one day when the weather gets a bit warmer I'll take a weekend biking trip off to the mountains!

Now then, the moment you've all been waiting for! The results of the corn sandwich poll! I knew I could count on my faithful readers not to disappoint me, and as expected you did not let me down. The pro-corn voters swept the polls; it wasn't even a contest. So thanks everyone, for once again, three weeks running, coming out against my opinion, this time en masse. Now my friend has gotten me suckered into agreeing to eat yet ANOTHER strange food item that I'd be happier avoiding... Roy in particular deserves honorable mention, because I'm pretty sure he knew I was anti-corn, admitted that he himself would not eat corn on a sandwich, and yet still voted pro-corn, just to spite me. Thanks buddy, that means a lot.
I do want to share this email I received from my sister, however:

and uh alex, if you think corn on a sandwich would taste good..... then you are the weirdest person i know... thats so weird.

Just thought I'd throw that out there for all of you.
As it stands, however, the final tally is as follows:
For: 6
Against: 4
It was actually less of a blowout than I thought, but the majority of the initial voters were pro-corn, while most of the latter ones were in the "I've never had it before, but corn on pizza is terrible" camp, so I just assumed they were anti-corn sandwich as well. To be fair, that is also where my opinion on corn sandwiches comes from. I've never tried corn on a sandwich, but corn and mayonaisse pizzas are frightening abominations that shouldn't be allowed to exist in the world.

Well, that concludes today's update! Sorry you had to wait until mid-week for it, but look on the bright side! You only have to wait half as long for the next update! (assuming I post on time anyway...)

See you again soon!