The Plan
- 9/15 – teamLabs Borderless and Shopping, then Dinner!
- 11 AM Heading to teamLabs Borderless. Probably going to spend a lot of time there
- I’m planning on exploring Tokyo and just like walking around and shopping a ton, idk lol
- 6:30 PM Izekaya with a bunch of dudes I met from reddit/discord
- Probably gonna try to get them to go to nijikai or sanjikai or even yonjikai lmao
The Reality
I won’t spoil anything here lol because I was also surprised.
Excited for teamLabs!
So I went to teamLabs yesterday! (spoiler alert: I stood at the gate and looked at my ticket for tomorrow like an idiot.) Like… You buy the ticket but you make your itinerary at home and it’s like you’re off by half a day so anyway ugh lmao second time I’ve messed up some time zone thing.
The place was kinda hard to find so I’m glad I did the walk tbh. But then my pedometer wasn’t on and I walked all the way from Azabudai Hills to the Don Quixote in Roppongi taking a lot of back streets to kind of get a feel for Tokyo residents’ daily lives. It was tough and I was sweating a TON. Didn’t collect any exercise data for it, but I sure collected several L’s…
Don Quixote
Then I spent like ¥115,000 on a bunch of junk and a lot of weird snack foods I wanted to try. The store is crazy. It’s like “Building 19” or “Spags” but has like, adult toys and stuff too lol. I feel like it’s the embodiment of AliExpress but in physical form and with Japanese stuff instead of Chinese. So anyway, I bought some weird foods. I may make a blog post about it so I don’t want to spoil it. I already started the post but haven’t finished it because I made I made my first vlog doing the food reviews. Vlogs are cursed and I’m not doing them moving forward lmao. Anyway, after Don Qui –and sweating a ton– is when I decided to go back to my hotel and make said vlog. I also wanted to refresh and recharge before our group dinner!
Yakitori at Torikizoku
We had a reservation for 7 at Torikizoku for 18:30, one of us ended up being late but I got there like 10 mins early. That train station is like, actually factually enormous. There’s a whole shopping mall underground there with several subfloors. Anyway so I met some new people from the discord, and Kai was there. I tried chicken heart and it was really good. I tried chicken liver and it was… Well just like beef liver. I almost yakked lol. Kai ate my share of the dish as well, like a champ. Then we had chicken skin, which was great and some fried chicken breast, which was tender and delicious. I ordered a rice bowl with an egg and I didn’t realize you’re supposed to like… Well anyway I didn’t know what I was doing and it was a bit embarrassing. But that’s just something I’ve gotten used to at this point lmao. Then we ate a donut at Mr. Donut, and it was pretty good! Kinda pricy at ¥197, didn’t feel worth the price but it’s always good to try something new.
Golden Gai and Kabukichō
Golden Gai is small as heck. All the YouTubers make it look like this incredibly wonderful place where it’s like a cyberpunk paradise that goes on for miles. It’s definitely a sea of tourist traps. Maybe it’s a pond… Anyway, heaven forbid you get a drink, you’ll pay 1.75x to 2.5x the price as anywhere else. Strong Zero is like $1 (¥140) and it’s 9% and delicious. Anyway after taking in the visuals of Golden Gai, we went to Kabukichō for more… “Visuals” lol. You’ll see what I mean.
Kabukichō is a paradise for debauchery. It has gambling, overpriced food, sexytime massages and getting roofied and having all your money stolen. I’m gonna go back to play some pachinko for fun and go to a bar I’ve been meaning to called “Deathmatch in Hell”. It was closed when I went. Sad.
We went to an arcade and I played some sick rhythm game called like Jubeat. It was fun! I actually knew some of the songs haha. Kinda cool. They do online play vs other people in other arcades and I got absolutely crushed lol. Then 1 of our friends had to go home and then another and slowly it just became me and Kai hanging out. So I was like alright, let’s fkn find a bar. BUT IT WAS RAINING AND I DIDN’T HAVE AN UMBRELLA SO WE WENT TO FAMILY MART LIKE EVERYONE ELSE AND SOME ASSHOLE BOUGHT 4 UMBRELLAS. Why is this allowed? ( ;_;)
Since Deathmatch was closed, I convinced Kai to come with me to another one that my friend Joe from back home recommended called “Godz”. It wasn’t that far so we just dealt with the rain.
It’s a heavy metal bar and yes… it was dope as hell. (Pun intended)
I quickly downed my Satan beer and then followed this with slowly sipping a ¥1500 Talisker neat and finished up with a ¥1300 pint of asahi super dry before the last train home.
The Last Train Home
What a pain in the ass lol. Like, trains aren’t regularly going where they usually do and it’s absolutely jam packed with everyone else who stayed out too late. I mean, where I’m staying is actually really nice, very far from the city center and never packed. It also has a direct line to both Shinjuku and Shibuya station via the Rinkai line and the hotel was pretty cheap. I definitely feel it with the train fees though… I started with like ¥10,000 on my Suica and I’m down to like, ¥1600. I mean I use it for like, literally everything so it’s not just train rides, but it’s like sometimes $20/day because I have to head back to shower. Idk what sentō fees are but maybe I’ll just hit public baths instead…
Anyway, I have a smoking room so I bought a pack of cigs and a lighter and had one in my room last night. Ngl, it was kinda nice. That said, maybe 1 a day at the most. Probably zero. I really don’t need it. I essentially just bought it as a prop I can use to smoke inside or a way to meet people when I’m solo.
So that was yesterday! I usually write these in the morning because nothing in Japan opens before 11am. Turns out teamLabs does and I’m stupid because I should have booked for like 9am and then by the time I come out it’d be 11. I guess fortunately for you, dear reader, it’s afforded me enough time to type this blog post.
Thanks for reading!
