The Place With All The Gyoza

Now that I have been here for six months site seeing has become cumbersome. The problem with Tokyo is that although it is awesome, most of the places just have the same stuff. Visiting a new temple is not that exciting anymore, and the downtown neighbourhoods all have excactly the same buildings, and department stores. So you just can't wonder around anymore.
Yesterday, after hours of lackadaisical debate, Matt, Natalia, Uli, Jonathan, and I went to Ikebukaro. Ikebukaro is another downtown district of Tokyo, like Shinjuku. It was there that we finally found a store that sells individually packed pairs of women's panties, but they weren't used, so our search continues. Yes, that exists here, but that's not what this entry is about, relax. The place we went to was a place called Namjatown, in a giant mall called Sunshine City. The place seemed like it was designed literally after a person's dream. It was seperated across two floors and along each floor there were booths that had carnival games, and restaurants. The theme of the place would change. It would go from film noir, to haunted house, to prison, to ice cream wonderland, to magical castle, to rainforest, all enclosed in this winding and confusing labyrinth. In fact we got split up at one point and couldn't find each other for twenty minutes. The film noir section consisted of these artifical streets that were made to look like a side street in Beijing, including fake cars, shrines, steam, concrete, and almost two dozen minature restaurants and food stalls that each served a different type of gyoza. We all split 24 gyoza and grabbed some burgers from a restuarant called Big Man. After that we went to the ice cream wonderland that served every single concievable presentation, and flavour of ice cream including snake, and fried octupus. We tried the fried octopus ice cream, and wretched. Leaving, we walked through a haunted house, ended up in a forest, and walked out of a train station. We left having seen something entirely different, and Tokyo proved that it still has something to show me.

Oh I'm sorry. Let me clarify what gyoza is. In North America they are know as potstickers. It is a type of chinese dumpling that is popular throughout asia. They consist of meat and vegatables wrapped in dough, which is crimped closed and fried. They are delicious with vinegar and soya sauce.

日本語で話すのがへたです。

School has begun again, and here is the plan: I think I have lost a bit too much weight here because of a lack of snacking and sugary cereal so I'm going to gain some weight. I am aware this a problem that most people wish they had (shut up, you are not fat!). Plus I think I failed my first test of the second semester because of a lack of study, so I have to return to a routine study schedule. The knife is down but not out. Oh... also I decided to grow facial hair. I am in this competition to grow the coolest moustache, I'm going for the same moustache the Eugene Hutz from Gogol Bordello has, but I'll have to probably settle for the fu manchu, like Shaq, or Billy Bob Thorton.

Going to Hokkaido

So I spent Christmas day in Tokyo, and the day after went to Hokkaido. I needed to take four trains to make it to Kushiro, my final destination. One of those trains was the bullet train. Except in Japanese it is not called the bullet train, it is called the shinkansen (新幹線), which means New Trunk Line. The name bullet train derives from the English translation of the construction project from the 1930s. The train travels at a top speed of 275 km/h, and I was able to cover 593 km in three and a half hours, but I didn't realize I was traveling that fast.
My destination, Kushiro, is not that amazing a city. It's a medium sized harbor town, and it is like the Japanese equivalent of Sudbury. I went to Hokkaido mainly to visit my friends who are stayng there for the break. But also if I didn't go I wouldn't see any snow this year, or have a miserably cold day, which would be strange. So I went. I met up with my friend Natalia in Kushiro. She was doing a two week homestay there and said there wasn't much to do. So we kind of just hung-out: went to restauraunts, ate some donuts, walked around. My hostel was in a nature preservation area, and it was very peaceful. It looks like a destination to return to in the summer for a short canoe trip.
For New Years I went to Asahikawa to visit my friend Arthur and his girlfriend Charlotte. Driving up from Kushiro through the mountains was really picturesque, everything from the trees to the roofs was covered white. Charlotte is an english teacher in a really small town called Biei, which is thickly covered with powder snow, and as soon as it gets dark turns into a ghost town. For New Years Eve Charlotte took us to a foriegner's bar called The Den, which is owned by this Australian guy who made his fortune in Japan on balloon animals. At 1 we went to a club in Ashahikawa filled with 40 to 50 Japanese people doing the STRANGEST FUCKING DANCE I HAVE EVER SEEN. That is the best way I can describe it, because I have no information about what it was or why the relentlessly continued to do it. It was kind of like Tae Bo, but only with flailing punches, and done rigorously to house music. I returned to Tokyo on the 2nd, and then attempted and failed to climb the Tokyo Tower again.