I Went To Japan For The First Time and Thailand Right After: Part 1

Not sure why I brought this... I have no shows to play.

Japan was something else. I hit the road with one of my old buddies and we painted the town a bunch of different colors. He did it way more than me, but we had more colors than an art teacher. We are scheduled to be gone for a week and start our journey in Japan. Japan is a country I've always wanted to go to due to watching light years of anime my entire life and even writing a paper about anime back in college. From 5 days in Japan we'd go to do three in Thailand, That is a country I'd been to a few times already, but remained excited to go back for the first time since 2019.

Things haven't gone my way for a lot of this trip. My ultimate goal wasn't having the most fun I could have. It was making sure I still do this. I wanted to see if I could pick it up and leave my country of origin again. I knew it would be one of the most difficult things I've done so far, but it meant a lot to me to see if I still had it. Had the ability to leave the US.

Good news! I do!

Still... I made a multitude of mistakes all the same.

Gotta catch'em all. If you don't they'll form a giant robot and smash your city.

So When I Was In Japan...

As I mentioned, I always wanted to go to Japan. I believe that watching anime will do that to you. You want to go there and pilot a Gundam or a Robotech suit. You want to slay demons with your color-changing sword like anime Chamilionaire. You want to beat up gods with your fists, cut them to pieces with your samurai sword, or take on the yakuza with nothing but your wits. You know that's all bull, but on some level, in your heart of hearts, you just don't care. So despite the fact that I knew that Japan was much more Shin Chan (average and overworked) than Naruto (ninjas murdering each other) I still wanted to see what it was like. Thanks to my homie. I got the opportunity.

Due to me not having lots of money at my disposal, I booked a hostel over a hotel. This makes sense when you're not cash-stuffed or spending daddy’s money. During my 5 years in Cambodia, I worked at a hostel and used to do events for at the Mad Monkey Hostel in Phnom Penh. That was where I perfected my trivia game and karaoke skills in efforts to make money between Hypnotic Fist Technique and 99 Boyz gigs. COVID killed opportunities like that for a while. They might be back now, but it's amazing the differences between the ages of 37 and 42. You go from feeling like you can do anything to not doing anything. This is even worse when brain cancer and seizures are on the table.

What’s Up With That Japanese Hostel

So the Tokyo hostel I stayed at started as a rather cool spot. It was in the Ginza neighborhood and seemed to offer a great place to stay while you're in town. This was true at first, but it quickly became problematic the longer I stayed.

I paid for free breakfast every morning and found that to be quite bad. Flakes with no frosting, soft scrambled eggs boiled in a pot, a few tiny croissants with a weird-tasting chocolate ones, lower-grade coffee, and black tea. Japan already is not a good place to practice any vegan values but this breakfast took the cake. (haha… I get it)

They did have a machine that would wash and dry your clothes in 120 minutes. I didn't have enough money to use this machine and couldn't get any help with that at the hostel, so I had to go out and find an ATM machine for the second time during the trip which cost an added $150,000 or whatever each time you use it. I bought a delicious salmon rice ball, returned to the hostel, and turned the machine on. When I came back 2 hours later, my clothes were still wet. Weird. I figured it would be fine, so I used the dry-only mode and waited around another 30 minutes for that to finish. When I came back, my clothes were still wet. This may seem like a small thing, but it came the day after me not being able to do the one thing I came to Tokyo to do. Go to Muscle Girls Bar.

Muscle Girls Bar? What The Hell Is That?

Of course I want to go here. Who wouldn't want to go here?!

Muscle Girls Bar is a bar in Tokyo where muscular women show off their muscles in a variety of contests and events. They squeeze fruit into your drinks, they'll slap you in the face and kick your actual ass with their actual feet. It's considered family-friendly fun, and I was desperate to check it out.

It was pretty far away from Ginza, however. I would have to walk 2.5 hours to get there or take a 35-minute car ride. Size is what Tokyo and Houston have in common. I'm not a fan of walking (ask any of my exes) so a car ride was the choice I made despite it costing about 50 dollars. I take this long ride, pull up to the place, and go down to where it is but no one is there. Muscle Girls Bar was closed. I looked it up again and the only day it says it's closed was Tuesday. This was not Tuesday. I was sad. I was depressed. I had to... get back home, but wasn't keen on getting a Taxi back so I bought a subway ticket figuring I could just use that to get to Shinjuku where my buddy and his friends were hanging out.

This was a mistake.

I was told what happened to me wasn't uncommon as the subway system of Tokyo is difficult for people even if they have been there a while. On top of that, it’s controlled by two separate companies. Finding out what line you’re on is almost like navigating a knot. I found this out the hard way. I got lost in Tokyo. Advice didn't help. Directions didn't help. I ended up out in the boonies somewhere. I was still in Tokyo which is the size of 5 cities, but I was in an area where about 5 taxis refused to take me home. Each one gave me to cross hands X and sent me on my way. After an additional 40 minutes of hunting taxis, I was back on the train again.

It wasn't these guys but you get it...

Eventually, through the help of a subway employee, I was able to find more accepting taxi drivers and one of them did take me home... for another 50 dollars. Forget hanging out in Shinjuku. I was already pissed. So, let's break this down: I spent 150 dollars to go Muscle Girls Bar, which was the top of my list on this trip and when I got there it was closed. Saddest thing that happened to me, and is going on The List. Goodbye pleasure, goodbye money, goodnight everybody.

Wow... Anything else?

I learned so many things from this trip. If you ever want to go to Japan, plan everything you want to do before you get there. Make calls if you have to. You don't have to be sure, but you don't want to waste time on various apps looking for people who want to do what you want to do. I did that and still ended up making that trip to Muscle Girls Bar by myself.

Japan may not give you many opportunities to destroy cities with a giant robot or call on Gigantor to get you out of jams, but Japan has amazing food, you can live out of a convenience store because they are everywhere and have everything and definitely do Karaoke in the place that invented it. While I went with two people who didn't want to sing, I had fun taking over the entertainment portion of their evening. It gave me that feeling of showing out as I did when I was in bands. That’s the feeling I want to get back so badly which is why I stickered the hell out of Japan with these:

Supercrime coming to a town near you!

So my trip wasn't a total loss! Check out the new band here and we'll leave the Thailand trip to Part 2 of this series as I'm sitting in a cafe in Thailand finally writing about this trip. It's certainly nice being back in SE Asia. It sucks that I've lost my ability to understand anything, but it's slooooowly coming back!

I’ll catch you next time.