Sunday, 9/21/08 7:18 AM, Ikebukuro
Holy crap! We just had an earthquake. I know they happen all the time over here but this was a first for me. The room started to shake a little at first and then it jerked around so much that what was going on was unmistakable. There are no apparent signs of damage except that I feel a little sick at my stomach. I know I’ll spend the next little while wondering if there will be an aftershock.
Sunday, 9/21/08 6:30 PM, Ikeukuro
It has been another long day already. I left my room around 9:45 AM. The restaurant I wanted to eat at wasn’t open yet. Neither was the arcade or the pachinko parlor so I went to the internet café for an hour, checking email and reading news from home. By the time I was through, the restaurant with the plastic food in front of it was open. When I sat down, I was at a bar facing out onto the street and there were pitchers of ice water at my disposal. I was liking this place already. I point out the gyoza and the curry tofu to my waitress. She warned that the tofu would be spicy and I told her to bring it on. The food was delicious. The gyoza was delicate with a slight crisp to the browned parts and the curry tofu was out of this world. Don’t worry, there was also some ground beef floating around in there with the tofu. There was soup, rice and pickles on the side with soy sauce, oil, vinegar, pepper, pickled red peppers, minced garlic and fish powder at my disposal. Unfortunately, they only took cash.
OK so if I’m out of cash, how am I getting by? Well, I’m not 100% out. I have some pocket change – about $90 left over from my last visit and I bought about $125 worth of yen for around $90 on ebay about 6 months ago.
After lunch, I went to the Taito Game Station arcade and pachinko parlor. There I tithed ¥5,000 to the local yakuza group. I probably spent too much there, including the last of my paper money, but it was fun.
As I walked back to my ryokan, I thought, “Maybe I really could live here.” The language and mannerisms were coming back to me. I was already learning the streets. Hell, I even knew where to duck in the shower to not hit my head. 
After a brief rest, it was time to go to Akihabara. Tokyo’s electric town was great. There were several girls dressed in maid outfits and even one guy dressed in a maid outfit. Two guys were stopped and talking with him. The “maid” seemed very agitated. I’m not sure if he was in character or if the other guys were just giving him shit, but either way it was hilarious.
I went to all the prerequisite anime shops and picked up some more gifts for friends – Gurren Lagann merchandise, earning me three more collectible cards. I’m only one away from having the complete set now! Then I went to several convinis netting Chocobis (Shin Chan’s favorite snack), some really cool Neon Genesis Evangelion treats with chrome cards inside, and a whole bag full of Umaibou!
I finally found a shop that sells Magic cards. Unfortunately they only took cash, so I could only afford three packs. I found out that the Shards of Alara pre-release will be held there next Saturday. I fully intend to play in it even though I won’t be able to read the cards and I won’t understand my opponents. My strategy is to build a deck of just creatures and swing for the fences every turn. I won’t give a damn about any of their come-into-play abilities or anything else.
After Akihabara, I came back to Ikebukuro and walked toward the gentle respite of Denny’s at a snail’s pace. The place was too packed to eat there. All I really wanted was to sit down and drink some water. So as the rain started to fall harder, I made my way to my ryokan. It wasn’t long before my bed started shaking again but this time it was nowhere near as hard and was on and off lasting about 20 to 30 minutes.
Monday, 9/22/08 9:05 PM, Ikebukuro
I wanted to take it easy today. The plan was to go back to the Citibank to get some cash and then go to Takadanobaba to get some katsudon and check out the ¥100 shop. This morning, I’m walking with a slight limp because one of my toes is injured. Ha! Is that the best you can do, Japan? I have ten toes! I’m nowhere near ready to call it quits!
My first stop was at the internet café where I’m becoming a regular. Then I made my way to the Metropolitan Plaza. At the Citibank, I had to talk with three different people only to find out there was nothing they could do for me because I had an American Citicard. The last lady did, however, point me toward the SMBC – Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.
At the SMBC, a guy walked me to the ATMs and set on up to display English. Just as I expected, however, it spit my card back out. But to my surprise, the guy seemed to have another solution. He walked me to a table and pulled out a form. Now we were getting somewhere! Unfortunately, the form was entirely in Japanese. The nice gentleman had disappeared momentarily to get me a customer ticket number. When he returned, he noticed my dilemma and actually told me what to write in each blank on the form. Top notch service!
When I was called up to the window, I deposited my credit card, the withdrawal slip and my passport into a small, round, sickly-green, plastic bowl and waited. About five minutes later, I was called back up to find that the bowl now also had three fresh, crisp ¥10,000 bills in it. I felt like a million damn dollars! And, I knew just where to break one of those bills. Plastic food, here I come.
Just up the street from the bank was my favorite restaurant so far. Today, another gentleman took my order. As was quickly becoming customary, we walked outside so I could point out what I wanted – again the curry tofu. This time I added “to gohan” (“with rice”) and he started asking me things in Japanese. I recognized “…tamago?” (he was asking me about an “egg”). Some of the plastic food had a hard boiled egg in the soup, so I thought, “Sure. Why not?”
When my food arrived, it looked pretty much the same as the day before except for the inclusion of said tamago. The egg was resting happily in its own little bowl, shell and all. It was cold to the touch – not good, I surmised. I have a raw egg to go with my delicious meal. OK. I’ve seen something like this before on No Reservations. You crack open the egg and drop it in the soup, which in turn is so hot that it actually cooks the egg, right? Anybody? Wrong.
I cracked open the egg and plopped the contents on top of my curry tofu. It didn’t cook. Instead, it only sadly looked up at me as if to say, “Why, Steven-san? Why did you break me?”
Without dignifying Tamago-san with a response, I stirred it into my tofu, where it served only to slightly water down the curry. Even after the tamago incident, it was still a great meal. Next time, no egg.
After lunch, I dropped by the AMPM to pick up some Pocky for later. I also got a Volvic Fruit Kiss, green apple flavored water because I thought it looked different. At the ryokan, I got so bored by the stuff on TV that I fell asleep and when I woke up, I deemed it too late to go to Takadanobaba. Instead, I decided to go to Denny San again.
Denny’s had a choose-your-own-combo special for ¥1,300. The main course was hamburger steak covered in grilled onions, gravy and a sunny side up egg. It was actually pretty good until I got to the yolk, which was runny. The side dish was what I can only best describe as Spanish rice covered in scrambled eggs, cheese and gravy. Surprisingly, it was really good. For desert, I ordered a pastry filled with what I hoped was chocolate. It turned out to be some kind of red bean paste. As horrible as it may sound to some, it wasn’t bad and the small scoop of vanilla-esque ice cream had solid bits in it which made for an interesting experience.
Instead of going anywhere else, I thought it might be a good idea to rest up my injured toe for the day ahead. So, with raw and partially cooked eggs resting heavily on my stomach, I decided to call it a night.
Lesson learned: Cancel the shit out of my Citicard. They couldn’t help me when I need them the most. Seriously, screw those guys.