Hotel and Mos burger

From Narita Airport to out hotel, it's actually about a 2 hour commute, which kind of wasn't very fun because I had to stand the whole time, which doesn't sound that bad, but actually I had had to stand on the train to GET to the airport, so all in all I stood up for about 6 hours on trains, and needless to say I was rather tired.

But, we finally made it to the hotel, which I must admit is rather nice. Then we were a little bit hungry, so we went out for a bite after getting ourselves situation with the room and I took her to a chain called Mos burger. The name is actually short for Most Delicious Burger, which if you think about it pretty much the dumbest name for a burger chain in the world, but it works for Japanese people.

Aside: Japanese people really don't know just what the hell to name their stores 90% of the time. I think they just open up a dictionary and just flip to a page with their eyes close then choose whatever word SOUNDS cool. I mean seriously, who in their right mind, would name a store Boycott? Like hey guys, my store is SO COOL that you should BOYCOTT it!! Yeah rock on!! Loft is another chain that is super huge here in Japan, but what does Loft even mean? Don't even try to tell me it's a Japanese name because it most certainly is not. OIOI and Tokyu Hands are both stores owned by the Tokyu Group or whatever that conglomerate's name is, but like...OIOI? What does that even mean? I asked my friend Kenji and he said he had no clue.

So back to Mos burger anyway. It's basically the direct competition of McDonald's, where McD's aims for speed and efficiency, MB (Mos burger because I am lazy) goes for the quality and the artistic liberal side of the hamburger. They are both good, but I actually like McD's a lot more. Mos burger puts funky stuff on all of their burgers, or at least in Tokyo they do. The first time I went to an MB in hokkaido, I just got a normal double decker burger and some fries and stuff, and it tasted good, but was overpriced and the burger had the dimensions of a quarter. Down south here in Tokyo though, i couldn't find just a normal burger, because everything had this chilly/onion paste on it. All of the burgers had this stuff on it, no regular burgers, I was thoroughly confused to be honest.

So Kay told me what she wanted and I ordered for the two of us, and both of us being pretty dehydrated at this point, I ordered water for both of us as well, only to be told that they didn't have any water. My brain sort of came to a screeching halt at this point, having the little ancient man behind the counter tell me they didn't have any water, and he pointed to the list of drinks they we could get, but water wasn't on there. I mean like...how can you not have water? What's up with that? So Kay got Orange juice, and I just got Cola (not going to recommend generic Japanese cola btw) and we sat down and had our meal.

Right now the weather is pretty chilly at night, but the sun is super warm when it's out...just saying. And the wind is stupid cold.

Tokyo Japan

Long time no see guys. To be honest my life has been rather dull lately, spring break consisted of mostly soccer, eating, and studying Japanese, so there really hasn't been much to talk about. But, for the next couple of weeks or so, I am going to be on the road, so there should be plenty to talk about.

First up, Tokyo Japan. This city is stupid. The density, is stupid. It feels like one city block of Tokyo has the same amount of people living in it as the entire campus of Ohio State. There are people everywhere, doing their thing, going from A to B, and this city is huge.

So I flew down Friday morning with my friend Kenji. He actually just graduated from Hokkaido University, and is moving here to work in a venture capital firm, so I helped him move and unpack and set up his new apartment, which is pretty nice I would say. After we finally got everything set up we went to a restaurant, don't remember the name, but it was supposedly famous around honshu, aka the main island of Japan. It was pretty western style, which made me happy because I was really feeling some man food, and I was pretty satisfied with the meal.

While we were eating, we had some good entertainment too. There was this pack of kids, Kenji said they had just graduated from 9th grade and were going to be high schoolers next year (only 3 years of hs in Japan btw). Anyway, it's illegal to smoke under the age of 18 in Japan, and they were being pretty roudy and stuff and going in and out of the store a lot, and then these 3 guys showed up in suits and stuff, and started giving them a hard time. Apparently these 3 guys were police, and they thought these kids had been smoking, the conversation and seeing this kid's faces was pretty funny to be honest...silly kids.

Anyway, after that me and Kenji just went splorin (exploring) a little bit around the area where he was going to be living for an undetermined period of time, and we ended up getting to tokaidou road, which back in the good old days, was the only road between Tokyo (at that time Edo) and Kyoto. These days the road is a huge highway with stores and stuff all along the sides and stuff, but it was pretty cool to walk along the same road that thousands of samurai traveled throughout Japan's history. I wanted a Katana...

So in the morning, I packed up my stuff and me and Kenji made our way into Tokyo. I was on my way to meet my girlfriend at Narita airport, and I think he was going to run some errands and just play around a bit, so we parted ways in Tokyo station, and i was left to fend for myself, and somehow make it to Narita airport. The train system in Japan is...well it's set up somewhat logical, and I knew exactly what lines to get on and such, but honestly I was pretty scared that I would end up in some backwater part of Tokyo. But, I made it to the airport, and I met Kay, and everything went rather smoothly to be honest.

More to come later.