Today I went to Shibuya all by myself like a big kid! I had asked some people to go with me, but three were busy and one doesn't have internet access on weekends, so I ended up having a good time all alone. This is not nearly as depressing as it sounds. For one thing, my friends from Kara were there:
Okay, so, not really, but this ad at Ikebukuro Station was delightfully huge. Nicole and Jiyoung were also there, but so were some middle school students with a megaphone trying to get people to donate to some kind of thing. That's why my two favorites are not present, if you were wondering.
This is a man named Yohei Onishi and his band. Street performances are a regular occurrence in Tokyo, to the point that sometimes companies allow musicians to forego most of the "street" part of that description. There are plenty of guys out there with just an instrument and a bowl for money, but sometimes you'll run into something like this with a full stage and everything. It's kind of nice. What I did hear was not terrible, but I will not be rushing out to buy this man's songs any time soon.
Here's the big intersection. I took the picture mostly for the Infinite truck, because that seemed important. In Japan, trucks that exist for no reason other than advertising are very common (it's catching on in America, too), and it's exciting to see "The ____ Truck" if you actually care about whatever fills in the blank. I personally don't care much about Infinite, but I know that people reading this might, so I decided to go for it. If you care, then... yay, Infinite truck.
This is an elevator. The picture did not turn out as planned, but it was meant to show the size of the elevator in this multi-story instrument store I went into. It wasn't a big elevator. It could probably hold two more people, and uncomfortably at that.
This and the small bass shop through this door were the entirety of the sixth floor. This is what you see when you get off the elevator. Tokyo is full of buildings laid out in this manner. Anyway, I don't really have much interest in learning an instrument, but I did want to check the instrument stores I found for Doris Yeh's special model of bass that recently got released. Doris is the bassist for a Taiwanese band and I love her. The bass was not present in any of the stores.
This is just a skyline picture. Enjoy it.
I went to this Tsutaya to look for some CDs (my whole reason for going to Shibuya), and I actually did have some luck (more on that later). However, their overall selection is kind of disappointing for a music store right next to the world's largest intersection. What really bothered me, though, was the fact that all the good CDs were rental only. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but CD rental is a thing that happens in Japan, and entire floors will be dedicated to it. From the point of view of someone who wants to either own the thing or not, rental sections are the most frustrating thing in the world.
After Tsutaya, I wandered around until I found Tower Records, which is the important CD store in Shibuya. This was an entire wall at the entrance. Nothing short of making Japan my permanent home will diminish the novelty of seeing things I enjoy displayed prominently in public places, which does not happen at all in America. Ever.
Tower Records was like the inverse of Tsutaya. At Tsutaya, the selection was poor, but the search computers were easy to use and told you exactly what you wanted to know, including whether or not something was in stock in that particular store. At Tower Records, the selection was enormous, but the computers were programmed with a meandering, bewilderingly-categorized system that told you nothing you didn't already know. For that reason, I spent much of my time there looking confused and staring at section names. Anyway, I found the Yousei Teikoku section again and took another picture. This is only half of what they had, because this is the very bottom of the shelf (Y section and all that), but the name plate was there. For the record, in America I have all of what was in this section.
I then found Rainbow's autographs in the K-pop section. I was not too terribly excited to see them, but that's because I actually own a pillow signed by all the members that I won in Music Bank's Christmas contest a while back. Still, though, Rainbow's cool.
This, however, made me jump around and giggle like a moron. This is the signature of the girl I jokingly tell people I am going to marry. Her name is E-Young and she is a member of a Korean group called After School. Here is a picture of her that I did not take:
Isn't she the best?
Here is the signature of the second girl in my trinity of Korean favorites, Ga-in from Brown Eyed Girls. There were actually two things she had signed, but this was somewhat more readable so I took a picture of this one. Ga-In looks like this:
Look at how great.
Below the desk were some more signatures. Here are Kara's
An then here are the signatures of SNSD/Girls' Generation. One of the members, Tiffany, completes my favorite triangle. Here she is:
I still haven't met any of them, but I've seen Tiffany in person twice!
These are Mika Agematsu CDs in THEIR natural habitat. You probably don't know who this woman is, and if you're reading this and do that's because I told you. Mika Agematsu is an
arpista, someone that plays the Paraguayan harp, and she's fantastic at her job. She is my go-to example when people try and tell me I don't listen to anything but metal and K-pop. I absolutely love her, and she is my favorite atypical (for a young person to enjoy) musician in my collection. I own the fancier of the two CDs with the rainbow colors at the top (they're the same CD but I own the special edition), but the rest I did not have and I desperately wanted them. In the interest of actually having money for the train home, I abstained from picking one up.
This is just Tower Records from the outside. One of my favorite things about Japanese music stores is that, in addition to the fact that there's often an entire section for visual kei (that thing where all the guys look like
this), every kind of person looks through it. You'll see everyone from high school girls to guys with buzz-cuts and baseball caps looking for CDs in that section, not because they have deep-seated issues like everyone in America thinks I do when I say I like this stuff, but because in Japan it's legitimately a cool thing to be into. The popularity isn't what it was in the 90s, but over here no one will look down on you for liking it. It's even on mainstream TV with relative frequency, and the fan base varies wildly beyond the "fat girls in Hot Topic t-shirts and their boyfriends" set good fans like me have to put up with in America.
The other thing I like about Japanese music stores is that they never do anything but lower the prices of things. There is a very good reason for this: the price of a CD will almost always be printed somewhere on the CD packaging itself, under the plastic wrapping. The price on the CD is the base price, and I've never seen a retailer have a "higher prices on everything!" anti-sale in my life. Because of this, the only way CD prices over here can go is down (unless they're rare), completely eliminating the need to shop around. They apparently do the same thing with medical procedures via a government-published book of prices for such things, which is a good idea no matter where you think the money should come from/go to.
This is more Kara, except fifty feet tall on the streets of Shibuya. Also, Nicole and Jiyoung are there this time (the left-most two).
This is another one of those trucks, but the ad was for a Korean drama called City Hunter. The girl on the far right is a member of Kara (Wesley's favorite), so I took a picture even though I don't watch dramas. It's just nice to constantly see familiar faces floating around the city, regardless of whether or not I have actually spoken with those faces.
Here is the Shibuya skyline from the entrance to the station just as I was about to leave.
Here's a bakery in Ikebukuro Station where I had some late lunch. You will notice that not only is there a bakery in the train station, but that the bakery is clean and does not feature the thin layer of dirt, gum, and cigarette butts that coats the entirety of almost every MARTA station.
This was the late lunch. It's still in the bag because I had to hold it in one hand and the camera in the other, but I ate it right after I took this. It's some kind of bread sprinkled with beans of varying sizes, and it was just stupidly delicious. Imagine the most delightful bread you can, and then put red beans on it. If you've never had red bean, I can't describe it very well beyond "it is a bean in texture only". Red beans are more appropriate for desserts than barbecues.
This was an empty road on the way back from the train station. It's no wonder that this is a country whose horror often focuses on mysteries and the unknown, rather than on cheap violence that produces unease by way of nausea rather than actual terror. Japan is laid out in such a way that every corner and side street seems like it holds a mystery, and at night the effect is amplified tenfold. Who knows what could be at the end of this road? I do, but that's not the point.
Here are the things I bought today. This is actually just three CDs, because the postcard at the top came free with the CD on the right. My primary objective today was Kalafina CDs, more specifically their new song "To the Beginning", which is the opening theme of Fate/Zero, and a previously unspecified full album of theirs. It eventually came down to a choice between
After Eden, which has "Magia" on it, and
Red Moon, which has "Lacrimosa" on it. In the end I went with
Red Moon, because "Lacrimosa" sounds like this:
Click me, I'm wonderful.
The middle CD is an entirely different story. I got it from a guy who was playing the shamisen (like a traditional Japanese guitar; geisha play them) outside of the train station who had a little tray with CDs next to his money bowl. It turns out that it's called
Tokyo Ghetto Shamisen, and before you say anything let me tell you that I have listened to the CD and there is nothing "ghetto" about it. The guy wasn't bad at all, and the CD was cheap, so I figured it might be an interesting experience to give it a try. I won't say I was blown away, but what I got was a solid little disc of pleasant twangy-ness that shows some promise. Young people are not so into traditional music anymore, and over here it's guys like this that keep it alive.
Anyway, that was my Shibuya adventure. I didn't really meet anyone, unless you count the black guy that asked me for directions to a place I'd never heard of, but that's okay. I'll be here until July, so there's plenty of time to meet people in the world's most exciting city. Speaking of excitement, my visit to a certain store in Shibuya today yielded some information about a special event at which Wesley and I will likely be the only white people. You'll hear all about it in May, but trust me when I say I'm really looking forward to it
Also I watched Fate/Zero again.
