10 VII 07, Being the Latter of Two Parts
Saturday night brought more communal joy on the town, starting with a concert at a subterranean venue called Yoyogi Zoo. the bands: Vasallo Crab 75 and Vish. you have to respect their way with words. VC75 was a catchy and invigorating exercise in rock and punk. the lead man was a bean pole in a scarlet sweater, shaved head under a black fedora that he manipulated in comical displays of showmanship. Vish was a really mellow (but enjoyable) act... talented and fun, but much farther down the pop end of the spectrum than i'd normally enjoy. Other Neil, Lane and i had no complaints - the two girls in the band were cute and charismatic. haha.
and then, well, you know the rest. nomihodai karaoke.
Sunday was a precision engineered, as though by lab coat-wearing madmen at Intel, ridiculous Day of Entertainment across Tokyo. this was a solo exercise, and every friggin' moment rocked.
started the day (in the early afternoon) at the Sunshine International Aquarium, which has my vote for the most smile-inducing name in history. it was on the 10th floor and roof of an immense building, with covered but open air zoo enclosures ringed by the aquarium proper. there was a splash tank and rocky outcrop with about thirty little penguins being cleaned and fed. i didn't recognize the species until a worker picked one up by the scruff and it immediately identified itself as a jackass penguin. common names have never been more accurate.
there was also a display with huge white pelicans (engaged in terrifying acts of snatching and fighting over fish), other birds, and a proudly displayed outdoor exhibit of small (1m) ocean sunfish. the Japanese love those fish, which they call mambou.
a walk-in vivarium had all manners of strange mammals: tamandua, lemurs, armadillos, and a mouse (i suspect an inadvertent display), among others. one lemur was in a tiny cage. i was upset until i saw another one running around with the 'dillos, and realized that it was probably just in time-out. the armadillos rooted about, but one pig-faced and plucky fellow kept grunting and trying to scramble up the log partition. it was greedily engaged in lapping up a dollop of lemur poop on the fence.
the aquarium itself was extremely impressive given its relatively small size. there were some preposterous invertebrates there that i could not identify except in the broadest possible guesses. literally alien.
dashed across town to the Sony building, where there are five or six (narrow) floors of product showrooms. the first staircase is touch sensitive and follows your path with whimsical LED lights and a tonal scale that rises or falls depending on your path. there was some great stuff on display, like HD video cameras and immense Bravia sets. the PS3, their current standard bearer of underperformance, was notably underrepresented, the only console streaming a dvd for a laptop or some such.
sun was going down behind Tokyo's omnipresent and emotionally oppressive, gray stratus roof, so i finally got on to the very serious business at hand. took a sweet elevated train to the island of Odaiba, which was recently reclaimed from Tokyo Bay. the entire bloody thing is huge entertainment complexes and hotels. first stop: Toyota Megaweb.
Megaweb is odd - a thinly veiled Toyota/Lexus showroom with free games and interactive displays on B1. the whole cavernous expanse was redolent with New Car Smell and citrus. i spent a while gawking at and sitting in a 7.3 million yen ($61K) Lexus rocketship and got on with the games. this was a good one.
downstairs, two racing simulation pods - complete with tilting hydraulics and 120+ degree display - running Gran Turismo 4. there were a fair number of people in line: a couple older guys, a teenager and his girlfriend, and a gaggle of middle school-age boys. i watched one after the other embarrass themselves. the poor girl was the worst offender - she was like a ping pong ball, ricocheting from the steel barrier at one end of the track to the next, going nowhere. i honestly have no idea how she did it. her boyfriend, who was no great shakes himself, looked like he was about to piss himself laughing.
finally, finally it was my turn. the crazy gaijin loped up, nodded to the girl running his pod, theatrically turned around his Astros cap and strapped in. 3..2..1 - i opened that mother up. there was a looong straightaway after a couple psychotic hairpins toward the end, and i got my machine to scream across the line so fast that the sim shuddered, modeling my car preparing to break up on the track. the kids were seriously cheering. not only was i the sole person to complete the course in the half hour i watched, but i set a new record (i assume for the day, and this was 930pm). hahaha. i gave the kids the V sign and strutted off, heart pounding.
connected to Megaweb was an immense warehouse of an arcade called Tokyo Leisure Center. any game you can imagine - besides the video variety, i hit a small batting cage - and haunted houses.
now, visitors here unfamiliar with my blogs of old may not appreciate the tremendous degree to which i, if you will excuse the term, am retarded for Halloween. as of June 22 (i sent Clay an email at the time), the annual bug bit me fiercely and irrevocably. it is too early... i needed an outlet. arcades with features like "Hell House" are an appropriate vent. it wasn't bad, considering it was entirely automated save the girl in a witch costume selling tickets. it made me dream of October.
finished the night at the famous Sega Joypolis. you have to stand before a futuristic hatch that dramatically hisses open before letting you enter a dim, electric blue-lit three story wonderland. there were honestly far fewer traditional games than i expected. rather, the bulk of the complex is occupied by rides of different flavors. physical thrills are on the first floor... spinning, sliding things to induce nausea and reunions with one's lunch. the top two floors have either elaborate booths for playing light gun games, movie rides, or "4-D movies". the latter are fun 3-D (with glasses) movies with lots of clever Vincent Price tricks thrown in. your seat will buck back at a jolt on screen, hot air is blown in your face when there's fire, fog fills the room, and so on. i went to one called Dark Chapel, about an impossibly hot witch summoning demons beneath a church.
before leaving, i hit up an odd, submarine-shaped attraction called Aquarena. it was an interactive digital aquarium! 40" HDTVs were arrayed about the room running decent aquarium sims. the fun part was that when you touched the screen or a fish, the program would react accordingly. touch the open water and a food pellet may descend into the tank. touch a rock and a terrifying moray will leap out and snap at your finger (trust me, you'll jump the first time). if you're persistent, you'll discover quirky parts of the sim... drawing on screen, lining up fish and tapping on them to generate musical notes, distorting them into obese leviathans... it was awesome.
i made it home from clear across Tokyo with about two bucks left to my name. hallmark of a great day.
