Where's Scott?

With Mabel and Seb sleeping in late, I wander about and check out Paco Park. It’s a fascinating circular cemetery with some very elegant trees, apparently one of the more interesting sights in Manila. It appears to be a popular student hang out, and there are several groups of what appear to be Japanese youths photographing the park; very odd considering the residual bad feelings between the Japanese and the Philippines left over from the war – after seeing how difficult it was going to be to get Mabel a visa to Japan, I’d be surprised if it was any easier for these Japanese to get to Manila.

Once we get rolling, we decide to treat ourselves to a day at the spa, and grab a cycle cab up to the mall. Mabel’s very nervous about spaing on her own, but we assure her there’s nothing to fear, and check in for a superb (and quite reasonably priced) oil massage.

We decide that it’s time to head back to KL (Kuala Lumpur), and spend some time buying tickets (always a headache!).

We return to the warm, humid comfort of Manila, and Mabel arrives from Cebu to meet us. Poor Mabel’s been quite sick over the last week, and has lost quite a bit of weight, now weighing in at a little over 35 kilos (not a typo, that’s 78 lbs!). Is there a flea-weight category?

We spend the day getting Seb’s new eyeglasses (which the store has, of course, screwed up) and getting Mabel to the doctor.

We have a plan to have lunch at the sushi house that Gaku recommended (but was closed on our last trip). We arrive and stare at the small house wondering if we really have the right place – it’s down a small, quiet street in a quiet business district. We step in and find a bar seating maybe 12, most seats filled by black suited Japanese businessmen. We’re seated at the bar and order our usual: o’toro – Nope, first faux pas of the day, no ordering here, we’re instructed to relax, enjoy some tea, and wait for our fixed menu sushi to be served. What follows is 4 plates of absolutely stunning sushi. We eating with our eyes closed it’s so good! Our last plate is an option: salmon roe, or Uni (sea urchin). Both of us detest Uni, but the sushi’s so good, we decide to risk it. They give us both a monster pile of urchin; how are we going to not shame the chef if we take a nibble and can eat no more? We nibble… it’s heavenly! It almost tastes as delicate as the o’toro! We’re unsure, is the Uni that much better here, or have we finally crossed some threshold, and now, at long last, become Uni eaters?

We wander the area to get a feel for business Tokyo (and check out the Denny’s). Some Japanese men in clean black suits pile out of a van and hand us some towelettes; I guess we were a bit too dirty for their liking. We spot some more men in suits on the bridge, carefully picking up stray leaves with pincer rods and putting them in plastic bags. Seb suggests that their all part of some cult, and the towelettes we were given are laced with arsenic. The suits are just strange enough (even sporting a yellow sash) that I agree to ditch the towelettes.

We stroll across the river, and try to get our bearings; Seb fancies himself a navigator, but after we finally locate ourselves on the map he’s only off North by 90 degrees. We decide to play it safe, and stick to the subway. Since we missed the downtown of Shibuya the previous day, we opt to return and check out the shopping there.

The area near the Shibuya station is an amazing mix of shops and restaurants that we’ve all but come to expect in the shopping districts of Tokyo. There are stores stocked floor to ceiling with comic books, or small toy figurines and models inspired by them; multilevel mega-stores with everything from small plastic gems for make-your-own jewelry to robot construction kits to small, electric led-blinking lapel pins; there’s plenty of name brand clothing as well, and it’s clear that most of the shops are targeted to teens or young adults.

We spot a promising looking bar, and nip in out of the cold (and it’s getting quite cold) for a pint. The bar is decorated to be an old, seedy British bar, but the interior is spotless and quite recently decorated – like so many things Tokyo, there’s an attempt to create a small escapist environment, but the underlying character of cleanliness and attention to detail always remain (hence, an immaculate dive bar). We enjoy a few pints to steel us for the cold, and decide that we can happily spend the rest of the night here; but first we need to fetch our bags from Roppongi.

We cross over a huge crosswalk to the Shibuya station; we wait for the light with hundreds of people (none crossing against the light), and are again reminded just how dense this city is! We arrive back at the hotel and figure that before we leave the area, we should check out Roppongi Hills, and perhaps grab a bite to eat. We ask the concierge for some “awesome” sushi, and he scribbles a few choice spots on the map for us.

Roppongi Hills is difficult to navigate, being effectively circular, but lacking easy access between levels, and the stairs are outdoors in the now biting cold. We manage to locate the top sushi recommendation, and find it a tiny, 8 seater sushi bar. We settle down and order up some kama o’toro: “near-kama” is all they have, and it’s $35/piece! This better be gold trimmed sushi! We’re disappointed to find it barely on par with the sushi-boat o’toro, but decide to try some scallops just to see if it’s just a bad selection; again, very average. Apparently, you can’t pay your way into epic sushi, you have to find it yourself.

We leave a very disappointed sushi chef, and try to locate one of the other sushi houses in the Hills. Our second choice has much more atmosphere, even if, as we’ve come to expect as pale faces, we’re seated right in the back away from the rest of the Japanese clientele. We have our own chef though, and we encourage him to serve up whatever’s good, and are rewarded with some excellent sushi!

We pick up our bags, and head back to Shibuya; as we’re leaving at 7am, we’ve decided to skip the hotel the final night, and just power through the night on beer and sake. Bags in tow, we explore the windy and hilly back alleys of Shibuya. A young teenager approaches us and asks if we’ve like to have sex with her for cash – I’ve read about this being a common technique for the Tokyo teenagers as a way to pay for the latest cloths and gizmos, but I’m surprised as how open and matter-the-fact they are about it; we decline, and she turns and asks the guys walking behind us, no shame in the approach at all. It’s snowing lightly now (1st snowfall of the year for Tokyo!), and so we find a bar that’s open late, and decide to camp there. We’ve chosen well, the bar is small and warm, and actually has some interesting graffiti scrawled in the wood walls going back to the 60s. They’re playing some excellent tunes, and we have the place almost to ourselves. We put away a few pints, and plan our final hours in Tokyo.

We have some credit left for the rail line, and decide to head back to the first sushi house we’d found the first night in Electric City (where, as luck would have it, we’d had some of the best sushi of the trip). We leave the bar about 4am, and grab the first train for the far side of the city. It’s a 20min ride, but we both manage to fall asleep on the train and miss our stop by a few stations ;). We finally walk in the sushi house just as twilight is breaking, and true to the first night, enjoy some absolutely fantastic fish!

We seriously consider the possibility of forgetting our departure time… and almost… almost… stay.

Seb’s brother Jascha has suggested we check out Yayogi park, so we jump the train for the far side of the city. We arrive to a packed station and shuffle out with a morass of people to the bridge leading to the Meiji shrine. Grouped on the bridge are dozens of young girls dressed up in absurdly “cute” costumes having their pictures taken by and with the tourists.

We pass through this insanity and into the shrine’s gardens, and to a quiet and serene environment a world apart from the Tokyo we’ve seen. We walk to the temple, where a (very public) wedding is taking place in full traditional outfits, but our hunger forces us to seek out lunch.

As we near the bridge again, we hear some American 50’s music playing near by, and follow it to Yayogi park. At the entrance are about 20 young men all dressed in full, black James Dean leathers dancing their hearts out. The music sounds American, but is actually in Japanese. Elvis hair slicked back, dark sunglasses and shoes worn down to a torn, ratty mess, these guys trade turns being the focus dancer in the middle of the circle while the others dance around him. They look like they’ve been dancing for hours! Groupies in 50’s high school girls outfits add even more flair.

We walk further into the park and find dozens of “theme” groups, people performing samurai swordplay, juggling, drumming, even cowboy style line dancing. If you have a hobby, there’s a group here for you to hang out with. Most everyone is dressed the part, you have to come prepared if you want to play 🙂

We’re still starved, and follow our noses across the street to a street food fair. There’s all manner of fried, boiled and BBQ food here, some with heinously long lines. We pick one of the longer ones and grab some unbelievably greasy fried pork dumplings (and a nice local beer). We keep walking and find a hundreds waiting in a windy parking lot to get into an auditorium – whatever is going on, it must be worth freezing you ass off for! Around the corner, another line, this time all 14 year old girls in nearly identical Goth dress and makeup. Only in Japan would you conform so perfectly to be a rebel, and stand politely in line. “Me thinks they don’t quite get it.”

We stroll back towards the park, and find some sidewalk street bands; and they’re good! Wacky outfits, take no prisoners attitude, and under it all, passionate gifted signers. We watch agape, and wonder what these guys do the rest of the week!

We jump the train back to Ginza, and grab a bite in a sushi boat house under the tracks – which is (surprisingly) excellent. We pay a return visit to our Internet Lounge (we’re members, remember!) to pick a new hotel in Roppongi, where we’ve decided to make our next camp.

Roppongi is much seedier than Ginza, and we’re immediately accosted by aggressive Nigerians trying to set us up with hookers. We try to wave them off, but they’re relentless, and we decide to escape to the hotel. All this sushi, and we’re finally craving red meat: we ask the concierge for a Kobe suggestion. The restaurant’s just around the corner, and we fight through the Nigerians again to get to it. It’s very elegant (we’re a bit underdressed in our fleeces), but they’re polite, and sit us as far in the back as possible. We order up the full Kobe 1 lb steak with a top bottle of sake. It’s absolutely mouth-watering, richly marbled, and quite literally melts in our mouth. I remember the last bite being as good as the first!

We exit out the back way to avoid the Nigerians (a few still find us), and we decide to escape to Roppongi Hills, the “city within a city” mall nearby; sadly, it’s mostly closed for the night. It’s also very cold and windy out, so when we see a mellow looking basement bar sign, we jump at it. The bar is miniscule! There are perhaps 10 people filling the place, 6 are the band. It’s warm, friendly, and wonderful, but sadly just about to close. We chat up the staff a bit, and ask for a suggestion for late night drinking, and the barman promises to show us a nice place.

Sadly, despite our attempts to describe “relaxing bar,” he leads us straight to a nasty, thumping disco. We convince him it’s not what we’re after, and spot a British pub. We buy him a beer and Seb watches some football hoping to find the Arsenal game. Bah, they’re closing too, we call it a night.

Yes, the sake is phenomenal, as is the bill! We’re closing The Bar at 4:30am and my credit card’s been declined! They run it several times, but it’s clear something’s very wrong. A quick call to the intl customer care, and we discover someone has tried to use the wrong PIN on the credit card; it appears yours truly, in another failed attempt to extract cash, stuffed the Visa card (not the ATM card) into a machine just downstairs, and managed trigger a suspension. Ooops. The shame …

We eventually settle the bill, and grab a cab for the Tsukiji fish market. It’s still pitch black out when we hit the market, and immediately run into a fast talking young women who’s also in search of the tuna auction. She’s from Africa, but claims to have lived some time in London, which interests Seb who quizzes her and quickly comes to the conclusion that she’s putting on an act and hasn’t lived in London at all. Nevertheless, she’s much better prepared for the fish market, and quickly leads us to the auction, something I’m sure neither Seb nor I would be capable of in our drunken and exhausted state.

We watch a while from our “visitors pen” while the professionals drag around huge, solid frozen 7′ tunas around the floor, and decide we have no idea what’s going on. We decide to wander the floor a bit and find a wondrous variety of crab, squid, octopus, shellfish, and dozens of unidentifiable species (of presumably edible) crawling and swimming species; some live, some frozen. The warehouses are huge, and there’s the constant threat of being run over by the many fast moving mini-forklifts moving the huge quantity of ocean bounty from seller to buyer.

A “must” at the market is to visit one of the sushi houses on sight, for the ultimate in fresh fish. We locate one that’s on the “epic” list, and join the hour long line outside. At this point, Seb and I are both absolutely famished and absolutely destroyed. We barely stay conscious in line, and can only vaguely recall the rapid seating, eating and leaving that followed (they run a tight ship at the market sushi stops!). I have an inkling that is was some exceptional raw fish, but we’ll have to go back someday and confirm it 😉

We sleep until well after noon, and finally have to roll out of bed to make our lunch date. We meet mom, dad and friends Gayle and Jim at the hotel, and head out to find the sushi house they’ve picked. Even with written directions, the restaurant defies our best efforts at discovery, and we eventually start begging help off locals. The spot couldn’t be more difficult to find, buried down a narrow, scantily marked stairwell, and with a shingle nothing like our written directions. We have a fairly average sushi lunch in a private room (but hey, we’re spoiled rotten), but the company is great, and we have a great time trading stories.

After lunch, we make a point to show everyone the awesome crosswalk by the Sony store (you know, the one with the diagonal walkways where everyone clashes in the middle – it was in Lost in Translation!). My parents travel schedule pulls them away, so we promise to meet for a night cap later. Seb and I grab a quick coffee to warm up, and decide to play it easy and shop a bit; we return to the Sony store and waste some time gawking at overpriced gadgets we can find at home (disappointing!).

After Sony kicks us to the curb, we realize we’re still wiped from the previous night, and start looking for places to put up our feet. We recall a “relaxation lounge and i-cafe” we spotted last night (we’re learning to look up, it’s on the 3rd floor), and hunt it down again. Bah, club membership required! We’re desperate, and sign up (like $5), and find it’s fantastic: dark, quiet, with private cubes complete with ‘puter, headphones and comfy chairs to nap in for a bit. Money very well spent! (Place even has a shower, massage chairs private movie rooms, espresso machine, and comic library! Where are these in the states?)

Refreshed, we head to the Imperial to meet the parents for dinner. I have a great recommendation from my friend Gaku, but the concierge can’t get them to answer the phone; we cab it down there anyway, but the place is dark. We settle for a very ordinary sushi house without a whip of character, but decent fish.

After sup, we “drag” mom and dad back up to “The Bar” to experience the sake and the view (hell, even the chocolate is amazing!). We don’t want to leave (ever), but the parents have an early date, and so we wish them happy trails, and decide to turn in early.

We wake with a plan to not leave the lodging to the last minute. We motor down to the 5-star hotel’s meager i-cafe (2 English computers) and at extortionate rates find a couple of real i-cafe locations. That sorted, we wander the town a bit and I listen to Seb lament that we missed the “girls that dress up like schoolgirls” area by about a block the previous night (his internet time was well spent!). We have a nice breakfast coffee and then try to find on of the i-cafes on the list. Problem is, without a map, a way to translate the street signs, or even an understanding of the street addresses (5 – 7 – 42 means where?) we’re hopeless. After asking around a bit we finally locate one – in plain sight, and totally invisible. At least now we can look for a hotel without it costing a night in one.

We decide to head to the “shopping” part of town: Ginza. With a nice map in hand, Seb suggests we head to Times Square, and a huge bookstore that’s supposed to be there. After many escalator excursions, and general circling common to mall travel, we find the bookstore at the far end of a long skyway (Tokyo has a love of the elevated walkway). I flip through the guidebooks while Seb tries to find his sister-in-law Lisa’s latest novel on the shelves. He can’t.

With a guidebook in hand, at least we now have a clue. The park nearby looks like an excellent detour, but by the time we’ve found the gate, it’s closed for the day. I flip through the guidebook, and find the Toto Showroom. Perfect! Toto makes all the fancy toilets in Japan, and when I say fancy, we’re talking Japanese style fancy! As we all know Seb spends 1/4 of his waking life on the can, and the showroom idea is an instant winner. We flag a cab and make for the 29th floor of some office complex where said showroom is hiding. We’re a little disappointed there’s not a whole floor dedicated to toilets (turns out they make all forms of bathroom gear as well), but we spot a “trylet” – ie. a bathroom splash demonstration room. As I approach my trylet, it sees me coming and thoughtfully lifts its lid, and warms its seat in anticipation. I sit down, and a quiet deodorizer kicks into gear – what a thoughtful, comforting device this is. On the wall, there’s a complex remote full of buttons, all labeled in Japanese of course. A try a few at random and, whirrrrr … click … pssss Whoa! Water sprayed right up my anus! Ooooo … oooo … where’s the off, off, oooo. Noooo! Stronger bad, very bad, this one? Hot seat, hot seat, not right. Yellow panic button? *flush* noooo, nooo, corner button? Ahhhhhh. Ok, so definitely not for the amateur!

We finally dry off (Seb’s had a similar experience!) and decide that we can settle our ruffled feathers with some sushi. We explore the basement mall of the building (did I mention any otherwise unused space in Tokyo is a mall?) and locate a quiet sushi bar, so quiet in fact, we have it completely to ourselves. We sit at the bar facing own, personal master sushi chef. The place is very formal, and three assistants stand quietly in the corner, only moving to present us with hot towels or fill our tea cups. We start with our ever faithful otoro. Our chef pulls a wooden drawer with sushi from below his counter and expertly slices and presents our fish, and then politely steps back to wait our next order. This is serious old school, we’re in heaven. We order a scallop, and he quickly appears with a shell, expertly opens it, slices out the still twitching scallop and prepares it for us. That’s fresh! We continue with this for as long as we can stuff sushi in our bellies, the whole restaurant at our beckon call. Why would you ever want to leave?

Physical limitations eventually come into play, and we’re forced to confront the fact that we still have to get across town and find our hotel. We again expertly divine the secrets of the Tokyo subway, and arrive at a dark, cold and windy station. Fearing a repeat of our first night’s limb numbing experience we pay close attention to the map, and duck into our hotel just before any permanent damage is done.

After a quick shower and a bit of a thaw out, we strike out for the main shopping strip at the cross between Harumi and Ginza Dori. Now we’re talking! Electric city has the name, but Ginza has the lights. The Dori is ablaze, neon lights crawl skyward into the distance in both directions, every major designer and brand name is there. I’m thumbing the map, and realize that we’re only a few blocks from the Imperial Hotel where mom and dad have just arrived at the start of their Japanese cruise trip. We orient ourselves and make the cold windy few blocks to the hotel, and it’s warm and inviting lobby.

I call up, and they’ve just checked in. We pop up to their room and spend awhile catching up. Sadly, they’ve eaten, and we’re starving, so we promise to catch them for lunch later, and head down to ask the concierge for a nice local sushi joint. Sushi’s just across the street, and we find it’s the same 24hr chain from the previous night (Sushizanmai for reference). We pay a bit of the “white tax” waiting in the cold somewhat longer than the Japanese patrons around us, and Seb eventually walks in and demands some of the open seats visible at the bar. We quickly divine why the sushi is so good here: they’re pulling out flounders and cod from their tanks, and cutting and serving them minutes after they were swimming! We have some more excellent sushi (the scallops again are heavenly!) and gorge for several hours until our guts can take no more.

The Imperial’s concierge has given us a top notch sake bar to find, called The Bar. We try to flag a taxi outside, but the driver points us to the front of the line, several blocks out of sight. The taxi line is insane, 2 lanes wide, and stretches away in both directions; the driver we’re talking to is facing the other way, but is nonetheless in line, as it has looped the block! The dinner beer and sake has steeled us against the cold, and The Bar not far, so we decide to hoof it.

The Bar is in Shiodome, which sounds grand, but is just a few office buildings with a mall in the bottom floors, and is totally closed up when we get there. Our directions are in the wrong building, and we spend some time wandering the empty skyways looking for some life. Seb’s ready to bail for the hotel, he’s cold and tired and we want to hit the fish market early; but I want to at least see what the bar is like. We eventually locate a reference to it on a placard in a deserted office building, looks like a bust. Just then, a spectacularly dressed Japanese couple walk by us and step into the elevator. I follow them in just to see where their headed, and a minute later we’re at the top floor in a majestic foyer that has several restaurants and The Bar! $15 cover, but screw it, we’ve come this far, and Oh My God, what a view! The bar sits low (you sit at floor level), with the tenders behind even lower. It’s made of a beautiful solid dark wood, and as you sit at it, you look out over a 180 degree view of downtown Tokyo. The bar is quiet, with some nice reflecting pools and a few other groups enjoying the relaxing atmosphere. I immediately fall in love with it.

We plant ourselves down, and learn the bar’s open ’til 4am. We decide up front to spend all night here drinking sake, pull an all nighter, and head for the fish market at dawn! An ohhhh, the sake is really, really good.

Ok, so the capsule has a few flaws, one being that if you roll over and hit the wall, you might wake yourself up; and I’m a roller. Clearly I wasn’t drunk enough! Sleep aside, it was cool…

Seb and I decide to check out Electric City and see if it lives up to its name. The first big store we hit is incredible All the variety of Fry’s Electronics could easily fit in half of one of these floors; items are stacked high, there’s barely any repetition, and it goes on and on, floor after floor, cameras, phones, displays, gadgets, gizmos… totally overwhelming. First store.

Hunger quickly overtakes our technolust however, and we start wandering in search of sushi. Electric Town is clearly not a hotbed of sushi restaurants however, and we eventually find a quaint tea house for a coffee and cake. The place is directly out of a history books, and looks like it’s been untouched by modernity for 50 years (and has probably even had the same gaggle of old ladies yapping in the corner for as long!). The coffee is plain black, but the cake is nice, and the house is quiet and meticulously kept, and a welcome escape from the throng outdoors.

After a nice break, we re-enter the madness, and shop some more. The stores here are very busy. They tend to be narrow and very tall, escalators can take you up 8 floors, each one crammed floor to ceiling with all manner of goods from watches to edible underwear, schoolgirl outfits (for play acting) to blenders, fluffy animal pickup game arcades to snack foods and DVDs – and all that on just one tiny floor of the eight! On the top floor of one we find an ice cream cafe and a cabaret theater! There’s no rhyme or reason, just everything crammed in and stacked high.

We decide to head to the pachinko part of town for the next night (“gambling” center, not really legal, but popular nonetheless). My phone doesn’t work in Tokyo, and we haven’t seen an i-cafe yet, so we’re getting a bit concerned about lodging! We grab the train, and impress ourselves by finding our way without help, and hit the new district with a mission. Prices here are much steeper than our capsule, and we don’t find much for less than $150 a night. Eventually we tire of lugging our bags in the cold, and decide to splurge for the Hyatt (not too bad with Seb’s flight crew discount). We check in and I nip downstairs for an espresso: $10! Well, its the Hyatt :P. I drink and sulk over the price, and watch 3 young Japanese girls consume (based on my menu) more than $300 in tiny cakes in about 15 minutes; dollars don’t mean much here I guess.

We jump out to brave the cold and find some nice sushi and sake, and wander the streets a bit. We begin to notice that’s there’s much more to the town than ground floor. There’s a huge variety of restaurants and bars, stores and hotels upstairs and down! We randomly pick a building and hit 5 in the elevator, and discover a tiny (as in fits 10 customers tiny) bar with a really nice chillout groove. We ask “sake?” and get a “we have no idea what you want” look, and reluctantly return to the street to hunt some more. Are we saying “sake” wrong?

We find the perfect sake restaurant, but ah, no credit cards. Out again. It’s getting cold, and we decide to split the sake-sushi hunt, and just grab sushi. We pop into a pachinko hall and realize that we have no idea how this is played; people are holding a handle while small ball-bearings are flying around in front of them, bouncing off pins and sometimes making the cartoon characters in video behind the play do strange things. Hmm, perhaps we should look this up on the web first…

We spend a day sorting hotels and flights (never ending when your traveling!), and eventually bid Mabel goodbye at Manila airport (where’s she’s also flying out to Cebu), and step out of the 32C sun of the Philippines and into the 7C wind of downtown Tokyo. Neither Seb nor I have cold weather gear (Seb’s just bought a fleece, under which is about 4 t-shirts, I’m about the same) and when we leave the train station near our hotel, we realize we’re in a spot of bother. We’ve booked a capsule inn in Electric City for the first night, and we have a rough map to get there with. However, we realize we can’t actually read any of the street signs (in Japanese), or compare with our map (in English). In addition, the late night streets are dark and deserted, the wind biting, and we have no cash. Well, we agree, at least it’s not raining!

We finally find several ATMs as we pop into some late night groceries to warm up, but despite having about 50 networks listed on them, they happily spit out all our cards, and come just short of laughing at us! Looks like the ATMs aren’t really for non-Japanese. We circle the station once, getting colder by the minute (Seb esp. so!) and finally guess at our bearings, and make a bee-line for our hotel. We almost walk right past it, but fortunately Seb, in a desperate attempt to prevent permanent limb loss, ducks in the door to escape a total freeze – he’s been in 26C plus for 2 years, his blood is a bit thin!

The inn is very small and narrow, and the proprietor quickly gestures that we should remove our shoes, and shown where the shoe lockers are! We’re expected (thank god!), and we swap our shoe key for a locker key. Guys and girls, different floors, 11 floors in all (it’s narrow, but tall!), and we head to the guys locker floor and manage, somehow, to cram our bags in the tiny lockers.

This trip is all about the food, and we’re starved! We corner a fellow round eye, and learn that we can only get cash at a post office, and you can find them on helpful “info” maps scattered about. We steel ourselves, and brave the cold again. We find a map, but can’t see a post office, but do find a nice walk-in sushi bar that takes visa (we’re saved!). We pull up a couple stools, and have some absolutely fantastic tuna belly, eel, and scallops, capped with a nice beer and some miso. We’re in heaven, and savor every bite, chewing ever so slowly! The trip’s already worth it, and we just got here!

After eating as much as it seemed polite to (and then a bit more), we head back to our capsules. We watch a very drunk Japanese man ahead of us whose absolutely perfected the drunken stagger. We follow him straight to our capsule inn, where he’s turned away (full, or too drunk? We don’t know). We head up and hit the showers. Wow! The shower has 4 spray heads plus a shower that gives you a fantastic overall hot wash; the shower alone is worth the $40 for the room ;). We head into the capsule area (quietly) to the slight smell of beer and stinky feet, and the snoring of many a drunken Japanese man. The capsules themselves are 1 meter square and about 8ft deep (closed with a roll screen), has a small TV, radio, alarm, and a thin futon and covered blanket – but that’s it. This is basic, and perfect.

A Japanese visa for Mabel is going to take over a week, if she can get one at all. Seb needs to be back in the UK in two weeks, and so he suggests putting Mabel up in a great hotel in Cebu (near her friends) and going to Tokyo anyway. Mabel isn’t having any of it; Seb’s apparently said if she couldn’t go, he wouldn’t either, and she’s furious that he’s changed his mind! Tokyo is a trip of a lifetime for Seb though (he and I have talked about it for years) and he really wants to go. He argues that he’s spent the last month doing and paying for everything with Mabel’s family, and he’s earned enough credit for a few days in Japan. Mabel is immovable though, and there appears to be a real battle brewing…

In the end, Seb learns the real reason for Mabel’s anxiety – it’s not a fear of separation, but of abandonment! Mabel believes that even after all the time they’ve been together, Seb’s not coming back for her! Once these fears come to light and can be discussed, Mabel agrees to stay in Cebu (in a nice 4 star with a pool), and we start looking at how to get at to all that sushi hiding in Tokyo.

We’ve made a few good plans on the internet, and we pack up early to head to Cebu. The whole family’s bailing out of the house, so we’re blessed with the “bigger boat” that promises to make the journey somewhat drier than we’ve been used to! The boat drops us at Maya, and we bid farewell to most of Mabel’s family who are headed back to Leyte (and home). We opt to switch to the AC bus in Bogo, and travel “in style” (as much as that’s possible) the rest of the trip to Cebu.

In Cebu, we get a chance to visit Mabel’s brother/sister Michelle’s house where she plans to grab a bag she’s left there and repack some belongings for the UK. Michelle’s house is in a very rough market, and if we thought we stuck out before, we’d seen nothing yet! Just by standing about while Mabel packs, we draw a large crowd of all ages. One of Mabel’s cousins discretely guards our bags (and backs) from local thieves while Mabel busily chooses what to discard and what to keep from her life’s belongings.

Michelle invites us up to her room… this is an adventure I’m not sure I can put in words. The entrance is a dark alley (no, really a tunnel) hidden between two of the market’s stalls. The ceiling’s low and hangs with rags and webs, at our feet is a a long muck puddle that we follow in the near blackness. By a small naked bulb we find a small wooden stepladder that looks like’ll barely hold our weight. We climb gingerly, and then thread our way between close walls of exposed beams, and try not to tread on some cute puppies that have made a home in a corner. Trying not to hit our head again, we eventually make it to Michelle (and her lover’s) “nest,” a 8x9ft room with a small bed and TV on a box as about it’s only contents; it’s surprisingly clean given it’s surroundings, and there’s even some nice fabric hanging around the bed. Above her, below, and basically on all sides are other small rooms about the same size. Mabel later tells us that they have a small bunsen burner for cooking dinner, and Seb and I both immediately point out the incredible, blazing inferno that will someday engulf Michelle’s house! She really must move! But at $12/month, it’s all they can manage.

Once we sort out Mabel’s life, we bail for the airport, Manila, and the Park Oasis hotel (H’s old haunt)