the dregs of society...

Yesterday started out with a trip to Shinjuku to visit Hello Work with melvis (aka melting faces, aka mj son of mg, aka cabana boy, aka the destroyer) to take in the meeting we were requested to attend... what a boring time! I mentioned this in the last post, and there were somewhere around 25-30 people there and all of them where quiet, and sad looking or French. I gotta go back again on Friday to turn in the form that took 40 mins to explain, and maybe some other stuff. Not looking forward to that trip either, boring. But! a week after that I should get some green baby!

After the meeting melvis and I headed back to my place to try and watch the NCAA championship game to no avail. I've used a site to watch alot of pro sports on, and even NCAA games early in the Bowl Season, but in the later, more important games it's been completely shit! NFL games, no problem. What's going on?
After my futile efforts to see the game, we headed out across the river to Todoroki stadium to see where I'll be spending several drunkin' nights this spring and summer watching Kawasaki Frontale games. The walk took about 35 mins, and the stadium looks alright, a bit old (built in 1965) but apparently a good atmosphere to see a soccer game. The area around the stadium is kind of a giant sport/nature complex with a bunch of baseball and soccer fields, and a few parks, ponds, and a lake. I think I'm gonna take a bike ride down there again today since work didn't call me in today...
After that trip melvis and I headed back across the river into Tokyo, and said our goodbyes because he had to head to work, and I headed off to the Ota-ku library. I took the chance to make my first Japanese library card, and check out a few books. It was an interesting feeling, I know a library card is not an exceptional thing, but it's so ordinary that it made me feel part of the community, it felt like the "gaijin" tag had been dropped for that brief moment when my books were being checked out to me, of course, the books were all in English...
After the Library I headed into Ontakesan to sit down at Doutor and have a cup of coffee and do a little reading. I finished reading "into the wild" by Jon Krakauer, a great book about the death of a young man in the Alaskan bush. I highly recommend it, very much page-turning material. Also started to read a book I checked out at the library called "Shikitari" which is all about Japanese Traditions. Not really a good book, there is little in-depth information. But, oh well.

At night, I went to a new (to me) restaurant also in Ontakesan called "Pizzaria Clara" and Italian Joint that was really pretty good, had some pizza and pasta, and cheese, and it was all pretty good. Pretty exciting considering I never knew there were any decent Italian restaurants around here!
Finally, on the way back home noticed a "sento." I'd searched the area before for one, but couldn't find one anywhere. A sento is a public bath, simply put. I've been to their more natural counter part, the "onsen" (hot spring), but I've always wanted to check out a sento, so I headed home, and picked up my towel, and soap and stuff and headed back down the road to take a nice bath. It was great! I'm deffinetly gonna make some more trips back down there in the near future.

If you don't know the rules, here you go:
first: pay an entrance fee, the price is set by the government I believe and it was 460 yen to get in.
second: head through a curtain into a "locker room" kinda room, be prepared, there might be naked people waiting for you.
third: strip down, and put all your stuff in a locker. The key is usually attached to a rubber-band looking thing that you can put around your arm, because you've got no pockets.
fourth: head through the sliding door into the bathing area.
fifth: grab a bucket and sit down at a stool.
sixth: soap up and wash down.
seventh: after your all clean, jump into one of the pools, and soak the day away. There are usually some kind of massage pool, and the place I went also had an "onsen" pool with natural hot spring water that had a slight yellowish tinge to it... they say it's minerals...
eighth: jump out, give yourself a quick rinse off, and head back out to change into your street clothes.

There are usually some extras that you need to pay for, like a sauna, a hairdryer, massage chairs and the like, I skipped all that this time, but I'd like to take a shot at the sauna next time. After you're done, you feel real good, and real warm, walking home, I think my body was about 15-20 degrees warmer and the cold winter air felt pretty nice. Be cautioned all, many sento goers may be surprised to see a non-Japanese tromping through, and you will get a few looks, but for the most part, people just keep to themselves, in the guys side people don't talk to each other too much (some people talk to themselves a bit, spooky...), the birds on the other side chat it up a bit, but most people are really nice.