katzu and i have much in common; many tattoos, piercings, ever changing colored hair, sensitive, shy, and today we both had yellow shoes. he is a very sweet person serving as my tour guide at the moment. he spent 3 whole days showing me around tokyo, and i appreciate it deeply. today we went to ueno, where there are many museums and a zoo. we opted to forget the museums, because the lines were very long, and went to the zoo, which was cheap and not as crowded. katzu said he is afraid of animals, but i insisted he learn to "become one" with them, since he has a tiger and a dragon on his body. so he made the plunge. this zoo is where the internationally famous ling ling, the giant panda lives. the highlight of the zoo, the gem of tokyo. so we waited in line to visit this legendary bear, and what an anti-climatic experience it was. ling ling can't be more than 4 or 5 feet tall and was sleeping, sprawled out on a ledge in the sun. some giant panda indeed.
there were pink flamingos, penguins, and the best ones, the polar bears with their own ice cage and waterfalls. i always thought polar bears were white, but these bad boys were brown. well, tan, actually, and quite irritated and bored. after awhile, i feel sorry for zoo animals and always get depressed upon leaving. i think i'm done with zoos.
we found an average indian restaurant and sat down to a curry meal and noticed the staff kept apologizing to katzu "coming, sir, coming!" i guess this happens all the time to him, because he has the traditional japanese yakuza style tattooing, and those guys get treated with respect. did you know people, both men and women, who are tattooed are not allowed to use spas, hot springs or the man capsule sleep chambers? such a bummer for me. who knew? not that i was going to use the capsules, but hot springs would have been nice.
speaking of yakuza, we stopped in crazy crowded freaky shinjiku on the way home. i made katzu take me to the ghetto side of town, with the strip clubs, prostitutes and other seedy folk, and to my delight, pointed out a pile of 20something young yakuza boys. none of them sporting the infamous "punch perm" which i guess i so, last year.
1 comment:
Cool yellow shoes! I thought Katsu was cute and sweet, too. He looks a kind of Kawaii to me, though I know most guys don't like to be described as Kawaii...
You gotta go to East side of downtown Tokyo - another type of ghetto part of Tokyo - to see punch permed guys. They're real Yakuza who protect our town, but don't attempt to take a picture!!!
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