A Normal Day for Them, an Interesting One for Me
Anyway, after the liquor store we jumped in the car and took Marina to a legal building (more or less the Saitama township building) to get her living situation registered. You have to have yourself registered as far as where you live and stuff in order to go to an accredited college here in Japan. So, she had to get her proof of residency and then fax that off to Waseda along with a copy of her high school diploma and her passport. So, long story short.. we sat around and did that and I just watched this adorable little kid in a stroller who was next to us the whole time rather than pay attention to what Marina was doing.
After finishing Marina’s registration we got back in the car and drove to what Marina and Yuko described as “a big ghetto drug store”, where gang members and ‘yellow trash’(Yuko's words - "they can’t be white trash, because they’re not white.. right?") shop. The only way I could identify it if I saw it again is that there is an enormous inflatable penguin on the top of it [editor's note: this sounds like Don Quixote]. So Yuko grabbed some laundry detergent and Marina looked around at some stuff so I went and wandered. This place had three or four floors and it was just a big hodgepodge of stuff. There were groceries and cleaning type things (for very, very cheap) and also a lot of stuff that you might find in Spencer’s, and also quite a bit of clothing, electronics and an interesting array of DVDs. So after looking around for a little bit, I found a belt that I decided to get. It was about 495 yen, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.35 American, so the price was right. The belt had comic strips on it… just random comics pieced together with some solid Engrish, also. I looked through their selection of underwear also, and although I found a pair of cool boxers that I wanted to get (with the name and mascot of a Japanese snack food on there) they were a large and large looked way too big. Upon further inspection of the underwear selection, I saw a couple pairs of boxer-brief type underwear with, get this, a sort of penis shaped extension on the front. After looking at the pictures on the top of the packs of boxers it became clear that you’re supposed to put your penis IN this little cloth “tube” that extended from the genital region of the boxers and briefs. Unfortunately, the colors weren’t really for me. I also didn’t have my camera, so I have no proof of this. Trust me, it exists.
So after more browsing in this enormous place, I finally ran into Yuko and she led me to a room tucked back in the back of the place. She kind of gave me a push into the room and started to walk in the other direction. The room was completely filled with cheap Asian porn DVDs, sex toys, lubricants, condoms, and other things you might need. There were the kind of dildos that you put batteries in and they wiggle around, and there was also an ice dish that was shaped like a penis for… you know what. Anyway, I felt uncomfortable in this room so I started to leave, but not before spotting an unbelievably “good” (I don’t know if you can call it good) deal on porn DVDs. There was a 5 pack, two and a half hours on each disc, for 1495 yen. For those of you who are keeping track and understand the exchange… that’s about 14 dollars American (!!) . If you’ve ever even looked at a shelf full of porn in an American video store, you know how expensive that stuff is. It’s about 30 dollars a DVD, and most of them would make you vomit (as a film snob I can say that not many porn DVDs are tastefully done, unfortunately), so this was an unbelievable price. I know what you’re thinking: even though I was encouraged to by Marina because of the good price, I didn’t buy it. So then we left. After leaving and thinking about it later, I should’ve bought it for those crazy porn lovers Mitch and Ian (friends of mine from school). Sorry, fellas, next time.
After our excursion to the bazaar type place with the huge inflatable penguin on the roof we went back to the house to grab some things, then we headed to Yuko's friend's house. We went and met Yuko's girlfriends and her one girlfriend's kids. We all went to dinner at a very traditional locals only type japanese place down the street, drank a lot of beer and ate a lot of new stuff. I met Yuko's friend's son Shingo, and although he doesn't speak much (really any) English, we became pretty good friends and got pretty loaded together. I discovered my favorite Japanese beer! Asahi Super Dry. mmmm delicious. It was here I made my fatal flaw. Drunkenly agreeing to go to a public bath later in the week.
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