Turning 20 in Japan

Posted on June 22, 2007 by Jono Ori

7/8/06

The day after our arrival and the first day we could really get out and see things in Japan was my birthday, July eighth. In the morning I woke up, walked downstairs and there was a sign that said "happy birthday" on it on the way down the stairs. That was so nice! I got a few gifts from the family (John Lennon words book in Japanese, a Japanese Olympic Basketball Team warmup, and some candy) and we had some cake too.

So then after the cake, which is pictured somewhere on my picture site, we ran out to get Marina a cell phone. The phones in Japan are all cheaper and more useful than the ones in America. They email, text, and take pictures, but the pictures are like.. better quality than my digital camera and i don't know - the phones are way cooler. So she got a pretty awesome phone except for the fact that it's pink - I'm not that big on pink. I picked out which phone I'd get if i were to get a phone here.. it's this nasty ass Sony Ericsson that's water proof or water resistant, whichever one means that you can take it under water 20 feet. You could watch TV, videos of any kind (that you put on the memory card), take high quality pictures, then email them... etc etc. And it was only 240 some dollars after the exchange. Damn nice phones! Marina and I walked around a bit while the phone was getting registered and set up in her name.

Anyway, after we got Marina's phone situation squared away.. we jumped on the train with her family and went into the city. We went to this giant department store type place that had an arcade, a musical instrument store, jewelry, electronics, CDs, and housewares.. all kinds of stuff that I'd want to buy in one place. I think it was a total of 7 floors, and you take an escalator to each floor. That was pretty awesome. Anyway, we got Marina a new alarm clock (I guess her old one is busted or something) and looked at some electronics with Nori (Marina's dad) who is a complete electronics fiend.

After that we walked around in the street for a little while.. I couldn't believe the consumerism in Japan. As we walked there was someone outside each store greeting "sumimasen" ("excuse me", or "sorry", or in this case "check this out" as my girlfriend and her parents informed me) then went into another building.. In this building there was a huge arcade (not so uncommon in Japan, arcades are all over the place.. in almost every big public building), but anyway.. we went in and played around. Marina, Lisa, Nori, Yuko and I did some sticker pictures in a booth and that was exciting, then we played some games. Marina beat me in a drumming game which was kind of sad, we played a crane game to get her a minnie mouse plush keychain. We tried four times to get it and finally we did - basically you can imagine how much these things cost... we payed 400 yen (give or take 4 dollars in American) trying to get the thing, and it's probably worth about 50 yen (50 cents). Then we played this ridiculous arcade game where you try to drop ice cream into a hole with a little mechanical hand and it comes out the door or whatever. The whole game was refridgerated and had penguins on it. I was obsessed with the game... they don't have anything like that in the US. They thought it was hilarious that i liked it so much.

So after the fun at the arcade, we got in the elevator and I thought we would head back to Saitama (Marina's suburb of Tokyo - which is more or less an entire city in itself based around one train station complete with high rises, a set of public schools, etc). We didn't head back, instead we went up in the elevator to a lobby that was designed like a cave! It said "The Lock Up" in english above the door and I figured it was just a maze or something. So we went in, and sure enough there was a maze... but then at the end of the maze I was handcuffed by a japanese girl dressed in a "hot cop" type uniform (for those of us who know arrested development). I was terrified.

I was thinking it was some sort of kinky japanese bondage 20th birthday tradition or something... but it turned out to just be a jail themed restaurant. She led us to our "cell" complete with a locking barred cell door and barred windows. So we started to eat... all the food was amazing and the beer was pretty damn good too. About 40 minutes into us sitting there the whole place went completely dark. Pitch black, couldn't see anything. Then over the loud speaker in japanese someone said "alert! alert! the monsters have escaped. the security has broken down! the monsters have escaped!" so sure enough these dudes in monster suits are running around slamming into the doors of the cells and going RAWWWWRRRR and stuff like that. So Marina and her mom are screaming their heads off and covering their eyes while Nori (Marina's dad) and I are laughing our asses off and drinking. Eventually the "guards" retain control and over the loud speaker there's "there's a birthday at table 34, monsters to table 34" so.. it turns out OUR table is table 34. So a monster brings me a piece of cake with a sparkler on it and one of the guards takes a polaroid of all of us and the monster with the cake. One of the best birthday celebrations I've ever had. Right up there with my 18th birthday in Hungary!

So after we had our fill of beer and Japanese food, we left the Lock Up and headed back to the arcade to take more sticker pictures with Lisa's boyfriend who had just recently arrived. After the pictures, instead of going home.. we decided to stay in the city while Nori and Yuko went home.. so Marina, Lisa, Tacci (Lisa's boyfriend) and I went to Karaoke! We sang lots of songs and had lots of fun...

By the time we got back from the trains from the city, we were dead... so we headed up to bed pretty soon after.

This birthday was awesome.