Katsuura Road Trip
Last week, I got an ETC card. With this
bad boy, you can go almost anywhere in Japan on
the highway for only 1,000 yen during the weekends.
It’s supposed to be very hard to get. Somehow, I was
able to snag it on a whim in a shopping mall.
To celebrate, I went on a road trip to some friends to
Katsuura.
Katsuura is a beach on the south-eastern tip of Chiba, or
Japan’s nose(?). One of the highlights of this trip would
be driving under Tokyo bay. I thought that this underwater
tunnel would come with a view, but I’ll talk about that
a little later.
Things went well from the start. Everyone was genki, even
Chuck who had the same amount of sleep as I did (2-3 hours)
the night before. I hate driving sleepy(I lost my other car
that way). My eyes got misty when I was driving home. I just
decided to park in a 7-11. When I woke up, I wasn’t sure if
I was driving or not. I realized I had my foot on the brake
for about 2 hours. A guy was staring at me in disbelief.
I went inside and got some genki juice, and then headed home.
Obuse
Hokusai
Genki Juice A
Genki Juice B
I was still very sleepy, so I picked up my coffee drinking
habit to full effect to keep us going. We would need it as
the trip took us six hours.
Chuck used the iPhone to navigate us to Katsuura. Katsuura
is a small town in the southern part of Chiba. Google Maps
is useful if you have an idea of the area around you. Otherwise,
with Japanese streets the way that they are, you WILL take
a wrong turn.
And that’s what happened. Three times.
We wound up in Yokohama, Ginza, and some other location.
We finally made it to the Tokyo Aqua line after about three
hours of driving. It was a nice little prize on the way to
Katsuura. We drove in the right lane to be soon driven off
by a roving gang of street racers. Then, we drove off into
the highway to Chiba.
It was dark, so it was too difficult to make sense of anything
in Chiba. We stopped at a 7-11 and enjoyed Onigiri produced
by AKB48. Chuck was trying to build a conversation around a pun
invovling AKB48, but I was too tired to contribute. I just
bought some coffee.
In order to get to Katsuura, we had to go down some very windy
and dark roads. Along the way, we saw a lone van with hazard
lights on. I saw a girl in there. Being chivalrous, I shouted
at Chuck.
“Ask her if she needs help.” I immediately regretted that decision
when it exited my mouth. We weren’t playing the best music at
the time (from hereon called rape jams), and we were three
foreign guys approaching one Japanese girl.
Chuck asked her if she needed help. She looked up from her phone.
She looked at us. Her eyes widened with a look of sheer terror.
She drove the car out of there fast.
Of course, it was one long road, so we followed behind her for
about 20 minutes bumping rape jams. We thought about making a
mix tape for it, Now that’s what I call
I decided to stop at a train track in the middle of nowhere with
no one around, at an ungodly hour. She was finally able to escape
from us.
Finally we reached Katsuura at night with the others. We tented
up, got approached by police, and went to bed.
I wanted to do some barefoot running in the morning, and with
enough sleep it was possible. It felt great to run on the beach..
for about 5 minutes. When I used up the beach, I ran on the
sidewalk. The sidewalk was ridiculously jagged though. I went back
and put on my shoes and resumed running.
There were sets of tunnels that maneuvered through the islands.
They had some fun grafitti in them. I found another island with
Hinomaru flags, and ran over there for a little.
Katsuura is famous for its fish market. We went over there and
found some great fish for cheap. We weren’t sure if we were going
to barbeque, so we didn’t get much of anything except some frozen
pineapple and whale meat.
We went back to found out we were going to bbq. The bbq was awesome.
Not many people interacted with us, though. Some girls stole some
stones and that was about it. I thought that Japanese guys go to the
beach to find cute girls.
To our right at packing time, two girls were sitting down on the
wall by our tents.
“I don’t think those girls are just sitting there by chance.” he said.
About two seconds later, a conversation got started. They were both
studying to be Phys. Ed. coaches around here. We were leaving Katsuura
that night, so nothing came of it.
After that, the group split up. The people we met went to Tokyo.
Me, Ed, and Chuck went to… Tokyo, too!
The plan was to go to Frijoles to buy a special dinner in Tokyo. We
had to get there before closing at 10 PM, though. We hauled ass from
Chiba, and with Chuck at the navigating helm we got lost…
Again…
and Again…
Time struck closer and closer each time. For some odd reason, we
managed to make it there 10 minutes before 10. We ordered tons of
burritos and tacos, and then ate it on the front hood of a car
(california style) in the middle of upscale Roppongi. Japanese people
stared at us, and other foreigners avoided eye contact with us.
We needed to find a place to park (because I was too tired to move),
and we found an all night spot by Shinjuku. The plan was to go to
the Shinjuku Capusle Hotel… the world famous Shinjuku capsule
hotel. I went there once, and I didn’t trust a friends insistence
about the cost (3,000 yen). Lo and behold, we went there, and it
was 4,300 yen for the capsule hotel. I told Chuck straight up,
“I’m not paying that much to go there.”
We continued walking and found a capsule hotel about two blocks down
for half price. It was Japanese Only, though. I walked inside and
talked to the attendant.
Me: 僕と友達は入いて、大丈夫ですか？(Is it ok for me and my friends to enter?)
Attendant: 大丈夫です。
Boom. We’re in for only 2,500 yen. We changed our clothes and took
a bath.
We’re on the way up to the room, and I’m enjoying the creepy ambience.
Dim lighting, and dirty pictures adorn the walls like a run down
mom and pop restaurant. I think they just picked random stuff from
Goodwill(or Off House), and posted them on the walls.
We went up a corner and Chuck said,”That’s a giant clock.”
What the hell, I thought. I turned around, and holy shit
it was a really big clock!
It felt like I was in a fun house. But not a normal fun
house. It was one with old Bob Marley posters, stained Miami
artwork and disproportionately sized clocks!
The beds were really no frills capsule beds (still better than the
last place where I couldn’t find the beds at all!). They had a small
TV and a light.
Chuck and Ed were still down to party. Chuck cracked open his Kentucky
Bourbon and him and Ed started drinking. I was debating whether or
not to party with them, until I realized that I was walking like an
old man carrying a golden egg over an active volcano. I decided to
just hit the bed.
The alarm woke me up at 8:00, 9;00, and 9:30. After 9:00, I was
ready to jet. I decided to watch TV with Ed, only to find out that
they had a porn channel the whole time. Leaving the building, on
the attendants desk, I found that they actually had a guide to the
porn channel. I mean, is anything on Japanese as interesting as this
stuff?
I found out Chuck and Ed went to the gay part of Shinjuku by
accident. Nothing much happened. We drove back home tired and
exhausted, happy to be on a mostly empty expressway.
EXTRA STORY:
After the event, we went to the Gunma forest in Takasaki. This sucker
is a big beautiful forest with many anemities and comforts. It
also has the Gunma Modern Art Museum and the Gunma History museum.
We ran into this person playing excellent guitar music and singing.
He also had a zoom pedal with a beautiful tone! He likes Inoue Yusei.
