40 Days of Summer (in Japan) - Part Juuhachi

I was set on visiting Yoyogi Park today, because I didn't think I'd have very many free weekends left. I wanted to just sit down somewhere and read my comic books, and maybe enjoy the exciting weekend life that seems to be the only out let for most Japanese.

My host family offered to let me borrow their bicycle to get to the park, which was only half an hour's ride away. I really wanted to try cycling around Tokyo, so I eagerly accepted.

"Back in my day, we ain't had none o' dem schmancy GPS thingummies."

I realised very quickly that this wasn't going to be the relaxing joyride that I expected it to be. For one, Koike-san's bicycle was very tall, too tall for me even with the seat at its lowest. Only by tiptoeing could I touch the ground. I had to push off like a ballerina.

Also, pedestrians. I'm not experienced enough to cycle on the road, and I have no idea what the road cycling laws for Japan are anyway, so I was biking on the sidewalk most all the time. And it's freaking scary, because the sidewalks are really narrow and there are people everywhere and the blindness tiles are so bumpy and I kept swerving and everything. And man, uphill biking is crap.

I got lost in Shibuya. I made a wrong turn somewhere, and instead of heading down the road and following the Yamanote line to the park, I kept swerving back and forth and I couldn't find the bloody railway line. This plus the fact that the human traffic is too saturated to cycle around Shibya, so I'm walking around pushing my bike and asking people which way Yoyogi Park is. At one point I accidentally cycled into the entrance way of the NHK Broadcasting Studios and was stopped by a security guard.

I finally get to the park, but at the opposite entrance to the one I was aiming for. And I find myself right smack in the middle of an ASEAN Festival. (Well, still better that the Tokyo Rainbow Pride After Party.) So there's me swerving between flea market stalls and food merchants and bumping into people and trying to get to the park since I was supposed to meet Mel and I was already an hour late.

I have not seen Southeast Asian food for two weeks, and I really do not care. That's how much I love Japanese food.

I was happy to find that the percussion band from two years ago was still there, still jamming to awesome syncopation and rhythm. It looked like it had less members than before though; maybe it's just this week, or maybe their members really dwindled over the years. Still, it didn't seem like any of them were affiliated; two guys came along, took out their drums, and just joined in. It was magical.

The old man at the back had a tiny hand-held bongo which he was thumping with the end of his walking stick.

Mel and I wandered around the park a bit, looking for a place to sit down. There's so much life in Yoyogi Park; it's like Central Park in a way, though I didn't see much of Central Park when I was there to get a handle on what that's like.

These guys were doing some dance practice. The tallest guy clearly hadn't

I wanted to bring Mel to the dog run, and we finally arrived after hunting it down. Mel spotted one that looked like her dog, but bigger. Mel is pretty much an expert on dog breeds; I was just pointing to the scampering little scamps and saying, "Aww, the little one is so cute!" and she'd be like, "Oh you mean the Border Terrier? Yeah it is!"

Whatever. They all look like tiny running poop machines to me.

We finally at down under the shade of this tree, near where a bunch of people were playing Frisbee. There were many Japan World Cup football jerseys being worn, seeing as Japan had their first match against Ivory Coast that morning (Japan lost 2-1).

I was hoping to sit next to a group of girls playing volleyball, but noooo.

On the way back we say this lady walking her meerkats. A few other passers-by had stopped to stroke them as well. I'm pretty sure meerkats are rare pets, and I am not even sure if they're legal. Still, they were very, very cute, and they kept trying to burrow into the ground, but I think the soil was too hard.

The owner also has two warthogs and two lion cubs, which all sing Disney songs.

Mel persuaded me to walk around with her at the ASEAN Festival, so I told my host family I wouldn't be back for dinner. I actually was quite curious to see if the Asian food had the same authentic flavour. There were many, many stalls, and curiously many Indian and Turkish stalls, which, last time I checked, were not part of ASEAN. Mel and I shared a box of karaage which tasted of popcorn chicken; she tried a tom yum noodle which wasn't really spicy enough to be called tom yum. I wanted to try the mee goreng from this Indonesian stall, and to my surprise it actually tasted pretty authentic. I also bought cheese fries from these Bangladeshis, which were really good but a bit overpriced.

Street food in Japan is a lot less dodgy that street food from other places.

When I came back with the food, Mel was being accosted by this random Japanese dude, who tried saying things in his broken English about the noodles she was eating. I think he might have been trying to hit on her, because he looked a bit crestfallen when I returned. He did get some noodles and a fry out of it though, so.

While all this was going on, there was a concert held at the small amphitheatre nearby. I think the bands playing must be small rookie bands from the ASEAN region; one girl started addressing the audience in what I would swear was Singaporean English, but Mel insists that it was a Filipino accent.

She also had the most sparkly dress I've ever seen outside a getai performance .

I left Mel at Harajuku Station, and, now that I had the train line in sight, followed it back to Shibuya and cycled home safely. I was really very happy to discover that the overhead bridges had a bicycle ramp, so that I wouldn't have to haul my bike up two flights of stairs.

This would have been such a better picture if I had a GoPro.

Looks like it's time to battle Misty.

I'm really, really happy about my adventures today, and I had so much fun cycling, especially when I was rolling downhill with no pedestrians in sight. I'm proud to have navigated my way through the city on two-wheels; I can see why Linus enjoys it so much. My butt hurts now, though, and my entire left calf is bruised. Oh well.