It's fun to explore,
but how is there always more?
Sometimes it's a chore.
Today was a relatively uneventful day, at least relative to most days I've had here in Japan. Still, the day definitely didn't go by without some interesting things happening. First, at work, I made a comic strip to use as part of a lesson tomorrow. The strip features Aykut and I on our morning commute, riding the train. We usually take the "Express" option to Ikebukuro from Tokorozawa. There are so many different types of trains, with so many different uninformative monikers. You can take an Express, a Rapid, a Commuter Express, a Semi-Express, a Commuter Semi-Express, a Rapid Express, a Local and a Limited Express. Limited Express is actually the best. It costs more and has the fewest stops. It's limited in stops, not in quality. The Express we take is quite good, only stopping twice between our home station and the terminus. We have gotten very used to the stops, every morning it's:
Tokorozawa-->Hibarigoaka--->Shakuji-koen--->Ikebukuro and on the way home it's:
Ikebukuro--->Shakuji-koen--->Hibarigoaka--->Tokorozawa.
We're so used to it we can recite the names along with the train announcements. Our journey is comparatively peaceful in the morning from Tokorozawa to Shakuji-koen, in that the train is only as busy as a full Skytrain would be in Vancouver, or a full C-Train would be in Calgary. Once we hit Shakuji-koen though, there's not a sardine in the world who would even trade places with us. Sometimes when we hit Shakuji-koen, and feel like the train is already full, we end up waiting at the platform for another train to stop and all the people from that train run across the platform and squish themselves on with us. It's insanity.
After work Aykut and I decided to try out some new things while not spending too much time out before catching a train home. We were both a little tired. We went to a pizza place near the University called "[a] pizza". We're unsure of the correct way to pronounce the square-bracketed "a". The place serves good pies. They are cheap, but also very small. Tonight we shared four of the tiny pizzas, which was about the equivalent of sharing a normal medium pizza. It did allow us to try four different varieties, including a potato and mayonnaise pizza which was quite good. The spot also has some hilarious English writing on their menu board. You can choose four different ways to have your tiny pizza cut, into two, four, six or eight slices. The eight slice option is basically having someone prepare each bite for you. They chose to write next to their slicing option diagrams, "Today's your style? Just nice a portion! Just nice a share!!" Today our style was just nice a share!!
After pizza we headed to the station, but even inside the station we decided to explore a bit. Despite walking through Ikebukuro Station ever weekday and many days on the weekend, I have still not seen everything inside it. It's colossal! Today we explored the Metropolitan exit side, which I thought I had explored most of on another venture one day when I had some time to kill. Turns out there was a whole underground shopping street I hadn't seen before, that Aykut apparently remembered from his previous trip to Tokyo years ago but didn't know was so close to where were walked daily. Also, there was an entrance right into the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, which I'd checked out from the outside, it has super cool architecture, but never from the inside. It has an impressive interior too and a really cool vibe.
Today's title references Jerry Seinfeld's web series "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee". I'd watched a couple episodes before but have just gotten really into it in the last couple days. All the episodes are quite short and are mostly hilarious. My best buddy back in Vancouver has been telling me to get more into CICGC for a while and I'm glad I finally have. I love how the series just features comedians chatting and cracking jokes, finding funny shit around them. I can't help but see Aykut and I's train trips as quite similar. I'm sure if you filmed us everyday there'd be more than enough material for a quality episode. The thing is Aykut's never heard of Seinfeld or Jerry Seinfeld. Not hasn't seen Seinfeld, has never even heard of it. It's flabbergasting! He said I was very kind to him in the blog before and I should really give him shit when he deserves it. Well, being anything less than a Seinfeld fan is a definite strike against you "bruv".
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