Tokyo: the last time I came here, about 2 years ago, the weather was not so great, I had a cold and a few other problems which left me with a bitter taste of the biggest city in the world. This time perfect weather welcomed me during my two very busy weeks in the metropolis where Daisuke kindly offered me a place to stay at his apartment.
One of the first items written in my agenda was to attend a sumo match. Sumo are enormous fighters who compete for the title of Yokozuna and eternal glory. The goal of the combat is very simple: push your opponent out of the ring or make him touch the ground with something else then his feet. I was again lucky enough to be in Tokyo during a competition, with my very resourceful friends we were able to get some tickets and I head for the arena with a few friends who were also interested. We were on the second floor, just before the last row of seats, good place to capture the ambiance of the arena built for this purpose. It was full, the competition lasted all day, and we went for the last 20 matches, where the most famous sumos compete. Fights last only a few seconds, the rituals between them required a bit more patience and gave me some time to ask my friends some questions. Some famous sumos made their entrance, the crowd welcomed them loudly. The Yokozuna showed up with a peaceful look like all the other sumo. It’s not always the bigger one that wins and some of them hide quite a lot of muscle under a thin coat of extra... padding. The show was well worth the price of the ticket and I can now brag that I saw the biggest sumo competing in Japan, the famous Yamamotoyama.
You probably know that I am not a big baseball fan, but I was still interested in going to see a match of the Tokyo Giants at the Tokyo Dome. 45 000 fans converge to the Dome which is located right in the middle of the city not too far from the Sumo stadium. The visiting team is the Hiroshima Carp. I went there with the cute Terumi who was also attending her first live baseball game. It’s a small stadium for a city that big so all the seated tickets were long gone and we end up getting standing tickets, which turned out not being so bad after all. We had a nice view on the whole stadium and all the super excited fans. The match was a pitcher competition and without being very interesting, in the stands it was something else. The fans, especially from Hiroshima, were loud, well organised, with huge flags, trumpets, dances, everything well synchronized; singing songs for every player. Three guys standing beside us had the Carp logo tattooed on their chest over their heart, shouting louder at every inning, at one point, one of the guys was holding his t-shirt in the air, shouting the name of his favourite player eyes closed with something that look like a tear going down his cheek, quite a unique moment. The game ended in the 10th inning, 1-0 for the Giants, and then a return to normal life for the 45,000 plus fans, in good order as usual, we followed them, tired, a bit disappointed that the Carp did not make it but happy about this experience.
Japan or should I say Tokyo is quite unique for having a lot of what we call.. Otaku. An Otaku is someone who obsesses about a television show, anime or a video game. I heard about these strange people and their uncommon behaviour, I wanted to see them. You can hang out around the very hip station Akihabara who is also call the electric city or you attend an Idol show. An Idol band is a music group that aim is to get the adoration of the Otakus. My second Japanese brother, Nobu, is the director of a Idol band, lucky me the band was performing a free show to promote their new single. Daisuke and I made it to the outdoor show just next to the Tokyo Dome, a crowd of about 400 or 500 Otakus were already there for the event. The concept is simple, they sing a few songs, and then offer a hand shaking session with the 7 cute girls in the band, later comes the chance to get a Polaroid picture with the band. Great. The little catch is that in order to get the hand shake, you must buy 1 CD at the nearby kiosk, which goes for around 2800yens (30$) and if you want a picture, you will need 
to buy 3 CD’s. I was laughing at the poor Otakus who were already lining up. My Japanese brother had the wrong idea to offer me a set of 3 CD’s (the same CD actually) and in no time I was on the stage, taking pictures with the girls, of course, being the only foreigner there, I had to exchanges a few words with the animator of the event, a famous rocker/comedian Hanawa. I had to lie about my real motivation for being on the stage, damn you Nobu. I retreated as soon as possible, with a Polaroid and the feeling that I was very close to knowing what it’s like to be an Otaku.
Tokyo is too huge to get a grasp of it, too many things to see, places to visit, hopefully the people I had the chance to meet take this enormous city to a much more human level. I need to thank all my friends there, who helped me so much, kept me busy and made it so much more interesting. Japan fascinated me years ago and this trip is no exception, although I still have so many things to discover in this country.
The water heater even spoke a few words addressed to me as I was leaving Daisuke’s apartment… that’s Japan.
