It's two days away from Christmas and there are some traces of seasonal merriment in Tokyo. Down the street, there are a few houses that have put up lights. The grocery stories blare the same stale, muzak versions of Christmas carols that seem to be everywhere. And, most importantly, the Colonel Sanders statue outside the KFC near my work has been dressed up like Santa since late October. 

Some families celebrate Christmas with presents, and trees, and a big dinner. For others, it's much more like Valentine's Day. If you have a boyfriend or girlfriend you typically spend the evening with them. Regardless of which camp you belong to, there is an agreement about one thing, fried chicken.

By far the most popular Christmas meal is KFC. I saw an ad this morning where several happy children munched away at chicken in time with Christmas music. They even had little choreographed Christmas chicken dance. You can pre-order your meal ahead of time so that you won't have to wait in line or risk eating something different. For three extra dollars they'll even toss in a bottle of champagne. To make things clear this is $30-50 thing, not a two piece chicken combo. Nozomi was speculating that it might simply be a rough adaptation of turkey dinner. Even other fast food chains are trying to get in on the action. Restaurants that don't normally serve chicken at all have signs up to entice people away from a Kentucky Fried Christmas. (OK that was terrible, but I had to fit it in somewhere.)

Last weekend, Nozomi and I celebrated our 4^th anniversary.

We’ve never kept our anniversary to an exact date. Instead we celebrate it on whatever day is convenient around this time of year.

On Saturday, Nozomi took me to an all-you-can-deep-fry restaurant. It was set up like a buffet with several skewers of uncooked meat, potato, bread, cheese, lotus root, ice cream, and much more. You take it back to your sear and fry it in a small cooker.  It was great, but we discovered the next morning that our clothes smelled like fried food. Before going home, we stopped off at a Karaoke place, something I’ve warmed to since coming here.

On Sunday, we rushed out to Apple offices in Tokyo. Nozomi’s friend was giving a demonstration of new guitar software that allows you to play guitar with any music you put on your computer. Nozomi’s friend was a fantastic guitar player, and it was worth it just to watch her play. However, Nozomi made the mistake of mentioning that I have a guitar, and so her friend called me up as a volunteer to play along with a Beatles song. It was embarrassing, but I only had to play for about a minute and I got a bag of free stuff, so it was all good. Afterwards, Nozomi and I went Christmas shopping, and then wrote Christmas cards in a café.

Nozomi has also been reading to me from her newest manga. I wouldn’t normally care, but this one is about Jesus and Buddha living together as roommates in Tokyo, and it’s awesome. I think I’ll buy it for myself, even though I can’t understand it yet.

I feel poor.

Yesterday I went to Shimo-Kitazawa. I had been there before briefly, but this time I actually explored the neighborhood.

Shimo-Kitazawa is similar to Kensington. It's full of second-hand clothing stores, and has a general hipster-ish vibe. It's made up of a series of narrow streets that wind in on themselves and intersect. Recently the local government has announced plans to build a large throughway that will cut through the middle of the neighborhood. There are also plans to start building high rise condos. All of these plans have upset the residents, and there have already been quite a few protests.

I didn't end up buying anything. I found some cool stores, but everything was out of my price range. Even in the used record stores everything was individually wrapped and in pristine condition. I can't afford anything. It was still nice wandering around though.  

I finally got paid, which means I finally forced myself out of the house for something other than work.

I only have two months left on my visa, so I decided to go and renew it today, and took the opportunity to explore a bit. The immigration bureau is on the opposite side of Tokyo down on the wharf. It took two hours and four transfers to get there. Fortunately, I got to ride on a monorail, (“monorail, monorail, monorail, monorail”) and it was beautiful. The tracks run over the river, and I got so distracted, that I rode two stops further than I should have and had to backtrack.  I followed the exit signs out into a small mall attached to a large theatre, where they are currently running a Japanese version of Frost/Nixon. Then I walked along the waterfront passing thousands of brightly coloured shipping containers, and, for some reason, a soccer field.

Then blah, blah, blah. I waited an hour to renew my visa and have to go back in three weeks to get my passport stamped. Absolutely nothing interesting about the immigration offices themselves.

I had been planning on going to the Sony Building today, but when I finished with my visa, there wasn’t enough time. Instead I went straight to Akihabara. It’s my third time there, but my first time exploring it properly.

It was early evening by the time I arrived and there were hordes of maids trying to entice passersby into their cafés for $8.00 coffees. I found one store that sells exclusively North American games for ridiculous prices, and an awesome store called Super Potato. Super Potato specializes in old games and they have absolutely everything (this is not exaggeration, well not significantly), and it’s all in museum-like condition.

I started to head home when I saw Michael Moore in one of the electronics store. I don’t know what he’s doing here, vacation I guess. He was wearing the same baseball cap and worn in jacket he always seems to wear. He was looking at cameras with his wife. I stood there for a few seconds before I realized that he might turn and see me standing in the middle of the street staring at him.

On the way home I bought myself the new Tom Waits album at Tower Records. That was my day out, and hopefully the least boring blog entry so far. I hope this is a trend.