25 Memorable Moments in Tokyo: Part IV

If you haven’t been reading, you’ve missed out on 15 of my 25 memorable moments in Tokyo. Not to fret, you can check them out here, here, and here. But for today,! here are moments 10 through 6…

MEMORABLE MOMENT 10: LATE SUMMER NIGHT IN THE CITY. Late in the Summer of 2008, the newest of my co-best friends and I took advantage of what turned out to be our last outing in the city as a trio. We hopped on the 6:27PM Chūō Special Rapid—affectionately dubbed “The Friday Night Express” because I always take it on Fridays after work to get into the city—from Fussa to Shinjuku and then hopped on the Toei Oedo Line to Roppongi. We went out to eat at TGI Friday’s and talked as we regularly did…about God, about the politics of our respective jobs, about life. Those talks were always good. Afterwards,! we walked over to Roppongi Hills to check out Tokyo City View! . They h ad a good deal going on where you could get in the Mori Art Museum, the Tokyo City View Observatory, and the SkyDeck for ¥1500…a definitely steal according to Tokyo standards. We mellowed in the Tokyo City View Observatory for at least an hour. We took pictures with Tokyo Tower in the background as well as pictures in the purikura. We then headed up to the Mori Art Museum and they had some good stuff in there. It was a nice, little lounge-like museum…you know, somewhere you can just chill and take a load off while admiring what they have on display. We didn’t get a chance to go up to the SkyDeck because it was a bit smoggy outside that night. So we killed more time by going down into the mall section of Roppongi Hills and did some mild shopping, after which we grabbed some Cold Stone ice cream. The train ride home was quick…even for one as late as it was. I guess it’s like that when friends are on the trains, joking aro! und with each other through C-mails and all. It was a simple outing for us…we’ve done far more exciting things as a trio. But that night resonates because all 3 went our separate ways to focus on individual things, essentially making that Friday night in September our last time hanging out as a trio.MEMORABLE MOMENT 9: NOT SO PROFESSIONAL. It was back in August of 2008, when my co- best friends and I all returned from our respective vacations. We attended the Fussa Tanabata Festival on a Friday night and followed it up with a trip to Showa Kinen Park the following morning. For the trip to the park, the pastor’s kids and one of my friend’s friend and her daughter came along. It was actually my debut in the park and it was pretty cool for a public park…really relaxing spot. We ended up renting bicycles to ride around the park. It was my 2^nd time riding a Japanese bicycle—I rode a co-worker’s bicycle to an appointment a few weeks earlier. Now, let me give you a quick sidebar to this story. In all of my times walking to and from Fussa Station and all of my visits into the city, I’ve seen the natives on these bicycles and when they’re coming to a stop, they take the right leg and move it over to the left pedal so that 2 feet ar! e on one pedal and bring the bike to a stop by stepping off as it’s still rolling. It’s easier done that said. So we stopped at the bicycle parking area near Water Fowl Lake. I decided that I was going to get off my bike like a Japanese person. I captured everybody’s attention as I circled around. I made a beeline for one of the parking spots. I got the right leg on the left pedal as I was approaching. I yelled out “I’m a pro” as I stepped down. I lost control of the bike and crashed into the bushes. Everybody started laughing. It was an epic fail. I’ve never been able to live that moment down. Even after redeeming myself in a return trip half a year later, everybody still mentions that moment. The pastor even alluded to it in a Thursday night Bible study session when he said, “We all can’t be pros, right Juan”. I couldn’t do nothing but laugh. Good thing that we weren’t recording when that happe! ned.

MEMORABLE MOMENT 8: TAKING FLIGHT. As a result of my score at the CES Christmas Party 2008, I had a flight tour over Tokyo. I decided to use it on St. Valentine’s Day 2009 with a couple of my friends. We rode on over to the Yokota Aero Club and got the spill on what we were gonna be doing. We got those extra shiny reflective belts. The pilot came out and we walked on over to the hangar. After he did all of his pre-flight checks, we all got in and put the headsets on. Listening to all the back-and-forth chatter between the pilot and the air traffic control tower was something new to me though it surely wasn’t a new thing to my friends. Once we got clearance from the tower, we began taxiing from the hangar to the runway. We had to pedal the Cessna and I was all off rhythm, causing the plane to go in a wicked path. Cut me a break…it was my first time. Once we were on the runway, the tower gave us clearance for takeoff and we wer! e airborne. Less than a minute off the ground, we were already flying over Tachikawa…which is 17 minutes away by train and 25 by car. We were a good 3000-4000 feet up and this offered a vantage point of the area I couldn’t get from Tokyo Tower or Sunshine City. We ended up passing by a lot of places I was very familiar with as a result of my travels in and around the city. For a couple minutes, the pilot let me fly unaided…well, almost unaided. I was doing the flying and he was just giving directions and communicating the various control towers. He instructed me to ! drop down about 200 feet and I kinda did it in an all of a sud! den way. One of my friends didn’t take that too well. She let out one of those gasps people make when they’re really high up in the sky—usually on a rollercoaster—and there is a sudden drop. We did get a chance to see the sunset over the Greater Tokyo Area on the way back in. It was a pretty cool moment for me…something I can tell my kids and grandkids one day. MEMORABLE MOMENT 7: YOU SAID WHAT ABOUT MY HOUSE. On the day that the Operational! Readiness Inspection concluded, I moseyed on over to a friend’s house to take a load off. It was a Friday night in December and it was a small gathering of church folks there. After some casual conversation, we started playing Taboo. The first three times I went up, I managed to give my team—the men, of course—some quality clues and they came through. On my 4^th time up, one of the cards I drew was FILTHY. I couldn’t use DIRTY or MESSY, which would’ve immediately put the team down to what the word was. So I improvised. The host has 2 young girls and they would come in and drop off their toys during the game around us. I used that to my advantage…as so I thought. The clue I gave was “Look at this floor…it’s…HORRENDOUS”. My facial expression and other nonverbals accentuated the clue. My team couldn’t guess it and after I told them the word was FILTHY, one of them called for timeout and burst ou! t laughing. Everybody caught on to the irony and started laugh! ing. The host was like “what you trying to say about my house, Juan”. It was indeed a funny moment. I’m reminded of it every time we play Taboo.

MEMORABLE MOMENT 6: MIDTOWN SATURDAY NIGHT. Back in January, I was checking out an exhibit at the Suntory Museum of Art in Tokyo Midtown when I saw what looked like an ice skating rink on the lawn across the street from the building. I went outside to check it out and it was indeed an ice skating rink. Volkswagen was doing some promoting in the area and they had this giant outdoor skating rink and it was relatively cheap…only ¥1500 for the skates and the rink fee, which is about ¥! 1100 less than the indoor rink in Takadanobaba. Seeing this as an opportunity to get my friends into the city for a major group activity, I came up with the Midtown Saturday Night event. Quite a few of us ventured down to Roppongi on that chilly night in mid-January…adults and kids alike. After barely avoiding everybody’s worst nightmare—getting separated away from Juan on the trains—by jamming the closing doors of the Toei Oedo Line, we dined in at TGI Friday’s. After filling our bellies with ! some good food, we walked down the street to Midtown, where we! got rig ht to the skating. Everybody skated except one of my homeboys—who didn’t want to risk injury ahead of a deployment—and the youngest child. Soon after, all of the other little kids joined her because they kept falling and their hands got cold. It was my first time ice skating in a few years and I was rusty. But even though I was rusty, I didn’t fall. Just when I was finding my groove on the ice, I heard a loud thud and the rink shook. I turned and there was one of the people in my crew…flat on her face. She got up and she had ice all over her. One of the other people tried to wipe it off and she was getting heated because it was actually kinda painful. We all laughed at her misfortune…as did she. It was good times on the ice. We were out there for about an hour or so before the cold really started setting in. We took plenty of pictures, including the group photo below. I may look back upon that night in my “Best of 2010” ! series this upcoming December. I’ll tell you this one thing though…we were all just about gone on the train ride home.

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