30/11 Shibuya Red Walk

On Sunday the 30th, we were invited to join the Shibuya Red Walk event, organized by wAds, which one of the volunteers is a member of. The purpose of event (and all other events that are organized by wAds) is to increase the awareness of AIDS among young people in Japan.

1. On our way to the meeting point. Shibuya clearly needs to work on its Christmas decorations.
2. Weird speaker Christmas tree. Very... "modern".

Not knowing for sure where the meeting point was, we kept a lookout for anything red - the color for the World AIDS day (or 世界エイズデー in Japan). It turned out we didn't have to look very hard, they had people wearing red and holding red balloons stationed everywhere to guide us lost sheep to the right place. There, we each got to write a sign to hold for the walk. Oddly enough, writing the organization's slogan, "Stop AIDS" was not encouraged. Surely that's the most straight forward message there is, so we all found it strange that we were refrained from writing that.

Getting things organized.

After getting everything set up for the walk, we listened to a couple of speeches, I imagine it was the higher-ups in the organizations speaking. They also had an AV-star as a spokesperson, and she just seemed... gone in the head. A bit robotish. Everyone received a flyer and condoms with her autograph on. Why you would want that on a condom is a mystery though...

The walk started and we all tried to keep the lines neat, but people kept dropping off so in the end we were quite scattered. It's the first time I'm taking part in anything like this, I didn't even do it in Sweden, so it was quite interesting seeing the reactions from onlookers, a role which I am usually taking. Seeing things from the other side was refreshing. During the walk, the AV star would chant "今日は何の日ーー？" ("What day is it today?", she kept saying "today" even though the World AIDS day was actually tomorrow) and we would respond with "世界エイズデー" and it all went quite fine until the amp/speaker broke down. The cord got rolled on too much and decided to stop working. Without a speaker voice, no one wanted to raise their voices. I thought, what the heck, does our commitment only reach as far as the speaker cord? So I took the initiative and did the 今日は何の日shout and it worked a couple of times. Then we stopped, because apparently it was time to move on to the next activity on the event. (And it was getting awkward without a speaker... What did I say about commitment again?) But before that, one of the JLSP guys got interviewed by the cameraman. I suppose they wanted the gaijin perspective of this all as well. @_@

We took the train to a temple close to the Tokyo Tower. Goodie bags were handed out containing mineral water and brochures about HIV and AIDS, which of course were cutely illustrated because we're in Japan.

1. On our way to the train. Follow the red balloons!
2. Jizo-san in front of the shrine, all prepared for the cold to come.
3. Another shot.

Inside the temple, we got to hear a talk by this head priest who clearly didn't have any idea of what the event was about. The monks beside him had to (not so) discretely remind him that it was AIDS he was talking about when he got stuck, but suddenly he (the priest) just started babbling about cancer, forgetting all about AIDS. Awkward much? ^^; After that, we listened to a performance to... eh, a famous traditional arts performance guy. We only noticed he was famous afterwards when girls rushed to him and asked to take pictures together. Hm hm. So we asked for one too. :D Hehe. With this, we left the Shibuya Red Walk (they had more activities planned for the day) and went to get some lunch. Btw, I found this video on Youtube from that day! For the 30/11 event, watch until 3:07. We show up quite a lot (check 3:06)!

Anyway, the lunch. It deserves its own paragraph! S, Sv, A and I went to Tokyo Dome City in Suidobashi (where they have that roller coaster we rode on A's bday) to eat at Ichiran, a ramen restaurant. But not ANY ramen restaurant! First of all, they have this ordering system where you get this slip of paper while you stand in line (of course) to fill in your preferences about the noodles - the thickness, spiciness, how much taste the sauce should have and so on. When you reach the ticket machine, you buy the base ticket and any extras you'd want, I went for extra noodles on the recommendation of S. When you get in, you see (well, not actually, I'll get to it in a moment) you sit beside other customers in lines, except everything is being shield off! It's quite difficult to explain, but they had four lines and they all had a wooden board shielding off from curious eyes. On the board for each line, there's a monitor thing to see how many seats are empty. It's quite difficult to explain the layout, so I recommend going to the Ichiran website (link above) and check out the picture at the "Taste Counter" section, they explain it all there. It was all very surrealistic/futuristic, and I felt like I was in a Satoshi Kon movie. And the ramen! Was it good! It's another you-have-to-experience-it-yourself thing, it was really, really, awesomely good! If anyone goes to Japan, I recommend Ichiran very strongly, but it's better if you know some Japanese (to fill out the form).

My ramen.

Tokyo Dome City was illuminated with blinding lights for Christmas as well.

On #5, we went to this place called Gindaco, which serve delicious takoyaki! Also a recommendation if you happen to pass by it. Will probably have lines outside.

Hair check before taking purikura.

We had a hard time deciding if we wanted to go to karaoke afterwards, since heaps for schoolwork had to be done by the day after. But realizing that we don't have many days left (Sv and A are staying for another semester), we went anyway and sang Christmas songs för hela slanten. :D

Getting back to Shimotakaido, we went for a quick stop at the Seven Eleven and ran into the hairdresser who did my hair yesterday - I wouldn't have recognized her if S didn't say "thank you for yesterday". Woops. that was close. ^^;