Scavenger Hunt

            by Jessica Tong

 

1.      Find a convenience store and buy the most interesting thing you can find for under ¥150.

2.      Have two Japanese people write their names in Kanji and Romanji in the space provided on the bottom of this sheet.

3.      Take a purikura with everyone in your group.

4.      Find a McDonald's, Mister Donuts, or other fast food place. What's similar and what's different from the ones in the US? Notice the menu, toys, ect.

5.      Play a video game in a game center. Take a picture.

6.      Eat lunch at a restaurant.

7.      Take a picture outside the Sony Building

8.      Each person in your group must buy something from a hyakuen store.

9.      Find Kabukiza Theater and take a picture with your group outside.

10.  Meet at the statue of Saigo Takamori in Ueno Koen at 7 pm.

Have fun! Whichever group gets finished first wins! REMEMBER TO CHECK IN WITH ME AT 2 pm AND 5 pm, and don't split up!

 

"I don't know what half of these things are," I said flatly, handing our list of objectives to Warren. "What's a purikura?" I looked up and watched the traffic flow around me. Gravel crunched under multitudes of feet and cars hummed by on the crowded street. I sighed- it was only about eleven in the morning, and my shirt was already beginning to stick uncomfortably to my back from Tokyo's heat and humidity.

Warren, Morgan, Tyquan and I were standing outside of Meiji Shrine, one of the largest shrines in Tokyo. After spending about an hour exploring the quiet, tranquil temple, which is nestled in a forest, we'd emerged in the bustling Harajuku district of Tokyo. Traffic was particularly dense around the nearby train station; there were men in business suits bustling in and out of the building, dozens of shoppers dragging along neatly wrapped packages and plastic bags, and uniformed women handing out packets tissues to passersby, a common advertising gimmick in Japan. 

            "It sounds really familiar, but I don't remember…" Warren stared intently at the paper as if it would tell him the answer, his fingers absently tapping. "Hm… Well in any case let's start with the convenience store since there's one right here." He pointed to a tiny shop front crammed with various goods.

            "Okay," Morgan agreed. We dodged through the traffic and squeezed into the store; the aisles were only wide enough for about one and a half people, the cool white shelves stuffed with everything from individually packaged hardboiled eggs to some of the strangest baked goods I've ever encountered. On our first day in Japan, Tyquan had the misfortune of mistaking a mayonnaise-corn-tuna Danish for a more conventional pastry.

            I wandered around in circles, uninspired by the selection of socks, unimpressed by the melon-flavored KitKat bars, and too disturbed by the selection plastic-wrapped dried squids to suggest buying them. I definitely didn't want to spend the rest of my day with the knowledge that one of those was in my bag. I found Tyquan at the register with a small cardboard package. "Whatcha got?"

            He grinned and turned the box so I could see the front. "They're mini hamburgers, I think."

            I inspected the package. "With meat?" I wondered skeptically. "They weren't in the refrigerated section… Eh, whatever. It never said we had to eat them."

            Outside the store, we gathered around the paper. "Okay, so that's number one, and we already did number two at the Shrine. Now we need to find out what a purikura is." Warren paused for a moment. "I swear I know it. It sounds so familiar," he agonized. "But I guess we should ask someone…" He pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose and looked at the crowd around us, shading his eyes from the glaring sunlight as he did so.

            There was a woman in her early twenties or late teens leaning against the wall on the other side of the door, clearly waiting for someone. "I'll ask her," I announced, eager to try out the latest phrase Isha, our Japanese- fluent group leader, taught us before the scavenger hunt began. "Um, sumimasen," I pronounced clumsily. "Purikura wa nan desu ka?"

            She looked surprised. "Purikura? Ano… " She rummaged around in her purse for a moment and produced a cute little cell phone. "Purikura." She pointed to a minuscule photo sticker adhered to the side of the device.

            "Arigatou. Um…" I paused, trying to remember how to ask where something was.

            Warren, whose Japanese far outclassed my own bumbling attempts at communication, intervened. "Purikura wa doko desu ka?"

            The woman frowned for a moment and thought. She explained rapidly in Japanese, then, realizing that we didn't understand a word, she simply pointed in one direction and added "Akihabara".

            Tyquan carefully wrote "Akihabara" next to 3 on our list and we bowed, thanking our informer. "I'm hungry," he announced, glancing at his watch.

            "Tyquan." Morgan glanced at him wryly. "It's eleven. We ate three hours ago."

            "But by the time we find a restaurant, it'll probably be closer to twelve," Warren noted.  "Besides, we can cross off number four on our list."

            We crossed the street and wandered through the crowded avenues and overflowing shop fronts in search of McDonald's. As we maneuvered the streets, we asked people for directions to objectives seven and nine— Kabukiza Theater and the Sony Building. We had very little luck— the two women handing out tissues on the street had never heard of either of them, the English-speaking shopkeeper we asked found a phone book and gave tentative directions to the theater. It seemed like the scavenger hunt was going to be more difficult than expected.

            McDonald's had been hard to find— as a fashion and shopping district, Harajuku was not the best place to go for food. While everyone else ate, I recorded the similarities and differences between a US store and this one in Japan. "The serving size is smaller," I scrawled. "There's a smoking and non-smoking section. The toys from the kid's menu are anime figurines."

            The four of us debated where to head to after lunch and decided on Akihabara—it was the only place that we knew we had to go to for sure. "It'll be pretty easy getting there, too," Morgan noted. She traced a lime green line on a large, complicated-looking map of Tokyo's subway system. "We just stay on the Ueno Line."

            "Hey, maybe we could ask someone at the train station about Kabukiza Theater or the Sony Building," Tyquan suggested as he stacked an impressive number of wrappers into a precariously-balanced tower on his tray. It toppled and he stuffed them all into his empty cup. "They have an information desks and lots of maps, right?"

            We gathered our things and left, maneuvering through the streets as we made our way back to the train station. People around us laughed and talked, the foreign language sounding strange and fast to my unaccustomed ears. Warren, clearly a tourist, enthusiastically pointed at anything that he found interesting or that he'd read about before he'd left home, from vending machines to T-shirts. 

We approached the Information Desk at the station. "Konnichiwa," I began, "Kabukiza Theater wa doko desu ka?" The man behind the counter dragged out an enormous dusty map book. It resembled a monstrously overgrown Yellow Pages. He flipped through the pages until he came to what he was looking for. In eloquent Japanese, he described the route we needed to find the Theater, his finger tracing the map as he spoke. Unfortunately, I didn't understand a single word. Bewildered, I turned to the other three. Going by their facial expressions, they hadn't either. Patiently, the man briefly explained again, and I caught a few words that seemed important. Feigning comprehension—a significant line was beginning to form behind us—I repeated "Ginza-sen. Ah, hai." I bowed. "Arigatou gozaimasu."

            On the train, we collapsed into cushioned seats and enjoyed the air conditioning. I puzzled over the meaning of "Ginza-sen". "Well, it's a train line…" I paused tentatively. "So it's probably on that route. It's just, we don't know where to get off."

            "Augh, I wish we had Priya in our group," Warren lamented. "She's so good at Japanese. She can even read Kanji!"

            "This is our stop," Morgan noted. We stood up reluctantly. Akihabara is often called "Electric Town" due to the large number of electronics stores there, but it's also an anime and manga haven, complete with numerous twelve-story buildings dedicated solely to cartoons and related merchandise. At the station, we squeezed out of the crowded subway car and climbed the stairs to emerge in Akihabara. We were greeted by massive posters of large eyed-cartoon characters, and Warren nearly had a fit.

"Whoa! This is so cool!" His voice rose a decibel in volume, clearly audible above the muted conversations around us and the station's loudspeaker as he whipped out his camera to take pictures. "I love Akihabara!" The commuters around us looked up, startled by his loud voice.

"Warren, we've only been here for 30 seconds," I reminded him with a grin, amused by his enthusiasm. "We haven't even left the station yet."

            "I don't care! I love it already!" He handed me his camera. "Could you take a picture of me in front of this poster?"

            "Sure." I snapped a shot quickly. Although it was around three- not exactly rush hour- the station was still bustling.

As I handed the camera back, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned. No one there. Tyquan snickered, and I snapped my head forward again. "What?" I demanded, irritated that although he'd already pulled that trick several times, I still fell for it.

Grinning, he pointed towards the exit. "Morgan found a pay phone. We have to call Isha, right?"

            Pay phones in Japan are a highly visible sour apple green color, and generally as hard to find as the elusive public garbage cans. They are also rather troublesome to use, as we learned by our third attempt at calling our group leader.

            "Hi, Isha?" Morgan finally got through. "It's Morgan." She paused. "Yeah, everything's going well. We're in Akihabara right now, and we just left Harajuku." She stopped again, listening. "Yeah, okay. That sounds good. Okay, bye!" She hung up and turned to us. "So, Isha said we're having dinner in Shinjuku tonight. She knows this really cool restaurant…" She shrugged. "That's it."

            We left the station and entered one of Akihabara's main streets. Department buildings towered over us and the giant TV screens that covered their surfaces blinked and flashed. Sound assaulted us from all sides— audio stores blasted music, anime stores played several movies at once in their shop fronts or out on the sidewalk, and there were people with megaphones advertising sales, nearly hidden by large stacks of brightly-colored boxes.

            We were all impressed by Akihabara, but Warren was thunderstruck. As we wove through people and products, he was clearly audible above the various beeps and rings from the electronics, the jumble of music, and the mash of dialogue from various movies. "I love Japan!" he exclaimed fervently, his camera everywhere at once. "I wish I could live here. It's so cool!"

            "Warren, quietly," I finally advised. "People are staring at you."

            We walked into a cramped store, walking carefully to keep from knocking any boxes or CDs off of their shelves. It was like a maze. "I don't think there's anyone down here," Tyquan said from the other side of the room. "They've got a lot of plastic models, though… Hey, I found a staircase."

            I followed the sound of his voice and managed to find the staircase. As we walked up, the merchandise became a bit sketchy and the lights dimmed. Posters of barely-dressed cartoon characters adorned the walls and I found myself thinking, "We probably shouldn't be here…" A female figurine without a shirt came into view. Uncomfortable, I developed a sudden interesting in my fingernails.

            "Um…" Morgan cleared her throat, her voice hushed. "Maybe we should try a different store."

            Warren was already at the register. A disgruntled man in need of a shave with long stringy hair eyed us. "Sumimasen," Warren began, "Purikura wa-"

            "No." He ruffled his magazine and went back to reading.

            "Oh. Okay…" Warren said, taken aback. "Well, then…" We hurried back down stairs and burst out into the street and sunlight.

            "That guy was really rude," Warren remarked.

            "That store was creepy." I added, shuddering. "They had a bunch of figures up there-"

            "You saw that, too?" Morgan exclaimed. "They had a bunch of them that were naked." She glanced back for a moment, clearly disturbed. "Let's find a different place."

            With some help, we found some purikura machines on the sixth floor of a game center. There was a bunch of the small white photo booths clustered together, overwhelmingly pink and yellow sparkled banners adorning the smooth plastic sides. The four of us squished into one cubicle. A green screen hung on the back wall and a camera lens glinted in the soft white light provided by the ceiling fixtures. A touch screen sat directly below the camera.

            "It's ¥400," Warren announced after finding the coin slot. "So what about ¥100 from each person?"

            We rummaged in various wallets, bags, and— in Tyquan's case— a fanny pack, and each produced a coin. Warren dropped them into the slot and an overly- perky, sweet girl's voice announced something in Japanese. The screen flashed and produced several picture formats labeled in Japanese. Below the characters, a timer counted down.

            "Quick, choose one!" Tyquan urged. Warren's hand hesitated, and Tyquan impatiently jabbed one of the buttons with his finger. The countdown kept going as a new set of choices in pink, baby blue and yellow        flashed and glittered on the screen.

            "Go-go-go! Hurry!" Morgan's hand shot out and hit one of the buttons. Now there were picture formats. Without thinking— the bright pink and white countdown marched inexorably on— a brief frenzy ensued, fingers punching the glowing images almost at random, laughing with wide grins plastered over our faces. At this point, none of us had any idea what we were doing, and we didn't particularly care.

            The bubbly voice announced something and the screen flashed once, the image on it shifting to the camera's view. We all stared at it blankly as a countdown continued in the corner of the screen. The camera flashed.

            I blinked. "Oh!" I said, feeling stupid. "Haha, I get it now…"

            Tyquan brandished a finger at the screen. "It's going again…!" The four of us leaned in towards the camera, Tyquan stooping considerably in order to get his head in the picture. This time, I remembered to smile.

            The light flashed again, and Warren shooed us all into different locations. "Tyquan, go stand in the back… Jessica, you're short, so go in the front. Ack, hurry!" We shuffled around in the small space.

            Four minutes later, we emerged from the purikura machine, laughing and feeling as bouncy as the machine's voice. Morgan found the editing booth, equipped with pen tools to draw on and add accessories to the pictures. She and Tyquan took control of the editing process, and as a result, one set of photo stickers was equipped with a moderate selection of sparkles and the day's date and location, whereas the other sported bunny ears, beards, cartoon ghosts, and, for some reason, a pile of animated poop between Warren and Morgan's heads.

            Morgan did a double take while she was cutting up the sheet. "Tyquan, why?" she asked, half exasperated and half laughing, her finger pointed to the poop.

            He grinned proudly. "Turned out pretty well, huh?"

            Three hours later found us on a bench Ueno Part, utterly exhausted but equally euphoric as we watched the traffic go by. We never found the Sony Building or Kabukiza Theater, although one particularly kind man at a store spent ten minutes finding the location of both and printing them out for us. We just ran out of time, and none of us cared, either. The scavenger hunt had ceased to be a competition, and regardless of who won, we had fun. Isha came around the corner and waved, a large plastic bag swinging off one arm as she walked. "Hey, guys! How was it?"

            We grinned back at her. "Great!"