The Observer: Travel Stories — Grand Prix Kitakyushu — Part I

“We’ll meet you at the Starbucks in the basement.”

This was the last information I was given before I set off for Japan. This was my second trip out to the Land of the Rising Sun (the story for the first may come at a later date). If I learned anything the first time I flew out to Japan, it’s that the flight is long. I’m talking about ten hours long. Now, I don’t mind traveling a long way. I’m a veteran of the ten-hour drive out West for a Saturday/Sunday PTQ, or a trip down to Hotlanta for a Grand Prix. But this isn’t the same. During road trips, you usually have more than one person. That alone is usually enough to stave off the mind-numbing boredom that usually accompanies the passing of the hours. Beyond that, outside the windows, the scenery actually changes. That has such a powerful psychological effect. If you can see the world passing around you, you know you’re getting somewhere, which always seems to reassure your mind and make things a little more bearable. On a plane, you get ten hours where the only time the scenery ever seems to change are when the guy next to you decides to give you the ass instead of the crotch on the way to his seventh trip to the bathroom. Seriously, the boredom grinds at your sanity like so many drunken floozies at a club.

Usually, on these long transoceanic flights, there are at least a couple of other Magic players on the flight, and I can get a game or two in to pass the time. However, most American players are not exactly what you’d call the “willing to travel” type. Consequently, it was just me and Mr. Crotch sharing a moment or seven on our way across the Pacific.

Wonderful.

After falling asleep by virtue of giving myself a concussion against the seat in front of me, the time seemed to pass a little faster (read: at all). On the way down into Tokyo, I got my first glimpse of the city.

Let me interject really fast that I am unhealthily in love with Japan. More on this later.

Tokyo is really a marvel of engineering. When you have to fit as many people onto those islands as they do, you quickly do away with all of the frivolities of unnecessary space. It isn’t like in America where you have massive parking lots and ten lane streets littering the landscape. In Japan, they just don’t have the space. Rather than expand to the side, like we tend to do here, Japan has built up. Tokyo is the prototypical vertical city, and it’s really cool to think about that as you see some of the innovations that they’ve come up with to accommodate themselves, such as automated parking garages that are one car wide and use an elevator system kind of like a vending machine.

Back to the airport.

So I land and deplane, and realize I am in a world of trouble. As a native English speaker, I expect everything to at least have some sort of translation into English, especially in airports. Narita is not exactly like this. There are translations, but they are incredibly abbreviated and, for the most part, if you aren’t familiar with what they are referring to (such as the fifteen million different train lines that run out of the airport), you might be better off trying to read the Japanese. Luckily for me, I was armed with slightly more Japanese than Mickey Rooney’s character from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the general understanding that basements were down. Using this Swiss army knife of knowledge and the fact that as a writer, I inherently have radar for Starbucks, I found the coffee joint in question and began the hour wait I had before my compatriots landed. I pulled out my laptop (I know, right?) and set to work on a couple of EDH lists. I mean, what better way to pass the time?

After an hour and a half had passed, I started to get a little worried that maybe I hadn’t ended up at the right Starbucks. My writer-sense was tingling, though, telling me that this was the only Starbucks, so I just toughed it out. Without Internet access or a working phone, I had no way of contacting anyone, and I wasn’t with anyone else, so I felt unnervingly trapped. Making matters worse was the fact that I had only met Ron Foster once, so I didn’t have the best picture of that he looked like in my head, and I assumed he didn’t know me terribly well either. Fortunately, I stand out like a sore thumb considering I was the only American a foot taller than everyone else in the Starbucks at the time. Just when my paranoia had hit its max, I saw someone that I thought was Ron coming towards me with a couple others in tow. He walked right up to me, shook my hand, and said, “Ready to go, Nate?”

Saved at last!

Now for a little background on the illustrious Mr. Foster. In my understanding, Ron is effectively in charge of everything happening in Asian Magic, including Grand Prix and Pro Tour planning. He went to college in Japan and studied Japanese literature while he was there. Thanks to his studies, he has a far better grasp on the Japanese way of thinking than anyone (non-Japanese) that I’ve ever met. Much like me, Ron has an almost overwhelming passion for the country, and it shows after only a few minutes with him. I was “warned” before I left for this trip that Ron has a tendency to explain everything and make just walking through the streets a history and culture lesson. In other words, we were going to get along just fine.

After taking our seats on the train, I was introduced to our other travel companions, also known as my first chance to really make an ass of myself on this trip. Let me start by saying that Magic follows some organizational rules for coverage that I haven’t quite found the Rosetta Stone for. For some of the Grand Prix that I’ve cover (most notably the South American ones), I have been paired with another writer, usually Bill Stark. For others, like Atlanta a couple of years ago, I was solo. So it seemed natural to me that since this was a foreign GP, I had a partner. When I was introduced to Jaime Jones and his wife Laura, I told him how happy I was to be working with him during the weekend and then began to lay out my plan for coverage over the weekend. After a few seconds of strange looks, Ron gave me a sideways glance and simply said, “Um, Jaime’s the artist for this weekend. He did Nissa and Progenitus.”

I am a master of first impressions.

I kind of have this law that whenever someone mocks you (even if it’s yourself), you need to charge forward as though they’re the one who is an idiot (which in this case I was). So, I immediately barreled into asking Jaime some questions about himself (nice recovery!). Jaime and Laura were cool people, and I really enjoyed talking to them and spending time with them over the course of the weekend. If you want to read my interview with Jaime, you can find it here.

With the awkwardness behind us (hopefully), the train pulled into our stop and we got out to wander the streets to our hotel. Walking through the streets of Tokyo felt like walking through canyons to me. Surrounding us to all sides were giant buildings decorated with neon lights like steel and glass Christmas trees. It was made even more apparent how Tokyo was built when we got up to the lobby of our hotel. The lobby was built so that two opposing walls were nothing more than massive windows, letting us look out at the impressive night skyline of Tokyo. Separating the sky from the skyscrapers was a line of red lights that seemed like a sanguine constellation set against a powerless sky. Parts of the city were illuminated by a jungle of neon creating illuminated oases in the darkness. It was an awe-inspiring view.

With our bags set in the rooms, Ron and I set out to get some food. Jaime and Laura, tired from the flight, let their exhaustion win over hunger, and they stayed in for the evening. As anyone who knows me can tell you (and if you didn’t figure it out from my last travel story), I am a being completely ruled by insatiable hunger. When Ron said food, I was already out the door.

To say that I didn’t expect to end up where we did would be a drastic understatement. Welcome to Shakey’s Tokyo! That’s right, ladies and gents, I spent my first night in Tokyo under the roof of a Shakey’s Pizza. Inside these hallowed halls, Magic-playing transplants gather to duke it out EDH-style under the watchful eyes of their beloved generals. Seriously, this night was awesome. Pizza, beer, and EDH are a powerful combination. I fell prey to it and loved every minute. Sadly, I left my EDH deck back in Indiana, so I was forced to rely on Ron’s Bag-O’-Fun to provide for me. I played a couple different decks over the course of the evening, but my favorite by far was the Momir Vig, Simic Visionary deck he had built. It used Cloudstone Curio and Equilibrium to run a bunch of tricks using creatures like Mystic Snake, Wistful Selkie, and Coiling Oracle to generate some really cool effects.

Also impressive on the evening were a couple of the decks I was playing against. One was a mono-White deck using the ever-popular Akroma, Angel of Wrath as its general. It ended up winning the game I saw it in because of a nifty Emeria, the Sky Ruin/Archon of Justice lock to threaten and control everyone. The other really cool deck I saw was effectively a combo deck that ran Reki, the History of Kamigawa as its general. Virtually every creature in this beast was a legend, which turned the entire deck into cantrips. When it got going thanks to its mana engine involving Patron of the Orochi and Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro, it really blew through the deck. After a fun night of gaming and a stomach full of awesome, we meandered back to the hotel so we could get some sleep before a nice day of sightseeing.

Now it was time for Ron “The Last Samurai” Foster to really shine. The first place he took us out to was the Sensō-ji Buddhist temple. Walking through the big market that lines the street running from the imposing front gate (known as the Thunder Gate) to the temple itself, Ron filled us in on all kinds of aspects about Buddhist architecture and the temple itself. I was enthralled. I won’t bore those of you with all of the details I learned, but here are some great pictures with a tidbit or two that I learned.

This is the Thunder Gate, which leads into Sensō-ji, which is the oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo.

I’m pretty sure these lanterns all represent people or organizations that contributed in some way to the remodeling of the temple that was going on.

This is the pagoda of Sensō-ji.

This wall contained omikuji, which are a series of fortunes that you could check out for a donation of 100 yen. You simply shake a metal cylinder until a wooden stick comes out, indicating which fortune you should take. Then you find the corresponding drawer and read your fortune. If your fortune happens to be a bad you, you tie it to the metal wires next to the stall. If you do that, the bad fortune will stay attached to the wire as well and not follow you. If it’s a good fortune, you can either tie it there to try to increase your good fortune, or you can just take it with you for good luck.

Koi are Japanese carp and have been selectively bred for color for almost 200 years. This golden ōgon koi really caught my eye because it was the only one of its kind in the pond. There was a really cool looking black one as well, but it was really hard to get a good picture of it since it was, you know, black.

This was just a cool shot of the pagoda and the garden surrounding it.

These awesome lion statues are known as shishi, and they guard the Shinto shrine adjacent to the Buddhist temple. If you notice, one has its mouth open while the other has its mouth shut. I thought it was really cool when it was explained to me that it comes from one of the most well known Buddhist mantras. When you take the sound you make with an open mouth (“Oh”) and combine it with the humming you get through a closed mouth (“mmm”), you get the mantra “om.” These shishi serve as reminders of man’s humble place in the universe.

This was just one example of the incredible chrysanthemum arrangements that were all over the exterior of the temple.

I think that’ll do it for this week’s story. Next time, I’ll finish up this trip to Japan with a journey down to the southern island of KyÅ«shÅ« for the Grand Prix itself, as well as a trip back up to Tokyo for a little down-home Tunisian/Creole fusion cooking. Hope you’ve enjoyed this trip so far. I know I did.

See you in two weeks,

Nate Price