These are the people in your neighborhood...

5/13/10

It's always important to have good relations with your neighbors...now let me tell you about mine!

There is the arcade/karaoke/bar/(fill in the blank with whatever else it could be) establishment directly across the street. It contains a machine that if I had the equipment I would fire bomb. Don't run to the phone trying to commit me, if you heard this machine you would be borderline crazy too! Picture an arcade machine that is really annoying, now multiply that times three and play it non-stop until at least 2am.

Neighbor #2 is a classy little establishment called "Relaxation" (pictured). It has no windows on the entire building, there is a metal grate that is always pulled down about 1/4 of of the way, and then another big door that you have to slide across to get in (no I did not go in, I watched a dirty old man (American contractor) do this one night when I was watching the activity out of my window!). One morning I woke up to a loud banging noise (on that door) and a man screaming "Police", after watching for a while I figured out that he wasn't the police but rather that he had "done business" with the Relaxation Massage Parlor and aside from being dissatisfied, he had left articles of clothing inside. This is where you get one of the special massages (see the post about rules and curfew, aka-places contractors and sailors are NOT supposed to go!)

Next on the block is my newest neighbor. Although, I noticed him when we first moved in, he earns his spot in this blog post because tonight as Adina and I were coming home from dinner he was having a heated argument with another man in a guy in the middle of the street (very similar to activities in St Louis) that became heated. This man (not Japanese) is definitely the drug dealer/pimp of the block. He sits on a step all day long and visits some cars that pull up, many people walk up, and there are many girls around him (who clearly could be prostitutes!)

Finally and quite possibly my favorite neighbors, mainly because I thought they were school children at first, are what I have deemed "the backpack girls". Otherwise known to the rest of the world as the prostitutes! They literally look like school kids, they wear backpacks, and yes they are prostitutes! They approach American men as they walk by.

With entertainment like this, there clearly is no need for television, which is good because although we do have 3 channels in English in this hotel, aside from CNN, they aren't showing anything current!