Minor caffeine poisoning

I left the house for Harajuku station at 1600, hoping to just sit in some cafes and learn Japanese. The whole Harajuku and Omotesando area is nice to walk around in.

I walked toward Lattest, hoping to find some food that I was interested in eating along the way (since Lattest itself doesn’t really do food except for cookies), but by the time I got there, nothing had caught my eye yet so I just made do with whatever was close.

The server at the cafe that I went to didn’t know much English so I had some trouble ordering. I asked for an espresso but she said that she could only do it in a large cup, so I thought why not and got a latte instead. I tried to choose from the beans on the menu but then she said that I couldn’t choose, so I asked what the choice of beans was for and she told me it was for the drip coffee. Then I asked her about the beans and she pulled out a little notebook that had the five beans on a scale of acidic to bitter. Keep in mind that this was all said with a mixture of gestures and pointing, and a tiny bit of English and Japanese. She clearly knew her coffee though and she also did know domain specific English words like “drip”, “espresso”, “bitter”, “sweet”, and “clear”.

Afterwards I sat at Lattest for a bit, studying Japanese on my phone. Mizuki also happened to be working there at the time. She spoke English to me when I walked in so she might’ve remembered me, but I almost hope not since I was such an idiot last time.

I walked outside a bit before 1900 (the closing time of Lattest) and realised I was both hungry and incredibly caffeinated, to the point where I was feeling jittery. It was funny realising that because I was shaming myself for not being able to concentrate inside Lattest and attributing it to nerves, but it was just caffeine all along. I was surprised how much it affected me because I probably only had 2.5 espressos worth of caffeine, but I guess that’s what happens if you don’t eat much and you lose your caffeine addiction/tolerance.

I stopped at a watch store along the way which I’d read had a large display of Casio G-Shocks. I didn’t realise that it was going to be an upscale one selling almost exclusively multi-thousand dollar ones, except for the G-Shocks. It was very spacious and mostly empty, making it really overstaffed. They actually had a map at the entrance detailing which cases contained what brands. As I was reading the map, one of the staff approached me so I asked if English was okay, not really minding one way or another. When he told me to hold on a second, I thought he was going to get someone else to come and talk to me, but instead, he came back with a tablet and a live translator in an office on the other end of a video call. Crazy!

I guess it’s worth it when you’re trying to sell these sorts of watches to rich foreigners who happen to walk in. I felt bad because all I said was something along the lines of “I’m just looking, I wanted to see the G-Shocks” so he just directed me to the display and then ended the call. I wonder how much it costs to use a live, human translation service like that. It didn’t seem specific to watches since when he initiated the call, he seemed to tell the translator that he was at a watch store.

As I was eating dinner I felt pretty awful since I was so caffeinated. I genuinely found it hard to eat properly and my coordination with my chopsticks was off. When I held my bowl and my glass, I felt like I was going to drop them at any second.

I got home, chilled out a bit, then went to the conbini to buy dinner at 2630 or so.

Waking hours

1430–2900